Social Media Influencer – How many times have you read this on numerous bios and wondered what they are?
Last week, as I was going through my Facebook Stream, stumbled upon this post by a good friend Prasant Naidu.
Twitter Bio: #I #am #a #social #media #influencer.I have 1100+ followersI follow 1000+ people
Posted by Prasant Naidu on Thursday, June 18, 2015
Needless to say, I agreed with him 100%. Being a strong believer in personal brand, I am often intrigued by how loosely many of us use or abuse this term and bring disrepute to efforts of the many folks who are ‘real’ influencers.
So many times, I stumble upon bio of so-called social media influencers who have no blog, no engagement on their posts and all that they do is broadcast messages without bothering to engage with the community.
The Indian social media influencer community saw a big outrage last year when few food bloggers were called for a blogger meet of a leading car manufacturer. While the food bloggers did write about the car but I still wonder, will I really visit the blog to know about the car or her recipes. Was the food blogger wrong in going there and reviewing the car, no! They were there because the brand considered them to be ‘influencer’.
Across other part of the world, here’s another rant around the same topic by Brian Fanzo. He covers the few other ills that has plagued the social media industry.
Maybe as an industry, we need to redefine what social media influencers are.
To start with,
Message for Brands
1. Number of followers doesn’t equal influence. Engagement has to be the real measure.
2. Klout scores are unreal. Again, check their engagement
3. Check their content. Is the social media influencer practicing what they are preaching?
In the end, quality will count more than quantity.
For me a influencer would be someone who can move mountains, literally. The person would have powers to create new order, change opinion, engage with community. If you aren’t able to do that, sorry, that is not real influence.
How do you define them?
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Good points Malhar. Quality and relevance are the 2 most criteria Brands should look out for while selecting influencers.Food blogger writing about which car to select will bring negative image both for Brand and Influencer too.
I have faced similar situation while selecting influential blogger with my previous startup.So to solve this issue both for Brands and influencers. Me and my team developing an influencer marketing platform http://adsparta.in/
Thanks for dropping by Debasis! Will have a look at your page
Its been a short time that I have finally taken on to Twitter though I had first logged in 2009. I totally resonate with your article on Social Media influencer tag. While I write on Fashion & Lifestyle since last 5 years, I have come across umpteen Fashion & Beauty Bloggers who do not know any heads or tail of the subject, but are reviewing the brands. Needless to say, brands are also engaging looking at their followers. I recently came across an incidence where the brand loved my content but decided to go with other blogger with trashy posts for collaboration only because of followers…. Wonder whatever happened to quality content and domain knowledge ? Novices doing book reviews without any expertise on word & writing style, anyone becoming a food blogger… Guess the next movement on Social media should be to seive out the trash.
Thanks for dropping by Falguni.
Indeed that’s the problem. Brands are being sold to by agencies that people above certain numbers are influencers and it doesn’t matter how they got their numbers.
Now is the time to raise these issues and educate the brands that it’s the knowledge that will count and not the number alone.