 So, I've been asked to spend a few minutes talking about this book that I wrote called Return on Influence and what I've examined in this book is what are the differences in how people acquire power and influence in the real world we're here today in our carbon based forms compared to how people are beginning to acquire power and influence on the internet. And it's quite interesting because if you think how much of our influence in our world comes because we're on an organizational chart or we have a title or maybe we've gone to a certain university. Well on the internet none of that matters people hate rules on the internet they hate organizational charts and if you ever try to tell somebody what to do on the internet you're going to get a lesson pretty quickly that nobody's in charge and they don't want to have anybody in charge and yet people are undoubtedly becoming powerful on the web. So I want to tell you a story about how I started thinking about this and this was my own experience about a little over two years ago now I wrote a blog post about this company called Cloud as K-L-O-U-T and they have the audacity to say we are going to try to measure your influence based on what you're posting on the web and how people are responding to you. So this created quite an outbreak and some of the people that were commenting on my post said Mark I hope you will join me in stopping this this is un-American that anybody would try to rate our influence and the other thing that happened is this article that I wrote it spread. It was tweeted over a thousand times so it went beyond my network and started going into other people's networks and thousands and thousands of people read this article and about three weeks after I wrote the article I got a call from a reporter from the New York Times. She said Mr. Shaper I've been researching this new trend this new marketing trend and when I googled it I found your article I read your article I thought it was really interesting can I interview you for the New York Times of course my answer was duh you know that term here right? So I was interviewed in the New York Times and my quote appeared four times and it gets crazier because the New York Times has syndicated it went all over the country I was quoted four times in this article it gets even crazier it was it goes all over the world so I'm in newspapers all over the world even the London Daily Mail that's not me I know your attention goes right to that it's not me it just happened in fact you know what I should just cut and paste this out and put me in there but I would so they rewrote the article I took my quotes and I was in the London Mail and then that was syndicated and that was going all over the place so I started thinking about this and I started wondering why me why me now this was before I wrote the book okay I'd written one book but it was just starting to go I don't have a degree from Oxford University I've never been in a movie I've never been elected to office I've never played for Manchester United or you know I've never been a supermodel that might be hard to believe it or not when I gave the talk earlier this week I mentioned that and this whole group of IBM they just started laughing I thought why would they laugh they just brought the house down and I would mention that I wasn't a supermodel but I guess it's that obvious so anyway I began thinking about how did I become an influencer and I wasn't born from a family of wealth I came from a very poor family actually and so I started studying this and I came across this model some of you probably know this the author Dr. Robert Chaldini Dr. Robert Chaldini has written several books on influence he's the foremost authority on influence in the world he actually left his position as a university instructor and went under cover for three years doing different jobs at companies to do research on how people become powerful at work so it came up with this model called the six weapons of influence and he said when you become influential at work it's for one of these six reasons but as I started to study this and read the academic research and and and talk to people I discovered something was missing that there's actually a seventh weapon we'll get to that in a minute so in the first half of my book I look at how do these six factors show up on the internet what's different now what's the same what's different and what I found is there are vast differences I just have a few minutes today I can't go through all of this but I want to give you example around social proof so what is social proof in the real world sometimes we can have an air of power or influence just by how we look or what's in our offices so in the absence of truth in the absence of facts we look around our environment for clues as to what to do and to who's in charge so we might look at what kind of car do they drive what do they have hanging in their office how are people dressed if I came in here in a police uniform you'd probably think this is well you think it was very strange but you'd know it wasn't a supermodel at that point so and so one example of this is there there's this doctor maybe you had this TV show here Marcus will be right so this is an actor named Robert Young now in his autobiographical writings he he reflected back and he said he was an alcoholic he was a drug addict he was a terrible father he was a terrible husband he was depressed and he tried to commit suicide twice and yet he was the most popular advertising spokesperson on American television for 20 years why because he played a doctor on TV he wore a lab coat and in his commercials he wore a lab coat and I can even remember my grandmother saying oh I just love that doctor Marcus will be that you know that's not really a doctor but there was a strong association of authority and power and influence just because he wore a lab coat now here's the difference in the real world we can figure that out okay we can figure out by talking to them by meeting them over lunch is this person kind of a fake who just dresses nice and wears a fancy car or is this someone we really should respect the difference is on the internet we don't do that we are overwhelmed by information density I heard this statistic the