Question 1
Social media influencers are people, groups or brands who have a strong fan base on popular
social media sites like Instagram, Tik Tok, Facebook, Twitter, Weibo etc. They wield some amount
of influence on people who are following them. With billions of users across popular social
platforms, the major influencers of them yield a large power in influencing public opinions from
their niche. Therefore, let’s take a look at the importance of influencers in social media and the
real-life examples.
1. Social outreach alongside credibility
Social media influencers with a significant following (above 10K followers) already wield clout to
a certain extent, and their opinions carry a certain amount of weight base on their niche. Of course,
the bigger the audience, the more people they reach. The mega influencers with millions of
followers and with high engagement rates (high percentage of ‘likes’ or ‘comments’ based on
follower count) have strong capabilities to shape public discourse or create sentiments or interests
from a like-minded crowd toward a brand or business. The opinions of large influencers do have
an impact on a wide section of the online population.
Besides, publicity and peer recommendations are very powerful these days, taking over the
traditional advertising. With social media influencers, credibility translates to positive or negative
opinions among their followers. Many people follow an influencer because they consider them as
an opinion leader, are inspired by them or because of how relatable they are. The expertise these
people hold in their field combined with their trust or credibility makes them reliable and persuasive
to their audience. Their opinion of a business or brand would most likely be the general opinion
among their audience. That is why a word from an influencer can impact a brand or business,
positively or negatively, and it also highlights the importance of influencers on social media.
2. Quality content that attracts a huge targeted crowd
Most people are visual as first impression counts, before deciding further if a business or brand
is worth their time. In a survey conducted by Vocus and Brian Solis, a whopping 62% of the
respondents clarified that they follow an influencer for their quality content. Quality content is very
important for any form of marketing campaign. Influencers who have a certain following know and
have created quality content, which explains why they have high followings. Therefore, they can
and will create relevant quality content when partnering with brands or businesses that would
strike a chord with the audience, reducing work for brands or businesses to do so themselves.
Besides, with paid partnership or content creation, influencers would also usually come up with
creative and unique ideas for the businesses that they are in partnership with. For example, by
uploading beautiful or exciting photos, relating those photos with a story or a solid review, giving
their audience an opportunity to explore something that might interest them, and also driving more
customers to brands or businesses. It is thus a win-win situation that benefits both parties.
Real-life examples:
1) Cristiano Ronaldo. Cristiano Ronaldo being a football legend, with almost 400 million
followers on Instagram, is the most followed person on that platform. The internet exploded with
excitement when his return to Manchester United was announced. That was evident as the
transfer agreement post with Juventus on August 27, 2021 attracted 12.9m likes on MU’s IG
account and 2m likes, 862K retweets on Twitter, breaking social media historical records. Not
only that, the number 7 jersey revealed to be worn by him again had skyrocketed in sales by a
whopping $60 million in just 24 hours. Adidas retail locations across the UK were struggling to
keep up with the demand due to the overwhelming excitement and response. It has also smashed
the record for most sales of a jersey in Premier League history. (Tiwari, 2021) That is one of the
most evident real-life examples of how mega influencers can impact the public with social media.
2) Kylie Jenner. Kylie Jenner is the second most followed person overall on Instagram, with
almost 310 million followers on her personal account. Nicknamed ‘Queen of Instagram’, she is
the highest paid influencer on Instagram, raking in $1m per sponsored post. Famous for her lavish
lifestyle and part of the Kardashian-Jenner clan, she started her empire by launching only 3 lip
kits, promoting it on IG back in 2015. When the products were launched, it not only sold out within
minutes, the whole website crashed due to the overwhelming traffic. (Swartz, 2015) As of today,
the lip kit became a make-up empire, with over 25.5 million followers on its own IG account, with
Kylie Jenner consistently ranking as one of the most influential and powerful celebrities on social
media.
Question 2
Moving forward with electronic shop, these are the two possible challenges faced by them in
collecting social media data.
1) Dispassionate data
Social media has become a very informal platform where people all around the world come up
with slang words or local terms that might not be universally understood, and may often cause
confusion or misinterpretations. This in turn encourages the public to adopt an informal or
personally understood terms to voice out their thoughts.
Frequently, automated sentiment analysis programs are unable to decipher the true meaning of
those interpretations. For example, words like ‘defo’, which is a short form of definitely. With that
being said, it makes things tough for an electronic shop to understand the context of those terms
and its relevancy to the brand, such as the reception of a new product launch or customer
satisfactory levels. Businesses like electronic shops require accurate and relevant feedback to
improvise their services and offerings, and dispassionate data makes it possibly challenging for
some of them.
2) The Incomplete Picture
In a world of different personalities, not everyone is vocal or care to share about their thoughts
publicly on social media. While some are very vocal and interactive, there are also a large crowd
who just scrolls through, maybe occasionally leaving a ‘like’ and browse. For example, the
demographic differences between the younger and older crowd. Younger crowd, especially GenZs and millennials who are more social media savvy tend to be more participative on social media
compared to more matured crowds.
With that being said, it makes electronic shops potentially leaving out a huge demographic who
may choose to remain silent. For any business and in this case electronic shops, a well-rounded
and well represented demographic is needed to convey meaningful and solid representations
towards making improvisions. For example, a lot of the people who can afford electronic goods
are matured crowds, and having mostly Gen-Zs giving comments may not give a complete picture
and puts things into entire perspectives. This makes collecting social media data challenging for
electronic shops due to the incomplete picture.
References
Swartz, A., 2015. Yahoo News. [Online]
Available at: https://news.yahoo.com/kylie-jenners-lip-kit-sold001455370.html?fr=sycsrp_catchall
[Accessed 6 February 2022].
Tiwari, V., 2021. Republic World. [Online]
Available at: https://www.republicworld.com/sports-news/football-news/cristiano-ronaldos-no-7jersey-sale-bags-record-60-dollars-million-for-manchester-united.html
[Accessed 6 February 2022].
https://www.globalmediainsight.com/blog/4-challenges-using-social-media-data-analytics/