{"id":1407,"date":"2019-07-28T05:46:57","date_gmt":"2019-07-28T05:46:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/britopian.com\/?p=1407"},"modified":"2023-01-22T07:03:38","modified_gmt":"2023-01-22T07:03:38","slug":"top-cybersecurity-influencers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.britopian.com\/influencer-marketing\/top-cybersecurity-influencers\/","title":{"rendered":"Top CyberSecurity Influencers: Here\u2019s What my Experiment Revealed"},"content":{"rendered":"
Below is a quick analysis I did on the top cybersecurity influencers. But are they the top influencers?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ask any tech marketer how they measure influence, and you won’t get the same answer twice. This isn’t a bad thing. Influencer intelligence<\/a> should always be the first step, and there are many variables to influencer measurement. These data points can be weighted differently based on goals, objectives, the industry, and the audience you’re trying to reach.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n This is one reason why I’m not a fan of influencer lists. Whenever I present influencer data to clients, I always say, “these are 10 of the top security influencers,<\/em>” not<\/strong> “these are the top 10 security influencers.<\/em>” It sounds similar, but it’s not. Influencer measurement is subjective. <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n Another reason I do this is because of granularity. For example, in my research, malware influencers differ from SecOps (DevSecOps, SIEM). So, categorizing influencers in the high-level topic of “security” isn’t as actionable. <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n I say all this because I wanted to experiment. <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n I Googled “top security influencers” and found several results of influencer lists. Most of them were from security software vendors (here<\/a>, here<\/a>, and here<\/a>), a B2B tech marketing agency, Marketing Envy, and one from Onalytica — an influencer identification and management platform.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n Of each list, one consistent security influencer made the top five – Brian Krebs, who owns\/operates Krebs on Security, and he appeared on 4 of the five lists. Bill Brenner appeared on two different lists. Here’s a quick breakdown of each list (only the top 5 noted): <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n I’m not sure what kind of math, if any, was used in calculating these lists. It could have been just a ploy to get the attention of said influencers, which isn’t a bad idea if done right. I see this too much from the content marketing and social media industry, which bugs me. Let’s move on.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n Over the last several years, I have spent a lot of time building and analyzing audiences online. One audience, in particular, is the IT and business audience. This<\/span> is important on many levels. You’ll see why. <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n I rarely account for influencer reach (or influencer follower count) when doing influencer research. Instead, I look for whether or not specific influencers are referenced (or mentioned) by a particular audience. In this case … a real, self-identifiable audience made up of people that matter, like security engineers, developers, architects, heads of security, etc. This, to me, should be weighted when measuring influence<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n In tech, security influencers consistently reference each other on social media. This happens all the time. <\/strong>They tweet an article, tag another influencer, add their handle in the Tweet, flood with hashtags, and then everyone retweets. I’m not saying this is terrible, good, or whatever. It’s just what they do. <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n I want to know which influencers are referenced by a specific audience or group. <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n At Zeno, we have built an audience panel of 200,000 IT decision-makers (and growing). We can filter and mine their sharing habits, conversations, media consumption, brand affinity, top interests, etc. This is all publicly available data. <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n For this exercise, though, we just filtered for each influencer above. In other words, I wanted to understand if any of the above influencers are reaching more than just other influencers. I needed two questions answered:<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n Here are the results. <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n The four influencers below were not mentioned by anyone from this IT security audience from June 2018 to July 2019. Most appeared on the Data Insider list and one from Onalytica. Again, I’m not saying that they aren’t influential. They just aren’t being mentioned by this particular audience panel.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n The others, well … were mentioned quite a bit.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Top Cybersecurity Influencers: A Different Approach<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
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