First, that’s a great book title don’t you think!?: Social Media Reach and The Sphere of Influence

Recently I have been fascinated with Heavy Influencer activity in their Sphere of Influence and the ways which they’re leveraging social media reach for products and services. The reach is often times quite stunning, beyond just those using social media, engaging their audiences to build even stronger relationships. It all starts with just one Influencer and grows the region of reach around the Influencer by adding one additional reach node at a time.

To better illustrate this Social Media Reach lets take a look at recent examples of Reach With Intention efforts by two of my personal Twitter friends: Robert Scoble (@scobleizer) and Gary Vaynerchuk (@GaryVee).

A few weeks ago Robert Scoble ran a promotion of sorts in which he gave away Seagate Hard drives (See: ‘Use Twitter or FriendFeed and win a new Seagate Drive‘). He announced this via Twitter and Friendfeed, and also posted the +140char details on his blog. The contest was pretty simple in that via social networking word of mouth anyone who physically showed up at the time/place would recieve the free drive.

On Tuesday at noon Eastern I’ll be standing by the Kodak sign in New York City’s Times Square (on side of Marriott Marquis hotel). I’ll have 20 drives. First 20 people to show me what Twitter or FriendFeed account they learned about the contest from will win a drive. So that’s one way you’ll win a drive, but that requires you to be in Times Square on Tuesday at noon. Not that easy for most of you.

But, not only will those 20 people win drives, but the 20 people who they learned about the contest from will also win a drive (we’ll send those to you).

All you need to do is Twitter or FriendFeed about the contest, tell your friends who’ll be in New York on Tuesday to come by and pick up a drive and you’ll win a drive too (these are cool drives, by the way, more about them on Tuesday).

Gary Vaynerchuk ran a similar giveaway last week in a live Ustream broadcast. Gary’s was a little different, focused just online, in that his goal was for a direct ripple effect via his followers/viewers social media channels. - Nothing new for anyone familiar with Gary’s Tactics.

For the Giveaway to even start viewers were instructed to use their social media reach to boost the Ustream videos online viewers to a level set by Gary. Once the viewer level had been reached Gary released the giveaway rules which again involved users social media reach.

Viewers were instructed to broadcast messages including all of Gary’s Twitter profiles, the first person to accomplish this task won a lovely iPod sound dock (I think that’s what it was).

Ive made an effort to avoid discussing the much debated PR/Marketing/Branding tactics in this post, as this is really more about pure Reach and how some are using their Sphere of Influence within social media. If you’re thinking about creating some ripples of your own make sure its a Reach With Intention:

Reach With Intention

1. Does it add value or enhance the experience of those we’re trying to reach. If so, how?
2. Will it engage your audience and help build stronger relationships?
3. Will your user(s) be able to spread your message independently?
4. What happens next? What’s plan B? (Especially important if you’re trying to do something viral — how do we nudge it if it stalls?)
5. How do I know understanding has been achieved (or if our message has been received)?
6. How do we measure our efforts?

For those still struggling with how to use Social Media to reach people who don’t use Social Media, check out ReadWriteWeb’s blog post on this very topic for Five Ways you can make this happen.

For more information on Influencer Marketing check out its Wiki page here

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