Source: Naranti.mx

8 Step Strategy to Become an Influencer

‘Influence is the power to shape others’ behaviour by others observing and imitating yours‘ Dr Albert Bandura. The best influence scholars like Dr Bandura, Dr Mimi Silbert and Dr Hopkins have demonstrated that an Influencer has the power to change anything if she knows what she is doing. Dr Anders Ericsson affirms that The Art of Influence is, therefore, something that can be learned by deliberate practice (Patterson & Granny 2017).

Ward (2017) reveals that Influencer Marketing is very powerful because it symbolizes ‘what many young people dream of having and the lifestyle they dream of living‘ (Marwick, 2015, p. 155 cited by Abidin 2016). By sharing their stories, Influencers provide a vicarious experience that allows their followers to taste the pleasure of the lifestyle they desire. ‘Vicarious modelling is one of the most accessible influence tools that can be employed. For most of us, that means we’ll make use of a well-told story’ (Patterson & Granny 2017).

Our Digital Reality is that ‘the Millennial and Gen Z generations view social media influencers as trustworthy and authentic celebrities’ (Talbot 2017). This trust is unfortunately shadowed by what Abidin (2016) calls Subversive Frivolity, the phenomenon of influential young rich women doing vain things online, creating ‘negative feminine stereotypes’ that provoke moral panics over the safety and well-being of women (Dobson & Coffey, 2015 cited by Abidin 2015).

This problematic creates a debate whether becoming an influencer is a desirable thing to do or not. From a business perspective, Influencer marketing is projected to be a two billion dollar market by 2019 (Talbot 2017) and since it is currently the most effective form of advertising (Ward 2017), it is worth exploring becoming an Influencer, if it is for the right reasons.

Academic and practitioner research revealed the following 8 Strategic Steps to become an Influencer:

1. Know Yourself

The most important questions to answer in order to become an Influencer are:

• Who are you and what value can you add?
• Why do you want to become an influencer?
• What makes you different?
• What is your style?

Once you have answered these questions, you can create a style and an atmosphere of your own by creating purposefully staged images that reflect what you stand for. Abidin (2016) has a very interesting study of Selfies as scalable objects, ways to earn an income and a ‘scopophilia’  phenomenon (pleasure from looking) at the ‘edited self’ (Laura Mulvey 1999).

2. Choose a topic you are passionate about

There is a myth that an Influencer needs to talk about lifestyle, travelling and luxury. The truth is that there are Influencers in any topic. Important is to choose a nice that makes you passionate, become the expert about it and above all be unique and be genuine.

3. Know Your Audience

“The most important thing in communication is to hear what isn’t being said.” – Peter Drucker cited by Maxwell & Dornan (1997). In order to become a true Influencer, you need to find out the following about your audience:

• What are they passionate about?
• What do they need and want?

Your ability to listen and understand what your followers want will determine your reach and success as an Influencer. This knowledge will provide the opportunity to tell your stories in a way that connects with your followers on an emotional level.

4. Create an Influence Strategy

Once you know who you are, the topic that makes you passionate and your audience, then you can proceed to create an Influence Strategy Plan. Academic research suggests using the power of Storytelling as a tool to provide Vicarious Experience. ‘To help people believe they can achieve victory, put them in a position to experience small success’ (Maxwell & Dornan 1997, p. 73). Consider including and mixing skillfully the Model of the Six Sources of Influence (Patterson & Granny 2017) in your Strategy plan:

Source: Patterson & Grenny (2007)

Your influence strategy plan should translate into the creation of a 3-month content strategy that you need to implement and promote consistently. Remember, 20% of the work is the content creation and 80% is the promotion of it (Ward 2017).

5. Choose the right Social Media Channels

‘The fastest growing influencer marketing platforms are Instagram, Instagram Stories, Facebook, and YouTube’, told Jeremy Shih, head of marketing at Mediakix to CNBC (Garcia 2017).

