360DigitalInfluence

Many people I meet ask me what exactly is Digital Influence? And why does it stem from Public Relations (PR)?

Well, to better understand what Digital Influence is, is to appreciate that Digital Influence is a communications discipline. Much like what Public Relations is. We can communicate on behalf of our client, or we give them counsel and how they should communicate, and where they should communicate.

Why do companies have to communicate? To inform the decisions that you make on a daily basis (whether you’re a concerned member of the public, consumer, stakeholder, employee, employer, policy maker… etc) What we consume, is what shapes our perceptions.

Originally, businesses would use the mass media to communicate with the wider audience, but as the media continued to evolve into multiple channels, audiences started fragmenting due to choice.

Then came Web 2.0, faster broadband speeds and the rise of Social Media (Or the media that users share with each other, a bit like a social transaction - i hate that word.) [Pat Law has an excellent post about social currency to help you understand what makes media, social. Link]

With the advent of Social Media, businesses, brands, corporations and finally, the public could communicate with each other using a wide variety of social tools:

Blogs
Forums
Twitter
Plurk
Facebook
Myspace
Wikis
Vodcats
Podcasts

And you could finally have a real two way dialogue, which was what communications was always about. Messages are conversations. What we tell someone isn’t always what that audience will perceive, they will interpret it, and Web 2.0 has enabled the interpretation to be published by that same audience. Thus forming a dialogue.

What’s changing is the way people communicate. We’re no longer content waiting for the 930pm news, or the music the radio wants us to hear, what the TV guides want to show us, when they want to show us. We’re not at the mercy of reading the news the publications deem worthy for us to read. No, we want information on demand.

As communicators, isn’t this the space you want to be? Where the messages you have aren’t forced at people, but accessed on demand by the public? While you’re still thinking about that, the power of information is now with the people, and we are all informing each other. That’s what social media has enabled us to do, inform each other on an amplified level.

Digital Influence, we’re communicators, we’re where the conversations are at and helping brands form bridges into their communities, people who use their products, who become passionate about them, and in turn, brands should also be passionate about their people. -)