You Ask, I Answer: The Definition of Influencer?

In today's episode, uh Salil asks, Can reviewers of products on YouTube that have a large following, i.e., one million or more, but are not paid by companies to promote their products, example the channel of Dobrano, be called influencers. Well, yes. Um the definition of influence in this particular context is someone, a channel, a person, uh, a media property that can motivate others to take action. You know, it doesn't even have to be human. Look at how much um interference by automated software uh can change political opinion, right?

Humans may not even be the influencers, but the media channels are t changing behavior. Anyone with a million followers, I mean heck, anyone with a thousand followers even uh if they're the right people in your audience and you can motivate them to take action, you are an influencer. That is an influencer, right? That is has some level of influence. Remember that the definition of influence is uh getting someone to take action to change uh something they would not have otherwise done.

Um whether it's buy a product, even consider a product, depending on uh the kind of product it is, uh awareness influencers operate uh all across the customer journey, right? From awareness, growing awareness to their audiences, consideration, and that's where things like reviews have a lot of uh power and sway is getting people to uh watch a review and add a product to their consideration or evaluation uh stage, getting people to buy something, uh also getting people to remain loyal to a brand, being able to have uh an influencer doing uh brand loyalty work uh showing the good works of the brand uh providing support um there are any number of influencers who have channels with tips and tricks for getting the most out of the product or uh addressing common problems as sort of like an informal technical support and evangelism getting their audiences to recruit others to grow their audience and grow the brand's audience so the real question is not whether these channels can be considered influencers because they clearly are to some degree by definition if you have a million people following you for any reason um you have some level of influence the real question that a lot of brands are trying to tackle is what change can an influencer compel you know how do you measure uh an influencer and their influence and its impact on your brand and this that's to me is where influencer marketing falls the most short because in a lot of cases when people talk about influence they're talking about again big channels big audiences and that's not that necessarily the best fit for uh every brand and every opportunity there's three kinds of influences and this is something I documented in a book way back in twenty sixteen that probably needs to get rewritten at this point but there's three general types of influencers right there's the the expert who uh the the reference I usually use is the way back uh E.F. Hutton uh advertisements in the 1980s, uh the ones that goes when E.F. Hutton talks, everyone listens. The like that kind of expert opinion that lends credibility to anything.

There's sort of that mayor or that hub of a network who uh is our literal walking Rolodex where if you need a connection to somebody, that person can get you connected to that person, and those connections are are meaningful. And then, of course, there's what a lot of folks in marketing consider the the typical influencer, the broadcaster, the the loudmouth, the the person with the million followers, uh yelling at people on YouTube or Twitter or whatever. And a lot of us in marketing think that's the influence. And there's these different types. And so from a brand perspective, the question is which type of influence do you need?

Do you need that that expert perspective? Do you need that connection to specific parties, or do you need the the big megaphone? And it depends on your goals, right? It depends on what it is, what kind of change you're trying to motivate. That expert opinion comes in real handy for sales enablement to be able to say, like this credible third party has said that our product is the best, uh, which is different than like a Kardashian talking about the product on Instagram, particularly if it's like you know, the server appliances, um, where brands fall down and where marketing falls down is measurement.

How do you measure influence? And if you're not clear on what your goal is, you can't measure it. Uh so is the goal more sales of the product? Okay, how are you going to develop that chain of evidence, that those connected key performance indicators that indicate that the program has had success? Is the goal awareness of the pro of your product or service?

If so, how are you going to do that? Are you going to go off things like branded organic search, social media mentions, uh unsolicited mentions, percentage of the influencers's audience that engage with your content? Uh those are all potential measures that you could use. I personally would lean towards branded search because it means that the uh product or service has gotten into somebody's head. Um but there's a lot of more complicated math to make those connections.

Uh, if it is leads or things like that, I'm starting to see brands use things like affiliate programs and tracking links to track influencers, and that is absolutely the right way to go. Uh, because you want to be able to show tangible activity of some kind from that influencer, whether it's website traffic or form fills, newsletter sign-ups, something that indicates, hey, this put a lot of eyeballs right here. And this is really what we wanted to achieve was get traffic to our site where uh we can take the influencer's audience and now remarket it, retarget it, uh harvest it, if you will, uh, so that uh you've grown your own assets. One of the worst strategies I've seen brands do with influencers is pay them a whole bunch of money and not get any of the audience in return, right? The the influencer doesn't do anything to grow the brand's uh own media channels, as opposed to something like, for example, an Instagram takeover, where the influencer convinces a bunch of their followers to go and follow the brand's handle.

At least you can see something, some kind of impact from that. And then after that is up to the brand to uh get those folks further down the operations funnel into into doing things that are are meaningful. But that's where I think a lot of the questions about influence and who is and is not an influencer come into play is based on the metrics you do or don't have. The best influencers are the ones that provide extensive reporting, detailed reporting, and show to some degree uh their level of impact, but also work with your brand, maybe even to help on the measurement side to say, like, hey, here's how we're going to do the tracking. Uh these are the best practices.

Uh let's work on this together so that you can see a return. Uh you can see something that has meaning. Um, like I do a lot of work with IBM and I provide monthly reporting to them with all the different uh outputs and actions and things so that they have tangible evidence and piles of PowerPoint slides as to what has happened on their behalf. So it's a good question. Remember, influence is all about creating change.

Um getting someone to follow your brand handle is a relatively minor change. Getting someone to buy your product is a bigger change. Getting someone to be a uh an evangelist of your product and put their own social handles and their own public presence uh behind you, that's a pretty big change because that's like an identity change. And so those are the kinds of things that that we should be thinking about when we try to define what influence is. Could go on for a long time about this.

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