The evidence is in: we are all born to be futurists

By

I believe that we all need to be our own futurists: in a rapidly changing world we need the skills and capabilities to think effectively about the future so we can act better today.

Perhaps humans are all in fact born to engage deeply in the future, it is simply a capacity we need to develop further.

Renowned positive psychology professor Martin Seligman, in a recent New York Times article prefacing his forthcoming book Homo Prospectus, says humans are intrinsically focused on the future.
Read more →

How to Become a Data Journalist

By

First, the bad news: If you want to be a data journalist, odds are you’ll need to teach yourself. There are courses and organizations that can help, but journalism schools are only slowly adding data to their degree offerings. What’s more, if you’re reading this, you’re probably a journalist who wants to add data to your skill set. Going back to grad school may not be practical. One does not enroll in a design undergrad because one wants to learn how to use Photoshop, for instance.

Now, the good news: it’s possible to transform yourself into a data journalist. Here’s how:

1)    Pick a platform.

2)    Learn the basics.

3)    Tackle one example of each of the Big Three.

This is how those steps work in more detail:

Pick a platform

First step is picking your platform. You can take the traditional approach and just learn barely enough of a dozen different platforms to churn out a serviceable pie chart after an hour of bashing around and Googling everything, but I don’t recommend it. At a certain point, one must commit. This is one of those points. Figure out which software feels right to you, whether it be Tableau, Google Data Studio, Power BI, or some other platform, and go with it.

This choice may not be entirely up to you. If your newsroom has already done some data projects, you should probably get with the program and use whatever they’re already using. There are also plenty of other ways to visualize and analyze data than with the three I listed above. However, I’m operating under the assumption that you’re a reporter, and therefore probably do not find yourself in possession of coding skills, and that eliminates certain options like D3.

Learn the basics

Second step is learning enough of your chosen platform to get started. Most platforms come with their own tutorials, and you can also look to services like Lynda for training. Alternately, you can just dive into step 3 and try to learn through trial and error. Learning software this way is a bit like learning to swim by jumping in a lake and hoping things work out for the best, but experiential learners may find it’s the only approach that really works.

If your newsroom has any experience with data, your very first step should probably involve finding whichever reporters have done data work in the past, and wheedling them for help getting started. You can also hunt down a full-time data journalist outside your newsroom and ask them to mentor you. There’s a good chance they’ll go for it.

Data journalism can be a lonely, isolated life bereft of human sources to interview. In other words, many data journalists could use a break and some human contact. Reach out to one and see what they say. I’ve spent years trying to wheedle the journalists I work with into learning Tableau, with little success. Every single journalist who has come to me asking for help with training has received some variation of, “Absolutely! Of course I can help!”

Tackle one example of each of the Big Three

Third step is tackling the Big Three: elections, census, and economy. If you’re a journalist, you need to be able to cover elections, you need to be able to cover demographics, and you need to be able to cover economic issues. From these three basic types of data, most other types of analysis can be extrapolated.

Further, all three types are topics for which data should be fairly easy to find. Most countries have plenty of election data available, whether generated internally or externally. Same goes for census information and economic metrics.

In each case, you will follow the same basic production outline:

1) Hit Google and figure out which data is available on the subject. This is the most difficult step. Don’t be discouraged if you hit a wall early on–data is often surprisingly elusive. Keep trying. Be prepared to jump through some hoops even once you find the data. Many sources have a learning curve simply to figure out how to select or download their data.

2) Pull up the data you find in something simple like Excel, so you can see how the file is structured and what it contains. Figure out how the headers work. What do those column names mean? Are there any cryptic titles that need to be replaced with titles that make more sense? Is your dataset manageable in size? If you have more than 20 columns, it’s probably a poor choice for your first data project.

3) Clean your data, if needed. For your first training datasets, this shouldn’t be an issue. Try and just steer clear of dirty data right now. When dealing with data, anything that’s wrong is “dirty.” For instance, if you have two alternate spellings of the same person’s name in your dataset, that’s “dirty” data because your software will treat those two spellings as different people. When you’re first starting out, you should seek out simpler datasets with few or no mistakes. You want to have a firm footing in your platform of choice before you try and tackle really messy data sources. These types of sources can easily lead to errors in your analysis and conclusions.

