Now that you’ve forged your Foundation Friends, and are beginning to expand your authority by continuing to write excellent quality blog posts, while securing new friends and fans through the previously mentioned tactics, the concepts ‘Spheres of Influence’ and ‘Influence Ripples’ become tremendously important.

Source: http://darmano.typepad.com/logic_emotion/

Spheres of Influence & Influence Ripples … the Concept:
David Armano introduced the concept of Influence Ripples in 2006. His post Influence Ripples 2.0 shows how numerous bloggers with varied spheres of influence interact. Ultimately, networks become evident.

The concept is this, each person’s authority can be viewed as a circle (see above) on a 2-dimensional grid:

Ever heard it said … “to have a good friend, you’ve got to be a good friend”?

Image courtesy: Prosoundweb.com

Well its absolutely true! A group of friends with similar interests but complementary skills is beneficial for all involved, especially where each works to help the others in the group. If each member is an authority in their respective realms, and truly respects the work and skills of the others, the whole becomes greater than the sum of the members … which tends to elevate the “authority” of each of the members.

Have you ever happened upon a blog, and thought to yourself “Wow the information on this site is fantastic … how does the world not know about it?”.

It happens often. The problem is; content alone is highly unlikely to be sufficient to build any significant authority. If half the battle is creating great content, the other half is all about who ya know. In the end, build a better mousetrap, and the world will not necessarily beat a path to your door!

When you’re new to online marketing, where do you start when you want to build authority on a given subject?

In reality, Authority Building is a process … a linear process for the most part. This means that there are steps and stages, and perhaps even a natural evolution of actions. Within each stage, there are some tactics that will typically work much better than others.

The key here is to look for a process that can be replicated … and will consistently produce great results.