Absolutely. But there’s a trend among marketers who focus on social media (and maybe I should have harped on this a bit more in the post) to label certain people as “influencers”; the connotation being that it’s likely for people who are less removed from you personally to be more influential, just by virtue of how many people they reach. Pretty ironic considering that social media is supposed to be so different from mass media — and it is.

Although pretty obvious to us, this research illustrates once again that WHO you reach is far more important than HOW MANY you reach; or rather that the person from whom you hear it, and who you might influence to hear it, is far more important than how many people they, or you, can reach.

I read it as saying that in order to be effective in spreading word-of-mouth, marketers should be more concerned with creating ways for brand advocates — excited customers — to spread the word within their own circles than whether a handful of people with so-called social media “influence” (those with thousands of Twitter and Facebook “friends”) are evangelizing their brands.