Anyone with an account on a social media platform has come across not only brands promoting their products and services but also charismatic, “every day” people doing the same thing. While their messages are casually woven into their interactions on these platforms, it become clear that this form of marketing is taking over our social networks. While it has long been considered normal even helpful for people to share products they love with people they know, in this case it is pushed out to mass audiences that the person has built. These individuals are known as social media influencers and they are one of the newest phenomenons in the marketing world. The following articles will help to identify who these people are, how they impact purchasing habits of their audiences, how they generate income from influencing others on social media, and examine the impact they are having on the strategic communications.
#1 Self-Branding Among Fashion Bloggers
Analyzes various posts from numerous fashion bloggers to determine how these influencers represent their branded personas in order to gain followers and connect with that audience while attempting to influence their purchasing habits.
#2 The Impact of Quantity of Followers on Influencer Marketing
This article examines two studies that explore how a high number of Instagram followers can lead to an influencer as being perceived as “more popular” and how their level of engagement and involvement with their audience factors into their marketability and influence on consumer shopping habits.
#3 Why Micro-Influencers are Social Media Marketing Imperative
Reviews survey results that explain how social media and influencers have changed the field of marketing as well as the benefits and challenges of working with influencers on social media.
#4 Who Are Social Media Influencers? A Study of Public Perceptions
Analyzes the results of a q-sort that examined the perceived personality attributes of successful social media influencers and provides tools of optimizing an organization’s social media influencer capital.
#5 Monetizing the Mommy: Mom Blogs and the Audience Commodity
Examines how blogs that started for the purpose of building a community and/or sharing information have grown and transformed into highly successful marketing platforms as well as how the strength of sense of community impacts consumer behavior.
#6 The Role of Partner Brand Social Media Power in Brand Alliances
This article uses the power theory to develop a conceptual model of the influence of the social media power of partner brands on brand alliances and how this impacts consumer shopping habits.
#7 Influencers on the Rise: Social Media Stars Take to Branding
Discusses how social media influencers are choosing to work to maximize their power, their image and influence with their audience, and well as consider licensing deals in order to heighten their marketability with brands.
#8 Media, Production, and Social: Marketers Doing it for Themselves
Explores the new trend of bringing media development as well as influencers in-house rather than hiring through third-party agencies and how this is changing the business of influencer marketing as well as how those influencers interact with their audiences.
#9 How Mom Bloggers are Reshaping Public Relations
This article explores the struggle of public relations and marketing practitioners face in adapting to the rise of social media influencers as major factors in today’s online environment, focusing on the fact that most of these influencers are amateurs in the field of promoting brands, products, and organizations.
#10 Explaining Females’ Envy Towards Social Media Influencers
This article discusses a study that analyzes the psychological process through which social media use and personality traits influence female envy of audiences towards social media influencers and the luxurious lives that are portrayed through their platforms. Also examines the impact this envy has the success of an influencers ability to market to women.
#11 Effects of Followers’ Awareness of Paid Endorsements
Explores whether the recognition of a paid endorsement or ad, along with the transparency regarding that endorsement, impacts follower/influencer relationships, purchase intent, or E-word-of-mouth.
#12 Role of Message Content and Influencer in Rebroadcasting
Works to determine what factors increase the likelihood that a post will be rebroadcast or shared by an influencer’s audience in order to reach a broader, seemingly less connected audience.
