Is your company still playing the ‘number of Facebook fans’ game? Do you still measure success by how many Twitter followers you’ve gained that month?

I know – let’s send our product sample to Ashton Kutcher!

Well, if your colleagues haven’t got the message that participation, emotional resonance, change in behaviour and depth of brand advocacy are far more valuable indications that consumers are developing loyalty and driving sales, maybe this nice whitepaper will help.

In ‘Influence and Passivity in Social Media’, HP’s Social Computing Lab created an algorithm for Twitter influence that improves on the volume-focused PageRank and H-index by examining not just the size and structure of a user’s network but the diffusion behaviour within it. And what did they find?

“An important conclusion from the results is that the correlation between popularity and influence is quite weak, with the most influential users not necessarily the ones with the highest popularity.”

That’s right. It doesn’t matter if an individual has a theoretically massive ‘reach’ – if their network is not full of active and engaged users with an emotional connection to the content, it simply won’t spread.

Looking at behaviour rather than numbers is the way to ensure word of mouth – we’re talking about human beings here, after all.

As with the offline world, the most influential guy isn’t the one who shouts the loudest. He’s the one who knows how to whisper in the right ears.

Tags: ashton kutcher, influence, passivity, popularity, social media, spread, virality, WOM, word of mouth