Who Is Influential Now?

Determining who a social media influencer is can be challenging.

How do we assess online influence? There are a lot of new voices out there whose messages are amplified by technology, they are not all social media influencers for your company. Understanding how social media works is critically important when engaging your customers.

The easiest answer to who is influential offline is anyone extremely popular or who commands some type of audience like a celebrity, public official or a very long title with a “C” in it.

But online, it’s significantly less obvious. The meritocracy is alive and well in social media channels. Anyone can be a publisher, write a review and offer an opinion. And these people are taking the place of our uninformed (however well meaning) friends at the bosses cocktail party. These social media writers have become our trusted friends in the know. We rely on our friends on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn to provide us with recommendations for restaurants, travel, health, beauty, fitness and even automobiles.

Engaging the influencer on social media channels is a long term commitment to participating in the conversation between your brand and your customer. The participation needs to be equal and benefit both the brand and the customer. If either party feels used, neglected or abused, the relationship will fall apart. Remember that ex? Yeah, same rules apply with social media marketing.