On influence, for Social Collective

Next week’s Social Collective conference aims to be a “big picture” event, one that examines “how we communicate within the platforms and how we measure and integrate social media into our strategies, customer service and marketing campaigns”.

As Cision is one of the event’s sponsors, I’ve had the chance to jot down a few biggish picture thoughts on influence over on the Social Collective blog. Here’s an extract:

It’s indisputable that social media has ushered in some kind of mediaocracy. Individuals (or at least, individuals in developed, mainly Western economies) now have the power to publish and distribute content to an extent formerly undreamt of. But Cluetrain-inspired ideas of a newly level playing field, in which all sources of content are equal, are giving way to a social media reality in which new gatekeepers have emerged and new hierarchies been established.

These hierarchies can be mapped according to the ways in which content, ideas, memes, conversations, spread across the internet. Those with an elevated position within the hierarchy can be seen to have more influence on the content that is shared and discussed throughout the network, whether as originators or as powerful propagators of the content in question.

Read it all.