Hbook: Chapter 1: What is Influencer Marketing
Influencer Marketing is not a new term. For example, when Kim Kardashian walk on Hollywood wearing a pair of red, luxurious, Valentino high heels, quantities of women will also want a pair of that heels; In the grocery store, the cashier told everyone that she had a nice weekend at Lake Tahoe, people who bought there and punched out their groceries on that cashier counter might also think that maybe they should go to the Lake Tahoe sometime; At the gym, a gym instructor got a new workout headset, then, three more people in the instructor’s class, will also get that same headset; and Recently, I got a new, serviceable Tumi backpack, which has a very nice design and features, then everyone asked me where I got it, so they could buy one too.
Truth be told, we are all influenced by others whom we trust, and we can also influence others. They can be a celebrity, famous people online, your next door neighbor, or just random people on the street.
A new mom wonders what to buy for her newborn, she finds herself surfing on YouTube to see what are the other moms’ top recommendations; You got a new watch and you posted it on your Instagram account, your friends saw it, and immediately increased their likelihood of buying it.
If people influence others on social media, we call them social media influencers or KOL (key opinion leaders). More specifically, we name a person a YouTube Influencer when that person has thousands or millions of subscribers on their YouTube channel. ; The same when we also call people who have a lot of followers on Instagram, Instagram influencers. Influencers can be traditional celebrities from Hollywood, sports stars, or they also could be grassroot people who have special opinions on things that make them vertical influencers. For example, they could be a mommy blogger, a fashion or makeup artist, a sports enthusiast, a traveller, a geeky person who loves to unbox gadgets, a child who plays with toys with her sister, a fashionable girl, a family vlogger, or even a fuzzy cat lover.
Theoretically, they all have followers in that particular vertical and it is true that they are very powerful. Influencers explore things they like, record their lives, and share their opinions.
Recently, influencer marketing has become really a hot issue. Countless numbers of brands are very much interested on discovering who are their KOLs so they will work with them directly. Brands also wanted to find out who are the KOLs,their competitors are using, in order for them to identify competitive strategies to be used for this coming year.
Influencer Marketing happens naturally, it is not paid, but theoretically, brands should reward their influencers in different ways. On today’s marketing situation, Influencer Marketing might be the fastest and most effective way to get the brand name out, strengthen brand awareness, drive traffic to brand destinations, engage and retarget users through influencers, crowdsource content creation, get feedback from users rapidly, update products with user feedback, and consistently create that social media buzz.
Brands build their own social media presence; it is best that they also build their social media presence with the best influencers.
Again, influencers can be stars, can be KOLs, and they can be you and me.
As competition in the business world continues to rise, brands are willing to pay influencers to do content creation, distributing that content, and throw advertising budget towards that content, all of these are what brands willing to do in order to increase viewership, traffic, discussion, and have groups of influencers work together: a massive network to repost and reinvigorate their content.
At the end of the day, all brands track impressions, likes, comments, clicks, click through rates, downloads, sign ups, registration, 2nd day retention, 7 day retention, purchase, repurchase, friend referrals, friend sign ups, and friend purchases…
The chain could be tracked on and on.
