Then this week, we got word that Like Minds was the “most influential on Twitter” for the whole of Social Media Week globally. That’s quite an incredible thing to have said about us. This is based on the number of tweets with our hashtag and/or Twitter account mentioned, which we led.

However both our debate on social influence and then this stat that we were the “most influential” trouble me. On one hand, I don’t agree with either of them, but on the other hand, there is some truth in them in the way that they are perceived and the end result that they have had. Let me explain a bit more and then let’s discuss it:

Influence is not measured by numbers

My dear friend Trey Pennington wrote a great tongue in cheek post last week on “4 keys to increasing your Klout Score“. The first half is now to get a higher Klout Score, which is a service that supposedly calculates your social media influence.

Then Trey writes in the second half:

THE REAL KEY TO INCREASING YOUR INFLUENCE ONLINE (and off)

None of the suggestions mentioned above has anything to do with real influence. Real influence is complex, multifaceted, and environmentally constrained (time, space, people, place, topic, occasion, etc.). Influence is more significant than two digits can capture (though Klout is necessary nonetheless)…..

Even so, as I ponder the real keys to increasing real influence, the words of Zig Ziglar ring in my ears and reverberate in my heart. A definite key to increasing your influence is found is Zig’s counsel: “You can have everything in life you want if you’ll just help enough people get what they want.”

Don’t worry about increasing your Klout score (or twittergrader ranking or whatever comes next). Just use whatever gifts you have to help other people accomplish their dreams. If you’ll help enough other people get what they want, you’ll have all the influence you’ll need.

But influence is helped by numbers

If you are helping one person, you are influential in that persons life. But if you are helping two people, you have the opportunity to increase your influence.

Note that I said opportunity. Unless you actually do create bottom line influence, it’s theoretical and not actual.

So what do you think influence is?

I lecture on influence and have been reading about it for years, and still I find it a hotly debated topic. Perhaps I just lack a framework

So I’d like to hear the smart inputs of the Friends who hang out here: what do you define influence as?

Photo courtesy of US National Archives

Most of you know that I run Like Minds along with Andrew Ellis. It’s actually the place where the majority of the discussion on this blog finds it’s actualisation – putting the ideas and insights shared here into practice at our Conference and also our community building.

This last one was exceptional. It superseded our event in February in every way (which was the best event I’d ever run and went down very well), but the biggest success was that this event was a HUGE risk on a few fronts. I actually, on the first day when I opened the conference, listed these.

The Risks

1. There were no superstars. Considering my post on “Why Social Events Aren’t Social“, I had to swallow my own medicine and not allow ego to slip in. This was risky because a large number of people go to events for names.

2. It was about learning, not buzz. Our previous events were very buzzy, so to then opt for a format which I knew would create less buzz, but deliver more lasting learning through immersive learning experiences was also risky because it meant fewer people talking about us and therefore buying tickets or participating online.

3. Two days means three days out of the office. Given that we expanded it to two days, this meant a day of travelling on the Wednesday too and that meant fewer people might come because, lets face it, so many still are bound to their 9-5, bill by the hour mentality, rather than billing for value.

But what happened over those three days was just phenomenal. Come the end of Friday afternoon, I could stand up and list these:

The Results

1. There were superstars – THE PEOPLE. Turns out that people really think highly of Like Minds, which is incredibly humbling, and our past events have done a good job for forming a strong culture that meant each person added such life to the event. For instance, Stephen Bateman, who I’m pictured with, travelled over 3,000 from America to join us. That is humbling. And what you can’t see is that behind the camera is 200 people clapping at his contribution.

2. People want to learn and meet new people more than get buzzed up or hang on the words of gurus. People SERIOUSLY got into the learning spirit of things, and all day you could see that our new format of Immersive workshops, Lunch Time Talks, and then keynotes in the afternoon meant people got far, far, far more value that they would’ve previously.

3. Our advocates made the time. Only a third of the people who came booked one day. Two thirds came for the whole two days, plus the two evening events, and they saw it as a major investment. Unfortunately, we had far fewer local people this time, which personally insults me because they were the ones who wanted it to be more practical this time (which we did). Makes me think of Jesus who said “no prophet is without honour, except in his home country” – in other words, you’ll get support from everyone but those who benefit the most from you locally. I need to find a way to crack this.

