Your Social Graph = Your Job Security

What does our intrepid Customer 2.0 do before making a decision to do business with you? They check your influence — socially, that is. When 78 percent of consumers trust peer recommendations and 8 out of 10 decision-makers say word of mouth is the most important source when making a decision, keeping up your social graph and influence has to be your first priority.

Admit it, if you’re choosing between a few potential employees, and one of them clearly outweighed the others in terms of LinkedIn connections, Twitter followers, and Facebook presence, which would you hire? Or if you are considering working with a vendor and one doesn’t even have a web presence, while the other has a great blog, an engaging website, and manages a LinkedIn discussion group, which would you choose to do business with?

Influence moves much more quickly online than it does offline because of the larger exposure. Where do you sit on the influence radar? Are you ready to tune it up?

Decoding Influence: Brian Solis defines influence as the ability to cause desirable and measurable actions and outcomes. In order to impact others, you must build a foundation of trust, demonstrate your level of authority/expertise, provide value, and be approachable for a connection.

Use It or Lose It: Influence can change rapidly because of a person’s status — it’s fluid, much like trust. According to Edelman’s Trust Barometer, your corporate reputation depends on quality, transparency, and trust. Trust protects a reputation: When a company is not trusted, 57 percent will believe negative information; but when a company is trusted, 51 percent will believe positive information.  It takes work to develop trust, but it can easily be lost overnight. Make sure your online footprint is clean, professional, solid, and approachable.

Winning the Popularity Contest: It isn’t about having thousands of contacts, followers, and friends; it’s about connection. So whether you have 100 friends or 1,000, if you can connect others in meaningful ways, you will influence the behavior of your network to take action.

Join the Army: Companies want to hire you to help bolster their brand. Once hired, they want you to join their army of viral voices that can influence and strengthen their brand. Become a fan on Facebook, follow the CEO on Twitter, comment on their blog, listen to the discussion on LinkedIn, and use word-of-mouth to help recruit friends to join the company.

Write On: Can your blog comment ignite discussion and arouse curiosity? Can your Tweets get people to follow you? Will your written word clearly galvanize people to take action? That’s what writing with influence is all about.