The term ‘influencer’ has grown in popularity with the advent of social media. However, like many other ubiquitous terms (see Cyber-Terrorism and Irregular Warfare), marketing professionals are confused, segmented, and in many cases losing out on some really big opportunities due to the lack of truly understanding what a key influencer is, and how they can impact their brand/product.
We just got back from 5 fast-paced days in London meeting with clients and thought leaders from Europe’s (and in a few cases the world’s) largest PR, Marketing, Media, and Advertising agencies. Our conclusion: traditional perspectives of what defines an influencer continue to dominate the industry kings, and if unchanged, will lead to their demise. Their approach to marketing still focuses on shotgun influencers (aka ‘Celebrity Influencers’ with large Twitter follower counts). Celebrity influencers may answer the need for quick, and high distribution numbers, but deliver a short shot range.
These traditionalists prefer a shotgun approach for something like a new product launch where a blast might hit 1 million+ impressions each. It all sounds logical as this approach may seem numerically sound. After all, it’s better to get a few hundred carries on a single blast to 1 million followers, right? But for how long? I continue to ask myself, do people REALLY listen to celebrity super models talking about the newest mobile app?
Ongoing social media conversation is directed, lead and curated by a few credible voices, NOT the largest megaphone. These credible voices usually don’t live in NYC or LA. They probably don’t have their own drivers, reality TV shows, and twitter curators, and most certainly are without handbag service dogs. The NEW Influencer is harder to spot among the social crowd. Have a new type of makeup? Ready to launch a new cell phone? Want the deets on the latest new mobile app? These are your people. You don’t know them by their picture on the cover of a magazine. Their audience knows them by the reputation they have built on a particular subject. You can’t easily find them, but when you do you’ll be amazed at what these snipers will do for your campaign.
They’ve amassed their audience organically. Not as in Whole Foods organic, but cultivating their reputation continuously, producing relevant and meaningful content on a particular product. Over time, they have become ‘credible’ in the eyes of their audience. When they tweet, yelp, post, or share, others not only listen--they take action.
We’ve seen this with many of our video posts. Here’s one that is very interesting.
It’s a bloom of Madden NFL 16 game early release video from EA. For those of you new to this form of visualizing smart data; the video is the red dot in the center with its Twitter ecosystem spreading outward depicted with many different colors and sizes of nodes based on the audience size. In this bloom the top key influencer was not an NFL player featured in the game or EA themselves. The honor goes to the one and only WWE champion, AJ Brooks. Her immense ecosystem (in blue at the top) commands well over 4 million and integral for catching over 40% of this videos views. She appeared in the video alongside NFL players that are also players in the game. So technically she is engineered into this video’s distribution strategy with a powerful, shotgun-like effect.
The Sniper Rifle Influencers discovered among those sharing the video in this bloom are; @SportsPickle with 144,146 total network reach, @tashevich with 183,906 total network reach and @KatieNolan with 167,710 total network reach. Two of these snipers are in the sports and social broadcasting arena, and included a sports minded game knowing their followers would be interested. However, another user @Tashevich , does not play in the NFL, or run a social sports platform. Unknown to me, it appears he has a credible voice among his friends in Russia to comment on such a video. A sniper.
This sniper rifle influencer approach may not be impressive to your CMO. They will likely laugh when you tell them 1200 people liked it. However, what if those 1200 were actually responsible for a sales conversion rate of 70%. Who’s laughing then? Right.
As markets continue to hyper segment, traditional marketers and non-natives to the social and digital world will continue to support their shotgun influencers (focused on large Twitter follower counts). I suggest they also learn to look through the scope of the rifle to define and find customers. The sniper influencer in conjunction with a shotgun influencer creates much greater impact. One shot from these credible voices, nets a longer distance sales target for a longer period of time. Sniper Influencers bring the precision required in today’s marketing to stay efficient and effective.
To learn more about how VizSense helps marketers and content creators find and harness the power of fans and credible voices to help improve revenue and profit, visit us here.