Even if these are the fastest growing and most important Influencer channels, it does not mean that you need to choose to work with them all. Every channel has its own nature, purpose and type of engagement. For example, Abidin (2015) states that Instagram primarily features the most professional and stylized selfies. Twitter is “less serious” in terms of photography aesthetic and the influencer feels “less pressure” to post “only perfect” images there. Snapchat is a space in which Influencers can deliberately curate and post what they describe as “fun selfies,” “ugly selfies,” or “more authentic selfies”. If you are comfortable with videos, do not miss the thrill of creating your Youtube channel. Now with 30 million daily visitors and 300 hours of content uploaded each minute, YouTube is a powerful search engine and content platform (Talbot 2017).

Hereunder the example of Jake Paul,  a Youtube Influencer Superstar with 14 million followers on Youtube and nearly 200 million views on this video (May 30 2017):

6. Use Some Cool Tech Digital Tools

The following cool digital tools support your Influencer journey:

• To enhance personal (selfie) beauty: ‘Meitu Xiuxiu‘ & Adobe Photoshop (Abidin 2015), Airbrush and Instagram filters
• To improve pictures’ visual: VSCO or Lightroom
• To schedule posts: Buffer, Planoly, Preview App, Ripl or Hootsuite
• To use the right hashtags: All#ASHTAG
• To check the numbers: Social Bakers, Facebook Audience Insights , Instagram Insights
• To join influencer platforms: Grin, InsightPool, HYPR, InfluencerBay, TRIBE and TapInfluence Barker (2007)
• Instagram tools: Instagram Stories & Instagram live

7. Engage Meaningfully (Barker 2017)

When someone comments on your photos, make sure that you reply to them. Also, return the favour by liking and commenting on their content. Do not take people for granted (Maxwell & Dornan 2007).

Here’s a checklist that you can use to increase your post engagement:

• Include a call-to-action in your caption
• Post at a time you’re likely to get maximum engagement (Use insights if you have a Business Account to post in the best times)
• Host giveaways and contests
• Use polls in Instagram Stories
• Follow similar accounts and engage with their content

8. Change the Environment and Become a Master influencer

Becoming and being an influencer is a great responsibility. Influence has the power to change the environment for the good or the bad. The purpose of becoming a Master Influencer is to empower others. The following image, summarizes the journey of becoming an influencer:

Source: Patterson & Grenny (2007)

To conclude:

Influencer marketing is growing exponentially. Many young people aspire to become Influencers because of the free and attractive lifestyle. However becoming an influencer implies a tremendous trust responsibility! It is fundamental to do it for the right reasons. If you decide to do it, make sure that you know yourself, the value you can add and your audience. Being an influencer is like being an entrepreneur. Know the game!

References

Abidin, C. (2016) Aren’t These Just Young, Rich Women Doing Vain Things Online?- Influencer Selfies as Subversive Frivolity

Barker, S (2017) ‘How to Become an Instagram Influencer and Start Earning Money Now’ The Startup [Online] 7 Febreuary 2017 https://medium.com/swlh/how-to-become-an-instagram-influencer-and-start-earning-money-now-a8ef3169e96d [Accessed 13 May 2018]

Garcia, D. (2017) ‘Social media mavens wield ‘influence,’ and rake in big dollars’ CNBC, Tech [Online] 12 August 2017 https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/11/social-media-influencers-rake-in-cash-become-a-billion-dollar-market.html [Accessed 13 May 2018]

Maxwell, J. & Dornan, J. (1997). Becoming a person of influence: How to positively impact the lives of others. Thomas Nelson Inc.

Patterson, K. & Grenny, J. (2007) Influencer: The power to change anything. Tata McGraw-Hill Education.

