There we were, me and my gang of girls, settling down for a cup of tea, celebrating our spare moments as the kids were happily (for us) away at school! Talk of home and hearth was followed by “Hey, where did you get that,” and before I knew it, I was checking out a series of E Commerce websites, comparing notes, and making even more mental notes. This is influencer marketing at its best. This scene could be applied to a number of functions starting from dressing up, to cleaning pesky stains, to doing what supermen and superwomen of the everyday, everywhere do – living. Now simply use this in a digital scenario – on facebook, on Instagram, on your favourite mommy blog. Anywhere, everywhere.
This influence can be seen everywhere. I have even caught women next to me in the supermarket aisles checking out what I pick up from the shelves, from the corner of their eye. During walks that we take. During gym sessions. At parties. At work. At lunches. At dinners. On dates. All the time. We recommend, we ask, we adhere to social norms in our groups and we dispense valuable advice to keep everyone in the loop. This is a basic human function that has now entered the digital marketing narrative. We call it influencer marketing.
So how does influencer marketing work? It works on a simple premise – show, don’t tell. Think about it. If your friend simply tells you to buy something, will you leap instantly? But if you see how she looks in it or what it has done to his home or her car, then you are so in!
In the digital sphere, this kind of influence is being exerted by bloggers and blogging platforms as well as media related websites. Google has been repeatedly changing its algorithms to ensure that the SEO measures taken by a brand go towards building it as an authority in its niche. Why? Because this is the kind of content that needs to show up on Google’s first page – in order to satiate the queries and questions of its users. Only when your brand is mentioned in an organic way on several other forums excluding your own blog, website, or social media pages, will you be considered an authority worthy of a good ranking. Which is a good thing. Why?
Because it also means that your content is actually answering questions instead of mindlessly appeasing the SEO Gods. This is how readers on various blogging platforms will stumble upon brand awareness and trust what they read. And once this happens, digital marketing nirvana churns out conversion results and you actually manage to turn these readers into your ideal customers. Hidden in the content on these blogs is customer intent (a new tool that you should be using, pronto) which is demonstrated in the words of the blogger. Show, don’t tell – remember? What could be a better call for action?
This is the kind of influence that actually reaches out to people. Personally, if I see an advertisement style post that peddles the brand from its own page, I will scroll right up. But if a blogger I follow, happens to mention the use of the product or service in an informative and entertaining post – with a click bait title on social media – it will definitely earn my click. This is real influence we are talking about. This is high quality SEO, more than anything else. It tells the story of everybody, everyday. It satiates the need for making connections, the digital way. So let us all pledge to rescue creativity from mindless SEO and turn it into digital story telling instead.
For this, you use the power of digital influence to gain the trust of readers who will be willing to turn into your customers. These influencer marketing platforms and bloggers are the friends of your target audience, carefully giving them all the right reasons to go to you, nudging them towards your brand. Because the whole world is turning into one big digital planet with continents like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and more, orbiting on the paths set by these influencers and their platforms.