In the modern age it is clear that social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Youtube have become some of the most popular networks on the internet, the key example being Facebook with over 1,870 million active users . The rise of social media can largely be attributed to its characteristics that differentiate itself from other websites, these being their ability to allow for the opportunity to communicate with others over the internet and in effect allow them to form groups with other like-minded people. Social media platforms that operate on a more personal level such as Facebook or WhatsApp also allow one to keep in contact with friends and family, regardless of where they are in the World.

The ability to communicate on social media creates a new avenue of exposure for businesses, such as through the ‘Share’ button on Facebook or tweeting on Twitter – These forms of electronic word of mouth essentially provide businesses the opportunity to receive a high level of exposure, allowing them to reach a wide number of potential customers, simply through viewing their content that was posted by others.

However, despite this it is clear that these advantages can only exist if the business themselves have already established themselves in the industry. A brand new start-up would not gain popularity from simply starting a Facebook page! As a result, in order to reap the benefits of social media to its fullest extent a business must first make itself known to its target market. For physical businesses such as restaurants or retailers, this could be done on-site: for example, on the restaurant’s menu or providing access to Wi-Fi only when the customer has ‘Liked’ their Facebook page.

For online businesses however, they will have to rely on methods other than simply a Facebook page or Instagram account in order to attract consumers. One such method is the use of influencers. A recent example of the usage of such influencers can be seen from the developers of the mobile game ‘Shadowverse’, known as ‘Cygames’, a game developer based in Japan. Here, they reached out to multiple streamers on Twitch.tv, and in particular one known as ‘Kripparian’ in order to promote their game. To those who don’t know, Twitch.tv is a live streaming website in which users can stream whatever they are doing on their computer to others viewing their channel. As of January 2015, Twitch had more than 1.5 million broadcasters and 100 million visitors per month. 

On Twitch, Kripparian was a streamer of ‘Hearthstone’, one of the most popular games on Twitch,  and who himself had over 900,000 followers and over 150,000,000 overall views on his channel. In addition to this, he also runs a Youtube channel with over 882,000 subscribers in which he uploads clips from his stream. In this study (Yung-Ming Li, 2011), it is established that there are numerous factors involved in determining the strength of an influencer, such as the “Review Rating” and “Popular Author” approaches. In the present scenario, Cygames’ may have decided to use Kripparian as an influencer due to a multitude of factors that they could have examined, such as the average number of views per video, the like/dislike ratio, his frequency in posting content and the channel’s growth rate in terms of subscribers. Some additional points of interest are also found in this article, namely the category of ‘Authenticity’. Cygames’ may have looked into things other than simply his Twitch and Youtube stats, such as his character, personality, his opinion on ‘Hearthstone’ and in what regard his viewers hold his opinion.

Cygames’ decision to use Kripparian and other Hearthstone streamers allowed them to penetrate the niche market they wanted to: Western players who had interest in online collectible card games. The success of their decision is reflected to some extent from the growth of the Shadowverse subreddit: a webpage in which the game itself is discussed. A notable influx can be seen on the dates of August 31^st and October 28^th. August 31^st was when Kripparian posted his first video relating to Shadowverse and October 28^th was when another video was posted about the additional content that was added to the game as well as when Cygames released the game on the Steam platform, expanding the game to PC users as well.

All in all, Cygames’ endeavor into the western market can be seen to be a success. At present, they hold an average of 5,000 – 6,000 players on Steam, and over 500 thousand downloads on the Google Play store. In addition, they appear to have recognised Kripparian as a strong influencer – As of today, he has been sponsored to post seven videos in total.

References

Li, Y.M., Lai, C.Y. and Chen, C.W., 2011. Discovering influencers for marketing in the blogosphere. Information Sciences, 181(23), pp.5143-5157