How to Become an IT Thought Leader
Published: 2022-09-04 10:35:18

## Influencer and Brand Advocate

Let's first understand what an opinion leader is and how he differs from an influencer and a brand advocate.
Most companies strive to attract a loyal audience and form a pool of regular customers who will appreciate not only the company and its products, but also worry and help this company develop.

**A brand advocate** is a loyal, passionate and devoted fan who is even better than in-house marketers at talking about your product, helping to promote it and achieve good results.
**An opinion leader** is a person who can influence the formation of the opinions of others and the general public, influence the emergence of trends, create or intensify discussion of various topics.

> “If your product gets into the circle of discussions and topics covered by an opinion leader and a person starts promoting it, then he is both an opinion leader and a brand advocate.”

Collaboration with an opinion leader helps to effectively reach out to specific consumers, have the most fruitful impact on them and build trust between the audience and the brand.

**An influencer** is a person who spreads ideas or information in a particular environment.

> “From the point of view of communication technologies and mechanics, an opinion leader and an agent of influence are practically the same thing.”

But an agent of influence is not necessarily an opinion leader. This is a person who can set the tone for communications and influence some action on the part of the target audience. Strengthen or reduce the influence of specific influencers, marketing messages and enable businesses to more effectively develop communication between the brand and the consumer.

## Who can be an opinion leader

It is usually considered that opinion leaders are politicians, representatives of show business, creative professions, athletes, social activists or authorities in various fields of activity. But opinion leaders can also be ordinary people who influence the decisions of their relatives, friends and associates. For example, you can be an authority for your environment and, accordingly, influence their opinions.

Opinion leaders in social networks are bloggers, journalists (both professional and non-professional), as well as users who actively publish their own content that has an impact on the audience that reads it.

> “The main feature of an opinion leader is the ability not only to broadcast information to a large audience, but also to really influence the opinions, actions, and behavior of specific people.”

Through their ability to get the message across, influencers can generate public outcry on a variety of issues, both in relation to certain products and in relation to certain situations.

**Characteristics of an opinion leader**

An opinion leader has the following qualities:

- active life position;
- an extensive network of social contacts online and offline;
- the desire to disseminate useful information, bring value to their audience;
- demonstrating your expertise;
- confidence in the formation of microtrends;
- the ability to raise various issues that cause a certain response from the audience;
- strong involvement in the process of solving any problems.

An opinion leader influences through emotions or rational arguments, inspiring trust and response from people who find in his words and actions a correspondence with their internal problems and expectations.

## How influencers can be useful for business

Attracting opinion leaders allows you to quickly convey certain information about the company, product, specific situation to the target audience.

People trust the leader of opinions, and sometimes imitate. He has real authority, his achievements are beyond doubt, and his competence in his field is not even disputed. The combination of these qualities makes an opinion leader an ideal tool for promoting various kinds of messages.

The important thing is that this is not only communication with the target audience, but also the opportunity to stimulate certain follow-up actions of this target audience:

- purchase of a specific product;
- resolving situations in relation to service problems;
- getting good reviews about the product;
- feedback at the stage of testing the product and its refinement;
- opening up new opportunities for using the product.

An opinion leader values ​​his usefulness to the audience. It can both negatively and positively influence the solution of various situations related to the brand. For example, to extinguish the negative impact of certain facts on the public, or, conversely, to strengthen.

> “Interaction with opinion leaders is one of the important moments of brand interaction with the target audience. Business needs to find common ground with influential people and establish effective communications.”

## Where to find influencers

To find influencers that will be useful for your business, you first need to analyze your target audience. During the evaluation, you will see where your target audience dominates, who they follow, what they read, what content they are interested in.

> “Based on this analysis, you will be able to find those opinion leaders who are trusted by your target audience.”

The audience can be found in the circle of their immediate environment. You can go to specialized events where your target audience and experts who convey key information prevail. You will simultaneously see people broadcasting certain content and how your target audience reacts to certain opinion leaders.

Opinion leaders need to be searched on the Internet using simple monitoring or services that allow you to determine certain people by rating or interests.
Pay attention to the number of followers and their degree of involvement on the person's page.

