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
Word-Voice 