Who can classify themselves as an influencer and how do you position yourself as one today?

It’s a concept that has become ever popular as social media has grown and expanded around the world.  There was a time where to become an influencer it meant direct and constant involvement, building, managing and a lot of time spent “positioning”.  Those people who were influencers had profound impacts on their market and their position was rarely contested (save for those of opposing markets)

Now we’ve moved (and continue to press into) an age of complete transparency and openness.  Between free publishing tools and “like” buttons, the concept of the influencer may be losing it’s value or credibility.

When we participate in a world laden with cheap like buttons and the ease of obtaining a click or sharing information, how much value can be placed on someone or something just because a throng of people gave a vote of confidence or thumbs up?  What defined an influencer then is certainly different from what defines one now.

At least I hope so - I pray that it will be about more than just click-through’s.

I’m left wondering how influence stands in the world we’re in now.  If person A can get person B to click on a link, does that mean that person A has influence?  If so, to what scale?  I’m of the mind that I think it’s important to consider a certain point;  Just because someone has the ability to influence or manipulate a given situation to obtain a desired outcome it doesn’t necessarily mean that person is influential or that they carry influence on a grander scale.

Once upon a time, before AOL sucked the world into it’s addictive black hole, actually moving a person into action was likely something that could grant someone the position of being influential.  Now, in a world where anyone can get anyone else to perform an action through retweets, likes, updates, SMS and more then I’m left to wonder what kind of metrics to look for that prove real influence.  Perhaps it’s not in how many clicks you can gather but if you can create something that disseminates beyond that first group. If you can engage your immediate network to begin reaching out into more distant degrees of separate to spread the message and pass the influence along - getting others beyond them to take action.

It’s possible that we’ve stepped through a point of evolution, into a new age, where there is no longer one great channel to cross in order to reach our goal and destination.  We may not be able to focus on a single tipping point much longer but instead our influence may have to be measured in the overall reach.

In a world where everyone seems capable of having influence, it’s more like an intricate network of dominoes.  Set em up - and if you set things up properly you can watch the dominoes continue to fall, reaching out to touch the next in line, passing the momentum forward.

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