I’ve been doing “influencer marketing” for more than a decade, and calling it that for more than 7 years. I’m not a big fan of what you’re probably thinking about when you hear the phrase “influencer marketing.” What I’m really excited about is not so much outbound marketing and promotion – but inbound value capture through listening to market influencers and thought leaders. Listen to them and learn from them! That’s far more valuable than asking them to share links to what you’re selling!

I did a webinar about it with the American Marketing Association today and I was thrilled that 600 people registered, more than 200 attended live, and almost all of them stayed through the entire hour – not dropping off until we were done. You can check out the presentation on demand here. Related: AdWeek ran a contributed article I wrote on the same topic the next day.

That attendance and the responses we got suggest this to me: the market is ready for this. Marketers are ready to go beyond influencer marketing 101, the presumption of shallow last minute paid endorsements. I sure hope so!

What is strategic, listening-powered influencer marketing? It’s really a two-way conversation and it goes far beyond driving traffic to your company’s website. It does do that, in small part through the advocacy and sharing of “influencers” and in larger part through increased relevance for your more-informed brand, but it does a lot more than drive traffic.

As super smart marketer Leah Kinthaert puts it: “True digital transformation requires new ways of thinking and doing marketing, rather than simply enhancing and supporting the traditional methods. Social media – and more specifically two-way conversations on social media – is a crucial part of it.” Yes!

Below: A network map of the AI thought leadership space on Twitter.

Interested in Artificial Intelligence? Who isn’t these days? If you’re creating content and ever mention AI, you should make sure you know about Andrew Ng and Yann LeCun. They will probably never talk about you. But you’ll be a lot smarter if you spend some time listening to them. Everyone in AI does.

If you want to see some great examples of network-savvy influencer marketing by marketers winning the right to be trusted advisors to their customers, discovering emerging trends early, researching the heck out of their named accounts, targeting ads based on past wins, and yes even smart paid influencer engagements – come spend an hour with my recorded voice and a pretty deck on this AMA webinar.

I hope we’re seeing the beginning of a big change toward smarter, more informed, and more authentic marketing.