Peddling Influence

(CBS/iStockphoto)

Nowadays it's all about the "Influencers."

And contrary to the 'decider' where you couldn't really pass yourself off as The One, the bonus about 'Influencers' is that you may be one and not even know it.

According to Editor and Publisher, there's a new Newspaper National Network study out today:

Newspaper Web site users, who also read the print editions, are 52% more likely to shape opinions about new products, technologies, and issues than those who use the Web without consulting newspapers, according to a new study from the Newspaper National Network (NNN).

So I posed that question to NNN President Jason Klein, who responded:

The Influencer concept has been around for a while, and was crystallized in a 2003 book by Jon Berry and Ed Keller called 'The Influentials: One American in Ten Tells the Other Nine How to Vote, Where to Eat, and What to Buy." There is standard definition of an Influential used by researchers, which involved taking part in 3 or more of a defined list of activities, like "running for public office". Millward Brown used this standard definition. We found that 47% of newspaper website users are influentials based on this definition, well more than the "one in ten" in the book.

So it's not that reading your newspaper and its online version automatically makes you an "Influencer," it's more the other way around – these are just things that "Influencers" do.

I asked Klein "Isn't this just another way to say 'These people are plugged in?'" And he said:

Not entirely. We were surprised by the finding versus social network sites, which did not perform as well on a variety of measures, as shown in the chart in the study. In the peer to peer world, not every person's opinion is equal. The Myspacers may be plugged in to others, but they aren't necessarily well informed.

So it remember that the next time you're counting the people who have 'friended' you. Logoff for a little while and pick up the dead tree newspaper instead.