other day that in the last two years as much information has been created and put on the internet as in the history of the human race all put together I don't know if that's true or not and make up about 56.6% of my statistics anyway but it sounds about right and I think you you see that yourself that the amount of information out there it's incredibly difficult and it's getting more dense every day I live in a small town 600,000 people in Tennessee Knoxville Tennessee I googled Knoxville pizza and got 8 million results that is just ridiculous we don't need that so on the internet people look for these badges they look for these numbers they look for clues as to social proof and in the short term the numbers may be more important than what you actually do it's like walking into an empty restaurant if you walk into an empty restaurant at 8 o'clock in the evening you think something's wrong but if there's lots of people there that's social proof I've made the right decision if you see two articles and one on the same subject and one has been tweeted twice and one has been tweeted 200 times which one will you read and even though the first one may be the superior article the social proof is I only have time to read one go here so that's how social proof operates as as as power influence so that's one of the traditional weapons and yet something was missing so I interviewed Dr. Chaldini from my book and I said Dr. Chaldini I think there's there's a seventh weapon of influence and he said you are right and this is content because now we all have the ability to publish we have we all have a voice and the thing that's exciting is that this can only be happening now we've had these two technological enablers come together just in the last few years you know I was walking around downtown and I see Wi-Fi everywhere this has just happened in the last few years right and it's becoming global the other one is these free easy-to-use publishing tools like Facebook and Twitter and blogging they're free they're they're very simple to use and now everybody can publish I want to give you an example of how this really works this is an example about a friend of mine named Robert he grew up in a very very poor family in New Jersey and when he was a young man his family moved to the Silicon Valley moved to California and can you imagine what that was like in the 80s you know all the excitement he wanted to be part of this he wanted to be part of this industry and excitement but he didn't know how to do it you see he didn't have a college degree he dropped out of school he wasn't your exact exactly like a business type he was very shy very nerdy he didn't have any money he didn't come from a family well so he couldn't start a company couldn't invest in a company so after he dropped out of school he became a clerk in a camera store that's the only job he could find then he discovered blogging so he would sit in his computer each day and write about his observations of his growth in this excitement in Silicon Valley and this was the way he could connect to the people and the ideas and the gadgets and the products of Silicon Valley even though you know he wasn't he wasn't employed so he started blogging once a month then once a week then every day then multiple times a day because there was so much going on and an amazing thing happened people started to pay attention dozens hundreds thousands eventually tens of thousands of people are reading this guy's blog he's having an impact on Silicon Valley just through his words and companies start to notice they start inviting him to their product launches they're saying you come behind the velvet curtain with the big shots they start sending him free computer software hardware gadgets because they know that this guy's becoming powerful and just a mention of a new product or a new service or a new company in this guy's blog could really help the company in fact in one famous example he quadrupled the traffic to one startup company's website in 24 hours quadrupled it with one blog post and that was over a Christmas holiday now think about how's he doing this it's not because of his education it's not because of his wealth here's what he can do almost better than anybody he can create content that moves through his network and beyond that's the source of his power this is a guy named Robert Scoble he's the most famous tech blogger in the world he had one time he was the blogger for Microsoft he's built his entire career based on his ability to create content that moves so if you think about I mean how did I show up in the New York Times it's because I created content that moved all right and that is the source of a lot of people's power today that could be the source of power and influence for companies for brands for nonprofits even for government here's an example of I didn't realize this till I was almost through with the book but I highlight a number of people in my book who are what I call the new citizen influencers this is the era of the citizen influencer and influence has been democratized now because anybody has the ability has the opportunity to publish and have their voice become known this was a young lady who lives in natural Tennessee and she started blogging after she had her first baby she actually became was suffering from depression so she was blogging to overcome her depression and just like Robert her her authentic voice just connected with thousands and thousands of people who just it should she was just very honest this is how I'm struggling this is what I'm going through but it wasn't just other mothers that paid attention to her it was organizations like World Vision and World Vision said her name actually is Nish Nish from Nashville I couldn't make that up so they said you have something special here you have a special voice we would like to fly you to Bolivia and write about what's going on with our work there and the orphanages in Bolivia and through her blog again never went to college and I didn't discover this until I was almost through the book that all the people I profiled in the book none of them in college not a single one and now she helped get 150 children sponsored through World Vision organization just to the words that she's writing