Another derogatory comment about the size of most social media efforts got me to thinking about the nature of influence. Particularly because for just a few bucks per thousand, I could make a whole lot more people sort of recognize my brand.
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How do you know a person is intelligent?
Mostly, we equate intelligence in terms not simply of general knowledge so much as knowledge of the right kind of stuff. No to children’s books, but yes to obscure Greek mythology. No to short-hand texting ability, yes to spelling words most people couldn’t use in a sentence.
But I think it’s quite clear that relative to one another, most people aren’t strangely smart or strangely stupid. There are anomalies, but most of what we assume is intelligence is really a symptom of something else, maybe a natural desire to accumulate knowledge, or access to good schools, challenging parents, luck, whatever. So our version of intelligence has more to do with access to information than IQ scores.
And it’s these “intelligent” people who use that perception of smarts and access to gain influence. The more intelligence perceived, the more influence gained and the more access given. It’s the echo chamber of smarts that happens as we ask ourselves questions like...
What do we consider smart? (Reciting Shakespeare, yes, fixing carburetor, no)
Do other people we define as smart consider this person smart? (smarts in TX just don’t equal smarts in NY)
Does this person do things we think smart people would do? (reading the Economist, yes, collecting comic books, not so much)
And finally, do these people have access to things we don’t? (whether that’s people or information)
And based on stuff like this, one person can have considerably more influence than that of another person.
And so it is with word of mouth, online or otherwise. What is important is not only reaching the same number of people as we can much more easily with reach media. More often than not, it just won’t happen. But what we can do is supply those people with the access, the information, and the kind of smarts that would make our constituents influential with the audiences that matter to us. And by doings these things, we can create or enhance an echo chamber of influence for ourselves, too.
Point being – a carburetor-fixing, comic book-collecting mechanic from Texas might not be able to sway a local election, but can become quite influential with access to the higher-ups at Marvel and a limited edition issue of Dark Avengers given the right audience.
And if anyone tells you that’s bullshit and your 10,000 earned don’t hold up to their 100,000 paid, just tell them they’re stupid. There’s an echo chamber for that, too.
