Introduction
In ‘Social Conversation – Six Key Areas of Influence‘ I talked about the six areas which work to influence others through that content that we provide. These influences were originally discussed by Dr Robert Cialdini in his popular book on persuasion in marketing ‘Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion’. I’ve already discussed ‘Reciprocity in the Societal Web’, ‘Influencing others through scarcity on the Societal Web‘ and ‘Do you have to be liked to be social?‘. Another key influencer is the authority that we carry, and when Cialdini talked about authority as an influencer he was primarily referring to people holding positions of authority. The ability of a role holder, to influence others by direction and control, has been a mainstay of the late 20th Century structure in most businesses. I now believe that this is changing significantly, and changing very quickly.
The new ‘authority’
Authority is no longer something that is provided by a role, but authority comes from being able to demonstrate the skills, knowledge, and experience that extends respect and trust from others into their acceptance of your right to be able to lead on a particular subject through that knowledge, skill, and experience. When others acknowledge your right to lead, by following, they give you authority to lead them.
Penny Power talked about the nature of following in her recent book ‘Know Me, Like Me, Follow Me‘ where one of the key aspects of building a group of followers was the authority they gave you to act on their behalf, and the willingness with which they utilized your knowledge, skills, and experience to help build a better relationship and outcome.
Authority can’t be taken, in the Societal Web, it can only be given. In a recent article on the nature of Authority in society and in particular how it transfers to the Web, we discussed Steve Rubel’s Micro Persuasion blog and his thoughts that some may be confusing authority with popularity, and that’s clearly a risk. Popularity does influence others and we discussed that in ‘Do you have to be liked to be social?‘. Liking people, being popular, has a strong influence where there is mutual respect and trust and can influence people to act in a way that is not supported by the evidence around them on the basis of doing a friend a favour. Of course, authority is all about when the facts do align with the request and the knowledge that any areas where there is a lack of knowledge by the person being influenced is accepted on face value because of the authority given on those areas where there is mutual understanding.
Google – the search authority.
Google won the stakes in the search engine wars by being the best at providing the output, the end result that the searchers sought. By doing so consistently over a period of time they gained authority that was not easily transferred to the other search engines, so people became loyal to Google and trusted its ability to give them the right answer.
As we move to the real-time Web where people are not just seeking the right answer to a question, but also the right people to talk to in relation to that question, and those who are talking about that subject right now, in real time, has led to a change in the definition of authority for most of us. Unless Google can adapt and make its results both relevant and timely it’s likely that other elements of the real-time Web will gain greater authority than Google and take the traffic from them.
This is just one example of the sort of interaction that authority can have in terms of influencing others, but in most businesses it’s relatively easy to see the similarities when you look at their customer-facing interactions.