4) Figure out the question you want to answer. Think about which columns (which data) you’ll need to answer that question. What sorts of views make sense? Is there a geographic component? Time component? Both?

5) Open your data in the data platform of your choice. If you decided to go with something Excel-based, like Pivot Tables, you can pat yourself on the back at this point for having saved yourself a step.

6) Start to answer your question from step 3. Remember that most visualizations begin life looking homely and unintelligible. It takes time to shape them. Be prepared to make multiple visualizations looking at the data different ways, and throw away those that don’t do anything useful. Often your finished product will be a dashboard with multiple views on the same page, and it’s normal to build more views than you need as you’re exploring your data. There’s nothing wrong with throwing away a third of the views you construct by the time you publish. This is perfectly normal.

7) Decide whether you’ve answered your question. If you have, see if that answer leads to any more questions–or if you’ve stumbled across any other interesting questions as you’ve worked through what you have. The side questions are frequently the most interesting.

8) Go show your results to someone. Their response can be anything from shocked astonishment at your feat to bored indifference. Bear in mind that just because you blow someone’s mind, that doesn’t mean you’re necessarily a genius. (But it certainly does encourage you to go out and keep analyzing.)

Strength in Numbers

Once you’ve tackled the Big 3, you should have enough familiarity with your chosen data platform to see whether data is for you. Many journalists are math phobes, and find numbers intimidating. It’s okay if you feel out of your depth. Bear in mind that as well as being scary, numbers can be transformative. Presented properly, they lend credence to your stories in a way that no amount of good prose can match.

One of the standby rules of writing states, “Show, don’t tell.” Data visualizations are the ultimate expression of this rule. They sit alongside our words and show the audience the numeric truth in what we report. This is of tremendous value to us, our work and our audience. In a world where credibility is a continuing challenge, we could all use some authoritative weight to throw around. Data can be that weight.

Smaller companies will drive innovation and economic growth with nimble learning and work structures

By

I recently did a media briefing for Telstra Business on why small and mid-sized businesses need to adopt relevant technologies to keep pace with a rapidly changing business environment. One of the interviews I did after the briefing was with Kochie’s Business Builders.

The two short videos below were excerpted from the interview, with summary notes below.


Read more →

How CIOs and technology leaders can map the future shape of their industries

By

I was recently interviewed for a podcast on The Future of IT for Cisco’s Connected Futures program, along with leading CTOs, CDOs and technology strategists.

You can listen to the podcast below.

Points I make in the podcast on the role of CIO and technology leadership include:
Read more →

What Motivates People to Click on News Stories

By

In the digital era, a news story’s success is often measured by its page views. Not only that, metrics play a large role in informing editorial decisions, partly because of the assumed link between clicks and audience interests.

While these statements may seem self-evident, a recent study in the academic journal Journalism reveals some cracks in these notions. Researchers at VU Amsterdam, a university in Netherlands, explored 56 news users motivations for clicking or not clicking stories by asking them to share their thoughts, or “think aloud”, as they browsed news online.

The researchers found several reasons for why people click on certain news items and not others. They also suggest that a lack of page views doesn’t necessarily mean users think a news story is not interesting or important.

Click-worthy news stories

Some of the motivations for clicking on news items:

    • They were personally relevant to a reader’s everyday life and offered information for discussions in social settings.
    • Events happened nearby, though what constituted close proximity was subjective.
    • Prominently placed news items received clicks because their location gave the impression that they were important.
    • Follow-up pieces were clicked, granted a user had been tracking the story and the news item had a new development.
    • Headlines with familiar information, such as a name, a news user recalled but could not immediately place.
    • Headlines, even if considered uninteresting, received clicks if accompanied by a visually appealing photo.
    • Amusing or funny headlines attracted clicks, even if story content had little value to users
    • Disheartening headlines garnered clicks, but not if they were perceived as excessively sad. “Feel good” headlines received clicks because of their light-hearted nature and positive affect on the reader, not because they fell into a particular news genre

.

