After writing yesterday’s post about the growing scrutiny of the role and value of influencers, another thought stuck me: are influencers making social media practitioners lazy?
In other words, are we relying too much on influencers to do the dirty work for us?
One of the reasons for the fascination with influencers is they have “clout” (Klout?) and large networks of friends and followers. By tapping into influencers, companies can, in theory, jump-start or super-charge their social media efforts. If an influencer recommends or even talks about a company, product or service, the word can quickly spread to their network.
This means less work for a company because they’re counting on a third-party to do a lot of the blocking and tackling for them as opposed to building and nurturing their own social networks.
Of course, this approach has plenty of of appeal because, if successful, it can mean far less work compared with the time and effort needed to get into the trenches to establish social networks. Influencers make life easy or, at least, a lot of easier than having to do the work yourself.
The risk, however, is companies are counting on influencers too much. The perception that influencers have super-powers deflects the reality there are few short cuts in social media. Success often means doing a lot of work behind the scenes with progress measured in inches, not miles.
As well, placing too much focus on influencers is like buying a lottery ticket. If you’re really lucky, an influencer will embrace your product or service, and spread the word to their followers. But like lotterry tickets, these kind of “wins” rarely happens.
It may have to do with the fact many companies are battling for the affections of influencers. It may also have to do with the reality that maybe influencers aren’t as influential as we want to believe.
As someone succinctly said in a comment yesterday, there is a big difference between being an influencer and being popular. We often confuse them, which means efforts to court an influencer are misguided or don’t the expected impact.
Even if influencers do have an impact and you’re successful in building a relationship with them, it shouldn’t take away from the reality you still need to hammer away at building our social media presence and networks because at the end of the day, it’s your own efforts that will establish a solid social foundation.
Influencers come and go; they fall out of favor as quickly as they become flavor of the day. Counting on influencers to do your work is simply lazy.
Tags: influencers, lazy, Social Media
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Mark Evans, Jonathan Belisle, sysomos, Colby Cox, Nils Seiter and others. Nils Seiter said: RT @sysomos: Fresh from the blog presses, a new post asking whether influencers make us socially lazy: http://bit.ly/fsStZT [...]