In the short amount of time someone spends on YouTube, Instagram, or Facebook, there is a high chance that they have encountered a social media influencer promoting a product. How many times have you scrolled through your Instagram feed and seen someone promoting Care/Of Vitamins? Probably a lot. So, what really is a social media influencer? What qualifies a person to become a social media influencer? How do brands come into contact with the influencer? In Jan-Frederik Grave’s 2019 research article titled, “What KPIs Are Key? Evaluating Performance Metrics for Social Media Influencers” all of these questions are answered.
According to Grave, there are two challenges that companies face when selecting a social media influencer: finding which social media influencer to work with and measuring the outcomes of the campaign. Fashion, health, beauty, entertainment and more are just a few of the various topics that social media influencers cover. Since there is a wide range of influencers for a company to choose from, they must rely on social media metrics to determine which influencer they would like to collaborate with.
Key performance indicators (KPIs) are various metrics used by brand marketers and agencies when selecting a social media influencer for their brand, according to Grave. One KPI that might be used is the amount of interactions an influencer recieves on a post (comments, “likes”, “shares”, etc). Another KPI could be the amount of followers, subscribers, friends, etc. the influencer has on their social media channels.
Grave explains that typical paid content on social media is created by the brand marketers themselves, which gives them more control of the overall message. However, social media influencers are given most of the control when it comes to creating the content for the brand. Although brand marketers provide the social media influencer with some tips to follow for the content, it is up to the influencer to create the content. Grave says this is why it is important for companies to choose an influencer whom they believe will create quality content with non-conflicting posts on their channels.
Kate Scott is an undergraduate student at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. She will be graduating in May 2020 with a B.A. in Communication Studies with a focus in Integrated Marketing Communication.
References
Gräve, J.-F. (2019). What KPIs Are Key? Evaluating Performance Metrics for Social Media Influencers. Social Media Society, 5(3), 205630511986547. doi: 10.1177/2056305119865475
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First, this article is very relevant to read right now because so many of us follow influencers on Instagram for example. I personally follow at least five or six bloggers that promote products. I did not know the formula the companies do to pick which influencers they want to promote their products. The Key Performance Indicator was very interesting to read through because it explained the process in simple terms. I also did not that it was up to the influencer to create the content. This makes sense now because the retail store I work for, we send certain items to a blogger in New York but she always comes up with the ways she wants to feature them on her Instagram.
This is a very relevant topic because influencers for social media are our friends, classmates and co-workers. I know a girl who is such a big influencer on social media that she has an agent do to all the products that she promotes. According to the Key Performance Indicator, the girl I know’s instagram has lots of likes and comments and so does her Youtube Channel. Brands are now letting the consumer become the marketer by paving a new way for follows, views, and likes. Being an influencer is not looked at as selling out but as an opportunity to further job experience.
As a college girl, I find myself constantly following new influencers to keep up with the latest “trends.” This topic is very relevant to social media these days and I often wondered how certain brands choose the influencers they do. Of course I am aware of the importance of likes and comments, but I never knew they had an official name (KPIs). This was a great read because it explained questions that I had always wondered about but never truly looked into. One of these questions being how the influencers earn a profit from their posts and how they get to the top. As an influencer I am sure you have many opportunities to brand yourself, and if I had to guess, this “trend” will only become more popular as we advance further in the world of social media.
It is amazing how many sponsored posts I see daily now. I have watched several influencers grow and with that came sponsorship’s. It seems that while most of the time the sponsorship fits the personality of the person promoting it, sometimes it felt like an odd fit. From a personal view, I grew up at the beach. Friends from school, with thousands of followers, became brand ambassadors instantly as they promoted various brands from skincare to bathing suits. I realize sponsorship’s not only help the brands, but also the influencers financially. I think there are pros and cons to this, but overall reading this helped me acknowledge something I perceive as normal and usual, while looking at it a little deeper. Sometimes these influencers urge me to buy a product and I actually like it a lot, so it does have its positives!
This article really opened my eyes to the things that businesses have to take into consideration when looking at prospects for their marketing. It is very unlikely to scroll through Instagram and not see someone promoting a product/business so it is very important to make sure that you are portraying the brand image you desire. Especially when reaching such a large audience.
It’s super interesting to see just how different the marketing landscape is now with social media and the influencers it breeds than it was 20, even 10 years ago. It’s not surprising to learn that businesses now have these Key Performance Indicators to assess their prospective influencer, especially if the influencer is in control of the content! Another interesting example, one which opened my eyes to the power influencers have, is in the scheme that was the Fyre Festival. The creators of the festival almost exclusively used influencers to advertise their festival, and it ended up selling out within hours. This shows just how effective this new-age form of marketing can be, and with a formula like the KPI, we’re bound to be seeing more and more of it.
This is a very good article in its place in today’s world where young people spend more than 1:30 hours a day on social networks.
Today, influencers have become a key part of brand communication strategies. It is therefore essential to know how to choose them. As Grave has shown, the engagement rate is a key tool, which is the number of people who liked, shared, commented or clicked a post relative to the total number of people who saw that post. This indicator is used to measure the interest of users in a particular publication. However, many influencers buy followers, likes and comments to get more money.
This article was something I personally took interest in because it is something that has been occurring on social media a lot lately. The one thing that was most interesting to me was the facts behind how the different social media sites choose who they want to promote their specific brands. I feel as if the number of followers is the most important aspect that was said to be a social media influencer for a brand. The more followers one has on social media, the more the product is seen and advertised.
I thought this blog was very interesting to read, I find that becoming an influencer is tough. Not only do you have to have the right followers to post content, you have to have the right style, the right photos, and the right message out to your followers. I have received DM’s from some brands on social media asking if I would like to sponsor their companies. (I have 1,400 followers on instagram and 16.4K followers on Tik Tok so I’m not the best candidate) Unfortunately all of them require me to buy something from their store at half price and to promote their business by offering a 75% discount using my code and offering myself 25% of the profits. However, the odds of someone buying something from a post I have made is very low, and companies who make the content usually sell items for expensive prices. To me, its not really worth it. But if you have a massive following, I can see how it pays out. For an influencer like James Charles with 15.9M followers, he would get tickets to Coachella just for making a single post about sugarbearhair. There is a celebrity factor which allows them to be able to get more than a random person like me, but I guess if you are a random college student like me, be expected to be put through a scam.