The Roundup

Events must shift their focus and let attendees be participants. I learnt  a lot of things this week, which we’ll discuss in the weeks to come, but the top learning for me is that people really are now tired of the weary conference scene. There must be more than just innovation – there needs to be a revolution, a reformation, a re-evaluation of events – without which, I fear many will die. People want learning, they don’t want ego anymore.

As Robin Dickinson wrote almost a year ago that “Room-filling [is the] last thing a post-Internet leader does“. We must take note.

But the biggest thing? It was the like minds in the room that made it. I fully confess that even on Wednesday night, I still wasn’t sure how it was going to go with our new format. It just goes to show, like I say, that Like Minds is the Like Minds, not Andrew and myself.

Your Leading Thoughts

• If you participated in Like Minds, either physically or virtually, what was your top takeaway? Did you appreciate the risk and did you benefit from the results?
• As we’re all ones on the inside of these changes from attendance to participation and watching to learning, what do these comments mean for you? What are you thinking about participation right now?

Fantastic photo by the incredible Harry Duns

Last week he wrote a post that I knew I’d love the moment I saw the title: “You Don’t Sell To A Community. You Support A Community“. You guys know I love a good strap line, especially when there’s aliteration. The great thing was that the post delivered.

It’s hard to pick a central quote (you can guess what the post was about), as it was one of those almost poetic pieces where each paragraph builds incrementally on the previous one, but perhaps the best part to me is this very accurate description of the latest marketing fad which is “build community”:

A brand should be careful about approaching social media as a sales funnel: to establish connections, build ‘trust,’ encourage a ‘community,’ and then market products and services to them. That’s not a community strategy, that is a marketing plan. And there is a difference.

This really rings home because recently I was having a leadership discussion in a venture that I’m involved in, and the painful point came up that whilst I was trying to explain we needed to build community in order to serve the community, the reality was that we were more interested in building the community in order to serve ourselves.

Turning it around is hard – we’re still in the process of doing it – and I’m learning some key lessons as I go.

Dan goes on to say that “building a community” for business is furthermore a hard and an expensive thing to do. It seems a stock answer at the moment to tell publishers in particular that they should “build community”, but I watch the people who say it and often they have never built one themselves. Dan actually argues that you don’t build them anyway – they already exist, and you help it grow.

My Experience with Community

I’ve nurtured many a community in the last 13 years that I’ve been ‘doing this’, but I think my most pertinent example would come from Like Minds.

I’ve said many times that my original intention for Like Minds was to show the local businesses that I was good at marketing, so that they’d hire me as a consultant. I was desperate to be accepted (many of the people who support me now didn’t back then), and I thought that if I could pull off a good event, they’d see.

After the success of the first Like Minds in October 09, a community – a tribe – was born in a day, but I still in mind saw that as a means to an end for getting work. Sure, I supported the community, but I didn’t see it as being a place that would be my main focus and income. I wasn’t selling to them – it’s important to clarify that – but I did see them as a way for me to secure more consulting.

It wasn’t until April this year that I realised how dearly I loved the community that was growing, and that if I focussed on serving that community, that would be far more fulfilling and rewarding. The irony is since I made that decision to not pursue consulting, consulting work has started to come in, and I turn a lot of it down in order to focus more fully on Like Minds because that’s where I’m seeing people really effected, which has always been my aim in the beginning anyway.

When a community really clicks (which I’ve been a part of many times), you know there’s no way that you can sell to them anyway. The things that they need from you, they’ll get without you blowing your horn, and you won’t given them anything but the things they need anyway, even if it’s not your thing that they need.

Your Experience with Community

1. Have you been on the receiving end of support and/or selling in a community?
2. Are you aware of any communities that actually grow based on a ‘selling’ mindset? (I don’t)
3. If supporting is what you do, how have you monetized that if you are nurturing a community?

Photo of Like Minds 2010 courtesy of Paul Clarke

Innovation means breaking things. Nothing that you currently do can be holy. If it isn’t moving forward and moving the bottom line, you’ve got to break it.

