"The internet is no longer a web of pages, it's a web of people."

At the LikeMinds community debate on Social Influence last night, this idea was key to understanding how we are influenced online.

Take a moment to think about how you found out about an event, a product or a service recently. Perhaps you did a Google search but more likely you saw a recommendation posted on a friend's Facebook page, asked a question on Twitter or received a LinkedIn or Eventbrite invitation. The integration of applications (made possible by Application Programming Interfaces or APIs) now means that social sharing is becoming ubiquitous. Just bought tickets to the opera? Why not tell your friends about it!

With Web 2.0 and easy access to media to share our ideas; the business of influence is being democratised. But how do we measure our own and others' influence?

The interest in social influence has given rise to a host of social scoring applications that can measure and rate your influence; PeerIndex and Klout are two such applications. But these tools can be flawed and do not reflect a person's true influence which is measured in all sorts of intangible ways including their offline connections and how they treat people.

With everyone being online and everyone having a network of friends and followers, the concept of reach illustrating influence is now outdated.  In my opinion, you get influence by being credible and persuasive not by having thousands of followers. Size no longer matters. What matters is the quality of your connections.

With influence comes power and power brings responsibility (to misquote Spiderman!). When we are blogging, or Tweeting or sharing on Facebook, we should talk about and share content about something we really care about. When you consistently generate high quality content, you get followers anyway organically. There is too much noise on the web to justify anything less.

Listening is also a key component of influence. They more you respond effectively to your 'friends' the better you will influence them.

Lastly, do something that creates action – this is a mark of real influence.

[Image with thanks to Gustavo Pedrosa via Creative Commons]

A quick ‘Save the Date notice’ – to celebrate the centenary of International Women’s Day on Tuesday, 8 March I will be hosting a free event called Enabling Women at Happy, an award-winning social business in east London.

Watch this space for more details.