Brand engagement through the power of social influencers

Social media has shown us how important it is to pay attention to consumer conversations and drive worthwhile engagement across all media channels. Using online influencers to create conversations has proved to be a powerful marketing option and a way for consumers to engage with brands through the power of social influencers.

Myles Brown

So what is an online influencer, exactly?

An influencer is someone who carries weight with a specific audience. They have the ability to shape the thoughts, perceptions and behaviours of their communities because they are independent, trusted sources.

Influencer marketing has been around for years. Brands have been aligning themselves with people that carry credibility with their target market for a long time. Historically, very little methodology has been used to identify these influencers and it's been more a case of "gut feel" for the best influencer/brand fit. But as this tool (influencer marketing) grows into a very powerful online marketing skill, it's become vital to be able to offer some science behind the influencer choices.

A local online platform, Webfluential, has become all-too-familiar with the ins and outs of online influencer growth and selection. Most importantly, the choice of influencer should not just be about the size of their following on their respective social channels. It's not the size of the following of the influencer, but rather the size of the influence in the following.

Webfluential collects data on influencers across all their social platforms, and scores them across three criteria: Reach, Relevance and Resonance.

Why these three criteria?

• Reach looks at the total audience size that follows the influencer on each social platform.
• Relevance looks at historical content that the influencer has shared and scores them against the brands requested target market.
• Resonance looks at how well the influencer's community has engaged with them and their content.

A well-planned and executed influencer marketing campaign will offer brands the ability to seed campaigns and content to the best-suited communities, and using all three criteria means that you are not just choosing someone based on the size of their following - you are looking at factors that affect trust and engagement too.

Why is influencer marketing important and why should we have paid more attention to it in 2014 (and why should we really pay attention to it in 2015)? In a study conducted by Nielsen (as far back as early 2012), 92% of global consumers said they trusted earned media (earned media was also classified as word-of-mouth and recommendations from family and friends). And according to a SocialChorus report, an influencer marketing campaign can drive 16 times more engagement than other media and promotions shared by a trusted source will convert at 4 to 10 times the rate than offers presented by brands themselves.

It is therefore vital, for the sake of editorial integrity, for the influencers to accept or decline brand campaigns, depending on who they are, what they believe in, and what they believe their communities want to see.This also allows the influencer to protect their brand, which in turn builds credibility. It's important that campaign messaging is consistent throughout all media placements, however ad formats and creative messages need to be adapted to best suit the platforms they are running on. By allowing influencers to tailor your brand message to their audience and in their own language, allows much stronger cross-platform engagement, to create a powerful cycle of worthwhile conversations (for both the brands and consumers). A win-win for all involved.

Here's looking forward to even more meaningful conversations in 2015.