Do brands have the power to reverse the ripple?

David Armano over at Logic + Emotion has drafted up a presentation about blogs/bloggers, outlining levels of influence based on linking, and what roles the different levels play in the pyramid.

"The bigger point that I want to make is that bloggers at each level command a “sphere of influence”. The higher the “level”, the more people are exposed to a blogger’s influence."

So, what does this mean for a brand who wants to attempt to influence the blogosphere? Is bigger always better? By David's visual, Engadget remains as the Level 1 technology blog. Should a brand always reach out to top influencers or does it have the power to create a new authority in the blogosphere?

Level 1 blogs at times can be perceived as jaded when it comes to brands approaching them (it happens all the time and is nothing new). Brands hoping to create a large amount of buzz in the blogosphere could easily get lost in the sheer quantity of content that Level 1 blogs pump out. Their message would still be read by a large amount of people, no doubt, but it would also have a lot of competition to reach Level 4 on the ripple wave. For the most part, that can be positive, in that a brand should be of high enough quality and interest in order to not be nipped in the bud.

However, should all brands immediately target high level blogs or do brands actually have the power to reverse the ripple? Instead of crossing their fingers that a high level blog would carry their message - what if they gave Level 4 bloggers 'inside' information that the Level 1 bloggers did not have? For example, if Nytimes.com wrote an article on a specific brand, and that brand had created a relationship with a Level 4 blogger, the blogger would then have the power to reference Nytimes.com but also give a "backstage pass" of sorts to what's really happening behind the article - thus making a large number of blogs in search for information that no one else has want to link the the Level 4 blogger instead of Nytimes.com.

David is currently welcoming more comments to his Levels of Influence post as he prepares his presentation due for late September.

via: Jaffe Juice