Quora (2017) ‘How To Become A Social Media Influencer In Ten Simple Steps’ Forbes, Tech, #AllThings Mobile [Online] https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2017/05/25/how-to-become-a-social-media-influencer-in-ten-simple-steps/#56bbeb3613da [Accessed 13 May 2018]

Quora (2018) ‘What are some of the best examples of influencer marketing?’ Quora. [Online] https://www.quora.com/What-are-some-of-the-best-examples-of-influencer-marketing?ref=forbes&rel_pos=2 [Accessed 13 May 2018]

Solis, B. & Breakenridge, D. (2009) Putting the public back in public relations: How social media is reinventing the aging business of PR. FT Press.

Talbot, K (2017) ‘How To Nail Your 2018 Influencer Marketing Strategy’ Women @ Forbes. 22 December 2017. [Online] https://www.forbes.com/sites/katetalbot/2017/12/22/how-to-nail-your-2018-influencer-marketing-strategy/#48359e8524bf

Ward, T (2017) ‘How To Become An Influencer: 10 Tips For Success’. Forbes. 12 December 2017 [Online] https://www.forbes.com/sites/tomward/2017/12/12/how-to-become-an-influencer-10-tips-for-success/#4b3bec7e72a8 [Accessed 13 May 2018]

Source: B2B News Network

Merriam Webster (2018) defines influence as ‘the power to cause changes without directly forcing them to happen’. An influencer is, therefore, a person or that affects the opinions and actions of others in an important way. In recent years, Influencer Marketing has become one of the most effective worth of mouth (WOM) strategies (Weiss 2014). To illustrate the strength of WOM, Nielsen’s 2012 ‘Global Survey of Trust in Advertising’ revealed that 92% of consumers worldwide said that they trusted word-of-mouth recommendations from their trusted influential peers. This vastly exceeded any other forms of marketing, such as advertising or branded communications (Liu et al. 2015).

The brand’s profound knowledge and the establishment of clear communications objectives & strategies are fundamental in the choice of an influencer (Booth & Matic 2011). Based on this, an influencer can be evaluated with traditional or newer (more technological) approaches (Liu et al. 2015). Academic and practitioner research unveiled the following methodology for identifying an effective influencer

1. Resonance

Resonance is the quality of the influencer to arouse her follower’s interest and desire for consumption. (Li et al 2011)

2. Activity

Influencer’s activity represents how active is the influencer in sharing information through her social media channels and/or blog site. The impact of Activity relies on the relevance and quality of the content.

3. Relevance

Relevance in Influencer Marketing refers the alignment between the Influencer and the brand’s image and core values. An influencer will not necessarily generate conversions if there is a mismatch between her and the brand she represents.

4. Engagement

The level of engagement is measured by the intensity of ‘responses, comments and shares’ from the audience. This parameter also refers to the level of engagement from the influencer towards her followers. Engagement increases the levels of trust, and trust increases WOM’s effectiveness (Nielsen’s 2012 ‘Global Survey of Trust in Advertising’)

5. Reach

“Influencers generally do have many direct ‘friends’ and ‘followers,’ but what makes them truly valuable is the number and relevance of their extended or indirect connections” (Hall, 2010 cited by Booth & Matic 2011).

6. Frequency

Frequency indicates the influencer’s ‘multiple exposures’ of the same content. Hamann 2018, asserts that higher levels of frequency generate high levels of returned visitors and loyalty.

7. Authenticity

Influencers with a unique personality, sharing genuine personal stories with less sponsored content appear to be more authentic (Hamann 2018).

8. Maintenance

Corporations are not only interested in whether an influencer is currently emerging or holding influence, but also in whether the influencer will maintain her influential power into the future (Lui et al. 2015).

9. Influencer Index

Booth & Matic (2007) developed the Influencer Index, a score that ranks the influencer based on the following variables:

• Viewers per month (vpm). The number of visits to the blog per month
• Linkages. The popularity of blog post links inbound and outbound
• Post frequency. The volume of posts per given time
• Media citation score. Volume and level of media that cites blogger/ influencer
• Industry score. Number of industry guru points based on industry events such as keynotes, bylines and panel participation
• Social aggregator rate. Level of social media participation (e.g. Twitter, LinkedIn, other bloggers/blog communities and other social media platforms)
• Engagement index. Reader response and the number of comments
• Subject/topic-related posts. Volume and immediacy of subject/topic-related posts
• Qualitative subject/topic-related posts. A qualitative review of subject/topic-related posts.