Right now we’re working on Like Minds Conference, Autumn 2010. We’re breaking a lot of stuff. We’ve taken everyone of our assumptions about what traditionally makes a great event, and we’ve broken a lot of stuff.

One instance is panels. I’ve never been happy with how they work, and I’m so thankful for Dave Lutz who shared this post with me, the comments of which encouraged me to go ahead and break what I didn’t think worked in the first place.

Lesson? We need that nod from our peers to say – “yeah, break it.”

Breaking things means we find out what works. Consider good ideas that aren’t just profitable ideas. I remember telling one person this ‘incredible idea’ I had, but was so glad that he could help break it and instead move me onto an idea that was breaking and making new things.

I guess I’ve found that the best ideas of mine are those that break the norms.

Your Leading Thoughts

1. What isn’t moving the bottom line? Why haven’t you broken it?
2. What norms are you currently breaking?

Photo courtesy of lasszio

If you can’t see the above video, click here, or watch it directly on YouTube.

This is a quick clip of me on Tuesday 15th June in Helsinki, chatting about how Like Minds Conversation Helsinki came together. I wanted to show it because I’ve having another thought about value vs volume and also about spreadability being like scattering seeds.

The point is that Like Minds in Helsinki came about through a chain of events that I could never have planned. In actual fact, it came about because we asked 1000heads to partner with us for our Like Minds Conference in February, but without charging them – so essentially promoting them for free. We loved what they were doing and just wanted to use the platform that we had to give them more exposure.

Of course, our relationship began to flourish from that point. One connection then hooked onto another, and before we knew it, we’re in Helsinki running a Conversation and also a Summit with the tourist board of Finland.

Value vs Volume

The value play says that rather than seeking to grow through shallow touches with lots of people (therefore volume being required to turn a profit), we seek deep relationships that have far more yield. This is contrary to most internet and social media marketing which is purely about volume. However with my story of Helsinki, I want to reevaluate this a little.

I’m not sure if you can predict which relationships will be valuable and which won’t. We’ve all been let down by people we had expectations of, and then been surprised by others who have exceeded our expectations. This is church, in business, in work, in life, in family – in relationships of any kind.

This means that if I carefully plant my few seeds in a few select locations, am I not leaving room for this exception equation. You’d invest in the ones who you predict will yield the most return, and leave the ones that you predict would not yield a good return. And then problem with that is as we described above – your expectations aren’t always right. People surprise you – either by letting you down, or coming to the fore.

In my mind I am beginning to see that we need both the value and the volume play. Spreadability is like scattering seeds – and you don’t know which of those seeds will yield what. But by scattering a volume of seeds, you create room for expectations to be both let down and exceeded.

This volume-based scattering is like the training ground where value-based relationships then come to the fore. Something that my social sales funnels make room for.

Your Leading Thoughts

• We all acknowledge this effect – synchronicity – is the product of planning?
• Can you predict a value based relationship?

I’m sorry for not sooner getting back to writing after our time in Finland with Like Minds Conversation Helsinki. Part of it is that I just don’t know where to begin. So I guess a good place to start is to first thank those who put in much of the hard work, my team:

This is Jonny, James, Rachel, Jon, John, Jason and Claudia. The oldest in the photo is me (26), and the youngest is James (15).

All of these guys are punching well above their age. Jason, for instance, who has worked with me for almost a year now, and on all the Like Minds events thus far, is personally known by everyone of our Like Minds Alumni – a collection of 50 industry leaders like Mel Exon, Olivier Blanchard, Molly Flatt, Maz Nadjm, John Bell and the rest.

I keep on saying, over and over and over that firstly, it’s all about people, and that secondly, one is too small a number to achieve signficiance.

Well here are the guys who are helping Like Minds be significant - most recently by using our international platform to promote the incredible work being done in Helsinki.

That last sentence made an important distinction that you might’ve missed – so I’ll make it clearer: Like Minds is about using an event to promote a community, and not about using a community to promote an event. If one is too small a number to achieve significance (and it is), then you need to partner with the communities around you to build something of shared value to everyone.

It’s far too easy to crucify people on the altar of running the event that was built to serve people in the first place. In other words, the event is made for people, not people for the event.

