Natural Influence

The Power of Natural Influence

Power structures are deeply embedded in individual and cultural identity. New strategies, technologies and tools, including social business and networks, provide the conditions in which change can take place. But unless there’s a corresponding multi-dimensional shift, the response is to find new ways to do things in the same way, resulting in temporary incremental change and not the lasting, transformational change that’s desired.

The evolution of social networks, or the cloud domain, is a great example. Hierarchies emerged in which a small percentage of people, brands and businesses have amassed very large numbers of followers in their networks. Our belief systems lead us to assume and expect that influence results from that power. Its critical to challenge, with rigor, those beliefs, assumptions and expectations: Do they hold true? If we’re not the ones who willfully influence through the size of the audience we reach, then who are we?

I like how Jeff Jarvis concludes his post:

Think about it: I don’t want someone to influence me. I don’t want to be influenced. The whole idea of looking for influencers is so old marketing: spewing messages to people who didn’t ask for them. So looking for influencers only perpetuates the mistakes of marketing past. Stop. Read the full post
He asks the great “what” questions. I think its equally important to ask great “who” questions.

I think of artificial influence in terms of quantity, willfullness, uni-dimensional and push. I think of natural influence in terms of quality, alignment, multi-dimensional and pull.