Can Multiple Channel Social Media Marketing Increase Your Brand's Influence?

The influence of Social Media and its ability to transcend different communities and spread your brands message is pervasive through the viral ability of the medium to enable people, companies, groups and communities passing your content and message on, especially if they see it is of a value and helps them solve problems.

Your link and content can start on Twitter, then transfer to Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, Company Websites and other blogs as other people take your content and pass it on by copying it, pasting it and adapting it. I have even had one of my blog posts “28 Reasons Why The CEO Is Afraid of Social Media”  turned into a Bingo game at Craig Thomler’s Blog at eGov AU. I am constantly amazed at people’s creativity.

A blog post by Joseph Greeny who states in his Business Week article, “Increase Your Influence Tenfold, that when we want to change behavior, we usually immediately are looking for a quick fix.  This means that we choose one method of changing the bad behavior and the one method we choose is the one we feel will give us quick results”.

What Greeny and the other researchers found however, is that when people try to change behavior using “one” source of influence, that they are rarely successful.

They have  found that when four or more of the six sources of influence are combined, the influencer’s are 10 times more likely to produce a profound, sustainable change in behavior.

 I think that there are significant parallels between the “Mutiple Channels” of Social Media and Greeny’s “Six Sources of Influence” and the evidential effectiveness of  the “Mutiple Channels” of Social Media. A lot of  digital marketing is single channel (or primarily one channel such as email marketing) rather than using multiple channels to provide leverage and efficiency. So here are the “Six Sources of Influence” and the parallel comparison with Social Media.

Six Sources of Influence: (and its comparative “Social Media” parallel equivalent) 

1. Personal Motivation – overcome individual reluctance and resistance

Social Media: It empowers the individual and provides personal motivation by rewarding them with feedback, comments and ratings with Social media Platforms such as Facebook, where you receive comments on your updates and increases in the number of friends, YouTube you get viewings and ratings, Blogs receive comments and you can track your subscribers and hits. This all can be very motivating to the point of obsession

2. Personal Ability – teach the necessary skills for success

Social Media: It provides the content and the tools to learn. Blogs provide the latest and greatest thought provoking content that transfers knowledge faster and more efficiently than ever before in the history of humanity. YouTube provides online tututorials on almost any topic you can imagine. Twitter is constantly pointing you at links and content that teaches and informs

3. Social Motivation – enlist help

Social Media: With Social Media you can ask for assistance from Facebook friends, ask your loyal followers on Twitter, Ask a question on LinkedIn and find a tutorial on Twitter to find the right advice 

4. Social Ability – leverage teamwork

Social Media: The medium provides a platform for you to put up content and then the web community passes it on in effect providing leveraged teamwork. In fact social media platforms such as YouTube allows the “Team” to put up information and content for everyone to view and share, in fact the top sites on the web are content provided by the “World Team”

5. Structural Motivation – reward early successes

Social Media: Put up a Blog post… get a comment, this is a reward, Follow someone on Twitter they follow you back (another emotional reward), Put up a YouTube Video, you get a rating and views (another immediate reward)

6. Structural Ability – create a supportive physical environment

Social Media: This Influence of providing a supportive physical element is addressed by Social Media by facilitating through online communication, the arrangement of a  physical  meetings with a coffee or a lunch (maybe a drink even). In fact a Twitter message from Florida by a Twitter follower resulted in a physical meeting with all its supportive elements with a fellow passionate social media enthusiast in Sydney, Australia.  

So if you are going to influence the universe and  make a difference it is adviseable to use Mutiple Channels of influence to leverage your message in cyberspace. So are you using one channel or are you a multi channel marketer? Let me know you story