Measure What Matters is Katie Delahaye Paine’s new book, due out in March from Wiley Publishers. Below is the beginning of Chapter 8 on how to measure influencers and thought leadership. Click here to download the entire chapter.
Chapter 8:
How to Measure Influencers and Thought Leadership“Dominant coalitions tend to value and support communicators who first demonstrate their worth.”
—David DozierIn the good old days, influencers were recognized leaders in business, media, Wall Street, or academia. Today, an influencer can be anyone who knows something about your product, your market, or your business. It can be someone with 10,000 followers on Twitter or 500 friends on Facebook. All that matters is whether they recommend your product or service.
New Influencers, New Thought Leaders, New Relationships
It used to be that a good communications program functioned like a food chain. You would educate key spokespeople and influencers on your message, and, assuming it was a credible message, it flowed down through the chain of media and ultimately reached your publics through a variety of credible sources. This top-down process of message control seemed reasonable, but was probably only a convenient illusion. Social media has proved it wrong...
