Can influencers teach us something
about digital strategy?
Following influencer accounts is an exercise that, in addition to entertainment, provides key elements on digital strategy, beneficial for any organization or personal brand.
Influencers, new experts in digital strategy, have shaped an industry that does not stop growing. According to data from the firm Fluvip, this market is expected to reach 10 million dollars a year in Colombia and 15 million dollars in Mexico during the same period.
Challenges, jokes, dramatizations, or lip-syncs are some of the contents that appear once you log in to any social network. Behind each photo or video there is a person speaking to millions of followers who are waiting for their next piece of content.
Faced with increasingly exorbitant figures, questions arise about the reasons for influencers’ incessant success. The same questions that led the company 1SEC (Japan) and digital artists Trevor McFedries and Sara DeCou (United States) to create virtual influencers, whose “movements” and publications are controlled from an office in their respective countries.
Beyond names and categories, there are realms of the influencer world that can be taken as lessons to understand why this industry has increased its boom in recent years.
Be Different
The way of communicating with their respective audience, the audiovisual language, and the way of producing diverse content are elements that make up a unique identity in apparently homogeneous markets. This is what drives influencers’ high engagement and close community of followers. The site marketingdirecto.com sums it up in one sentence: don’t try to be better than others, be different.
Added Value
An essential starting point is the knowledge of the target audience. Influencers have understood this premise very well and, based on constant feedback from their own community, they manage to create content that meets the expectations of their followers. It is a basic listening process that materializes in decisions with a low margin of failure.
It’s not about me, it’s about us
The audience will only feel really involved and part of a community as long as it is recognized as a participatory actor. Interactivity and constant dialogue are what allow that feeling of closeness that not everyone manages to achieve.
Trial and error
A common quality among influencers is their reckless attitude when testing new trends. Those who wait to see results in others are left behind when it comes to tools or ideas that can provide unique opportunities to remain relevant in an industry that is hungry for original content.
Behind each account in a social network, even virtual influencers, there are people working daily on a digital strategy aimed at standing out in the middle of a universe of information. If we stop for a moment and observe carefully, we will realize that there is passion, knowledge, qualities, and, above all, lessons that many times we ignore when, on the contrary, something could be learned from them.