A Big Fat Influencer

Who are Influencers ?

“Influencers are the individual or groups who directly or indirectly promote, endorse, advocate or generate brand engagement on various social media platforms “

Importance of Influencer Marketing

A variety of recent marketing practices & researches have defined the emergence of influencers marketing & its importance. From print to social, broadcast to podcasts influencers alleged to be the most effective approach for creating brand impressions. Influencers are not the new exercise however with the expansion of marketing channels there were reforms in the traditional beliefs of influencer marketing.

How does Influencers Impact individuals purchase intense

Do you know in our day to day tedious life we come across numerous of countless influenced advocacy. It’s just the matter of fact that we never tend to notice them to be so, each and every endorsement, poster, banners influence our buying perception and believe it or not, to a great extent we are towed towards the products. So, have you ever thought about the dynamics that incline us towards the convincing product discussion or product promotions and many a time also impacts our buying decision?   

Meanwhile you must have thought about the components which impact your purchasing decisions. If I am not wrong price & quality was the first thing which came to your mind. Now, let me reveal one vital secret with you, none of the two has to do anything with marketing and trust me it also doesn’t impact your purchasing decision either in majority of cases. Lot of over the counter products are of similar nature & also have same or close to equal price now there is the real trade-off if the price & quality are the main factors which perceive our buying decision than it would really become hard to differentiate among the existing options. Now let’s examine what are the other dynamics which play harsh role     

Many factors, specificities and physiognomies influence the individual in what he is and the consumer in his decision making process such as, shopping habits, purchasing behavior, the brands he buys or the retailers he goes. A purchase decision is the result of each and every one of these factors. An individual and a consumer is led by his culture, his subculture, his social class, his membership groups, his family, his personality, his psychological factors, etc. & is influenced by cultural trends as well as his social and societal environment. By identifying and understanding the factors that influence their customers, brands have the opportunity to develop a strategy, a marketing message (Unique Value Proposition) and advertising campaigns more efficient and more in line with the needs and ways of thinking of their target consumers, a real asset to better meet the needs of its customers and increase sales.

Among the other purchase intensities all the above derivers of engagement & consumer decision making are radically influenced by a specialized set of people or the group. These individuals or groups tent as key influencers in brand perception mapping. They enable the brand to communicate on a higher pitch to their set of followers. Many a time these influencers are marked on the basis of their expertise & knowledge in their own diversified areas. The impact of any vital statement, advocacy, recommendation or endorsement made by them in favor of any brand holds a high spread & assurance weightage as compared to any general individual. Henceforth the influencers are nurtured to be the people who have high visibility or popularity on social media and among the general population as well. Basically celebs, sports icon, social activist, media specialists, industry experts, critics, etc. are denoted as influencers if they engage huge number of general public’s interest with their post, blog, tweet or statement etc.

How Influencers Mapping is done

Influencers are mapped based on their knowledge or interest in particular area such as industry segments & sub segments, skills, product information, category of followers, channel of popularity, specialization etc. . Influencers are spotted based on their virtual fan following which helps in measuring the visible equity of an individual on the social media space. Influencer’s equity can be measured based on the effectiveness of their statement or post. Higher the equity higher is the impact of the influencer on social media. Influencer’s posts are very crucial for the marketers as it cannot be ignored. Majority of studies & research have confirmed the collapse of the world’s top brand equity due to influencer’s negative posts. As far as the brand has their online presence as a sanitation practice it should not avoid their top influencers owing to which, the chances of neutrality of brand equity is less on social media. However, the opposite of which may affect the brand positively on the social media space. As per the majority of social media experts it is always good for the brands to have a key influencer on a social media platform

Hindrance in Influencer mapping

A very initial step of influencer mapping involves a series of defined procedures. Though the mapping terminology may sound easy but it is equally challenging for the experts to identify brand influencers based on the set up rules. Just because it is not easy to mark the influencers based of their fan followings it is equally crucial for the experts to identify the interest, profession, followers & knowledge of the influencers. Below pointed out some of the top challenges in tracking effective influencers

Availability of good tools

A lot of social media analytics agencies are fore sighting the availability of good tool which encompasses the entire basic requirement necessary for influencer mapping. A good data mining tool is required which shares all the details right from the bio’s to the individuals post

Time constrain

The process involved around influencer tracking & influencer mapping cannot be automated hence majority of manual work is required to be done which is time consuming. A lot of ORM practicing agencies claim to provide efficient influencer mapping software’s but all of them reflect top influencers based on the no. of fan followings only 

Benchmarking process

Till date there has been no standard process setup for influencer identification & mapping different agencies use different processes to group their influencers. Many agencies follow free tools like Klout, Glassdor etc. which have their own different set of algorithms to find out influencers however till date none of them fragment the influencers based on their profession, likes, dislikes & bios etc. (eg. Rajdeep Sardesai a reputed media men having huge number of followers can be an automobile influencer if he has posted, retweeted or written anything about Hero Moto Corp. but has nothing to do with automobile industry far-far away)

When The Data is Big How can the Influencer’s be small?

The huge shift on social media enabled the conversion of Big-data into place however till date very few social media analytics agencies are able to capture 100% data for insights & recommendation as still majority of experts practice various sampling techniques for intelligence & claim their analysis to be accurate. Seeking the expansion of analytics there has to be a big social media research reform which will assure the existence of available players in the markets. On the other side the correlation & regression has now been surpassed by predictive analysis similarly lot of such innovative restructuring has to take place in the social media research space. Hence the influencers mapping cannot be a bunch of follower base leaders there has to be a drift which drills down more information helpful in quick decision making. Segmentations & sub-segmentation of the influencers has to be done as a proactive measure to device the effective social media awareness reform also these influencers should be categorized based on their topics of discussion & kinds of fan following. Though the process is time taking the area of specialization has to be defined to enable the effective brands communication synergy on social media

Thank you for reading. Please click the like button if you think my effort deserves it. Also do not forget to comment in case you think anything important I have missed should be included in the study

**Disclaimer: Lot of information used in this case study has been taken from different web resources & blogs already present online. The moto behind the case presentation was to bring down all distinguished information present on different source, shared by different authors under one study for the better understanding of the evolution, importance & growth of social media giant. 

Written By:  

Gaurav Shankar

Assistant Manager (Social Media Research & Analytics) @ Metlife GOSC

Practicing Social Media Listening, Analytics & Communication from Past 5 years

https://www.dhirubhai.net/profile/public-profile-settings?trk=prof-edit-edit-public_profile 

Date: 28th April, 2015