Why people don’t click new items

  • Headline appears informationally complete, so there is no need to read full story.
  • There’s an associative gap between a headline and the story, so readers don’t connect the news item with their pre-existing interest in a topic.
  • Users already know the story, think the news is obvious, or that the news repeats itself (“supersaturation”) too often without providing new developments.
  • Headline is an opinion a news user disagrees with or is dismissed as petty.
  • A news item is too in-depth and the user doesn’t have enough context to understand it.

When not clicking doesn’t mean not interested

There were pragmatic reasons behind why users did not click on stories, even though they were interested in them.

  • Data-heavy stories weren’t clicked because they cost the user too much to view.
  • Items with videos were sometimes avoided because load times and commercials would disrupt user experience
  • Users didn’t have time to read the full story or thought they’d get more information on it later from a different source.

Other news users browsed headlines to stay informed, but were satisfied with this superficial “scanning” or “checking” that they didn’t click on stories. They went online for the news headlines alone.

Takeaways

In terms of page views, these findings give insights into what makes a headline weak versus strong and “clickable,” thus offering direction on how newsrooms can improve. However, behavior from news users who prefer to scan consistently for snack-sized developments suggests a more compulsive and cursory tendency in consuming news, and it’s doubtful that more effort in constructing headlines will translate into higher click through rates from this group.

If an online publication’s goal is to gain more clicks in order to bring in more advertising revenue, experimenting with site design and focusing on user experience may result in solutions that override the pragmatic reasons holding back user engagement.

The study suggests that news users are not simply interested in so-called trivial and soft news items, but that explanations for not clicking on a story are more complex and nuanced. If news organizations can focus in on what users do like, such as personally relevant stories and ones with social utility, while delivering it an user-friendly and and tailored format, it’s possible both to maintain journalistic integrity and better captivate audiences.

Read the full study here.

Domain names for thought leadership content – showing clients the future

By

Over many years I have registered domain names for interesting topics, almost all of them about the future.

Using these, I have launched a number of online publications over the years, including FutureofSex.net and Creating the Future of PR, among others. One of the possible paths for my business was to launch many future-oriented publications in parallel. I accumulated close to 400 domains to support possible projects.

While I intend to be doing a lot more in publishing in years to come, my core business model is fundamentally shifting (more on that another time). As such, apart from a smaller collection of domains I will keep for my own projects, I am offering these domain names for sale.

These domain names are perfect for thought leadership content projects. For example, one of the few domains I have sold was TheFutureofStrategy.com, which AT Kearney bought for a web publication featuring the firm’s thought leadership.
Read more →

How Chatbots and News Messaging Apps Are Changing Editorial and Commercial Innovation

By

In a 2015 blog post entitled “The Future of News is Not an Article,” Alexis Lloyd, the then creative director of the New York Times R&D Lab, envisaged a future that unlocked the potential of “Particles” instead of articles.

She pointed to Particles, “the potentially reusable pieces of information within an article,” as the way forward for news organizations to encode information in a more accessible, relevant, and long-lasting manner:

“The Particles approach…means that news organizations are not just creating the “first draft of history”, but are synthesizing the second draft at the same time, becoming a resource for knowledge and civic understanding in new and powerful ways.”

[s2If current_user_can(access_s2member_level0)]
Lloyd’s essential message was that organizations must transcend the limitations of the traditional news article—a relic of a relatively print-dominated era when storytelling had fewer platforms—in order to make the most of, and the most impact in, a digital media environment.

Based on this premise, the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism has recently published a report by media consultant Kevin Anderson entitled “Beyond the Article: Frontiers of Editorial and Commercial Innovation”. The report urges news organizations to think “beyond the article” in terms of “both the content they produce and the commercial revenue that supports their journalism.”

‘News as conversation’

Given the pressures surrounding existing business models for news, Anderson argues that editorial and commercial innovation must go hand in hand to propel journalism forward in a digital world. One of the key developments he sees at this intersection is the use of messaging apps and chatbots. These platforms are fuelling the shift to “news as conversation,” an approach that seeks to capitalize on mobile and messaging trends, build closer relationships with audiences, and generate new commercial opportunities.