In building participatory events (or attendee-centered events as they are known), you have to be very prepared in order to make it as easy as possible for your participants to learn, but you never sacrifice their learning at the expense of standards or protocol.

I have lots of things that I want to talk about that I’ve experienced over the last 2 weeks. It’s the amount of stuff that has happened and that I’ve learnt that has literally paralyzed me from communicating it. But – I must get it down. I’ll post some of it at the Like Minds site, and then carry out some deeper analysis on the topics and ideas here that we can then munch over and discuss.

I also want to, again, thank you for your support and encouragement. I felt it everyday that I was there.

Yours,
Scott

I am, of course, thrilled. I’m going to be meeting some exceptional people over this coming week, as well as taking with me a contingent of exceptional people to Helsinki to engage in a very exciting learning experience.

This has also been a learning experience for me. I can tell you right away I’ve made mistakes and learned some valuable lessons for the future, mainly about community and how to organise an event over email and phone, without being there. Whilst I’ve spoken at events and planned events around the world, this is the first time I have planned an event from afar. I’ll be sharing these lessons over the coming weeks – probably in video form – which will be good to get your input on too.

Want to know one of them now? Ok, you’ve pulled my leg.

We received a lot of  praise and feedback for how well Like Minds Conference 2010 was organised, which I have to agree with. Without being arrogant, it was the most well organised event that I have designed, and it was the best event that I have ever been to with regards to being minute perfect (which is mainly down to my wonderful wife Faye.)

We were pretty prepared for that, but I never knew how easy it was until planning Like Minds Conversation Helsinki. The level of preparation that you need for an international event that you are organised virtually, as opposed to physically, is ten-fold, and likewise communication is ten-fold and the amount of lead time you require, and advance booking of all the elements is also ten-fold. I’ve already outlined how to improve this, and am already drawing up the partnership documents and the event run sheet for Washington DC in September and then Exeter in October now.

My Itinerary This Week

My itinerary is arrive in Helsinki on Tuesday, and then meet with the local press and media as well as locals in general during the day. If you are in Helsinki, let me know. I want to meet you!

Wednesday night I am speaking, as you know, at Dicole Oz on People-to-People (which will be streamed live), and then Thursday 17th June is the big day – Like Minds Conversation Helsinki.

You’ll be able to follow the event live online at http://www.twitterface.com/likeminds, thanks to the wonderful team at Fresh ID, lead by my friends Lisa Qualls and the inestimable Kristi Colvin. Please do support me on the day by tuning in and also engaging on the #likeminds hashtag.

Then Friday I am privileged enough to take our team of speakers and guests and spend a day with Visit Finland, the tourist board of the country, discussing and developing a Social Media plan for the country. I can’t begin to tell you how humbled I am that I find myself in this position – it doesn’t seem real to be honest to think I’ll be consulting a country – and I certainly feel the weight of the responsibility. Of course, the team of people we have is exceptional and I have every confidence that we will deliver a very high degree of value for Visit Finland.

Probably the biggest thing in all of this (and as much as it seems a big deal, I know it’s still a small thing in the grand scheme and all), is that this is all happened quite unexpectedly. This is a theme I want to discuss later – I can categorically tell you that 6 months ago (with Like Minds already underway), I didn’t think I’d be here. And a year ago, I certainly didn’t think I’d ever be here.

And where is here, exactly?

I’m not here for profit. I’m here for a cause. I believe that the connections I am making, and the community I am fostering, will be a force for change, and ultimately, for the spiritual and physical benefit of many.

Photo from Like Minds Conference 2010, courtesy of Benjamin Ellis.

To be a king maker, you have to know your kings. The strongest teams are those who know each other inside out, and can maximise each other’s strengths and minimise each other’s weaknesses. This is why Robin’s share words are so important, because they help us know each other.

