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The Benefits of Using Influencer Marketing on Social Media

Milan Kundera once said that “Business has only two functions - marketing and innovation.” In fact, in today’s business circle marketing and innovation has never stopped. The most successful business model that combined with marketing and invocation is the influencer marketing; which, can be define as the promotion of products services and ideas through the use of people usually popular celebrities or leaders who have the ability to change other people’s attitude and behavior. How does influencer marketing apply on social media you may ask? Social media influencer utilizes their relationship with their audiences and in attempt to shape the content in a creative way in order to pass the message of a brand’s campaign. That being said, the market has formed. The objective of this paper is to discuss the benefits of using influencer marketing on social media and how it leads to increase in brand authority, fast trust building, and higher return of investment

In “#sponsored – Influencer Marketing on Instagram” (Ewers, 2017). This article provides an overview of influencer marketing has taken a predominate role in the growing popularity of Instagram. The paper examines sponsorship disclosure, product placement, and types of influencers as a result to measure the consumer’s purchase intension and their activities involved with product placements. The article is in a great use of analyzing the key points of increasing brand awareness and study their interplay on consumer responses. I will base on this source as my supportive idea for this first paragraph, indicating the use of influencers marketing have a positive brand awareness and authority.

In “Identify effective influencers based on trust for electronic word-of-mouth marketing: A domain-aware approach” (Shixi et al., 2015). This article provides an overview of word-of-mouth marketing, and how it is effective in building trust between social media influencers and their followers. To address this topic, the article proposes a framework that takes into account the dimension of time, trust and area of expertise. Shixi et al. explain online social trust has become a problem especially via electronic word-of-mouth. The paper takes a natural standing on despite trust relationship amount between users and online social trust. This source will be further discussed in my second body paragraph, I will indicate the benefit of trust building leads to long-term value by taking some of the perspectives from this creditable source.

In “Influencer marketing: studies claim to prove ROI but beware of celebrities” (Burgess, August 17, 2016). Burgess indicates the recommendation posts has a significant impact on advertising and promoting brands. The paper is in detail analysis the pros and cons of having a higher return of investment. I will use this source to support my third body paragraph.

There is no deny that the growing popularity of social media platform has become a great opportunity for start-up business to advertise their products. Many viewers are essentially become a part of the E-commerce circle, because it brings people together with common interests. (N. Booth, J. Matric, 2011). As a result, by taking advantages of using influential power on social media, small business owner can have a massive response on product reflection in terms of building brand authority and awareness. Instagram as one of the social media platform performs a great example which every sponsored post contains the #hashtag and #sponsored (N. Ewers., 2017). This is in a great way strengthened the brand authority and awareness. Because their followers always recognize the product as genuine and trustworthy as the influencer. “Influentials generally do have many direct ‘friends’ and ‘followers,’ but what makes them truly valuable is the number and relevance of their extended or indirect connections” (Hall, 2010). Research conducts that “[P]eople´s attitude towards the brand was generally bad when sponsorship was not disclosed, regardless of whether a product was placed or not, but when sponsorship was disclosed, no product placement lead to a more positive evaluation of brand attitude” (N. Ewers., 2017, pp. 28)

One of the elements that influencer marketing has proven right is that the fast connection of fundamental trust building between influencers and followers. “[T]rusted influencers could potentially lead consumers to accept recommendations, make purchase decisions, and select transaction partners in e-commerce” (Nielson, 2012). By sharing the same tastes and fashion, influencers have narrowed down followers who are only interests into a specific field based on the content and posts. In this way, followers and influencers would formed a log-term relationship which gives a long-term value for driving effective endorsements. It has also state that “Consumers are accustomed to seeking useful information from people with a high online status in an online social network” (D.Lu, Q. Li, S.S.Liao, 212). Therefore, building an effective trust model with follwers become more and more easy. For example, celebrities from time to time open a live video to introduce the recent lifestyle or give recommendations and rate on some fashion dress or makeup products. In this way, it can further enhance their relationship.

Influencer marketing has driven a higher investment of return on social media. Given the fact that “every $1 spent on influencer marketing returned $12.54 in the "Tourism Destinations & Travel" sector, $12.21 in the "Bath, Body and Beauty" and a still creditable $4.50 in "Retailers & Apparel” (Burgess, August 17, 2016, para 3). This as a result leads to increasing in sales. Another way to measure the higher return of investments is by looking at the number of impressions and engagements (likes and comments) received by influencers. When we observe, it is not hard to find rhythm that the return of investments increased in 35% when impressions doubled (Burgess, August 17, 2016). Therefore, the high investment of return is bonding with influential power.

Just as Milan Kundera said “Business has only two functions - marketing and innovation.” Influencer marketing has become the most successful model in competition with other marketing strategy. The benefits are very obvious. This paper takes an overview look at the three benefits of using influencer marketing as a tactic in achieving the ultimate sales goal. The first benefit is increasing in brand awareness which hashtag and psychological perspectives are consist the key elements strengthened brand awareness. The second benefit is the fast trust building, which, essentially influencers are using high-quantity content in order to generate a long-term value with their followers. The use of the statistics to prove higher return of investments as the third benefit has a close relationship with impressions and other channels of engagement.

Reference

Hall, T. (2010), “DigitalNEXT”, 22 March, available at: www.adage.com/digitalnext 29 March, available at: http://adage.com/digitalnext/article?article_id=142907.