on her blog so this is a very important point that content that moves and this is the difference it's a big difference though a lot of organizations understand the idea of content we need to block we need to do videos we need to have photos but igniting that content that's the more difficult part how do we get that content to move through the network how do we attract a group of people around us to help share that content content how do we even ignite the people in our own organization to help ignite the content so this is a legitimate source of influence and power it's unique to the internet it's unique to now now the other interesting thing that's going on is that companies are beginning to actually figure out or trying to figure out can we measure this so the first idea is can you measure content that moves okay so this is Peewee Herman he's kind of an obscure American comedian he's kind of a silly guy and I'm embarrassed to say that the most popular blog post I ever wrote was the 20 stupidest things you can do on Twitter now I'm an academic and I try to write really smart things on my blog but I got silly one time and I wrote this blog post the 20 stupidest things you can do on Twitter and it was whoops it was tweeted by Peewee Herman he has two million followers it crashed my servers my blog my website went down so can you measure how the content moves yes you can look at the numbers you know I knew that day he brought the Peewee to my blog and and the content moved you can measure that okay then the other idea is how do you create a reaction are people reacting to this well what about if your content gets tweeted or posted on Facebook or retweeted or someone clicks on a link or someone comments on your blog those are all discrete activities that can say someone is reacting we're having an impact in you know through our content so the second big idea is that if you could if you can to the extent that you can measure how the content moves and measure these reactions you could measure influence not all influence it doesn't measure how influential you are at work doesn't measure how influential you are at home it doesn't measure how influential you are influential you are with your 12-year-old daughter which is your but it can look at one sliver of influence can you move content and if you think about business today if you think about our world today isn't that an increasingly important activity that we can demonstrate we create content that spreads and shares people share and create a reaction okay so this is a quite an interesting concept that for the first time we can begin to measure influence on a mass scale and that's what companies are doing and you're probably thinking how can this getting more exciting it is going to get more exciting because I'm going to talk about these companies who are doing this so we have one actually based in the UK pure index is based in London cloud is in San Francisco and then Craig Craig Craig and opinions is based in New York but and they're all basically trying to do the same thing there are many companies they're doing this they're slicing and dicing all this data all these billions of pieces of content and they're looking at three things is this a person or is this an organization that can create content that moves is the content moving are we measuring this what are they talking about so what are the topics of influence is it economic policy is this when this person tweets or posts or blogs about economic development does it get a reaction and then they're also looking at who is reacting are you influencing the influencers are other people who are influential about economic policy sharing your content so that goes into the formula as well and they come up with a number so some companies have two numbers some companies have three numbers some companies have multiple numbers based on your different topics of influence but they're all basically doing the same thing it's almost like a credit score for influence it's an indicator of how well you can move content so we can also get other insights about this and I use kind of a benign product like Listerine which is you know the mouthwash okay to kind of to give you an example that there are influential people out there even talking about Listerine and we can start to now monitor this to see well look here is the conversation about oral care there are actually experts out there talking about oral care and there's some people talking about Listerine and to the extent they overlap Listerine is part of the conversation but look how much of the conversation they're not part of and one idea might be 75% of conversations are taking place on blogs 82% of the conversations about Listerine are taking place on Twitter so as a manager of this company is we can now see maybe we need to be spending time with blogs and you can do this type of analysis for any type of topic any type of organization and we can do it very inexpensively and very quickly so it's a new opportunity we can then click down to see who are the people actually having these conversations we can then click down even more and see a profile of these people we can see what are they saying where are they saying it what is the sentiment about this so if you want to if you want to look at a certain industry you know like high-tech or software development you can even find the influencers in Europe in the UK in Ireland and wherever you know whatever subject that you're interested in and then you can I what if you had content that you wanted them to spread you'd build these relationships to help do that you can even see over time and in this example both the volume of the conversations about Listerine and oral care have gone up and the sentiment has gone up so as a company I'd want to know why what happened why are people all of a sudden talking about Listerine in a good way maybe we can capitalize on that so again this is a kind of a simple example and a silly example but shows the power now we have to look at this big data and start to distill some interesting things out of it so a big idea is that you know we don't have to be celebrities or movie stars or athletes anymore this is the era of the citizen influencer this is a guy a profile in my book