Reflecting on the second EOTO, I wanted to focus specifically on online influencers for a couple of reasons. First, I think it is a fascinating area to study in our current society which seems to be overflowing with social influence. Secondly, I wanted to reiterate this topic because it happens to intersects with some quantitative research I conducted in another class this semester on the topic of social influence and college students.
At it's core, I believe it is important to realize the you cannot really separate "influencers" from "social influence". That is, in and of it self, what influencers do. By definition, online influencers are "individuals who have built a reputation for their knowledge and expertise on a specific topic and make regular posts about that topic on their preferred social media channels and generate large followings of enthusiastic, engaged people who pay close attention to their views." They normally do not do this out of the goodness of their heart as they are typically paid by a company to portray a product or service in a positive light.
There's many specific reasons why a company may invest in online influencers , but all of them are ultimately concerned with the goal of increasing sales. 89% of companies say the ROI (return on investment) from influencer marketing is comparable to or better than other marketing channels. Furthermore, 17% of marketers will spend more than half of their budget on influencer marketing; not half of their marketing budget, but half of their total budget... Economically this is not surprising, however, considering influencer marketing has one of the best ROI's. Interestingly, an overwhelming majority of influencer budget will be spent on Instagram alone, more than 6x more will be spent on Instagram than on the closest second influencer platform: YouTube. Additionally, I found it very interesting that unlike YouTube, for example, Instagram doesn't pay any of it's creators directly. Rather, content creators on Instagram make their money solely off of brands who sponsor them. Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson has clinched the title of the most paid influencer making just over 1,000,000 million dollars per post to his more than 234 million followers.
I had the chance to do some quantitative research in another class on more than 500 college students (74% of which were High Point Students). One of the many findings was that college students who responded that Instagram/ Tic Tok was there number one most used social media platform were more likely to be swayed by a online influencer when it came to purchase habits than respondents who ranked Facebook/ Twitter as their number one most used social media. This makes sense, considering that Instagram is the most funded social media platform for online influencers while Facebook and twitter barely rank. (While Tic Tok is not on the list above, I imagine within the past 12 months, the presence of influencers has grown immensely).
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