The Phenomenon Of Digital Influencers

Globalization is a phenomenon that has even affected the way we understand marketing. Today, the saturation of advertising added to the heyday of social media has led many companies to create new actions to reach consumers. It is here that the figure of digital influencers, also called digital influencers, appears .

These are people with an account on a specific social network and a community of followers who can be greatly influenced. They are also considered new players in the company’s marketing strategy, which seeks to convey a more reliable message.

Digital influencers may be traditional celebrities, but they have also gained significant relevance to many bloggers, youtubers and instagramers, who can provide greater targeting to the brand message and allow companies to reach their niche market.

The arrival of social networks created a panorama in which the opinion of any user can generate an ideological current, giving rise to a new language. The purpose of this article is to examine this phenomenon that moves millions of reais annually, and in which more than 20 million people work around the world.

What are digital influencers?

While we all have the ability to influence, to a greater or lesser degree, a digital influencer is able to transfer certain information to more circles of influence. These people reach out to various online communities, media, other digital influencers and, most importantly, the end consumer.

Among his main skills stands out the ability to communicate and get in contact with his followers. The digital influencer needs to know their audience and their language, in order to know how to adapt their message. We must keep in mind that the influencer’s communication model is bidirectional, as it creates a space for dialogue.

Thus, they also have the ability to generate trust and reciprocity. In other words, the ability to convey closeness and establish lasting relationships. Also, showing empathy and similarity to followers is key to influencing them.

Obviously, it is also important to show knowledge about the specific subject and to speak objectively. So a very good thing about their work is that they know how to anticipate the questions potential buyers might ask about the products they promote.

Among the main characteristics of digital influencers is their ability to create trends. This person must be able to get the customer to buy, consume and recommend the product. For this, the influencer must have a good ability to tell stories, create content (videos, images, articles and opinions), maintaining a good level of quality and generating interest from the target audience.

Between fraud and numbers

We must also highlight the dangers of this phenomenon, in which it is easy to take advantage of people’s ignorance. Here we can see two cases that highlight the dangers we may encounter:

An especially paradigmatic story is that of American Instagrammer Arii, a girl with more than 2.6 million followers who decided to launch a clothing line. Even with so many followers, he couldn’t sell more than 36 shirts.

This is a real demonstration that the number of followers does not always represent a loyal audience or a mass of potential customers. There are, for example, tools that allow you to buy followers, the so-called “fake profiles”.

Another well-known case was the Fyre Festival, an event publicized by several influencers. Praia, supermodels, an island that belonged to Pablo Escobar in the Bahamas, tickets starting at 4,000 euros; all tickets sold out within 48 hours, but it was a scam.

However, despite these dangers, according to a 2016 study by Twitter, 49% of consumers seek advice from influencers on social media to buy. In addition, 20% of followers stated that they have already purchased after tweets from an influencer.

This study also shows that the areas most affected by this type of marketing are politics, society and fashion. The most used social networks are Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Conclusion

We can say that influence marketing is a viral phenomenon for consumers and businesses. Consumers prefer to trust a person who, although they do not know, brings convincing arguments to buy a particular product.

Therefore, companies decided to invest time and money in a new marketing plan that includes digital influencers in the promotion and communication strategy.

However, it is important to choose the most appropriate influencer for the brand. Otherwise, resources will be wasted uselessly and trust in the company may be lost.