Many levels of influencer — long tails, tall tales
Duncan Watts is getting a lot of attention for attacking the notion that markets can be divided into influencers and influencees. The influential 
Seth Godin argues the market wants to gather into “tribes” of people who, no doubt, influence each other. On the other hand, he also argues for a more classical, top-down, influence-the-influencers approach as well. Guy Kawasaki buys into an extreme form of the Watts argument.
I agree with Godin, not Kawasaki. More precisely, I think there are many kinds and levels of influencer. The most important can be identified, and should be direct targets of your market outreach. But you should also be trying to reach an influencer “long tail” as well.
If selling enterprise technology, for example, you should separately target 8 different kinds of influencer, namely: Read more
| Categories: Analyst relations, Marketing theory, Technology marketing | 9 Comments |