The other day I had a hankering to indulge my new found love of sushi.  I had been to a couple restaurants downtown, but I wanted something closer to home.  Being an internet wizard, I thought I’d go online and lookup sushi restaurants in my neighbourhood; but how would I know if the restaurant is any good?  

I found a forum where one contributor had high praise for a downtown restaurant.  I followed the thread and - “ka-ching!” – someone pointed out that the restaurant had opened another location that was just around the corner from me.  I went, I ate and it was good.

What’s the point?  Knowingly or not, the contributors to that forum had become influencers.  Like me, they have an interest in sushi, but what makes them influencers is that they talk about their interest to others.  What makes them important is that they can make sales for a company, just like they did for the sushi restaurant - and they do so without being paid!

So how do you find the influencers?  Well, you probably can’t swing a dead cat without hitting one; according to a BIGresearch study, almost 95% of us “regularly or occasionally give advice about products and services they purchased”, and over 90% of us “regularly or occasionally seek advice about products and services before making a purchase.”

Clearly people are talking – and they are talking about you (if they’re not, better check the corporate pulse!).  And it’s also not difficult to find out where they are talking.  As of June 30, 2007, there were 212,080,135 internet users in the U.S. – 70.2% of the population. 

Some influencers take things to the next level, beyond their circle of acquaintances.  Their thoughts and opinions are sought out by others - they are opinion leaders.  The opinion leader can be easy to identify as they generally exhibit the following characteristics:

• a higher level of interest or participation in a certain subject or issue
• gained the confidence of their publics by being well informed
• they are articulate authorities

Until recently, most opinion leaders were fairly well known, if only in their area of expertise - politicians, corporate leaders, industry analysts, journalists, celebrities, etc..    They were engaged by organizations, through advertising, lobbying or public relations, to exert their influence from the soapbox of traditional mass media.   

The web gives everyone a soapbox and an entirely new class of opinion leaders has emerged – I call them the buzz meisters. Over 25 million adults regularly offer their opinions on products or services online.  Increasingly, just like me and my sushi, many of us use the web to seek out that information and opinion and use it to make buying decisions.

The buzz meisters may be a little harder to find and identify than traditional opinion leaders, so keep the above list of characteristics handy.  But you must seek them out because they have very important implications for your business and your C2C marketing efforts – even for a small sushi restaurant on the east side of town.

Do you have any other ways of finding and engaging the influencers, opinion leaders and buzz meisters?

Tags: conversation-marketing, online-marketing, viral-marketing, word-of-mouth-marketing
Posted in Sales & Marketing