We understand by influence, the ability that a person, a group or a particular event has to exert power in any of its forms, over someone.
Influence is a sociological theme par excellence, since its action focuses on human relations. Their clearest manifestation occurs when they identify changes of attitude in the people or groups of people. When we talk about digital influence, we refer to the ability of someone, individual, group of opinion or brand from their digital presence, to provoke changes of attitude in the people who are part of their online community.
But the Internet is a network of people grouped in communities, and therefore, it is a social system. This system is built from the relationships that are formed based on the conversation and the free exchange of content. This particularity makes the subject of digital influence require a deeper exploration in its ways of approaching it for the use of Marketing.
Strictly speaking, we are talking about a medium where the degrees of influence can be multiple, of different levels and well delimited with each other, that by their communitarian and collaborational character, causes that it is distributed collectively more quickly. It is known the power of viralization possessed by the Internet, and that viralization directly affects the digital influence, this we can review by reading Seth Godin and Malcolm Gladwell, parents of the conceptualization of virality.
In traditional media the influence has been handled quite superficially. The purchase of Media seeks in some way that the brand message influences the opinion of the audience, in order to generate positive attitudes towards the issuer. When “celebrities” of the media come into play, decisions are based mostly on the size of the audience that the personality has, and is usually associated with an information medium.
On the Internet this dynamic varies greatly, since the Internet is a space where celebrities coexist with people whose fame is very minor, but whose influence on their communities can be even greater. In this way, we can say that, while in the traditional media the “influencers” allow us to get more diffusion in our messages, in Internet that function goes beyond.
It is known, and there are studies that indicate it, that people rely more on the recommendations made by their friends or relatives, ordinary people whose opinion is based on the actual experience with the recommended object. This point is what makes the marketers open their eyes like plates, visualizing opportunities of gold after these recommendations. The big problem comes when the approach that is given to the subject, is vitiated with the logic of the traditional means.
Sponsored Internet, with more emphasis on RRSS, messages are not compatible with the leitmotiv cluetrainiano of “human conversations conducted in a human voice” as a pattern sponsored Internet certainly it has no natural voice, human voice, but leads The intrinsic language of the radio commercial or television. Somehow, sooner or later the check is seen to the conversation ruled as advertising, by more creative writing techniques that have such conversation. It’s true that human beings on the Internet go some way to being media, but the problem is that we really are not. Humans on the Internet are still human, something that does not happen with traditional media, where the average man (celebrity) owes his power of influence to the environment and, therefore, adopts his ways.
For some time I have devoted part of my work to researching the nature of digital influence, in that search I have been accompanied by some fellow communicators, marketers and friends sociologists and researchers who have finally helped me to find a fairly simple way to land the theme. Within our search we find that there are several types of infuenciadores, and that these can be classified according to their degree of commitment to the recommended thing (related, prescribers and ambassadors), according to the relation that has with its audience (Experts, celebrities and common people ) And according to the function that this influencer fulfills for the objectives of a brand (Credibility, affinity, use and diffusion).
We also discover that a good strategy of digital influence must be derived from the brand’s conversation and content strategy, whose dynamics help us to identify these influencers and allows us to decide the degree of approach that the brand wishes to have with them, according to the objectives Of traced communication.
The most important thing is that this strategy of influence can be operated without violating the logic of conversation (Digital Logic), which happens if and only if its scope goes beyond the digital and does not base its commitment on the commercial exchange, the Which can be given but only by way of pretext.
