Marketing

How Influential Are You?

influencer

 

This week I met a friend who was updating her Twitter profile because she wanted to make it more interesting. I asked, “Why?” She replied that someone wanted to pay her for tweeting. Now because she wants to sell tweets at a higher price, she was updating her Twitter page. My first reaction: How unethical! What if someday you genuinely support something, but people do not believe in you or your tweet’s authenticity? My second reaction: Influencer marketing! So common, yet so secretive.

The concept of influencer marketing was uncovered in 1940s in the Two-Step Flow Model of Communication by Lazarsfeld. He probably didn’t think how one day a social media kind of thing would take it to different heights. The public relations professionals try to gain influence, ideally, through unpaid influencers. The marketers go a step forward and pay them. If I comment more about payment and non-payment here, I would be reemphasizing that PR and marketing professionals are in a love-hate relationship. (Please refer to my blog post for further detail on this: “PR and Marketing: Competing or Completing?”)

Popular social media tools to determine influencers include Twitalyzer, TweetStats, and PeerAnalytics. I recently explored these and some more. I found Twitalyzer a really effective one. It is more of a quantitative tool, that is, you get numbers, but this makes the data easy to measure and quick to use. Thinking whether you are an influencer or not? Go ahead. Go to the home page of any tool you wish to and just type in your name. This may make you happy to see how popular you are. Then even you may want to sell your tweets! Easy business…is it really? I suggest, think before you endorse.

These quick, and mostly free, databases allow the communication professionals to tap on the inherent power of influencers. Once discovered, an influencer can be turned into the brand’s unofficial mouthpiece. This practice is on the rise and might take some time to reach its saturation point because in real lives these unofficial influencers are great friends, helpers, activists, or simply charming persons that others love to follow or even ape. Human nature makes us look up to people whom we perceive are better than us, our wish to be close to them makes us follow them, and finally our desire to be exactly like them makes us do things that are done by them. This implies that influencer marketing is tied to the basic nature of humans to grow, or look, better. So we can say that this concept is, at least, as eternal as the human race.

Cheers to the discoverer and cheers to all those who contributed to its successful use through social media. Businesses now have something to cling on to even if they are on weak legs.

What is your opinion on this concept? Have you been approached by any brand to be their influencer or do you, in your profession, approach others to be influencers for your brand?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-step_flow_of_communication

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Influencer_marketing

http://blogs.salesforce.com/.a/6a00e54ee3905b8833017eeab47b46970d-800wi

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szStBV5Mxto

Marketing and PR: Competing or Completing?

Merging lines
(Pic courtesy: http://bit.ly/1fjyTV7)

Public relations and marketing professionals are in a love-hate relationship since ever. With the growth of IMC, the hatred seems to boil down every now and then. If we compare the definitions, the theoretical base, of both the professions, we see an obvious overlap.

The Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) defines PR as: “A strategic communication process that builds mutually beneficial relationships between organizations and their publics.”

The key here is relationship-building.

The American Marketing Association (AMA) defines marketing as: “Marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large.”

And what can be a similar key here? It’s the exchange of valuable offerings.

There is a hint of commonness in both these definitions. We can join the two keys and say that relationship building occurs when there is an exchange of something that is valuable for the giver as well as the taker.

So how do the two complete each other?

PR and marketing lie on the same continuum, they complete each other. While marketers fulfill the needs of the consumers by offering services and products, the PR professionals communicate to build brand credibility that motivates using or buying those services or products. While marketers give the company measured figures of sales, the PR professionals work on the intangible aspects that account for generation of tangible data that is used by marketing. And while marketers load the social media with exciting ads and product-deals, the PR professionals gather third-party reviews to add authenticity to those deals.

Whose method is it?

It is interesting to note how similar some of the methods that PR and marketing professionals use are. For example, PROs use third-party spokespersons, while marketers use paid endorsers, and PROs use publicity events, while marketers use trade shows.

It might take years for all the academic curriculums to realize that they cannot teach PR or marketing alone. But in the real world, the changing market demands this. The lines between the roles and responsibilities of the two fields are blurring. With multiple periods of recessions and growth in economies, now the companies strive to reach out and make a mark in every possible way. Even if the conflicting PR and marketing teams pass each other with only a grin, in most cases they now realize that it’s not possible without each other.

These are just my views, but what do you believe? Do you think that marketing and PR are shunning borders? Are lines between the two fields blurring, or do they still fall into clearly defined silos?