Social Media

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

Let’s Get Somewhat Real

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Engagement through social media, or e-engagement, as we may call it, is not just a way to build new contacts now, but also a way to voice your opinions in a time when people want to know your thoughts, but do not have the time to stand and share them with you.

Social contact, through social media or real relationships, is essential for a healthy living. A new study by John Cacioppo, psychology professor at the University of Chicago, reveals that social contact and regular exercise contribute to healthy aging, and also increase life span.

A blaring question here is that social contact now is dominated by social media. And when virtual life dominates the real one, how do you maintain moderation? On the other hand, internet addiction disorder (IAD) is on the rise. North America’s first inpatient clinic for Internet Addiction opened last year at Bradford Regional Medical Center in Pennsylvania. Social media is encompassing everything, but like other technologies, this exciting tool is slowly revealing its dark side.

Saying “I am very social” today has a different connotation from what it had, may be, 10 years ago. At that time “social” meant meeting in-person and sharing physical space. It included enlivening all five sensory functions of our body: touch, smell, sight, and hearing. The “new social” still lacks touch and smell. (I am not counting taste so significantly because I believe this sensory feeling still has personal boundaries to it.)

The social media space is growing each day and posing threats to real relationships. But are these really threats? May be yes, if we forget moderation. If it’s forgotten, we may slowly slip under the IAD scanner. But I fail to understand at times, how should an active social media person draw the line? Is it really a one-person effort?

Once we start using social media, we cannot avoid it. And even if we don’t want to start using it, there are many influencers to get us started. It’s addictive. No wonder why IAD is on the rise. The bottom-line is everyone has to set his/her own personal limits. We need to distinguish the “new social” from “real social”, we need to share physical space, and we need to exercise moderation.

You remember we teach kids about moderation when eating junk? Now we ourselves need to refrain from eating junk: the internet junk. It’s time to re-plan our days with more time for real people.

Let’s get somewhat real! Let’s take out time for the real social. Will you also take out the time to get real or do you prefer sticking to the “new social”? Or will you, like me, try to get, at least, somewhat real?

Video: http://bit.ly/1mtbvh4

Sources referred:

http://bit.ly/1jM7PFd

http://bit.ly/1gxoCIX

http://bit.ly/O9FWtK

http://bit.ly/1h6fj18

http://bit.ly/NaihZ7