Paul Gillin, author of The New Influencers, gave a lecture last Thursday in Waltham, MA about his book and implications of social media for marketers. I read the book several months ago and recommend it to anyone seeking to gain a quick understanding of what's going on NOW with respect to social media. I thought the lecture would simply reinforce the book, but actually, there was significant new information and a host of resources.

• Personal expression through online media to a global audience is here to stay. Gillin predicts that within 10 years, there will be only 5 major city newspapers left. The traditional media publishing model--where content and messages are created by large organizations and then broadcast to the consumer--is being fundamentally disrupted by the reality that millions of individuals are publishing their own content. In this society of publishers, a "remarkably civil" conversation is evolving. In such a world, influence is more important than power. And everyone has the potential to be an influencer.
• Think Small. The greatest success stories come from companies of one or two people. A media-savvy realtor creates a website, facebook profile, myspace site, linked in profile, then blogs about something valuable such as advice on living in Seattle. She leapfrogs her competitors, eventually building a realtor network. Or a guy starts blogging about gadgets and eventually has a website, Engadget, that is more relevant (and has greater reach) than PC Magazine. Again and again, the stories of New Influencers are the stories of individuals who use their passion and creativity to earn a platform of influence that increasingly allows them to be more relevent than multi-million dollar companies and traditional advertising campaigns.
• The point is not to understand it: the point is to do something about it. This point is illustrated by another blog post about the MITX Event last week where "heavy hitters" from social media talked about their companies and schmoozed with the Boston media folks. The reality is that everyone is learning and it is more important to be a participant in the game than to find an expert or become an expert. Nobody knows what they are doing. There is no time to wait for leaders to emerge or worry that your strategy might not be the right one. Just do it.
• Opportunity and Competition. You don't need millions of dollars of VC money to start a company and change the world. See Guy Kawasaki's post about how he started Truemors for $12,000. Of course, it helps to be Guy Kawasaki...but the point is that the new influencer model of marketing creates incredible opportunities that are hard to control. The goal of viral marketing is to find and engage the enthusiasts to turn them into promoters. Message delivery is declining in importance because marketing is more about relationships between trusted individuals than about crafting the right words. This means that individuals and organizations that can become adept at engagement will have an enormous advantage over organizations that simply have money to pour on advertising campaigns. An Army of Davids will beat Goliath. Don't be Goliath.