Research to real life

While I am no stranger to writing, I had never written academic research papers until I started graduate school. Don’t get me wrong, I have written research papers before, but I’ve never written one that requires a method, data gathering and analysis. It’s like a science experiment but for the communications field.

I have now written two academic research papers, and I have noticed a common theme across both. The two papers examine aspects of social media influencers. I guess you can say I have established an area of interest.?

In my research, I was looking at tactics that influencers use to market products for companies and how they choose to use disclosure language. The main limitations for both of my studies were that I didn’t interview any of the influencers, and I wasn’t able to find company branding guidelines online. Now that I’ve been at Obsidian for almost a month now, I’ve been thinking about my research more because I’m on the backside of it.

As public relations practitioners, we work to promote our clients. Whether it’s curating content for websites or social media, media relations or helping a client create and/or launch a campaign or event, that’s what we’re here to do. As the media landscape continues to change, we have to adapt and change with it.

Enter social media influencers. Social media influencers are not a new concept, but they have rapidly grown in popularity over recent years. There is debate around when exactly influencers came on the scene. While some sources date them back to 20 years ago, social media influencers as we know them have been around for the last decade. Regardless, this growth in popularity has put influencers into the promotion mix. Instead of just pitching to reporters, editors and event calendars, influencers have thrust themselves into the equation, forcing brands to pay close attention to their draw.

Instead of observing how influencers are promoting brands, being at Obsidian is beginning to show me how practitioners go about working with them. It’s more than just sending a quick direct message asking them to promote something. There’s an art behind it, and research is needed. Influencers aren’t just chosen at random. You have to make sure that their profile and style matches up with what is being promoted.

Besides helping her clients secure partnership with influencers, Lauren Hannaford, senior director of client services at Obsidian, said one of her most memorable experiences was interacting with an influencer from the consumer side. Both she and the wife of a prominent NBA player had newborns around the same time. Lauren remembers responding to one of her questions about a baby product she wanted to know more about, and within 15 minutes, they were having a full-blown conversation in the middle of the night. To Lauren, this showed the influencer’s authenticity, and authenticity is always something that she looks for when following someone new.?

Taylor Jolley, senior account manager, shared a similar parenting-related experience. She’s generally skeptical of influencers, but does seek content from a select few who have real-world credentials to back up their content. For example, one of the few she keeps up with is a mother of four, a postpartum nurse in a major hospital and a certified lactation consultant. With those credentials in her arsenal, Taylor feels much more confident listening to her insights.?

Obsidian’s owner and founder, Courtney Ellett, echoes Taylor’s sentiments about credentials and said that having trust and confidence in an influencer is most important to her. Anyone can promote a product, but that promotion won’t hold any meaning unless the source is credible.?

Christina Babu, senior account manager, also told me that the main reason she follows a few influencers is because they have similar interests to her. She likes “food-stagrammers” for recipes and inspiration in the kitchen, and she’s recently started following “plant-stagrammers” who give advice for caring for plants. This is an important point to remember because whether someone is choosing to follow an influencer or partner with one, everyone’s interests need to align.?

On the flip side of that, Gracie Lee, account manager, shared with me her experience working with social media influencers from the practitioner side. She is helping one of her clients promote their upcoming shows in Memphis, San Jose and Nashville. Gracie said they are doing this by looking for influencers with a strong local following and offering free tickets to the show in exchange for social media posts. This very project has given me my first taste of social media influencer partnerships from a practitioner’s perspective. The team allowed me to help them build a potential influencer media list for them to reach out to for event promotion, and it’s not as easy as people would think. There is a great deal of thought and research that goes into the process.

With the rising popularity of social media influencers, partnerships are also becoming a bit more difficult to form. Murray Lace Alexander, senior account manager, has noticed a decline in opportunities that clients are willing to pursue. Most people like to offer a trade for a static post on an influencer’s feed, but as an influencer’s following continues to grow, they would prefer payment for a post instead of the trade. For the trades that she’s been able to make, most clients typically just get a post on the influencer’s story.?

There are so many things I have learned about public relations in my short time here at the firm. You can learn about theories and best practices all day long in classes, but nothing compares to actually being in the field as part of the mix and learning from the experiences your colleagues have to share.