What is Influencer Marketing and who are Influencers - Eldar Pirmisashvili

The word "influence" is the most important word in today's modern world. Recently, organizations and brands use less traditional ways and methods of marketing and public relations to make influence over people. Changes in communication throughout the world are due to the creation and development of digital world, social networks, and new media. Consequently the people, their views, attitudes have changed and most importantly, the quality of their trust.

Brands cannot get the desired result with the old methods, so "social currency" has become important for marketers and public relations (PR) specialists, which is directly related to the work of the influencers.

The product or brand recommendation, talking about it and sharing feedback from loyal consumers has never been so important and effective as it is today. Brands spend excessive time and energy to create stimulating sales, reputation and are looking for less expensive ways to deliver their products or services to consumers, create awareness and positive reputation.

New media and social networks have established and promoted word influencer in the digital world. Specialists do characterize the influencer marketing as a means of communication of aiming to access bilateral links with their target groups, creating awareness and stimulating sales through the influential people.

Nowadays, anyone can become an influencer, blogger, vlogger. Differences, individualism and self-expression are very popular and often become an online society, mostly through social networks. The main challenges for influencers are: Creation of the additional value for a career, recognition and image generated in revenues or just entertainment and hobby.

There are two types of influencers:

  • Content-creators: bloggers, vloggers, experts and so on. &
  • Life-casters: Celebrities, entrepreneurs, Models, Businessmen, Politicians etc.

Life-casters are people who are successful and not known without social networks, they influence certain groups of people, they have gained the influence offline and then brought their image and reliability online.

Content-makers are the influencers who have become popular through social networks, they create special images and texts (lifetimes) to demonstrate lifestyle or different directions, as lifters are like role models for people (like subscriptions).

The main value of the influencers is their result, and today communication has become the most countable in its history. Create awareness, selecting the audience properly, their activation and high engagement challenge are the basic task for influencers.

The article in rated edition ,,Forbes” shows the results of a survey- 47% of internet users block the internet ads  which leads to increased costs and less-effectiveness of advertisements.  The expenditures  on the influencers also increased significantly during the last period in spending marketing budgets, while 86% online-users require authenticity and confidence, that is why influencing has become important where the “third-party effect"- does work when a seemingly uninterested part recommends that product or service.

And still, why do companies apply to influencers and communications specialists?

  • Rating - Influencers have a large number of followers;
  • Influence - they are influential and trustworthy in the circle of their subscriptions and followers;
  • Competence - easily and quickly guess the essence of brand and are competent;
  • Visual and content - they can create tendentious, different and interesting visual and textual material and make the audience interest;
  • Personality - Personal experience make social networks users more interested than brands published offers.
  • The fastest result - the word of influencer looks like a "virus" - it spreads too fast, as reaction and spreading the idea in Internet do happen very quickly.
  • Countable result and statistics – it is easy to gauge work and demonstrate the result of the influencers, which takes much time, resource and expenditure of other means of communication.
  • Expense-efficiency - the work of influencers does not cost "cheap", though the amount paid by the brand must be in compliance with the results, the result of good influencing is acceptable when the maximum effect is possible to gain with minimal costs.

Finally, as one of the founders of public relations, Edward L. Bernays used to say: "Why should I make influence over millions of people if I can do the same with one person?"