A Four-Dimensional System for Quantifying Social Influence

Influencer marketing and engagement work continues to grow and become more complex. We need a robust framework for assessing (and ideally quantifying) a person’s level of influence. We can do this by breaking influence down into four dimensions: Relevance, Authority, Reach and Accessibility (the RARA system). Together, these dimensions allow a quantifiable, data-driven and robust […]

Knockout: Facebook positions to take a piece of global Influencer marketing budgets

Image: Wikipedia Over the past few months, Facebook has made three changes to the way influencer marketing works. Together, these changes give Facebook Inc. a very strong position in influencer marketing, and a good shot at eating a big slice of the global influencer marketing money pie. So what have they done? First, they’ve made […]

Real followers, fake followers, and real influence: fallout from the Devumi exposé

Influencers with millions of followers can command a lot of attention, and with that attention they can bring in a lot of media dollars. So when an article appears like the New York Times’ exposé article on the fake follower economy, it’s bound to shake things up. So is influencer marketing doomed? What’s really going on […]

Why most influencer marketing fails

The wave has peaked, and we’re sliding down the frothy slope now: people have realized that most influencer marketing is bullshit. Thank God. It’s about time the industry saw some sense. A bit of context: this article appeared a couple of days ago in Digiday, featuring some revelations from an anonymous social media marketing exec. With nearly 37 […]

The Narrows – Four trends changing how information flows and news spreads

If you’re reading this, you probably got to it through an algorithm. That’s really common these days – and it’s a trend with a surprising dark side. Either you came here through a social media link, or you found it via a search engine. In either case, the algorithms that determine who sees what on those platforms […]

The Three Fundamentals of Powerful Interactive Communications

On the morning of 14 November 2008, a 15 year-old boy was rushed to hospital in Laholm, Sweden. He was suffering from an apparent epileptic fit, brought on by exhaustion and dehydration. Investigating doctors discovered that the cause of his illness was self-inflicted. The boy had been playing Wrath of the Lich King, an expansion of […]

Science says Facebook will lose 80% of its users by 2017

Fascinating if true. But I have a doubt. UPDATE: Mike Develin, a data scientist from Facebook, has just published a cheeky critique of the Princeton duo’s research – well worth a read. Recently there’s been a splash about a paper that says Facebook will lose 80% of its users before 2017. The authors, John Canarella and […]

Lessons in citizen media from Greenpeace: #IceClimb

There’s a very interesting protest happening right now: Six women are climbing the Shard in protest at Shell’s arctic drilling plans. Of course, Greenpeace and others have done this sort of thing before. What makes this different is the scale of the activist media operation around the event. It’s a great example of citizen journalism […]

Kill it With Fire: why Gamification sucks and Game Dynamics rule

This is a transcript (sort of)of an Ignite session I just delivered at the Melcrum Digital Communications Summit in London.

The intimacy of disaster: why journalism is personal, and the main challenge of 21st century media

I’m starting to see patterns in people’s memories of the 9/11 attacks. I’ve been reading a lot of people’s stories lately, as we’re collecting them over at Citizenside. When you’ve read enough of these recollections, you start seeing patterns. One motif keeps coming back time after time: the phone call from a loved one. At […]