Brand communication through digital influencers: Leveraging blogger engagement
Introduction
Companies considering the Internet as a strategic communication tool have also recognized the power of influential members of this platform, i.e. bloggers, who frequently share their brand experiences on a regular basis. These digital influencers have an effect on the members of particular communities gathered around similar interests. According to the two-step flow theory (Katz & Lazarsfeld, 1955), certain people recognized as opinion leaders interpret media information they receive and then pass it to others, thus increasing its influence. In other words, mass media messages may not always affect the public directly; as the two-step flow theory states, opinion leaders mediate the transmission of information. Bloggers can be considered as digital influencers, similar to the offline opinion leaders considered in two-step flow theory. These influencers can mediate messages and affect communities in the digital environment, where messages can be disseminated rapidly and easily with a potentially viral effect. Consequently, it is essential for brands to engage with bloggers, online influencers, in order to attain authentic and trustworthy presence among online communities.
Social media, including the blogosphere, is still being explored in both the academic literature, and in terms of its practical implications. The purpose of this exploratory study is to reveal how brands can engage with bloggers, now considered as the online opinion leaders due to their knowledge, expertise and concealed influential power. To this aim, the present study combines a literature review based on research into two-step flow theory, and also into the power of bloggers, enriched with in-depth interviews with the brand and agency representatives responsible for implementing blogger communication programs. The results are expected to shed light on how brands can strengthen relationships with customers through support of these digital influencers. To address the influential role of bloggers and peer-interaction, and elaborate the traditional two-step flow of communication, this study proposes a new model, the brand communication through digital influencers model.
Section snippets
Theoretical background
Recent advances in communication technologies make the Internet important not only for individuals, who have gained the opportunity to share their opinions and emotions, but also for brand managers seeking to interact and engage with online communities. The ease of creating, publishing and sharing content with those with similar interests has had a definite effect on the nature of message dissemination. This effect requires reinterpretation of related theories of information flow and influence.
Methodology
In this exploratory study, research questions on blogger engagement were investigated through qualitative in-depth interviews. One of the main features of qualitative research is an emphasis on process (Woods, 2006), thus it is appropriate method to discover how blogger engagement programs are developed and implemented. In-depth interviews were conducted to increase understanding of implementations from the practitioners’ point of view, by revealing these experts’ experiences (Kvale, 1996) of
Results
The extracts from the inteviews are examined under seven topics: blogger definition, blogger selection criteria, digital integration, power of bloggers, types of blogger communication implementations, long-term relationship building with bloggers and measurement and budgetary issues. The common points are summarized in Table 2. Additionally, other specific findings are explained in this section.
Discussion and conclusion
Due to technological advancement, consumers are currently more information savvy, sophisticated, and well informed, and can no longer be easily controlled or manipulated by organizations. Due to a greater awareness of their power, consumers are no longer merely passive recipients of messages, instead they desire to communicate in a participatory way. In addition, instead of simply accepting packaged brand messages, they tend to place more trust in the opinions of those who appear to be similar
Managerial implications
A clearer understanding of brand communication through digital influencers model (Fig. 1) can leverage practitioners’ knowledge on blogger engagement and lead to managerial implications regarding the flow of messages from influencers and mediators in the on-line environment. Changes in the communication landscape caused by technological developments have affected practitioners’ control over brands’ messages (Gensler et al., 2013, Kuksov et al., 2013). From a managerial standpoint, the influence
Limitations and further research
The current study, however, is limited given that it is based on only 17 in-depth interviews and uses a limited, but expert-representative, sample of practitioners. Hence, the findings could be regarded as a starting point for future research to expand and generalize upon. A quantitative study, focusing on the seven major issues, including more implementation samples from a greater number of practitioners is a possible direction for future research.
This study represents practitioners’
Contributors
Burcu Yaman helped the authors in transcription of the in-depth interviews, and contributed to the data interpretation and discussion.
Acknowledgment
The authors would like to thank Professor Philip J. Kitchen for his valuable contribution to the development of the Model for Brand Communication through Digital Influencers.
Ebru Uzunoglu is an Associate Professor and works as the Head of the Public Relations and Advertising Department at Izmir University of Economics (IUE). Currently, she has assigned as the Acting Dean of the Communication Faculty at IUE. She teaches courses on Marketing Communications, Campaign Design in IMC, IMC Projects, and Brand Management. Her research interests include integrated marketing communications, brand communications, and social media implementations. She has published research in
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Ebru Uzunoglu is an Associate Professor and works as the Head of the Public Relations and Advertising Department at Izmir University of Economics (IUE). Currently, she has assigned as the Acting Dean of the Communication Faculty at IUE. She teaches courses on Marketing Communications, Campaign Design in IMC, IMC Projects, and Brand Management. Her research interests include integrated marketing communications, brand communications, and social media implementations. She has published research in many journals such as International Journal of Information Management, Journal of Marketing Communications, Public Relations Review, International Journal of Human Sciences, and The Global Media Journal. She worked in several national and international companies as a marketing communication specialist and product manager for 12 years.
Sema Misci Kip is working as an assistant professor and vice dean at İzmir University of Economics (IUE). She teaches courses on advertising, media planning and marketing communications. Her research interests are digital communication, media planning, advertising, knowledge management, value creation, and television viewing habits. She has various publications in journals such as International Journal of Information Management, Public Relations Review, and The Global Media Journal. She worked at Initiative Media (1999–2003) and Universal McCann (2003) for advertising and media planning strategies of national and international clients such as Unilever, Group Seb, Uno, Ferrero, Adidas, Kimberly Clark, Citibank, Johnson & Johnson. She has been teaching at IUE since 2003.