Social Influencers Help You Sell More Stuff
April 11, 2010 by ebrown
Filed under Engagement Strategies
Social Influence Marketing, as described in Social Media Marketing for Dummies, is a technique that employs Social Media (content created by everyday people using highly accessible and scalable technologies such as blogs, message boards, podcasts, microblogs, bookmarks, social networks, communities, wiki’s and vlogs) and Social Influencers, (everyday people who have an outsized influence on their peers by virtue of how much content they share on line) to achieve an organization’s marketing and business needs.
Social Media, which was likely one of the most hyped buzzwords in 2008, refers to content created and consumed by regular people for each other.
Social Media and its making now allows everyone in the world to be a content publisher and arbitrator.
Social Influencers are the everyday people who influence the consumer as he/she makes a purchasing decision. Simply, the people who influence a brand affinity and purchasing decisions are Social Influencers. Engagement is a Lost Art, are you targeting Social Influencers as part of your overall marketing objectives?
Social influence is the change in behavior that one person causes in another, intentionally or unintentionally, as a result of the way the changed person perceives themselves in relationship to the influencer, other people and society in general.
Christine Thompson describes Social Influencers in her post titled Social Influence Marketing;
Key influencers – people who have almost celebrity status in the social media world – in some cases can exercise considerable influence on purchase decisions throughout the consumer’s buying process. Rarely does the consumer actually know these key influencers in real life.
Social influencers are people whom the consumer follows on Twitter or FaceBook, or whose blogs and product reviews appeal to the consumer. Their influence is greatest during the earlier phase of the buying cycle: awareness and consideration, but wanes during the action phase. Although the social influencers are likely to be within the consumer’s social graph, they may not actually know each other.
The greatest impact occurs through known peer influencers: colleagues, friends and family. How much impact these “known peers” exercise varies by product category and how much the consumer respects the person’s insight and expertise in that category. For example, a husband can influence the brand and model decisions when it comes to auto purchases or leases; however, he has no impact on purchase decisions for yoga classes, mats and accessories, or other yoga-related items. This is because I don’t believe he has an informed opinion in this arena.
- Are you connecting with Social Influencers to drive your marketing needs and business needs?
- Does your Digital Footprint have the required reach and inclusion of Social Influencers relevant to your brand?
E
I have a related but unrelated question – this appears to be a mash up of whole paragraphs from one of those Social Media for Dummies books and two or three other blog posts with maybe one or two original questions embedded. That would include the pics.
My question for my own curiosity in doing blog posts is; when is it appropriate to site your sources and when is it okay not to? You clearly did not site the sources or even link back to them in this post so I am even more curious where that line is.
Thank you in advance for any consideration you give this.
M
Mike, Good Morning,
Thank you for being the Social Media / Copyright / Blogging Police, and as such, we have added the links back to the original material. You are absolutely correct, the links and mentions should have been part of the blog post, and were inadvertently overlooked, for that I apologize. This is why Social Media has such an impact, when you drop the ball, someone reminds you of it, and quickly. It is likely also a reason why folks don't participate.
You have been blogging for longer than most of us in this space, so I assume you have your own guidelines and blogging ethics, so I am not sure what I could add to that.
While the hint of sarcasm isn't from a defensive standpoint, but an overall aggravation at where folks minds are. My intent with the post is to spur conversation around the topic at hand, Influence Marketing and to think about how brands expand their reach, and see the benefit of Influence Marketing.
It was not to spiral the”Purest Mindset” that Content needs to original, and all the Rules of Yesterdays Thinking,
Mike, Good Morning,
Thank you for being the Social Media / Copyright / Blogging Police, and as such, we have added the links back to the original material. You are absolutely correct, the links and mentions should have been part of the blog post, and were inadvertently overlooked, for that I apologize. This is why Social Media has such an impact, when you drop the ball, someone reminds you of it, and quickly. It is likely also a reason why folks don't participate.
You have been blogging for longer than most of us in this space, so I assume you have your own guidelines and blogging ethics, so I am not sure what I could add to that.
While the hint of sarcasm isn't from a defensive standpoint, but an overall aggravation at where folks minds are. My intent with the post is to spur conversation around the topic at hand, Influence Marketing and to think about how brands expand their reach, and see the benefit of Influence Marketing.
It was not to spiral the”Purest Mindset” that Content needs to original, and all the Rules of Yesterdays Thinking,
E
I love the medium and content [mashed or original]. It makes no difference to me. And, to speak to your point – the conversation is what matters. I for one thank you for taking the time to put together content that provides for thoughtful discussion – it's hard work any way you look at it. And, you have been consistent in your approach. I just could not help myself when I started reading and thought – hey, I've read this same stuff somewhere else.
Have a stellar weekend and thank you for taking the time to respond -
Ha, I do have to chuckle about this Mike, and it really does point to transparency, and self policing and teh speed of both in the digital age. I have read that inconsistencies and errors are fixed on Wikipedia in something under two minutes.
On a separate, we would love to hear about your Social Media initiatives at Mills, if you care to share those,
Change at the speed of fiber –
) Fits in nutrition as well as new media transparency. My attempt at ill-timed humor.
Thank you for the offer – it is our hope to blog about the entire experience from start to finish once we get through our RFPs. That said, I will enjoy the dialog along the way – its what makes this so much fun in my opinion.
Guys – way more to this than the the simplicity stated here would reveal.
Check out the work of Tomi Ahonen http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/
and also here is a better view of Digital Footprint http://blog.mydigitalfootprint.com/whats-your-d...