The potential of a “news as conversation” approach has become increasingly apparent since usage of the big four messaging platforms—WhatsApp, WeChat, Viber, and Facebook Messenger—overtook the big four social media platforms—Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat—in monthly active users throughout 2015 and 2016.

“Beyond the Article” covers three interesting case studies that harness this trend: the Facebook chatbots of social news network Rappler, the apps driving youth engagement with newspaper Helsingin Sanomat, and the conversational interface and notification system of the Quartz news app. The key findings of these case studies are highlighted below.

1. Helping people see the whole picture: Improving content discovery and crowdsourcing through Rappler’s Facebook chatbots

Aims

Rappler, a growing Philippines-based social news network, sought to overcome the content limitations of Facebook’s algorithms and newsfeed in a way that would better communicate its distinctive editorial voice and priorities.

“People are really seeing a lopsided view of what we are serving our public, and that has an impact on the quality of discourse,” Rappler’s head of research and content strategy, Gemma Bagayaua Mendoza, said in an interview with Anderson. “In the Philippines as in the United States, the echo chambers are really out there, and they are affecting how people respond to situations in current events. We would like to be able to have direct access to people so they see the whole picture.”

Methods

Rappler dedicated two developers to work on a Facebook chatbot called RapRap. Launched in July 2016, the chatbot is a conversational application that allows users to ask basic questions or enter keywords to see related stories from the Rappler site.

Rappler has also built a chatbot that assists people to contribute to its crowdsourced #NotOnMyWatch anti-corruption project. #NotOnMyWatch uses real-time data to show where and how corruption happens, a game-changing approach in a country where very few families who pay bribes actually report corruption.

Benefits and challenges

The first round of chatbot development was relatively quick and “the effort was fairly low,” according to Rappler’s then-CTO Nam Le. Despite this, spreading awareness about how users can interact with the bots remains important as technical developments unfold. The bots are expected to gradually recognize and respond to a greater variety of user requests and submissions.

The RapRap chatbot has helped Rappler to capitalize on a surge in Facebook activity amid declining Twitter usage in the Philippines. As the bot facilitates user discovery of the breadth and depth of Rappler content, the organization anticipates more story views and more advertising revenue. The sales team is exploring ways to make this happen.

Meanwhile, the chatbot for #NotOnMyWatch has benefited from crowdfunding and private-sector grants. By providing a convenient online reporting process, the bot is helping mobilize individuals and communities to supplant Facebook rants with actual reports of corruption. “This is something that we hope to carry into the next years. If we can make it work, it will make fighting corruption far more transparent,” said Rappler CEO and executive editor Maria Ressa at the Philippines Social Good Summit in 2016.

2. From a WhatsApp experiment to a custom-built app: Engaging youth audiences through chat at Helsingin Sanomat

Aims

Nyt (“Now”), the youth-oriented section of Finland’s largest newspaper, Helsingin Sanomat, wanted to grow its reach among 15- to 26-year-olds. Initial efforts to engage this age bracket on social media had plateaued, with Instagram and Facebook strategies proving less successful than expected. Consequently, the Nyt team sought a new strategy to effectively engage with the target audience, especially its youngest members.

Methods

Realizing that WhatsApp is used by around 80% of youth in Finland, Nyt launched a WhatsApp newsletter in autumn 2014. It first sent subscribers a few top stories, a small number of headlines, and a joke. Although the team didn’t heavily market the newsletter and only expected a few hundred early adopters, within a week 3,000 users had joined. Shortly afterwards, Nyt had to cap the number of users at 5,000.

The limitations of the WhatsApp platform soon became apparent. Faced with what news editor Jussi Pullinen called “a manual labor hell” of managing multiple distribution lists and precariously navigating the platform’s terms of use, the Nyt team decided to work with an external firm to develop a custom-built app that could mirror the conversational format of WhatsApp.

