Yesterday at Noon EST you may have felt a slight disturbance in the Force. That was the exact moment when the first episode of a monthly discussion on how to influence your audience hit the airwaves (more accurately the internet waves.)
(Note: as of 7:30am Nov. 5 - the blogtalkradio site was having some issues - player may not work - check back please...one of the pitfalls of free services I guess.)
Influence Insiders has one episode in the "can" so to speak and you can jump in and listen via the embedded player to the right, or out at blogtalkradio. The show lasted an hour so grab a sandwich and listen during your lunch.
I can tell you this - I truly enjoyed the conversation with my fellow panelists and was very happy with the turnout from the audience. I can't wait for the next episode - December 2, 2009 if you want to mark your calendars (Noon EST again.)
I won't go into details on the set up - you can read that here from a post last week. On the show were:
- @annbares
- @heathermargolis
- @leapcomp
- @toddhanson
- @incentintel (that would be me)
Missing from this episode were @frankroche and @thelance - (we missed you guys!)
Great contributions - thank you all very much.
Since you can listen to the show I won't go into boring details but here's where I netted out of the hour-long discussion...
- Getting an audience's attention is tough (no new news there.)
- Every audience is starting to act more like a traditional consumer audience. B2B customers, Employees, etc. are have similar issues relating to information overload and multiple channels of communications. Getting any audiences attention is tough and getting tougher.
- People are less influenced by "brand" messages (again no new info.)
- People pay high attention to someone in their network - whether that be in real live or via linkedin, twitter, or other online groups.
- Getting attention today is about getting the attention of some one who can get the attention of your target audience member. In other words, you might ignore a message from a brand that you received via email, TV, radio, other "mass" tools - but if someone in your network says to you directly - "you might want to look at this" you will pay attention.
- The need for a "big" event to get attention is less important than an event that gets the attention of a few people who are in the network of the person you want to talk with.
It Ain't New Any More
Some will say that none of that is new - and I'd agree. For those of us who have been involved with social media and networks we've known this for a while. But the key thing for me is that it is now mainstream. It isn't a cutting edge idea and it isn't something only the "new age" companies need to worry about - it is here and it is real.
Tortoise and the Hare
The one thing that hit me after the show was that attention isn't something we get with an announcement any more - it's something we get, over time, based on opinion. It's probably best illustrated...
If you're responsible for communicating with an audience and getting their attention - you may want to consider being the tortoise instead of the hare. In my opinion, a good message to the right network will have a bigger impact on the audience - and have staying power. IMHO.
Hope to have you on the next episode - remember - December 2, 2009 - Wednesday - at Noon EST. Hope you tune in!
