The role of social media influencers has become an increasingly a popular topic of conversation across disciplines. Whether people refer to them as digital third party endorsers to persuaders to influencers, everyone has a clear definition of who these individuals are and their overall impact in the community they are a part of.
Several leading social media professionals have discussed the conceptualization of a social media influencer in great detail and have shared some of their thoughts and opinions to the digital community such as Mark Schaefer, Jayme Soulati, and Neicole Crepeau to name a few. Also, there is a growing research movement in expanding on this line of research, which Aaron Sachs (University of Tennessee) is currently doing with his Master’s thesis. Here is a very interesting short documentary from Social Times you all might want to check out as well:
[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/16430345[/vimeo]
There are of course many ways that can be used to quantify or “measure” influence via social media. However, we are currently exploring the range of possibilities that are out there in measurement and evaluation when it comes to social media, and being able to come up with the formula of solving the equation of what makes a person influential on social media continues to raise discussion and debate in the digital community. Some state that Klout is the way to go in having a sound tool to measure the influence a person has on Twitter or Facebook, while there are those that disagree with this statement.
Personally, I do believe that there can always be improvements for quantifying measurement of influence when it comes to Klout, but it is a good resource to get an overview and one perspective of how a person is perceived based on their interactions and following on these two social media platforms – that is the nature of research itself. It continues to evolve and is never static – so input and additions will also help improve the measurement tool.
So, how would I define social media influence? There have been many definitions to influence, but one of the fine characteristics that I have been interested in focusing in on is the role of personality attributes that are associated with social media influencers. Is there a prototype personality profile for a SMI? If so, what are some of these characteristics? Well, these questions helped guide me with a research line that started off a year ago and will continue to evolve during my time at the University of Louisville.
The interest in this research has been significant in both the academic and professional circles. I had the chance to talk with Ryo Yamaguchi, the social media manager for Cision about the study I worked on with a few of my colleagues on the perception of personality attributes on social media influencers (or otherwise known as SMIs). I wrote a guest blog post on the research earlier in May for Neicole Crepeau’s blog as well. The interview with Ryo was for a blog post on the Cision Media Blog, which I was very honored to be a part of – this was one resource I have included as a must-read for all of my students in my classes, and I also refer to it on a regular basis for my own research and consulting.
I have to say that I thoroughly enjoyed talking with Ryo – very professional, engaging, and very knowledgeable about both the theory and application of emerging media and technology such as social media. It was a great discussion about what were some of the main findings from the study and what are the best practices or implications professionals in social media (in advertising, marketing, PR, etc) need to take notice of. The research on SMIs are just the beginning. We still have much work ahead of us when it comes to social media influence research. We need to come together as a community to brainstorm, discuss, and generate specific actions to take with this research to share with both the academic and professional community.
Hope you all are having a great day.
Best Wishes,
Karen
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