Benefits and challenges

Nyt’s WhatsApp experiment offered a useful learning curve that informed the design of the app. The Nyt team had been surprised at the intensity of interaction from young WhatsApp users who asked questions, sent audio and video files, and gave direct feedback about what they wanted more of and what Nyt should change.

“People who were from the Helsinki region really liked getting tips on new restaurants or bars or info on events on the town via chat,” said Pullinen, rather than having to “go and look that info up”. Chat therefore proved to be a convenient, social and user-friendly way for Nyt to engage a youth audience. As Pullinen explained in a post on Medium:

“All in all, it felt very personal and very natural to be a media brand and to chat.”

But there was a significant stumbling block: WhatsApp users were not clicking through to the website. Consequently, rather than relying on website traffic, the Nyt app is designed to drive revenue through partnerships with local businesses who provide coupons, contests, and sponsored content. Building these partnerships requires more work than selling ad banners, but Nyt’s data indicates that its young readers tend to block or ignore ads, yet they are relatively open to reading quality sponsored content.

The Nyt app now has many times more users than those on the WhatsApp newsletter. However, maintaining user engagement has been harder. “Our core audience is on WhatsApp all the time. When you have a separate app, you have a threshold there,” Pullinen said in an interview for “Beyond the Article.” Despite this setback, the Nyt app continues to unlock valuable insights into the brand’s youth audience, including their preferences for a distinct editorial voice, a short digest format, and direct, genuine interaction.

3. Playful, creative and condensed: Newsbites, notifications and the Quartz brand experience

Aims

Given that consumer use of notifications tripled in many countries from 2013 to 2016, digital business news outlet Quartz wanted to enter people’s mobile notification streams. It sought to achieve this in a way that would align with its three guiding principles: “provide global business news, respect readers’ time, and go where the readers are.”

Methods

After weighing up several contrasting ideas, from a minimal mobile experience with extensive notifications to a mobile version of the full Quartz website, Quartz decided instead on an app with a conversational interface. In an article about the launch of the Quartz news app for iPhone, Zachary M. Seward explained:

“We put aside existing notions about news apps and imagined what our journalism would be if it lived natively on your iPhone. It wouldn’t be a facsimile of our website. It would be something entirely different, with original writing, new features, and a fresh interface.”

Launched in February 2016, the Quartz app presents users with newsbites, where they can click on an emoji-filled icon to receive a story summary in live-chat style messages, or they can skip to the next story. Users can also choose from four types of notifications: basic news updates, important and interesting news, “really, really big news,” and the “markets haiku”.

Benefits and challenges

Quartz’s chat-based app is strikingly relevant for time-pressed audiences and Millennials. The app’s instant responses mimic the familiar format of texting, generating a comfortable, amusing vibe similar to chatting with a friend. Although the app does not at first understand an individual user’s news preferences, the decisions that users make about article choice and notifications provide Quartz with a wealth of customer data points, fuelling feedback loops that may be used to build more efficient and personalized customer experiences.

Some people may find the app a bit limiting because it chooses which news stories to reveal, one at a time. But in the view of Adam Pasick, push news editor for Quartz, this is precisely the app’s crucial differentiator: “We’re providing a very slim, curated view of things that we find interesting,” he told Anderson. “This is really a small snack size as far as reading the news goes.” In contrast to the Quartz website’s array of in-depth feature articles, the Quartz news app thrives on its brevity, epitomized in the cryptic and popular daily Markets Haiku.

 

To help monetize the app, Quartz places visual ads within the app’s update stream. This may seem counter-intuitive given consumer trends towards ad-blocking and ad resistance. Nonetheless, for many users, the overall experience of the app is likely to be positive, convenient and even delightful. According to Quartz creative director Brian Dell, the goal is “to match our user’s context, and build the best brand experiences for that in a Quartzy way.”

Convergence in the business case for news as “particles” of conversation

In the three case studies above, the alignment of clear editorial goals with technology and business outcomes has paved the way for innovation in how people understand, experience and engage with news. By converting news into “particles” of conversation, Rappler, Helsingin Sanomat, and Quartz are making information resonate with their readers in direct and convenient ways that could revitalize brand-to-consumer relationships.

