Gloria, Gloria, Gloria… I am crushed! I am NONE of these. Couldn’t you list me as ’1 Marketing Nerd?!?!?!?’ To lump me, I assume, with newspeople/journalists is a crime. OUCH! (Maybe I am the techie? That would take the sting out just a bit…)

As I commented on the original list post — my following/followers are 100% organic. I don’t play Twitter games. I try to provide useful, thoughtful information around marketing, PR, and integrated marketing communications. Sure, it might not everyone’s cup of tea at the end of the day…but I am what I am.

Do I think I am influential just because of Twitter numbers? Hell no. That’s silly. Influence is in the eye of the beholder, just like perception…we tend to forget that.

And this whole influence conversation is a joke. Anything can be gamed. The most influential people tend to be those who speak less, but speak strongly when they need to. My mom comes to mind.

At then end of the day why get riled up about and waste time on some silly Top 10 list? This is the kind of stuff that holds people back from real work.

Beth Harte
Serengeti Communications
@bethharte

But I will take some time to look into the other 9 people – and perhaps see if I am “missing” anything. Who knows – maybe I am . . .thus making Technically Philly an influencer for me =)

I love your discussions and the insight you bring to the table – because after all- isn’t getting people to think about things – influencing them?

Hillary

You will note that my original response to Technically Philly was a few tweets. I felt my opinion needed more than 140 characters to express thus my blog post (key words being MY blog, thus my choice of what the content will be) . If you feel that I have not expressed my opinion, that is your opinion, but I respectfully disagree with you. I am curious what type of response would you felt was worthy of being considered “content”?

You make some valid points and I have only response. If it were not for people making things happen, what would journalists have to report on? There would be no news to report if it were not for people making things happen. Thus, my position that journalists are not more influential than the people making the news that they report. Yes, journalists help spread word of what is happening and therein lies their influence. It does not however give them more influence. I do disagree with your point that Technically Philly and other blogs are dependent on the news for their content. I know many great bloggers who develop thoughtful, original content that is not dependent on news reported by other sources. Also, your position that Technically Philly is just a blog that reports news is erroneous. Technically Philly is a news organization. I know all of the founders and editors personally and can state unequivocally that they are true journalists who expend much time and effort investigating, researching and reporting news, not just regurgitating news reported by others. Yes, they do pass along articles from other news sources that will be of interest to their readers, but the majority of posts on their site is original content.

While I understand where you are coming from, I completely disagree with the approach.

It really comes down to what is the perspective of influence. What you are arguing is the same question that many marketers are posing today – in a digital world of interacting with the same individual and similar message across multiple touchpoints, to which tactic does one attribute the conversion?

You argue that journalists are never more influential than those who make things happen. So, within the context of Twitter, it is the last person who tweeted that resulted in an action by the end user. So a social media superstar who has accumulated many followers who tweets about a topic/article based on a journalists’ work has more influence because they drove a certain percentage of their followers to take an action, often by reframing the news article to guide individuals in a certain way.

This obviously is the new direction for new media. Fox News on TV, Huffington Post/Daily Kos/Red State, all have pioneered this approach and it’s not just politics. Blogs everywhere are popping up slanting the news to influence others to take a certain perspective.

But therein lies the rub. Without the work of the journalist, many blogs are hindered to the point of irrelevancy. How many tweets, blogs, shares, etc. come from articles from CNet, TechCrunch etc? What would be the content impact on Technically Philly if they didn’t have news articles to reference? Would they even have a site? Would they really be able to show just how far Venmo has come since their award win at MOMOMA Demo Night? Just what kind of impact on their business is being published on news sites mean?

Social media is a tactic, but it is the original work that powers it that is truly influential, because it influences not just one blogger but all of those who depend on their work.

I would love to see your list and I bet the Technically Philly folks would too!