In the beginning was the word: The purpose of public relations

“Let’s get people talking about us!” That’s the goal of all public relations (PR). PR firms have existed since at least the year 1900, serving as something of the right hand to advertising’s left. For decades, the distinction between the two was easy to understand: Advertising was something you paid for, and publicity was something you earned.

The job of a PR agent is to build awareness for her client by “earning” it, which means creating press or buzz that builds organically. For example, a PR agent representing a new line of organic makeup might pitch editors at beauty magazines. She sends the editors makeup samples along with information about the products in the hopes that the editors will love what they get. If the editors love the products, they might feature the makeup line in an unpaid, editorial section of the magazine — in other words, an article. Maybe the founders of the new makeup line will be featured in an article about industry innovators. Or maybe one of the products will make it onto an “Editor’s Picks” list, featuring the best new products on the market.

Landing a feature in the Editor’s Picks list is earned placement: The cosmetics company didn’t pay for it — they earned the respect of the magazine editors based on the merits of their product. You can imagine how much this type of endorsement would mean for a brand! A glossy ad in a magazine might grab a reader’s attention, but the reader might not believe the ad’s claims. After all, the reader knows the ad was designed by advertising professionals, and she knows the cosmetics company paid for it. On the other hand, she loves the Editor’s Picks list. She trusts that the editor spent time and effort considering which products to include on that list and recognizes the editor as an authority in the industry. She may even tear out the list and bring it with her the next time she goes shopping for makeup. She’ll definitely try this product.

This is essentially how press mentions have worked for years. Magazine editors at all kinds of publications receive press releases and products every day from people who want their clients, companies, brands, products, or ideas noticed. They want to be written about favorably by authoritative figures who readers trust.

Word of mouth: The holy grail of marketing

If you see a flyer for a new café that just opened downtown claiming to serve “the best sandwiches ever,” you may or may not believe the café’s claim. Of course the café is going to say that, right?

But what if your best friend tells you he just ate “the best sandwich ever” at the new café downtown? Not only would you be more likely to believe his claim, but you might make a point to remember the café’s name and consider it the next time you’re eating lunch nearby.

That’s word-of-mouth marketing at its most basic: People trust recommendations from friends and family. Friends and family influence our purchasing decisions. Word-of-mouth recommendations are incredibly effective.

Unfortunately, brands face two great challenges when trying to generate great word of mouth:

• They can’t guarantee that any given consumer will mention their product or brand, even if the consumer truly enjoys their products. Data shows that people are far more likely to share bad brand experiences than good ones.
• There is no way to force word-of-mouth marketing to happen on a grand scale. Getting dozens, hundreds, or thousands of people to know about your company, let alone talk about it, is difficult.

As brands tried to solve for these challenges, they planted the seeds for today’s influencer marketing.

Enter social media: Take it to the people!

Blogging was the foundation of social media, but it took several years and many failed attempts for PR professionals to truly understand how working with bloggers could revolutionize word-of-mouth marketing. At first, it was just kind of messy.

Blogging came to prominence in the United States at the turn of the 21st century. Political blogging gained traction and credibility during the tumultuous post-9/11 era, when bloggers began covering the news in ways traditional media outlets weren’t (ironically, becoming newsworthy themselves in the process). In the first few years of the century, blogging ushered in a new era of Internet usage:

• More and more people gained high-speed Internet access, including at the office, and the demand for fresh content surged. Sites like Gawker (www.gawker.com), which launched in 2002, were instantly popular.
• Modern web design made it easier than ever for people to create blogs and to comment on them. WordPress (www.wordpress.com) and Blogger (www.blogger.com), two popular blog platforms still widely used today, were launched in 2003. They allowed people to publish blogs without needing to know how to build or design a web page.
• Blog readers loved the ability to comment and enter into discussions with blog writers and other readers. The concept of active online engagement took hold. Users were no longer passive; they were part of the conversation.

By 2005, The New York Times reported that more than 30 million Americans were reading blogs regularly. Advertisers and PR professionals took notice. A whole new world had opened up to these industries. Almost overnight, a new way of reaching consumers had come into existence. Instead of having to work with the editors in charge of print or online publications, PR agents could work directly with prominent bloggers directly.

So they tried.

On the surface, blogs didn’t look much different from traditional media. Instead of magazine editors, there were bloggers. Instead of print circulation numbers, blogs had daily or monthly visitors. And just like traditional publications, blogs focused on specific, sometimes niche topics that made it easy to target the right client with the right publication.

