Social media influencers can partner with brands, exchanging content creation for money, products, event tickets or more (Photo by iStock/PeopleImages).Social media influencers create and post content on social media, growing a large following. For brands, “influencers are a vehicle to their audience,” says
Jenny Heinrich, who has taught DePaul students about influencer marketing for six years. With over 25 years of experience, Heinrich has been named a
Top 30 US Pioneer in Influencer Marketing. In this Q&A, Heinrich breaks down the basics of influencer marketing and provides industry insights.
What is influencer marketing and how does it work?
Influencer marketing is a partnership between a person and a brand with an exchange. This doesn't always have to be monetary. Influencers could receive products, information or event tickets. Whenever there's an exchange, that's marketing.
There are three categories of influencers. Cultural influencers, which most people associate with the word influencer, pick up on something timely in a relevant category – like beauty, food, automotive, etc. – and create content around that. Another kind, Media influencers, are highly influential and have massive reach, but involve different partnership considerations due to media ethics. The third type, reputational influencers, create content with accreditation behind it. They’re typically the ones that have a degree, are CEOs of big organizations, or have other expertise, like a registered dietician or healthcare practitioner. They come with credibility and their content has gravitas.
Start with the audience you want to reach and then find the right influencers who have a relationship with that audience. That way, branded content will stick.
How has influencer marketing changed over time?
Influencer marketing has changed based on audience consumption habits, the social platforms that have evolved and the content type that performs best.
The first version of influencer marketing was broadcast. Think of it like advertising. Brands began partnering with influencers so they could broadcast their message to a captive audience.
The second evolution of influence was content creation and distribution. When social media became a must-have channel, brand-created content was perceived as inauthentic. While trust in brand-created content declined, influencer-created content rose to the top. We trust people that we can relate to. So, brands began using influencers’ content to gain trust.
Jenny Heinrich has taught influencer marketing for 6 years (Photo courtesy of Jenny Heinrich).
In the third evolution, which we’re in now, influencers are considered brand partners. They are aligned with the brand and have an affinity for it. They have a relationship with the brand and pulse content over a longer period. The influencer is invested in the business and impact of that partnership, typically with compensation incentives for content that performs well.
Why is taking a class on influencer marketing beneficial?
There’s an actual step-by-step process that goes on behind the scenes, which most students don’t realize. How do you develop a coherent and cohesive influencer strategy? What are the criteria I’m looking for? Who is the audience I’m trying to reach? How do I find influencers and qualify them? Most people don’t know that it’s part of the parcel.
The class teaches students the fundamentals of influencer marketing: how to approach the work to make it strategic, impactful and creative, then execute it from A to Z. Students learn to measure the success of the program from start to finish and prove business impact. They learn to negotiate and get the most “bang for your buck” in terms of budget.
Any communications company you go into now is either partnering with influencers or they want to. Students with knowledge about influencer marketing will be ahead of the pack post-graduation.
What are potential jobs for people interested in influencer marketing?
Being a content creator is one side of the coin. It’s simple to become one: you just start creating content and amass a following.
There’s also the behind-the-scenes work of influencer marketing, with three pieces to the puzzle. One element is the influencer team who create the strategy, find the influencers, negotiate with and contract them. Organic reach across social media is typically very low, so paid media experts often amplify the content with paid posts on the influencer’s or brand's channel. Finally, analysts look at the data and figure out the story the data is telling so they can make recommendations for next time. Those are all different ways into this industry.
How can we be conscious consumers of influencer partnerships?
When I look at influencer content, I look for true brand affinity. If it is a true representation of this creator, their life, their habits and the kind of products and brands they would be into then that works best.