Monetizing social networks and the valuation of social media connectivity – 9: who speaks for whom?

This is my ninth installment in a series on the valuation of online social networking connections, and more generally of online social media connections (see Macroeconomics and Business, postings 42-47, 49 and 51for parts 1-8). I have been posting on the general topic of social media influence scores, and the value of having members of social media-connected communities with high scores serving as spokespersons. And as a part of that I have discussed some of the basic parameters that would go into making a spokesperson’s influence effectively serve as a source of positive, negative or neutral value to a business or other organization. One of the basic assumptions that I have kept in place and unexamined through this has been that of selection and influence that an organization would have over its spokespersons and that is the topic of this installment.

In this regard I note as a starting point that with the advent of web 2.0 and the directly participatory interactive web, anyone and everyone can and should be expected to share opinions online and about essentially anything. That can mean posted and shared direct reviews and with numerically scaled evaluation scores and both on a business’ own online sites, or through third party and neutral sites such as Yelp. That can mean less-structured and unstructured feedback and review commentary and through friends’ Facebook walls, Twitter feeds, blogs, and a growing range of other venues. But whatever the venue, as soon as interactive features are made with options for others in the business’ outside community to read this shared commentary, social media influence: positive and negative becomes an important issue. And in general, businesses and organizations might be able to reach out and at least seek to influence the people who have influence regarding them with more significant voices. And they can respond to recurring and virally marketed messages. But that is all they can do, barring directly challenging messages shared that reach and surpass a threshold of libel or slander as being knowingly false and intentionally and even calculatingly harmful.

Basically, with this posting I throw open to the crowd the entire issue of influence scores, and evaluating the impact of these metrics becomes a statistical and even demographic level analysis balancing positive and negative impact – plus analysis of the impact of outlier high influence score commentary participants.

And I add here, that favorable commentary from supporters can have negative impact and unfavorable commentary and even from strident detractors can come across as neutral at most in impact, and even where by the numbers those participants appear to have high influence scores.

• It is not just what is said in commentary, review and feedback but how it is said that counts.

I write that point with a specific consulting client I have worked with as a working example. This is a nonprofit that offers computer technology training to help members of underserved communities find new jobs and start new careers. And some of the favorable feedback shared with them through their organization’s Facebook wall, while very positive and praiseworthy in intent, has been off-putting for how it is written. I am not just referring to typos and spelling errors here, but to use of curse words and slang, that does not put either the writer or this organization in a good light. That is potentially positive influence that loses its positive impact and certainly for potential donors who might review this Facebook page when making their donation allocation decisions. At the same time, this organization has had to deal with negative reviews, shared through sites such as Yelp – and they did not come across as credible for how they were written either. This organization has control over which wall postings it would allow to stay up on its own Facebook page, but like any other business or organization it has very little control over what would show that addresses it on other Facebook pages, or on third-party sites such as Yelp.

• Organizations do not in general in any way “own” their spokespersons or their voices or opinions or how those views are expressed.
• They can and should know what is out there that reflects upon them, positively and negatively.
• They should respond where and as appropriate.
• And the most important influence score coming out of this is going to be the cumulative, aggregate score and its message, as influenced, perhaps by those high-impact, high influence score outliers and their messages. That includes the impact of spokespersons and hired spokespersons as it overlays and contributes to the more general and community wide conversation.
• And even a well-respected spokesperson with an articulately stated, catchy positive message can be lost in the flow of a less positive virally shared message and the collective impact of numerous individually low influence social media participants.
• So looking across this and the past several preceding installments in this series, social media influence scores are not a magic bullet, and understanding them and developing a response calls for a detailed and nuanced analysis and of what the overall message is, where it is shared online and how it is presented.

I am going to finish this series at least for now, with a next and final installment in which I will consider issues of the monetizable value of social media influence scores when taking the fuller array of factors that I have been discussing into account. Meanwhile, you can find this and related postings at Macroeconomics and Business. You can also find this and related postings at Social Networking and Business.