10. Influencer Platform Automation

Automated influencer platforms like Ghostlamp and Heyinfluencers are offering match-making services to companies and influencers. All the processes from finding the influencer, contracting and payment are fully automated.

11. New approach: algorithms

Digital Marketing Academics have developed complex and more accurate algorithms:

• Product Review Domain Aware (PRDA). Evaluates influencers in three dimensions: trust, review domain and time factor (Liu et al 2015). The results classify influencers into three categories: emerging, holding and vanishing influencers
• Marketing Influential Value (MIV). Developed by Li et al (2011), this algorithm combined the network-based, the content-based and activeness-based values to determine the MIV of a blog site.

Source: Li et al. (2011) Information Sciences

The ‘‘uncertainty’’ problem (Li et al 2011) of resources being wasted on efficient marketing is a growing concern in Digital Marketing. Multiple methodologies of measuring influence and conversion have emerged in the last decade. Influencer Marketing has become one of the most effective WOM marketing strategies (Nielsen 2012). However, there are still a lot of myths around this Marketing technique (Forbes 2018). Some of the myths include the belief that an influencer must be a celebrity and that the Return on Investment is difficult to measure. Studies show that micro-influencers (10 000 to 100 000 followers) can present a higher impact (Ake 2017).

Further, the identification of influencers within complex social networks requires complex data analysis. New tools (like the automated algorithms) support marketers and advertisers to perform a higher cost-effective promotion of their products and services. These tools are taking over the traditional ‘popular author’ approach. Since the most important factor remains the quality of the relationship between the firm and the consumer (Booth & Matic 2011), there is a concern whether the algorithms and modern automation processes can preserve this relationship quality.

References

Ake, C (2017) ‘How To Choose The Right Micro-Influencer For Your Brand’ Forbes Community Voice. 2 August 2017 [Online] https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2017/08/02/how-to-choose-the-right-micro-influencer-for-your-brand/#3c9990307885 [Accessed 30 April 2018]

Booth, N. & Matic, J (2011) Mapping and leveraging influencers in social media to shape corporate brand perceptions. Corporate Communications: An International Journal, vol. 16, no. 3, pp.184-191.

Forbes (2018) ‘Five Influencer marketing Myths That Could Ruin Your Campaign’. Forbes Community Voice, Business. 1st May 2018 [Online] https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2018/05/01/five-influencer-marketing-myths-that-could-ruin-your-campaign/#379c739f6b34 [Accessed 1st May 2018]

Ghostlamp (2018) ‘Does influencer marketing work for your brand?’ [Online] https://ghostlamp.com/getstarted [Accessed 30 April 2018]

Hamann, H (2018) ‘5 Tips for Finding the Right Social Influencers for Your Brand’ Convince&Convert, Digital Marketing [Online] http://www.convinceandconvert.com/digital-marketing/5-tips-for-finding-the-right-social-influencers-for-your-brand/ [Accessed 30 April 2018]

HeyInfluencers (2018) ‘Build your influencer outreach list’ [Online] https://thisishey.com [Accessed 30 April 2018]

Li, Y. et al. (2011) Discovering influencers for marketing in the blogosphere. Information Sciences, 181(23), pp.5143-5157.

Liu, S. et al. (2015) Identifying effective influencers based on trust for electronic word-of-mouth marketing: A domain-aware approach. Information Sciences, 306, pp.34-52.

Merriam Webster (2018) ‘Influence’ Merriam Webster Dictionary. [Online] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/influence [Accessed 30 April 2018]

Nielsen (2012) ‘Global Trust in Advertising and Brand Messages’. Reletur Files. 10 April 2012. [Online]  https://retelur.files.wordpress.com/2007/10/global-trust-in-advertising-2012.pdf [Accessed 1st may 2018]