Former Forrester Analyst and social media visionary Charlene Li has added fuel to a topical flame dubbed the “Personal CPM.” She hypothesizes that marketers will bid for access to personal social networking profiles with greater reach and influence among their peers. Inherent in this discussion is whether these individuals share in the windfall of this influence. I will be participating in a panel on the topic at this month’s OMMA Social in San Francisco so I thought I’d put a few ideas out there and see if I can crowdsource an analysis.

First, this is not a new topic, it has been tackled by other industries and wrestled by other thought leaders under different monikers and in alternate contexts. Social Media shares DNA with sister discipline Word of Mouth. As a former Board Member of the Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA) and student of the burgeoning Social Media industry, I’ve witnessed both industries obsess over “influencer methodologies.” From this debate, messiahs have been created, definitive tomes written and disciples deputized. Two dominant “religions” seem to have risen from the fertile influencer landscape even before the context of social networking evolved the conversation: The Influentials vs. The Everyday Evangelists. Malcolm Gladwell’s breakthrough work The Tipping Point was the Old Testament to Charlene Li’s New Testament Groundswell. His research located those “maven” consumers, the cool kids, who’s fashion, music and consumerism were the seeds of all trends. Tipping Point gave rise to a legion of “cool hunters” that splintered into a more scientific approach outlined in Keller/Berry’s book The Influentials, with a descriptor that says it all “One American in Ten tells the other Nine how to vote, where to eat and what to buy.”

The Everyday Evangelists argue that the search for alphas, mavens, sneezers and the like is a fools pursuit. Companies like Bzz Agent have led this splinter faction, assembling legions of hand-raising, would be evangelists to try stuff, talk about the stuff that they like, and report on the conversations. They make no claims that these people are screened for influence, size of network, or persuasive personality traits. They have, however, placed a line in the sand around the idea of a CPC, or cost per conversation. Based on some nifty math and established media metrics they’ve established a de facto standard of $.50 per conversation. In a performance based world, would you give two quarters for a conversation about your brand?

These models of course were conceived BF (Before Facebook). If Google established the common practices and pricing models of performance advertising, I argue Facebook will be the battleground of the Personal CPM holy war. On one side, marketers await, anxious to “buy” social influence at the human being and personal profile level. Lining up against them will be the privacy zealots and marketing skeptics, defending the sanctity of our profiles and the actions within our social networks. Somewhere in the middle will be consumers with a growing sense of their marketability and looking for a little something, you know, for effort.

Mark Zuckerberg once called Facebook “Word of Mouth on Steroids” and his Beacon advertising program planted the philosophical seeds for the idea of tapping purchase influence within social networks. Beacon may have lost the battle but Facebook will win the war. Out of the ashes has risen three new weapons of mass influence: Social Ads, Pages and Connect.

How can advertisers tap into the social graph and “Personal CPM” to have greater impact in Social Networks? Should they? I’d love any thoughts.

Next post I’ll be be tackling “CPF- What is a Fan worth?”