It has been the noisiest buzzword in marketing for the past two years. Massive budgets are being thrown at it. Yet, much of the spending on the so-called "influencer" is going to waste. Typically, big brands recruit "celebrities" with massive followings to serve as messengers to share branded content with their online fans. For example, luxury bag brand Coach contracted singer and actor Selena Gomez to punt its products via her Instagram account, the most followed in the world. In social media, personalities who are unknown in the mainstream often build up communities of followers that come to be regarded as communities of influence in their own right. Brands then recruit these "micro-influencers", in effect, on the same basis as the mainstream stars: as minor celebrities within their own niches. The size of their following denotes their value. A question that marketers cannot answer convincingly, however, is how effective their influencer marketing strategies have been. In other wo...
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