Knowing you, and you knowing me, means that we don’t compete with each other but we complete each other:

• When anyone asks me who to speak to about digital publishing, I tell them it’s Andrew Davies and Ed Barrow at Idio.
• If anyone needs measurement and integration consultancy with Social Media, I tell them they need to speak to Olivier Blanchard and attend Red Chair in London later this month.
• Anyone who is overloaded I tell to read Robin Dickinson’s blog immediately and start developing diamond-focus.
• Those who want Social Media advice and are in Bristol or Cheltenham I tell to speak to Chris Hall and attend Media140 in Bristol this month.
• Any person who wants to really impact on a social scale I hook up with Stephanie Rudat and the exceptional work she is doing, or point to Jeff Hurt and Dave Lutz to learn how to improve learning.
• For those wanting to take their organisations beyond marketing, I refer them to Ann Holman.

And likewise, these people are plugging people into me who need the strengths that I have.

The Multiplying Effect of People-to-People

When we talk people-to-people like this, we encounter a multiplying effect. A scripture in the bible that confounded me for years was “One can put a thousand to flight, two can put ten thousand to flight.” I never understood how 1+1 could equal 10, but then I began to realise that if I spend my day doing what I am best at, and let others do what they are best at, then I no longer have to waste my time and neither do they. My day becomes more productive, and our combined productivity equals a 10.

The big question of course is “do you know me?” – or rather – “do I know you?” The volume-based game that most are playing online booms with a resounding “No” because everyone is too busy building their own super personal ego brand, complete with logo and 30 day programme, that they don’t have the time nor the inclination to get to know you.

However people-to-people is not a volume but value play and we must know each other – and know each other well. Without this, we do not understand each other’s strengths and therefore don’t achieve this multiplication of strengths.

The answer then is plain: know me, and enable me get to know you.

Note: this is an active pursuit, and the one of a leader. Followers not necessary.

Your Leading Thoughts

• How do you get to really know people, practically?
• How are you managing those relationships successfully and ensuring that you build deep, value-based relationships rather than getting sucked into the volume game that most people play?

P.S. If you have no idea what that photo above is about, watch this.

Dicole Oz is hoted by Teemu Arina, one of our panelists at Like Minds, who Joe Pine referred me to – so it’s like minds allround.

I’m guessing most of you won’t be there in person (in fact, it’s full already) – but you can watch the live stream here at 18:45 on Wednesday 16th June, Helsinki Time.

I’m going to talk about People-to-People: The Future of Everything, something that any regular reader here will understand. People-to-People is the new way that we are operating in a knowledge economy, where people are more valuable than parts, and success is built not by the speed of a machine, but by the strength of your team. (Yes, there will lots of rhyming.)

Here’s the Test

I want to go to Helsinki and talk about this community. I want to talk about Exeter and bringing £100,000 into a city’s economy through social media. I want to talk about the stories of like minded individuals across the world – most of whom haven’t met yet. I want to talk about the depth of discussion that we generate here.

What I need are your stories and examples – from the boardroom, to the big deals, to the unique engagement, to the personal touches, to the new friendships – so that I go to Helsinki equipped with the examples to show what a people-to-people community looks like.

Let’s talk:

A year ago today I met Trey Pennington: 26th May 2009.

We got talking on Twitter in early 2009, and when he was due to come over to England, we arranged to meet up. Trey actually did one better, and came down to Exeter for one of our first tweetups.

For those of you who know the history, it was the same day that Like Minds began. Trey suggested we do an event, hooked me up with Olivier (whose blog I had been reading for sometime), and we set the date of Friday 16th October 2009.

You know what I love about Trey and people like him? They connect like minded people together.

There’s a saying that you can be a king, or a king-maker. You only get to be king once, but you make many people kings. When I look at Trey I see a king maker, and it inspires me to do the same. Trey never seeks to build his own kingdom, he just helps others build theirs. Another friend I made, Chris Brogan, would call it being the elbow.

In fact, Trey so believes in making kings out of other people, that through doing just that he got to interview his hero (and almost everyone’s hero) Zig Ziglar recently, saying his classic line: “if you help others fulfil their passions, you’ll fulfil yours along the way.”

When I think about how much Trey means to me, as a friend and a person who kickstarted the vision that’s taken me thus far, I realise it’s far more rewarding, effective and exciting to be the king-maker, than trying to put yourself on the throne all the time.

While we’re here, I also want to shout out to my friends Ruairi Fullam and John Harvey, sat either side of Trey, who’ve also supported me continually and mimic Trey’s king-making talents.

So here’s to Trey. I love him, and I thank him.