Social Influence, Social Authority and the Growing Social Paradigm

Our fascination with the social world is far from over. In many ways, it’s only really the beginning. Every turn we take leads down a new and unknown road. Aside from knowing that the masses use social media and that we contribute a massive amount of time to it, we can wholeheartedly say the jury is still out. We all have great ideas, thoughts and insights into what all this really is but who can really say what all of it means.

Over the last year or so, there has been a significant and growing convergence towards attributing some kind of tangible value toward our notions of “social influence”. Something of which is impacted and graded in just about every conceivable way through every action you take on Twitter and increasingly on Facebook.

Interestingly, this phenomena of social influence, which I wrote about in a post last week aptly title A Future Based In Social Influence, will have profound effects on our social media behaviour, actions, perception, treatment and in many other factors of life that at the moment are unforeseen. Just as interesting is the reaction much of this is receiving.

Naturally, some social media users and individuals will thrive within an environment based in social influence. It will create legitimacy, gains and various types of success for these pro-social influencers. Just as naturally, there will be a backlash and opposition to the notion of being graded, measured and valued differently.

Regardless of which dichotomy you fall into, the very true, harsh and evident reality is this is taking place and will continue to take place. And it’s impacts will resonate and move into areas of life that might be understood as separate from the world of social media. But as all lines of differentiation continue to blur on an extreme scale, the future appears to be one that is socially-inclusive on a scale we can hardly conceive or understand now.

Intriguingly, another emerging social media reality caught all of my attention when I came across an extraordinary article earlier today written by Rand Fishkin. He wrote about Google’s and Bing’s confirmations that their search results and all aspects of SEO are in fact influenced by Twitter and Facebook characteristics. What’s substantive and crucial here is that this official confirmation by both verifies that various social measurements do indeed have a serious and growing impact on search. Equally, it exemplifies the prowess “social authority”, as characterized by Bing or “author authority” as characterized by Google, is taking on within the world of online search. And it’s something you can further understand through Bing’s Visual Search function seen in the picture above.

The significance here is the tremendous effect the social graph is having on one of the most prominent uses of the web. And though we fully don’t understand the effects social authority has on search, it’s safe to say its relevance will only grow. Rand himself takes on a series of educated guesses of characteristics that influence someone’s social authority within search, of which are very reminiscent of social influence measuring.

Seemingly, anything from quantity, importance and analysis ratios of friends and followers, to relevance, longevity of content, content surrounding the message, diversity of sources and engagement are but a few possible metrics Rand discusses amongst what is a considerable number of different measuring metric variations that could be used in establishing an effective level of social authority.

Social influence has already begun to change social media behaviours amongst users and increasingly amongst marketers and brands. And due to the well-known significance of search, social authority will most definitely have the same reciprocating effects especially for how search is received, perceived and used by marketers, brands and users alike.

Social media and it’s unwavering existence is redefining the dynamics of just about every aspect of life. And that understanding is nothing new. But elements such as social authority further legitimize our notions of social influence amongst other evolutionary aspects of the social world. As we refine, enhance and innovate our thoughts, theories, ideas and insights, we are undoubtedly establishing a growing social paradigm. One that has changed and is continually changing life as we know it.