Social media has created a new layer of influencers

Brian Solis, principal of a PR and new media agency in the Silicon Valley, coined the title of this posting in his blog on June 11, 2007: The Social Media Manifesto – integrating Social Media into Marketing Communications. I’ve only just come across it. Slug. I’m glad I did though.

Social media goes beyond the role that people have played traditionally in disseminating information, it’s much more than that. The dynamic behind the new layer of influencers is the Social Web: enabling people to create and share news and information with others through decentralised networks. The Web is a 21st century social meeting place. Like any other meeting place over the eons, people socialise, discuss politics, conduct business all in the one place.

The impact on mainstream media is significant. Mass media scale advantages do not apply to social media. Broadcaster and publisher audiences and readers now have alternatives, and they are producers as well as consumers. There are many participants…millions of people…but as Clay Shirky has observed, a few are far more active than most. It’s a pattern that Clay states is general to social media. Just a few people can be very influential.

There are ways to identify who the main influencers are. One approach is that adopted by The Advertising Age in publishing a list of the top Media and Marketing blogs in the world. Laurel Papworth identified the most ‘influential’ Australian media and marketing bloggers out of the Australian entrants on world list. Just how influential these bloggers are is unclear…but it does provide evidence of social media influence.

Brian Solis’s message to PR & marketing professionals was that “…focusing on important markets and influencers will have a far greater impact than trying to reach the masses with any one message or tool”.

Back in 2006 The Future Exploration Network(FEN) described a symbiosis taking place between social media and mainstream media (eg. TV stars setting up profiles on social networking sites). Solis’s message and the FEN media symbiosis are just two indicators of the growing nexus between social and commercial elements of the Social Web.

Solis pointed out that understanding social media is more about sociology and less about technology. Perhaps another way to describe this is to take a socio-technical perspective. This is an important issue – it means that anticipating the future of communications and media is more about understanding social developments and less about technology.

Social media is being employed by corporates. Mashable has identified 35 examples of corporate social media in action. To paraphrase Brian Solis, understanding the nexus between social media and commerce is more about socio-economics and less about economics.

What all this means is the need to go deeper into the social and cultural transformation taking place.

Over the last couple of months I have become aware of many researchers and consultants blogging, presenting and twittering on the subject of social media and social networking. There are social media start-ups in Australia, such as Norg Media - people powered news. Read about the first robot with living brain tissue. 3eep is a social networking come social media enterprise for sporting enthusiasts.

Earlier this month Brian Solis and Jesse Thomas created The Conversation Prism graphic that charts online conversations between people that populate communities as well as networks that connect the Social Web.

The graphic is an excellent visual representation of rapidly evolving and pervasive extent of the Social Web.

The 20th century is known for massive advances in technology. It is not surprising that so much attention has been paid to technology trends in keeping pace with media developments. At this point in the 21st century however, social developments rate as being of more significance as drivers of change.