Nonetheless, there are many challenges involved in making chat-based news successful and sustainable. Harnessing the rise of bots and messaging is only one trend involved in creating the future of news—a future increasingly being shaped by the synthesis of editorial and commercial aspirations.

Image sources: Rappler.com, fightcorruption.ph, Helsingin Sanomat via Medium.com, Quartz via BrentManke.com, and Quartz via Mike Wickett

The power of humans: how companies will compete with humanity against AI

By

I was recently interviewed for an interesting article in The Guardian Brand human: why efficient automation will not always be best for business.

The main thrust of the article was about whether companies would choose to hire humans rather than use machines to win customers and improve perception of their brand. It is an interesting point, though I view it as fairly unlikely that consumers will actively shift their buying to companies that hire humans in roles that machines could do.
Read more →

How to use a futurist to create value: shifting executive thinking

By

Liz Alexander of Leading Thought has recently published an interesting free ebook titled How to Use a Futurist, which compiles examples of how 24 futurists have created value for clients.

This was my contribution to the ebook (5MB pdf):
Read more →

The Business of Influence: 5 Principles of Successful Influencer Marketing

By

Today, every business is in the business of influence. More and more organizations are working with people who can influence desirable audiences to connect, engage, and make decisions—and purchases—on a powerful scale. However, unlocking the massive potential of influencer marketing in a networked world requires understandings and focuses that are eluding many organizations. As digital analyst Brian Solis reveals in his report ‘Influence 2.0: The Future of Influencer Marketing’, a reassessment of the value chain is vital for organizations to avoid lagging behind as the future of influence unfolds. Here are 5 key principles to help organizations re-evaluate the causes and characteristics of successful influencer marketing.

1. Effective relationship management is the driving force of influencer marketing

Relationships underpin the influencer marketing process, in which marketers borrow social capital from the relationships between influencers and their followers. However, as Solis emphasizes in the ‘Influence 2.0’ report, “You must do more than use the relationships of others to broadcast on your behalf, regardless of payment exchanged.” Instead, successful influencer marketing revolves around mutually beneficial relationships: connecting with the right people to create value not only for your brand, but also for the relationships influencers maintain with their communities.

In order to strengthen relationships and value creation, organizations are moving away from short-term, influencer-led campaigns towards more meaningful, long-term relationships that build trust and foster greater opportunities for ROI. According to Solis:

“The concept of Influence 2.0 is to help strategists envision a future of influencer marketing that aligns with the objectives of business, influencers, and customers. This is why…Influence 2.0 is centered on relationships…It’s time for brands and agencies to think beyond traditional endorsements and campaign-driving thinking.”

Recasting influencer marketing as “influencer relations” could, Solis suggests, create “a new discipline that transcends all relationship-driven marketing”. This would entail “not just a simple ‘rebrand’ of existing PR resources,” he stresses, but “continuous care through an influencer relationship management (IRM) platform and dedicated resources to connect customers with the people who influence them every day”.

2. A human approach to understanding customers and influencers can strengthen mutual value and social capital

An influencer and his or her community produce rich exchanges of mutual value and social capital, based on personal and professional ties. Executives can better capitalize on these ties if they invest in understanding how and why a particular influencer has actually earned their community, and what a mutually beneficially relationship might involve. As Solis points out, “few people actually read the work of influencers before reaching out to them”, an oversight which can reduce the uptake, quality and results of an influencer-brand relationship.

Likewise, deep customer understanding is essential for organizations to make the most of influencer marketing. According to executives surveyed for the ‘The 2016 State of Digital Transformation’ report, the top driver of CX-led digital transformation was understanding “evolving customer behaviors and preferences” (55%). At the same time, the top challenge was “understanding behavior or impact of a new customer” (71%). In-depth customer insights, therefore, remain crucial to help companies close the gap between what they assume customers value, want or do, and what customers actually value, want and do. As Michael Troiano, Chief Marketing Officer of Actifio, puts it:

“What customers want is intimacy…they expect to be understood as individuals, and to be treated like people. What marketers want is scale, the ability to touch lots of people at the most efficient CPM possible. The reason to get excited about social marketing is that it offers the promise of “Scalable Intimacy,” really the first medium to do so. And authenticity is the currency of this medium. You can’t “fake it,” by definition.”

