Here is a blog I wrote about how your likes can be gamed and when they are they become less of a signal and indeed can become worthless to a company.  But thinking further....What if when you bought a new tech gizmo, the price was higher because your "Likes" or  "tweets" constantly referenced your love and devotion for the product - and you did this as you wanted to win one? This is called online behavioural pricing (under the banner of behavioural economics.)  Whilst if there was one supplier in the market, it could be a consumer’s worst nightmare as it uses the traces of your Digital Footprint to maximize prices on the products and services you want most. However, it rather directs us towards Doc Searls work on VRM - where we set the terms and the price.

image source : http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_Gd6AxrhM2wE/TUcs7oE6EfI/AAAAAAAABUU/Tpp2fb6jeYM/s40...

Some scenarios to think about

Digital footprints are about how your data describes you - but as we start to game (gamification) with you and how you react, do we loose the purity of the signal?

Example....

option 1; your "like" is being bought by the competitions that say "like me and get a free iPad"  - you have been bought

option 2; your "like" is earned as you decide that you "like" something for a reason

             the original reason "A Facebook Like is supposed to show a user’s approval of a brand, product or piece of content"

option 3; Your "like" brings value to you and the community - self interest

Experian Hitwise calculated that a Like generates 20 visits to brand sites;

Deals platform ChompOn reckons a Like is worth $8, a Twitter follow worth $2 and an individual tweet worth $2 in additional sales of deals on its services.

A study by the CMO Council shows your likes can be gamed by asking you to enter a competition. Incentives are a common way to drive up Twitter followers, get positive "customer" reviews, posts and tweets and generate word of mouth. Sites like ReviewMe and Buy Twitter Followers even allow you to skip the incentive and buy results.

The outcome

Your SIGNALS are not pure and "Like" become  meaningless. Back to the drawing board - how do I find out what you "like" so I can sell you more?

A recent HBR paper What's Your Influencing Style? by Chris Musselwhite president and CEO of Discovery Learning Inc. and Tammie Plouffe is the managing partner of Innovative Pathways.

In this digital word as we search for influencers - what type is the most effect and what is the signal we are looking for?

Effective leadership today relies more than ever on influencing others — impacting their ideas, opinions, and actions.  From their research, they have a list of  five distinct influencing styles: rationalizing, asserting, negotiating, inspiring, and bridging.

• Rationalizing: Do you use logic, facts, and reasoning to present your ideas? Do you leverage your facts, logic, expertise, and experience to persuade others?
• Asserting: Do you rely on your personal confidence, rules, law, and authority to influence others? Do you insist that your ideas are heard and considered, even when others disagree? Do you challenge the ideas of others when they don't agree with yours? Do you debate with or pressure others to get them to see your point of view?
• Negotiating: Do you look for compromises and make concessions in order to reach an outcome that satisfies your greater interest? Do you make tradeoffs and exchanges in order to meet your larger interests? If necessary, will you delay the discussion until a more opportune time?
• Inspiring: Do you encourage others toward your position by communicating a sense of shared mission and exciting possibility? Do you use inspirational appeals, stories, and metaphors to encourage a shared sense of purpose?
• Bridging: Do you attempt to influence outcomes by uniting or connecting with others? Do you rely on reciprocity, engaging superior support, consultation, building coalitions, and using personal relationships to get people to agree with your position?

So now you know your style (could be corporate) do you think how your style will be received by someone else and how can you adjust your style to align with their model.....and make it more effective - signal given, signal received, transmission modified....closing the loop!

Playing with TweetLevel, a Twitter measurement tool created by @jonnybentwood at Edelman

"Even though we believe that it goes a great way to understand and quantify the varying importance of different people's usage of Twitter, by no means whatsoever do we believe we have fully solved the 'influence' problem."

Image source : http://memeburn.com/2011/03/why-data-is-the-new-oil/

There are a lot of trends for 2012 about data being the new gold, oil currency or something other commodity. Even if we ignore the basic economics about physical commodities (they are limited) raw data has some value, moving along the refinement process we know that filtered data has more value, presented data has even more value but data analysis that tells the story and the future has more, but the highest value is that which changes a behaviour.  Assuming that everyone now has some digital influence that can create behaviour or attitude change (not just celebrities, academics, policy makers or those who sway public opinion) - will we see in 2012 an influence reward system that will yield wealth and value on those with the most digital social influence or just more about how to score it?

Categorising media as Paid, Owned and Earned isn’t particularly useful. In fact, it simply appears to reinforce increasingly irrelevant functional silos. The Influence View of Content aims to establish something more useful. It’s a perspective that seeks to help influence professionals think about how influence goes around and comes around in line with the Influence Scorecard framework.

Source : http://www.philipsheldrake.com/2011/11/the-influence-view-of-content-0-1/

Gideon Rosenblatt of Alchemy of Change posted this image a part of a longer thought blog on “Who to focus on.” It is worth reading!

One aspect of personal value and model generated from a digital footprint is so that you will know both who matters, who influences you and who you can influence.  

Image from http://www.demographicsonline.com.au/

Why everything you know about demographics is wrong!

ARTICLE HIGHLIGHTS:

• Traditional demos aren't dying, but nobody looks at them in quite the same way.
• The pitch isn't about reaching X number of males at a certain age with an income of $50-100K, it's about leveraging a passionate community.
• Without the social lens, demographics -- even if you apply targeting technology -- are just amorphous groups.

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Personally I find it interesting that with all the data we now have we flip between saying that you are part of this group (classic segmentation and demographics) and you are unique and I can target a sample size of 1.  We are still overlooking the new ways of segmenting: such as Trust and Influence