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In my last post covering the application Pay with Tweet , I had alluded to the fact how social payments can evolve and how brands can use social networks to further their message, last week Brian Solis (@brian solis) along with Vocus have come out with a research paper , which fills an important cog in this wheel ” Influence”, The detailed report can be downloaded here . I am summarizing the important points covered in the report.

• Influence is different from Popularity
• Quality of network and quality of content have a defining impact on influence
• Content is king, but context is also very important
• Effective measurement is still an area where executives are divided,but still majority feel the action is the most important tool to measure effectiveness of social media.
• Executives are willing to pay for the influence .

Well in context of social payment, two important things come out , one is that now we have a clear notion of usability of influence and proxies to measure it, secondly and importantly the marketers  are ready to pay for the influence .

In my view this has huge ramifications for the social payment system and will enable  the development of tools which will help brands engage with influencer’s, and also pay them ( in cash/kind) for the value they might add. These alternate payment systems can sit parallel to or integrate with the current loyalty systems the users might be exposed to and also work as stand alone offer based systems ( like pay with tweet).
There are obviously apparent challenges for these kind of system to work, would love to hear from you guys and may be we can have a next post on that