In addition to followers, look at how people react to the influencer's posts. He doesn't have to write posts every hour, but the return on posts that have deep content should be very high.
Interview members of your target audience about the personalities they are interested in, whose opinion they value and whose recommendations they listen to. This is the easiest way to determine the points of influence on your target audience, and maybe give an answer with whom you should cooperate with in the future.
Interview experts in your field of activity, they will indicate to you people whom they trust and whose opinion they listen to. Often the interests of the target audience coincide with the opinions of experts.

You can use monitoring services that provide additional information about the number of subscribers and influencer ratings. If your target audience is very narrow, then it is important to sort either by key queries or by a specific topic of content that this or that influencer publishes.

## How to negotiate and communicate effectively with opinion leaders

> “Opinion leaders are people. And all communication with them is people to people, per-to-per.”

To work effectively with influencers, you need to build trust between a brand, a company representative and a certain person. These relationships are built on the principles of mutual benefit.

The advent of social media has made it easier to find, communicate, and connect with opinion leaders. But at the same time, no one canceled the element of trust. If for some reason you could not agree with the influencer you wanted to attract, find people in your environment who could recommend you and improve relations with the person.

This is an interpersonal relationship, so it is important to fine-tune communication. The further effectiveness of his interaction with your target audience depends on the opinion leader's perception of your company.
Try to be useful to a specific influencer and provide all possible information about your product or service. Give the product for testing so that the person knows exactly what you want to convey to the public.

At the same time, do not openly impose a product and do not focus solely on financial components and on the benefits of a particular opinion leader. It is important to build trust in you and your company, to identify the influencer's interest in interacting with your brand and product. If you do not achieve this, you will receive very dry feedback or communication that will be supported solely by financial motives and will not have the desired effect.

## Options for cooperation with opinion leaders

There are three options for working with influencers:

- financial motivation.
- commodity-material relations.
- free promotion of your product.

The third is solely the result of the formed trust, which depends on your personal communication. But here it is important to remember that "free cheese" may well be the expected "mousetrap". Especially when personal relationships collapse or when the opinion leader will have a completely different result than the one that was originally laid down in communication.

The most trivial way to interact with an influencer is money or paid posts. The mechanics are simple. You contact an opinion leader, agree on specific conditions, offer certain rewards for hidden or native advertising of products. If this does not contradict the life principles and moral character of the opinion leader, then you will achieve a result.
An important point is to give an understanding that a certain involvement in this communication must be obtained from the opinion leader.

> “The more sincerely the opinion leader will talk about your product, the more the target audience will believe in this product and you will get a better result.”

The second option is inventory items that can be presented as a gift to an opinion leader. This can form a small, short human communication with your target audience.
Typically, this method is used in the fashion and lifestyle industry, where a gift is a small element of communication with the audience. An opinion leader can talk about his emotions when receiving a gift, share his impression about the product: what he liked, what he didn’t like.

At the same time, it is important that the process itself should be emotionally filled.

> “The higher the emotion of the opinion leader himself, the stronger the effect will be achieved in the communication that the opinion leader develops.”

The third option is free promotion. If you are interesting and useful to the opinion leader, then it will not be difficult to persuade him to publish a post about your product.

## Principles of working with opinion leaders

There are several principles of working with opinion leaders:
- Define your target audience and see which people they trust. Start communicating with these influencers.
- Choose quality leaders, don't chase stars with a huge number of followers. Perhaps they will treat you and your product with some condescension, showing their superiority. In communication with opinion leaders, trust and a certain friendly atmosphere are important. Start with less popular personalities.
- Make everything beautiful. In communication with an opinion leader, the state that you cause in a person is also important. If he trusts you, treats you warmly, then the tone of communication with your target audience will also be permeated with these feelings.
- Be sure to follow the opinion leaders.
- Always be honest.
- Don't place high hopes on them.

This is where communication is important. The more often you communicate with influencers, the better you understand them and can bring more trust and friendly notes into your relationship. Also, you must broadcast your attitude towards the influencer to his audience.

## Alternatives to face-to-face communication with influencers

If it’s hard for you to personally communicate with specific opinion leaders, then services such as Publicfast (which was mentioned above) allow you to quickly and efficiently find your target audience.

You can register there under the name of the brand and start interacting with the audience you are interested in.

Instead of a conclusion

Opinion leaders are not dogma. This is a separate communication channel that will allow a business to be more effective on the Internet. By collaborating with influencers, you speed up the moment of delivering information and build trust. Influencers share their trust and translate it into a brand or business, which adds value to your product.