Empathy and a focus on human to human (#H2H) interaction can foster the authenticity that organizations need to better understand and reach crowds with common values.

3. Influence requires championing and cross-functional leadership

In the ‘Influence 2.0’ report, a clear majority (71%) of surveyed brand marketers viewed influencer marketing as a strategic or highly strategic marketing category. Despite this, influencer marketing typically remains an add-on to a paid endorsement or PR program, rather than a standalone program with executive sponsorship. Indeed, 65% of surveyed companies assigned engagement with influencers to PR, but only 16% cited PR as the owner of their influencer marketing. This disconnect between the departments that own influencer marketing and those that execute it, is, according to Solis, stunting the growth of influence programs:

“To become more prominent within the marketing mix, influencer programs require someone to make the case, uniting stakeholders to lead a cross-functional initiative.”

Below is the Cross-Functional Influence Model Solis proposes in ‘Influence 2.0’:


By having a dedicated team that coordinates with various departments—for example, with Public Relations, Marketing, Digital Communications, Client Relations, IT, Sales, and HR—influencer relations can earn executive attention that transcends business functions. This, in turn, may benefit an organization’s larger digital transformation efforts by improving customer experience, since, as Solis puts it, “Customers don’t want to see the ‘cogs,’ they want to believe that businesses operate seamlessly and effortlessly to serve their needs.”

4. Influence never stops, and should be integrated with all touchpoints of the customer journey

Customer journeys are “always on”, and people are constantly turning to trusted others to help them make informed decisions. Therefore, Solis recommends mapping influencer relations against all stages of the customer journey:

“It’s uncommon for executives to live the business the way their customers and employees do, so escalating influence requires marketers to expose how, where, and why digital customers and employees seek information.
Where do they derive value?
Who do they trust?
And, how does engaging with your company affect each step of their decision-making journey?”

A successful influence program, in Solis’s view, “must consider outcomes across the board and then reverse engineer programs to deliver against them”. Business outcomes must be aligned “with influencer and customer objectives in each moment of truth—from awareness, to consideration, to decision, to overall experience”. This approach helps organizations clarify what factors are really driving their relationships forward and creating mutual value.

5. Influencers can align content creation and distribution with customer care and conversions

Integral to influencer relations is a shift from corporate-centric to customer-centric narratives. “Paradoxically, your “story” is not about you—it’s about what you do for others,” writes Ann Handley, Chief Content Officer of MarketingProfs. The customer, consequently, becomes the hero of your story.

A shift to influencer relations could help organizations to integrate customer experience with content strategies and influencer engagement. 80% of the organizations surveyed for ‘Influence 2.0’ describe influencer marketing as most impactful for content marketing. However, relatively few companies (22%) are linking their content strategy to the needs of customers throughout their journey. Influencers can bridge this gap by aligning content creation and distribution with each stage of the customer journey.

In the above framework from ‘Influence 2.0’, influencers produce and share useful and engaging content throughout the customer journey, from introducing new products and answering questions to showcasing new product capabilities and directing customers to points of sale, support and further information.

Innovation over iteration

The ‘Influence 2.0’ report by Brian Solis is valuable for its emphasis on helping organizations align the future of influencer marketing with the objectives of their business, influencers, and customers alike.

Without the shift to influencer relations proposed by Solis, influencer marketing risks becoming a process of iteration, where new tools generate similar results, rather than a process of innovation in which new strategies unlock value.

It will be interesting to see if and how PR can benefit from a cross-functional approach to influencer relations. What does seem likely is that success in the future of influence calls for an adaptive mindset and the ability to work together to optimize—and humanize—outcomes across the influence ecosystem.

Images: andy.brandon50; and concept diagrams from ‘Influence 2.0: The Future of Influencer Marketing‘ by Brian Solis from Altimeter