If you are new to influencer marketing you may feel overwhelmed with all the jargon and Here explanation for influencer marketing terms and vocabulary:
Influence
The ability to cause measurable effect or change impressions or behaviors.
Resources: Exploring and Defining Influence, A Framework for Influencer Marketing
Influencer
A person or group of people who possess greater than average advantage potential to influence due to attributions such as frequency of communication, personal persuasiveness or size of and centrality to a social network.
Resources: Influencer Guidebook Slideshare, A Framework for Influencer Marketing
Nano Influencer
An influencer with typically more than 1,000 followers.
Micro Influencer
An influencer with typically more than 10,000 followers.
Macro Influencer
An influencer with typically more than 100,000 followers.
Mega Influencer
An influencer with typically more than 1 million followers.
KOL
KOL, better known as Key Opinion Leaders, are what consumers are gravitating towards in hopes to filter the clutter that digital advertising has created.
The Difference Between KOLs And Influencers
Both influencers and KOLs are individuals who influence a consumer’s opinion about a product or service.
Influencers can have a strong influence on an audience present on social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. While KOLs may have a presence on social media, these platforms don’t have to serve as their main communication channel. An influencer’s credibility comes from their online persona, their content and their perceived authenticity.
Influencer Marketing
A byproduct of marketing that focuses on using an individual’s influence to amplify your brand’s message. Instead of marketing to a large group of potential customers brands collaborate with influencers who already have trust and rapport with your desired audience to help tell the brand story.
Resources: Rachel Miller’s Influencer Marketing Definition, Guide to Influencer Marketing, AIM: Setting Sail with IM, What is Influencer Marketing?
Influencer Relations
The art of creating social capital between a brand and independent industry experts, by building strong, trusted relationships based on shared goals, common values, and uncompromised authenticity.
Resources: Influencer Marketing 2.0: The Future of Influencer Marketing
Influencer Engagement
A function of a relationship-based approach to working with influencers where brands interact based on knowledge of the influencer’s interests and goals. Ongoing engagement can take many forms from social sharing and commenting to content co-creation to program collaboration. A transactional approach to interacting with influencers is technically a form of engagement, but it is the lowest form in terms of mutual value.
Resources: The Marketer’s Guide to Mastering Influencer Engagement
Influencer Outreach
The process of initially attempting to form a relationship with an influencer. Successful influencer outreach sits at that sweet spot of understanding what makes your business tick, what makes a desired influencer tick, and showing the latter why engaging with the former would benefit him/her. It opens the door for future engagement; more eHarmony than Tinder.
Resources: The Three R’s of Influencer Outreach, Step-By-Step Guide to Influencer Outreach
Influencer Marketplace
A technology that aims to match brands and participating influencers based on simple criteria, facilitate fulfillment of paid activities through standardized processes and provide KPIs that attempt to mimic advertising performance measures. An example for influencer marketplace is: rockstars.media
Defined By: Nicolas Chabot
Synonyms: Opt-In Network, Pay-to-Play, Influentizing
Resources: Two different paths to influencer marketing, Opt-out of Opt-In Network
Influencer Advertising
The discipline of leveraging influencer content as an extension of marketing’s paid digital media practice, often confused with influencer marketing. Influencer advertising consists of buying influencer content as media directly from influencers or through influencer marketplaces. Government regulations often require strict disclosure to consumers of sponsored influencer content by adding the mention #ad or #sponsored to such content.
Defined By: Pierre-Loic Assayag
Synonyms: Influencer Endorsement
Resources: 5 Most Dangerous Myths of IM
Influencer Compensation
The method by which an influencer is reimbursed for their time, expertise or partnership with a brand. Although some compensation is monetary, compensation can also include offering the influencer experiences, trips, or free product. Influencer compensation should be relational, not transactional.
Resources: The Seven Golden Rules to Paying Influencers, CMO Insights: 5 Keys to Identification
Influencer Content Co-Creation
The process of a brand partnering with an influencer, or group of influencers, to produce a piece of content. In this scenario, both the brand and the influencer impact the creative process and co-promote the content together.
Resources: Guide to Content Marketing & Influencer Strategy, IM Content Framework
Influencer-Generated Content (IGC)
A piece of content an influencer creates that mentions a brand. In co-creation, the content is created in partnership with the brand but with IGC, the influencer has more creative freedom and leverages their authentic voice to engage with their audience. Similar to user-generated content (UGC), IGC is authentic content created by a person mentioning the brand’s products or services.
Influencer Selection: Identification Keywords
Influencer Identification
The ability to map business goals downward to the people who can help your brand achieve them. Selecting influencers to partner with means looking for trust and authenticity with the desired audience you are trying to reach. The key element of picking influencers to work with is starting with a success in mind and selecting influencers who can help your brand achieve that success.
Defined By: Brian Fanzo
Resources: Guide to Influencer Identification
Reach
A measure of an influencer’s audience size. Aside from possessing qualities that have the power to drive action, an influencer has an above-average number of followers in a specific niche or market.
Defined By: Brian Solis
Resources: 3 R’s of Influence
Resonance
A measure of how much activity an influencer generates by publishing content. Someone who creates content people crave and love to engage with will make a major wave with a blog post and gain a lot of traction with a single tweet, because the content resonates with fans and followers.
Defined By: Brian Solis
Resources: 3 R’s of Influence
Relevance
A measure of how relevant an influencer is to a topic that is relevant to your brand. Look for mutual relevance. Find this by assessing keywords the influencers are showing up for when you do Google searches, as well as tags and categories on their blog, hashtags they are using on Twitter and Facebook, and the topics of groups they are involved in.
Defined By: Brian Solis
Resources: 3 R’s of Influence
Celebrity (Vs Influencer)
A celebrity inspires a following; an influencer inspires a following to take action. If you go into the grocery store, you’ll likely recognize a celebrity, but not an influencer. An influencer may be a celebrity, of sorts, in their own peer group, but the general public will have no idea who they are.
Defined By: Gini Dietrich
Resources: Eight Tips for Influencer Marketing Done Well, Scott Disick’s IM Fail
