Mark Schaefer: Social Media Influence in the World of Timeshare

Mark Schaefer -- author of best-selling books The Tao of Twitter, Return on Influence and Born to Blog; an entertaining and engaging speaker and authority on social media – says he learned there were six Weapons of Influence from Robert Cialdini. According to Cialdini, there is Scarcity, Likeability, Reciprocity, Authority, Commitment and Social Proof.

Schaefer told his audience at Interval International’s Shared Ownership Investment Conference, held in Miami this week, that in social media, numbers are the social proof. Social media mavens watch sites like Technorati, Top 100 Business Blogs and 50 Top Blogs because they have accrued thousands of followers. In recognizing the power of numbers, Schaefer feels he’s discovered a seventh weapon in the online world, ‘Content That Moves.’ He gave Robert Scoble as an example. Scoble has limited social skills and education and yet, his circles of influence are enormous because of his volume of posts that are meaningful and compelling.

Schaefer points to Klout.com, a site that measures influence on which you can find out who is posting about what and how often. Klout will even provide ‘appinions’ – influence gap reports so you can track a particular author or subject.

To properly use this seventh weapon of influence, you must observe three rules: 1) keep your content relevant to your audience, 2) be consistent with the frequency of your posts and 3) make what your content has to say meaningful. Schaefer calls it “RITE.”

Relevant
Interesting
Timely
Entertaining

An interesting rule of thumb he provides is to think of your messaging not as being B2C or B2B, but P2P; people to people. Keeping these thoughts in mind with regards to your social media participation, he says, will provide you with significant ROI – Return on Influence.