Thammasat University students interested in business, marketing, sociology, economics, celebrity culture and related subjects may find a new book useful.
The Dynamics of Influencer Marketing: A Multidisciplinary Approach is an Open Access book available for free download at this link:
https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/57750
The TU Library collection includes a number of books about different aspects of influencer marketing.
The book’s editor is Professor José M. Álvarez-Monzoncillo, who teaches audiovisual communications at Rey Juan Carlos University in Madrid, Spain.
As the publisher’s page explains:
YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, Vimeo, Twitter, etc. have their own logics, dynamics and different audiences. This book analyses how the users of these social networks, especially those of YouTube and Instagram, become content prescribers, opinion leaders and, by extension, people of influence. What influence capacity do they have? Why are intimate or personal aspects shared with unknown people? Who are the big beneficiaries? How much is vanity and how much altruism? What business is behind these social networks? What dangers do they contain? What volume of business can we estimate they generate? How are they transforming cultural industries? What legislation is applied? How does the legislation affect these communications when they are sponsored? Is the privacy of users violated with the data obtained? Who is the owner of the content? Are they to blame for “”fake news””? In this changing, challenging and intriguing environment, The Dynamics of Influencer Marketing discusses all of these questions and more. Considering this complexity from different perspectives: technological, economic, sociological, psychological and legal, the book combines the visions of several experts from the academic world and provides a structured framework with a wide approach to understand the new era of influencing, including the dark sides of it. It will be of direct interest to marketing scholars and researchers while also relevant to many other areas affected by the phenomenon of social media influence.
In an Introduction, Professor Álvarez-Monzoncillo observes:
The time we spend connected to social networks is growing more and more. The phenomenon of social media entertainment (SME) is capturing the attention of the traditional media audience and of the entertainment industry in general.
In many countries, the average amount of time dedicated to social networks per day is in excess of one hour. The study of this new style of consumption is complex because during that time users also share content from the media and entertainment industry: news, video-clips, and so on. A large number of television companies and many newspapers have also opened channels on platforms such as YouTube in a search for visibility and, consequently, possible revenue.
However, those professional contents live alongside amateur ones. This has been the key element of change in communication this century: users can create their own content and distribute it freely on exchange platforms, thus giving them considerable visibility. The “sharing economy”, the idea that certain products should be free (the common goods), and the free playing of digital products (zero marginal cost) have transformed the current ecosystem of communication and digital leisure.
At the same time, something which is transcendental for understanding this transformation has changed: the personal information which search engines or social networks obtain is being sold to others in order to optimize marketing. The digital footprint has economic value – something which clashes with the right to privacy and intimacy.
In a scenario dominated by platforms such as YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, Twitch, Snapchat, Twitter, and so on, many users have appeared and are actively participating with each of them: vloggers, streamers, YouTubers, influencers, Instagrammers, gameplayers, TikTokers, and so on. Each platform has its own features and its own specialization and users take advantage of them in different ways with different profiles and different aims. Some create content for fun, others for altruistic motives and others to make money – often involving their hobbies.
In the context of this mixture, the book focuses on the phenomenon of influencers. It is a blurred concept with a lot of stereotypes. Most of the population would associate it with femininity and fashion & beauty. However, it is obvious that the business of influence goes beyond that and can affect any industry, as has been the case historically. In recent years, new ways of influencing have appeared, rendering the traditional ones obsolete…
Companies themselves have always developed strategies and campaigns to influence buyer behaviour. That’s why the term “influencer”, as a concept and business, is so broad and has had a long history... When influencers reach a critical mass of followers, companies appear which are willing to invest in many channels to promote their products in such a way that the production of content is becoming professional as production costs rise. This phenomenon would not be possible without platforms which bring one and the other together. They are intermediaries in the value chain and, consequently, they receive a percentage of the income – the figure is normally around 20 per cent.
Followers tend to participate actively with comments or likes, creating certain community links. Platforms have personal information about the digital footprint so they can market and advertise programmatically. At the same time some companies have an interest in sponsoring content creators to link the brand image to some influencers. Normally contents are produced professionally to capture more attention and increase influence. On many occasions that poses ethical problems and causes a fall in the ability to influence.
The logic of brand communities is also very interesting since marketing has several peculiarities which are linked to exchanges and the participation of community members. The relationships which are established are emotional as what brings people together is a common idea, taste or hobby. Feelings of belonging are, therefore, generated which is why people share and collaborate. Personal information from search engines and internet activity plus the feelings of belonging to a group which develop around an influential person is all of interest to organizations because they can target their marketing. These are new ways of functioning. Years ago a large manufacturer of sportswear would sign up a leading sportsperson so that their adverts would appear all over the media whereas today they contract them so that on their blog or Instagram profile they give an opinion, make comments or post photos to influence their followers. These are new opportunities which firms are working to optimize and, at the same time, there are new features which are less well known such as the factors which determine the engagement between followers and influencers.
On the other hand, intermediaries must give influencers a financial reward and manage advertising spending in exchange for a percentage. These control the information in the process in an automated way. The true power lies in the control of algorithms. No-one doubts that this opens up an interesting field of academic and applied research into the marketing of influencers.
(All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)