subject: Twelp Force Follow-up [print this page] Twelp Force Follow-up Twelp Force Follow-up
You know, I've been thinking more about the twelp force and social marketing influencers and it brought me to some interesting conclusions. I've been talking a lot about influence in my articles, trying to define it, put a name on it- really figure out the inner-workings of influencers. And well, it'spretty damn hard. Influence isn't something that is relatively easy to quantitatively define. Some of the steps involved in becoming influential may be measured and calculated, but, ultimately, it takes two to tango. That is, the influenced have half as much a say in influence as the influencer. A government cannot be properly run without people to run it.
There are a lot of thought leaders out there attempting to put a name to influence, and from all that I've seen on the subject I've found that it usually can be broken down into twomain categories. Of course there are many other derivatives that stem from these categories, but for now I'll just be talking about these two. Number one I like to callAnalogue Influence. That is, influence that is based on "land-line" things- Title, Company, Brand, Customer Experience, History etc. This is the standard type of influence that we've seen for hundreds or thousands of years. But recently with the advent of the internet we've seen the emergence of a new type, one I'll classify as Digital Influence. Influence that is based on the amount of active opinions found throughout the internet indexed in various media forms such as blogs an what-have-you.
Best Buy, with the implementation of the "Twelp Force", has united the two, and baby, it feels SO good. They've managed to truly bridge the gap in influence, creating a whole new standard for the rest of the world. They've managed to directly connect and create a relationship with you, the customer, something that traditional internet retailers have been unable to do. Plus, as I mentioned in my previous article, they've made that relationship one of pure goodwill, generating massive amounts of "influence brownie points" and word of mouth advertising potential.
So the short and skinny of it all becomes this- Is this transition marketable to other companies? And can you Best Buy level influence using only a Digital Influencemodel?
