David Armano has a great blog for many reasons. He talks about the intersection of branding, marketing and design, and almost always has a cool graphic to illustrate his thoughts. I actually read his blog more for the pictures :)

David wrote about Influencing Influencers back in January, and I tucked the post away. It was a compelling graphic about the ripple effect from influencers in the blogosphere. What caught my eye is that at first glance, the most prolific influencers are actually the bull’s eye of a target. Makes sense. We always talk about PR campaigns designed to influence the 2-3 key influencers in a market.

For some reason, I couldn’t get the graphic out of my head. This weekend, I finally had that “aha” moment – David’s graphic is really a map of online influence, and doesn’t need to represent just bloggers. It shows that in the world of social media, it’s no longer just about getting to those 2-3 influencers to create the ripples. Instead, some of the most successful campaigns actually start on the outskirts with small ripples, and then work their way inward. As the ripples grow, by the time the “target” is hit, there’s actually a major splashing going on.

This of it this way: if a great dane barks, the entire neighborhood hears it. Occasionally you’ll hear additional barks joining the fray. Five, or even three, years ago, the great dane was that elusive “influencer” who was quoted everywhere. Just getting them to mention your company/product/service meant a huge influx of traffic to the site.

Now imagine hearing a small dog bark. You know, that annoying, incessant yipping bark. They don’t stop, and it’s so shrill the entire neighborhood hears it. And every other dog hears it and then starts barking. And then more dogs start barking. And the yipping dog never stops. Suddenly, you have an entire city of barking dogs – including the great danes – and everyone can hear the noise.

It’s still important to approach and build relationships with the top 2-3 great dane influencers, but following David’s map of influence, getting to those outlying influencers can ultimately have a bigger impact. The first step, of course, is figuring out each influencer’s sphere of influence …