Hi everyone!
Last week we spent time diving into the Diffusion of Innovations and the role it has played in the way we now communicate on a daily basis. Today, we are going to dive just a little bit deeper and discuss the importance of interpersonal influence and opinion leadership in communication. Before we can begin discussing the importance of those things, we must understand the large role that word-of-mouth advertisement plays in our everyday lives.
Since the beginning of time, people have shared stories and ideas through word-of-mouth advertising. Opinions have been passed down from generation to generation by people sharing their positive and negative experiences with one another. Businesses very quickly caught onto the idea that the best form of advertisement is word-of-mouth advertising. Most businesses see more of a return from people who share a positive experience with a friend than they do when they post a paid advertisement across social media platforms.
This infographic does a great job of explaining why word of mouth advertising is effective:
Word-of-mouth – source: Idea Sandbox
Think about it, what is the first thing you do when you see a new t-shirt you like on Facebook? Personally, I search for it online and look at several different reviews. I tend to trust the reviews people leave about the products more than I trust the information the company has listed on the actual webpage the product is located on. This is because I trust the word-of-mouth opinion that my friends (or sometimes complete strangers) share with me.
With that in mind, let’s apply that concept to the digital world we live in. Every day we see a new celebrity influencer on social media telling us about a product they enjoy using. Opinion leaders, or interpersonal influencers, often use word-of-mouth to generate sales using their social media platforms. That is why teenagers, like Charli D’amelio, are becoming so successful as “Social Media Influencers”. These young people have built their online presence across different social media platforms up to a point where businesses are willing to pay them thousands of dollars in “brand deals” to be a part of their word-of-mouth advertising.
Let’s take a look at this young influencer:
Charli D’amelio
Charli D’amelio, age 16, is a dancer whose call to fame began by actively creating simple videos on the social media platform TikTok. According to statista.com, she is the most-followed creator on TikTok worldwide. As of January 2021, she had over 107 million followers on the app. Today, she has over 111 million followers and that number is steadily growing. Along with this popularity came a huge fan base including many members of the new generations that major brands became interested in advertising to. Some of the brands she has worked with include:
Morphe 2
Dunkin’ Donuts
Pura Vida Bracelets
These brands made deals with Charli to promote their products on her personal social media accounts to share a positive experience through word of mouth with potential consumers. Most of these targeted consumers are teenagers and parents of teenagers who recognize her as a fun-loving teen who dances on TikTok. These people seem to trust her opinion on the product because she is young and can relate with most of her fan base. This type of sponsorship is important for brands because it allows them to establish trust with their consumers on a wide-scale basis by using influencers that consumers already trust to promote their products who have actually tried their products.
Now, you may be asking… why don’t large companies rely on using their actual everyday consumers to spread this message online? Great question.
According to an article written by Chris Pash, Business Insider with sciencealert.com, the natural size of a personal social network is about 150 individuals. He goes on to state that while personal relationships can be prolonged by social media connection, they will eventually die out without face-to-face interaction. You can read this entire article here.
This is where interpersonal influence and opinion leadership become key players. With our social networks being so small, we are always being influenced in some way online. The people we follow, the links we click, and where we are located around the globe all play small roles in the algorithms social media platforms use to determine what we see when we log into our accounts.
As most of you know, many of the advertisements you see on your social media timelines are customized to you and your preferences. Large corporations like Google and Facebook are able to see what you are viewing and use that information to filter in content that will seem relevant to you. For example, I work at a coffee shop so my Facebook timeline tends to show me advertisements from local coffee shop’s near me.
This interpersonal influence is subconsciously planting their coffee shop advertisement into my head because they know I go to a coffee shop often and I research a lot about coffee supplies. From time to time, I may even click on their website links just to see what they are about because I am interested in the subject… These large corporations are filtering what I am seeing and subconsciously I am okay with it because it benefits me.
While we are on the subject of coffee, let’s talk about the global coffee superstar—Starbucks. Starbucks does a great job in allow its consumers to be their advertisement drivers. While they do some marketing, their best marketing is done through word-of-mouth. Many people will go to Starbucks and share a photo of their drink online and a short review with their friends. Then their friends will see it and decide whether or not to go get a coffee from Starbucks as well. We can label the people uploading the photos “opinion leaders”. These people are taking on the role of “social media influencers” for their specific personal networks.
To sum it all up, these simple word-of-mouth techniques steadily drive the overall economy by pushing consumers in the doors of businesses. These social media influencers, big and small, share their experiences and help others decide whether or not to try a product. As communicators, we must be willing to adapt to this new age of opinion leaders and work to engage their influence in gaining new consumers.
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