Or how to define an effective influence strategy...
One of the buzzwords of the year: 'influencer strategies', or how to advertise without advertising! The double advantage: consumers are more likely to believe what other consumers recommend... and what's more, it costs less - no need to buy advertising space, of course.
The idea is not new: on the social Web, it is as old as... the social Web, when it was still only called Web 2.0. All this takes us back more than 10 years! And even further back...
So in 2007, when BlackBerry - at the time the undisputed leader in business smartphones - wanted to promote its new 8800 model, it graciously sent one to Loïc Le Meur - France's most influential blogger - to test it out, in the hope that he would pass on the right messages to his readers.
There's nothing new under the sun: in the 1970s, the Vedette household appliance brand was already paying the famous Mère Denis - Jeanne Denis was her real name - in washing machines, or little more, to note at the end of each commercial: "That's the truth!.
As for Microsoft, to celebrate the launch of its new Vista, the multinational privatised the Grande Arche de La Défense to invite the crème de la crème of the media and the blogosphere to attend a super fireworks display - resulting in rave reviews, with Suchablog even running the headline: "Because perfection existsnothing less!
But that didn't stop the majority of bloggers - admittedly less influential, but still numerous - from denouncing the OS's shortcomings; as for the comments on Amazon, they all pointed in the same direction: "When it comes to innovation, I don't have much that's worthwhile...". the comments read.
Even in the heyday of the blogosphere, no influence strategy could change the perception of a product or service... bad!
When social media arrived as we know it today - read Facebook and Twitter - agencies suggested that their clients recruit millions of fans and followers; a fool's errand, since the same brands that paid them handsomely to build up huge bases of friends now had to pay Facebook to talk to them.
Sometimes, to save time, they even offered to buy fans "by the kilo": totally fake fans, created from scratch for the occasion by small Indian or Sri Lankan hands.
Today, some companies offer influencers almost by weight: but real influencers are judged not by their numbers but by their quality.
Their quality is their credibility... in other words, their ability to exercise their critical faculties with regard to brands: not easy for 'me too' products or products that don't perform very well.
Their quality lies in their ability to create relevant content... which means not copying press releases down to the last spelling mistake, as too many specialist journalists unfortunately do.
If this paper, posted on a blog, then pushed on LinkedIn reaches you, and you in turn relay it to your friends, it's not because I've paid an agency to circulate it through its network of influencers: it's just because you've found the content interesting and chosen to share it with your contacts. Let's hear it!
