Positive aspects
“Building long term relationships with customers is essential for any sustainable business” (Chaffey and Ellis-Chadwick, 2019). Social media marketing is one of the most effective ways to develop online existing relationships, to emphasise a company’s brand awareness, credibility and favourability.
Using social media influencers gives businesses the opportunity to have access to a high quantity of online existing relationships. In terms of positive aspects, ‘Social CRM’, which is the process of managing customer-to-customer conversations and engagement is one of the most beneficial reasons to use social media influencers (Chaffey and Ellis-Chadwick, 2019).
Identifying the right individual
Influencer marketing can only be effective after the business has distinguished the right person. This can change typically for each type of business, depending on their aims and objectives. Choosing the right influencer can be just as important as the content and should be key in the marketing strategy. A study conducted by Brorsson and Plotnikova (2017) identified the effects of social media influencers, different characteristics and how different SMI’s are perceived by the receivers.
“Note that it is not always an influencer with a great reach that is most effective to achieve desired targets in social media marketing” (Brorsson and Plotnikova, 2017).
Taking the following steps:
Figure One: Shannon and Weaver Model of Communication (1979)
This model describes the digital communication process with the different factors that the influencer marketing strategy involves. In terms of successful marketing strategy, the first information source would be the ‘brand’, which sends the ‘Instagram post’ to the ‘transmitter’ who then posts it to their influencer marketing page or most popular social media platform. This then creates the ‘noise source’ which will be the advertised post to create the information dispersion. The next transmitter is the ‘received signal’ which could be in this case, the comments, likes, voices and opinions of the followers and fans. The noise element of the model represents the interference that occurs in the process. The receiver creates this opinion from the post, which lastly, takes them to the destination which also in this case could represent the sales of the product (Shannon and Weaver, 1979).
According to much of the literature, influencers have the ability to strengthen a brand through their social media channels. Due to their high following, high level of trust, open communication, social media influencers are the key to positive brand perception (Djafarova and Rushworth, 2016).
According to Brorsson and Plotnikova (2017) it is a complex process when identifying the appropriate infleuncer due to different aspects such as:
- Number of posts
- Number of followers
- Social structure
- Target audience
- Attributes: Age, gender, psychological and external characteristics
How to find and leverage influencers on social media (YouTube, 2016)
This video explains the steps into finding the right influencers for your brand, by helping to identify the certain metrics and collaboration efforts. The first step is looking at the engagement ratio, which explains using tools such as ‘Iconosquare’ that helps brands look at the engagement ratio for an influencer. The last step as explained in the video is the ‘content authenticity’ which means looking in depth at the influencer to see how there going to advertise your product. examples of this could be, reviewing your product and giving their honest opinion.
How to track and measure your influencers campaigns on social media (YouTube, 2018)
This YouTube video explains the process in finding the right influencer for your brand. This video compares to the above YouTube video in the sense that the content goes into detail about how tracking the strategy after the strategy has been performed. The important steps include monitoring the influencer marketing strategy and measuring the impact they are having on your business.
Successful stories with influencer marketing campaigns:
How to run influencer marketing campaigns – successful examples (YouTube, 2018)
This video gives details on the success of marketing strategies for companies such as Skype, GAP and Glossier. GAP used different influencers to renew their current persona which gave them widespread reach. Skype used a competition for their strategy to attract influencers to provide content and gave Skype the opportunity to further their target audience/reach. Glossier decided to use micro influencers (influencers with a small following) to gain a more approachable brand image.
“According to a recent study conducted for a HubSpot more than 94% of marketers believe that influencer marketing was an effective campaign strategy” (YouTube, 2018).
Social media analytics
Finding the right social media influencer for your brand involves using social media analytics to analyse the big data from social media. Companies can identify the common behaviours, interests of their consumers to convert the social media users into customers (Rowena, 2018). According to the Social identity theory, consumers behaviour is determined by the interpersonal behaviour. This means that the motivations and actions of the SMI is closely linked with the result of the behaviour of the promoted product (Glynis and Rusi, 2014).
Bibliography:
Brorsson, A and Plotnikova, V. (2017). Choosing the right social media influencer. Diva . 1 (1), p31-39.
Chaffey, D and Ellis-Chadwick, F (2019). Digital Marketing. 7th ed. Harlow: Pearson. p118-127.
Djavafova, E and Rushworth, C. (2017). Exploring the credibility of online celebrities’ Instagram profiles in influencing the purchase decisions of young female users. Computers in Human Behaviour. 68 (4), p1-7.
Glynis, B and Rusi, J (2014). Identity process theory: identity, social action and social change . 6th ed. Cambridge: Cambridge Univeristy Press. p20-22.
Rowena, H. (2018). Impact of Data and Analytics on Social Media in 2018. Available: https://towardsdatascience.com/impact-of-data-and-analytics-on-social-media-in-2018-595a3bd4fb60. Last accessed 8th March 2019.