Organizations of all types are beginning to understand the importance of integrating digital into all aspects of their marketing and communication plans. Blogs, webinars, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, Facebook and LinkedIn groups and other services are becoming part of the vocabulary. So is a word that describes the desired audience… “key influencers.” In the PR and Comms world, that typically means single individuals with large-to-massive audiences; a carry-over from what Seth Godin calls the Television Industrial Complex.
Targeting key influencers means a lot of things. I’m going to kick off the week with a sobering look at “key influencer” marketing.
OVERSIGHT
Going after key influencers means leaving behind a lot of “smaller” voices that may have an aggregate influence greater than a single big voice. The smaller voices can have significant reach and probably enjoy a closer relationship with their cozy audience than a key influencer does with his/her enterprise.
INFLUENCER AND AUDIENCE FATIGUE
Many key influencers are pitched more times a day than you can imagine. Your issue and pitch must resonate with the influencer and should come to them at a time when the issue can be wedged into his/her established editorial calendar. In considering whether or not to participate, the key influencer will consider if the audience will eel put off by yet another call to action. Key influencers will not want to engage in anything that will result in audience fatigue.
DRIVE-BY EFFECT
With large and engaged audiences comes the risk that any single Twitter message or blog post will go largely unnoticed. One Twitter message among one hundred or more in a day might come and go without capturing the interest or even the eyes of people in the community.
PUBLIC VALUE STATEMENTS
An organization that selectively decides whose voice is worth responding to in the digital world makes a public declaration of which voices have value to them and which don’t. This can be a dangerous proposition since an organization loses audience one person at a time and a company one customer at a time (oh, and a politician one voter at a time). Miscalculating who should be acknowledged could be disastrous (see The Cataclysm Effect).
THE CATACLYSM EFFECT
Ignoring a sea of “small voices” expressing concern over an issue could mean an organization will face a rather large storm if that issue hits a tipping point. For example, there was already a swell of anger growing online when, in 2005, Jeff Jarvis went public with his frustration over problems with his Dell computer and the lackluster service the company was offering him. Mr. Jarvis’ blog post became the catalyst that turned that sea of small voices into the head of the storm which was just as angry for being ignored by Dell as they were about problems with their computers and the company that had failed them.
In a conversation with a “key influencer” last year, we laughed that “A-listers” like himself have only one direction they can travel in quickly. The small voices are the ones building strong and engaged communities everyone else will join.
There are three good examples of the Canadian political community embracing digital technology to extend their reach to and engage more with the public.
Watch or participate in a conference about Canada at the age of 150
The Liberal Party of Canada is hosting a non-partisan event called Canada at 150 in Montreal later this month (March 26-28). The three day event features a full program of speakers and aims to challenge Canadians to think about what we would like our country to be in 2017, the year of our 150th birthday. Canada at 150 has offered both media and blogger accreditation (cutoff date was Feb. 22), showing that the organizers realize the value of including social media journalists as part of the planning process.
Don’t worry if you can’t actually be at the conference. Besides the media and blogger coverage, Canada at 150 will be live streamed on the Internet (for those who register for free in advance) and there are a number of interactive tools to encourage Canadians to participate. The organizers have also made available a handbook for hosting your own satellite site to follow the conference.
At your fingertips wherever you go
Ontario Conservative Party leader Tim Hudak became an iPhone App this week. The free app was created by Ottawa company Purple Forge and was modeled on their MyPolitics iPhone App — an app that aggregates political information from all parties and for all levels of government.
Tim Hudak the iPhone App puts Tim Hudak the person at the iPhone owner’s fingertips. Users can access Tim’s bio, his upcoming agenda (though it’s currently a week out of date), YouTube videos and flickr photos, news, Tim’s Twitter stream and contact information. There are additional features for those who register themselves with the application.
I expect relatively few politicians will go as far as creating mobile applications that aggregate their work and centralize the ways in which the public can engage with them while on the go. This is probably more true because of the cost of creating a custom app of this sort, reported to be as much at $9,500.
Video conversation
Prime Minister Stephen Harper used YouTube to live stream his response to last week’s Throne Speech, yesterday. It’s a move that has come with mixed reactions. Christopher Waddell, associate professor and director of the Carleton school of journalism, was quoted as saying “People are trying lots of new ideas and new technologies but to me this doesn’t sound like a winner.” However, the Toronto Star article in which that quote appears offers no explanation from Professor Waddell for his opinion.
Even more interesting than the Prime Minister’s use of YouTube to ensure his message is delivered to the public his way, is his use of YouTube to engage with others online in something called Your Interview with Prime Minister Harper. The PMO has invited the public to submit questions about the Throne Speech and budget in the form of short videos posted to YouTube no later than 7pmET, Tuesday, March 16. A selection of questions that receive the most public votes will be addressed in the PM’s next YouTube video. It will be interested to see which questions are selected and how the PM responds to them.
The Liberal Party of Canada is hosting a non-partisan event called 
At your fingertips wherever you go
