Social Influence Marketing

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Social influence marketing in practice
The online influence of famous Americans and Britons, such as Charlie Sheen, Lindsay Lohan and Snoop Dogg, has been used by companies for years. After all, celebrities have many followers and therefore a great influence, Sponsored Tweets must have thought. Not without a fuss , by the way. Legislation does not allow advertising for a product or service without explicitly stating that it is advertising. With the hashtag #Ad or #sponsored it is tolerated.

Our own Marco Borsato was also accused of surreptitious advertising at the time, but this was consistently denied.



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In 2012, this form of advertising was again in the news when actor Dirk Zeelenberg admitted that he had approached several celebrities (such as Carice van Houten, Thomas Acda and Peter Heerschop) to advertise the film Doodslag via Twitter. Zeelenberg recently implemented this principle in a real enterprise: Spread the brand ( Creating engagement. Connecting leading brands with influential people) . Where even lesser gods are more than welcome. So now it is no longer just about celebrities, but about 'influentials' in a broader sense.

The concept of social influence works both ways. There are various initiatives where you are not paid to tweet, but pay something with a tweet. The company Pay with a tweet has completely focused its raison d'être on this.

A recent expression of this idea can be seen in a campaign usa phone data by Kellogs.



Measuring social influence
That's all well and good, but social influence marketing only makes sense when influencers actually have influence, and when followers are waiting for this. A well-known tool to gain insight into online influence is Klout . The so-called Klout Score indexes the influence someone has on Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and LinkedIn to a number between zero and one hundred. And the higher this score, the greater the online influence.

Klout is not a small player and many organizations take this score very seriously. Especially in the hospitality industry, guests and travelers with a high Klout Score receive certain privileges that others with a lower score do not. Because, when these influencers start communicating about the hotel, that means great advertising. In theory a great idea, but don't we attach too much value to this.