The Influencers.
We all have around us a group, or more than one, of people we influence. And we’re all part of someone’s sphere of influence.
The big difference that opens up the online environment is that it gives us the possibility of establish very close relationships, with a great level of trust, with people we do not know and do not know us, but in whose opinion, judgment and recommendation we rely on to make a decision or to change decisions that we already had made.
This chart (known as the Rogers Curve or as the Moore Chart) shows us a quantization-type of the different segments in which we can divide our potential market.
Influencers are usually located in the first and second segments: they are the innovators and the early adopters,according to Rogers’ nomenclature, or enthusiasts and visionaries, according to Moore’s nomenclature.
From these two groups, which represent only 16 of what we can consider our “potential audience,” it depends on us reaching the quantitatively numerous groups: the early majority and the late majority. In the last segment, we find those that are normally called traditional or sceptical (laggards).
As the graph shows well, the conquest of the first “brave ” (innovative/enthusiastic) is decisive to attract and engage early adopters/visionaries and then there remainstricky part of saving the abyss (chasm) that leads us to the Mainstream Market, that is, to build a bridge that will lead us to the mass market.