The number of shares and likes a piece of content receives on the web are crucial in its efficacy as a successful marketing tool, the audience of Content Marketing World Sydney has been told.

Mark Schaefer said that power and influence are shifting on the web thanks to the dual enablers of widespread high speed Internet access and easy to use publishing platforms like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.

He said that Robert Caldini’s six sources of influence of scarcity, likeability, recipricocity, authority, consistency and social proof no longer work online.

The new locus of power lies with content that moves. In other words content that people share.

“Social proof is incredibly powerful. Numbers matter. You wanted to grow beautiful tulips. You find two blog posts. One has been shared lots the other not. Which one are you going to read?” Schaefer asked his audience.

“Content that moves. Creates power. It’s only good if it’s shared,” he added.

This means that companies have to have a network strategy as well as a content strategy.

Schaeffer also added that the new people of influence were no longer movie starts and celebrities but every day people who just started blogging a lot or Tweeting a lot and gathered huge audiences. People such as Robert Scoble who was just an IT department nerd, but ended up receiving the first Google Glass to trial outside of Google employees.