The point about influencers and passionate people is really just a matter of semantics. If you were looking for influencers for a client and did not have some quantitative or qualitative measure of passion, relevance, approachability, etc, then you really wouldn't be doing the whole job. In all of the influencer research I've ever done, I've tried to never bring an influencer before a client without having assessed their passion level.

At the same time, it's going to be really difficult to figure out what sort of return you're getting on your time investment reaching out to people if you're only measuring them based on passion and not also influence.
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