The infographic below, from influence marketing firm Crowdtap, sheds some light on the current predominant thinking regarding how to reach influencers. Crowdtap found that when it comes to purchasing decisions, the most influential recommendations come from people we actually know, either through the web or in person. For brands, that means effective influencer marketing is about enabling customers to easily make peer recommendations to their networks of close friends, rather than helping widely followed people blast out marketing messages to thousands or millions of people.