Social Marketers Focus on Influencers: Are They Missing Half the Equation?
By Karla Robinson
July 27, 2012
July 27, 2012
When it comes to social media marketing, it’s not enough to use someone who is influential. The person must also have a network of influential friends, not just susceptible followers, says a new study from Sinan Aral and Dylan Walker of New York University.- “The biggest takeaway for marketers and others trying to spread messages through social media may be that influential Facebook users are less susceptible to influence than non-influential ones, and influencers tend to cluster in the network,” notes ReadWriteWeb.
- Also, people are most influential on others within their own age group, and “the older a person is, the more influential and less susceptible he or she is on Facebook.”
- “For now, the best marketing strategy is to target influencers who have already adopted a product, the researchers said,” according to the post. “Individuals who already use a product can be given incentives to influence their peers, as opposed to giving individuals with susceptible peers incentives to adopt a product.”
- The study had some other interesting findings: “younger users are more susceptible to influence than older users”; “men are more influential than woman”; “women influence men more than they influence other women”; and, “married people are the least susceptible to influence in the decision to adopt products.”
- For marketers, this means advertising specifically women-oriented may be ineffective. And more importantly, “the key is finding the clusters of influential users within a social network to get a message disseminated as quickly as possible.”
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