I said this is the new face of influence he's a graphic designer works for the city of Los Angeles he's very very shy 42 never went to college learned how to do his coding at a trade school he described himself as a social media hoe because he tweets for the 200 times a day he's like a human RSS feet but his 80,000 followers on Twitter love him because he says I just want to help people if I find someone who's suffering I want to find someone that can help if someone is needs exposure for their charity I want to help spread their content so in a world where the average cloud score is 40 he is an 80 and as you can see by his new avatar it's starting to get to his head so now brands and companies are reaching out to him when Audi introduced their new a8 into the United States they didn't call Brad Pitt they didn't call Angelina Jolie they called Calvin Calvin take our car try our car and what's he doing the whole time he's posting he's tweeting he's taking pictures I've learned that Instagramming is now a verb he's Instagramming all along he's driving it up and down the west coast of California coast of California he was invited to a big celebrity auction at the house of blues they caught them a room in a casino he got to hobnob with all the celebrities the VH1 awards sent a limousine for him and seven of his friends to attend the VH1 awards he's getting so much stuff from companies and brands who want to tap into him he's created a Pinterest page called my daily swag and one of the things I talk about in the book is that this is going mainstream that brands and companies are now starting to figure out we need to tap into these people who can spread content and one of the things I mentioned is that even I experienced clout envy for the first time who got tickets to CJZ it's out by Southwest and who didn't so now I want to tell you a little bit about the formula this is not the formula on how to increase your influence this is what you get when you Google complicated looking math formula but there there's lots of academic research about this right now because it is such a hot topic and this is the end of my conversation and be happy to take your questions but if you look at the academic research there are basically three things that you need to do three strings that you can pull to increase your influence and you can't do one of them or two then we have to do all three now as we talked about most people get the idea around content content is the catalyst that makes things happen one of the nice things about this organization is your rich in content you have it your website is amazing you have so much wonderful content which is a good thing because I go into a lot of companies and organizations and they look at each other and they said how do we tell our story we're not generating content you are generating content so that's usually the hard part but you have lots of you have a great story to tell you have lots of great content the piece that a lot of people miss is this idea about the relevant audience so you've got the content but are you actively systematically connecting to people around the world who would be interested in hearing from you are you building relationships with people who would be interested in your content and interested in sharing your content so a lot of people overlook that and in in my books I spent a lot of time with lots of ideas on how do you find those people how do you connect with those people but you're not really leveraging the value of the content unless you get it to move unless you get it to ignite it's just sitting there it's not creating conversations so you've got to find the relevant audience that will help you move it then the last part is consistent engagement is that social media is social they want to know about you they want to hear from you you've got to be out there you've got to be connecting you've got to be part of the conversation maybe you need in addition to them coming to see your content maybe you also need to go visit them wherever they are to and build those relationships so that is really the end of my talk I wanted to end with one last story it's one of my final stories to illustrate this power of the citizen influencer and this is a young lady who had graduated from college her name is Molly catch pole and just like you know we have here in Ireland we've got an unemployment problem in many parts of the United States as well she could not find a job so she was really struggling and her struggles turned a crisis when it was time she had to start paying back her student loans so she was just taking any part-time job that she could she became a part-time nanny and then one day she got a letter in the mail from the Bank of America one of the largest banks in the world and said dear miss catch pole thank you for being a loyal customer we'd like to inform you of a new policy unless you have an average daily balance in your account of $20,000 we're going to assess you a $5 a month monthly fee just to access our money and she just thought this was so wrong and she felt disheartened and she felt angry and she felt tired and she started tweeting about this she started blogging about this and one of her friends on Twitter said you know there's this organization called change.org where you can create a petition and get other people to know that this what this bank is doing is wrong so she created this online petition and the content began to spread in fact in two weeks she had 300,000 people sign a petition and in three weeks the bank reversed the policy this 22 year old part-time nanny had stopped the biggest bank in America in its tracks this couldn't have happened five years ago it's a new time it's a new day she had found her return on influence this was her time this is my time this is your time there's there's an opportunity for all of us and every organization to capture this opportunity and find their return on influence too and here is my contact information if you want to stay in touch with me I'd love to hear from you on Twitter or my blog and if I went too fast if I have any questions that I don't get to today I'd be delighted to stay in touch with you you can drop me an email and let me know how I can help you so. Thanks very much.