Exerting Influence: How Micro-influencers Can Help Businesses Earn Customer Trust

Social media influencers want to influence because it can bring them a small (in a few cases extremely large) measure of fame, potentially cash or free products, and a modicum of internet notoriety. Notable social media influencers, for instance, made the Fyre Festival an important, lucrative, big hit. Until it wasn’t. In an editorial about the failed event, a Financial Times writer explores how social media influencers can become overly important and powerful: “Inside the messy overall failure, though, lurked a success story about the vast power of influencers.”

Celebrity influencers can have extreme, out-sized social media power and personalities, which are often used to connect with followers to sell consumer brand products promoted through profitable contracts. For most of us, however, our social media influence will not reach Fyre Festival levels.

And that, actually, is a good thing. Because in the business world it’s more important to concentrate our efforts on specific customers than filling the internet with hundreds or thousands of posts designed for mass consumption. By focusing efforts on extremely precise groups of people it’s possible to become a micro-influencer with the power to launch your personal brand as well as your company’s into a niche that will stimulate long-term success by bridging gaps between consumers, brands and those who work for brands.

Content Rules

The objective of becoming an influencer in this vision of marketing outreach is to grow the customer’s experience with the brand through informative, usable content that can positively impact everyday life. The best way to become a part of a consumer’s life is through honest, consistent interactions. And the best way to do that is by separating—to a certain degree—from the brand and building personal social media channels.

On a B2B platform like LinkedIn you can communicate one-on-one with thousands of people around the world who have an interest in what you’re saying and by extension what your company is creating/ developing/testing/selling.

Recent research asking consumers about their feelings toward B2C brands finds that people not only want brands to be honest but to support social and political causes, as well. (Cognizant, for example, has a foundation that supports STEM education.)

“Brands are now being pushed beyond their classic business interests to become advocates for a better society,” according to a 2018 Edelman study on consumer brands and consumers. “This is a new relationship between company and consumer—purchase is premised on a brand’s willingness to live by its values, operate with purpose, and if necessary make the leap into activism.”

For instance, I try to explore both sides of technology issues here and, hopefully, succeed. Although Cognizant is not a consumer brand, I believe Edelman’s concept still applies. 

Cognizant is a tech company and when I write about emerging technologies, like artificial intelligence, I like to take a look at both sides of the topic. The good and the bad. The advances and regressions. The cause and the potential effect. Because, as someone who works for a brand, I do want you to buy our products and services, but only if they’re right for your organization and only if we can stand behind those products and services with the knowledge that the offerings will be something that is beneficial and good. (In fact, 64 percent of consumers are “belief-driven buyers,” according to the Edelman study.) Writing about technology and other topics help me accomplish this objective while at the same time building my personal brand and influence in the technology space.

“Can a brand change the world? Many consumers think that’s the case. They want to hear directly from the people who make sure the brand fulfills its messages, and social channels are great (at) personalizing communication,” explains my Cognizant colleague and social media wizard Gerry Moran.

Whether you are a fledging influencer or have hundreds of thousands of followers, being honest in your influencer area is key to building and maintaining long-term, productive customer relationships. It’s not only the right thing to do it’s what customers want and expect.

“There’s an easy way to have an original personal brand—and that is to be genuine and authentic,” writes Goldie Chan.

This means writing about topics that are interesting to you and having open conversations with readers.

Be a Brand Ambassador

Now for the sticky part.

Every company has different social media policies; some are more lenient than others. In some cases, building your personal brand will be difficult and fraught with compromise or brick walls. Nevertheless, company leaders should invest in employees’ personal brands. Rather than looking at employees as “going rogue” when publishing articles online, they should be seen as company ambassadors with the potential to positively influence customers. (Publishing articles has the benefit of helping to increase the writer’s stature and visibility within the organization.)

Everyone has value and a story just waiting to be told. Social media platforms offer the opportunity to become an influencer by focusing on a person’s expertise as it relates to something they love or something they love to do with their job and career goals.