Except it turned out that blogging is actually vastly different from traditional press, for many reasons — reasons that PR professionals learned the hard way. Because, despite the fact that blogging was a truly new online medium (with so many possibilities for changing traditional PR), most PR agencies managed bloggers and blogger outreach exactly the same way they’d been managing press outreach for decades. And it didn’t work very well:

• Bloggers aren’t media outlets — they’re human beings telling personal stories on personal websites. Back when blogging was new, bloggers didn’t understand why a PR rep would interrupt or “invade” their personal space with impersonal requests.
• PR reps often got bloggers’ names wrong, or wouldn’t take time to learn about a blogger’s niche. This further alienated bloggers from wanting to work with PR companies.
• Bloggers aren’t journalists looking for the next big “scoop.” They don’t need content suggestions from companies.
• For the most part, if a blogger is going to voluntarily write about a product she loves, she’ll do so without prompting. If a brand reaches out to a blogger with the express intention of the blogger writing about them, the brand needs to approach the blogger as a professional, and enter into a professional relationship.

Because of this, most of the first PR pitches to bloggers fell on deaf ears, went unanswered, or (worst of all!) were published on public blogs and circulated among bloggers as what not to do. When a well-respected tech blogger known for her childfree, vegan lifestyle was approached by a meat company touting child-friendly recipes, you can bet she posted that pitch on her blog!

Of course, PR reps and brands eventually learned how to win favor with bloggers. And those early mistakes paved the way for what would eventually become influencer marketing.

What influencer marketing is

Let’s break down the definition of influencer marketing and dig a little deeper:

• “The art and science of engaging people …”: What makes influencer marketing so special is that it’s about engaging real people. The Internet in general, and social media platforms in particular, have made it easy for anyone to be an expert or build a community over which she has influence. Influence is no longer the sole territory of celebrities, newscasters, athletic stars, politicians, big brands, or publications.

  The challenge is that real people aren’t necessarily marketers. They aren’t companies. They aren’t even press. Real people don’t tend to have professional relationships with brands.

  So, brands and marketers can’t reach out to real people to engage with them the way they would reach out to magazine editors. Instead, they have to approach real people in a human way.

• “… who are influential online …”: Just who, exactly, is influential online? Who is a “social media influencer”? The answer depends on why you’re asking, who you’re trying to influence, and what you want them to do. Sometimes, influence can be measured by statistics (like number of followers), but more often than not, true influence is measured in qualitative data as much as (if not more than) quantitative data. Numbers tell one story; specifically, that a person posts enough content of interest to attract a certain number of readers. But we don’t always know where those numbers come from. Maybe an influencer posted one story that generated a lot of followers, but readers never came back? Or maybe a blogger attracts many monthly followers because of great search engine marketing, but readers aren’t “sticky” (they don’t stay on the site long or return to the site). Qualitative data, such as regular commenters who are deeply engaged with a blogger’s content, tells a much fuller story than numbers alone.
• “… to share brand messaging with their audiences in the form of sponsored content”: The message brands want influencers to share may be very specific and boilerplate, or it may be very loose and fluid. For example, a brand may:
  • Offer a downloadable coupon and ask influencers to share that coupon with their audience.
  • Create a video and ask influencers to share that video. Or the brand may want influencers to watch the video, and then offer their opinions of the video while also sharing it with their readers.
  • Ask bloggers to sample and write a review of a product. That review may have to include specific language about the product (provided by the brand). Or the brand may give the blogger complete flexibility in the language he uses. (This is still considered “brand messaging” because the blogger’s message is about the brand’s product.)
  • Ask social media influencers to photograph or write a story about a concept that reinforces a brand’s message: For instance, say a beverage brand is eager to be perceived as fun and stylish. Instead of seeking reviews, the brand may engage influencers to creatively showcase their relevance using a brand-approved hashtag.

The idea of influencer marketing is that, once an influencer shares something, her audience is inspired to take action. Action may take the form of something small, such as noting and remembering a brand name (which may lead to brand recognition, familiarity, and purchase at a future date). Action may be immediate, such as a blog reader commenting on a sponsored blog post or sharing an influencer’s post on Facebook. In some cases, an audience member may be inspired to purchase a reviewed product then and there, and take action in the form of clicking a “Buy Now” link. Each of these actions may be a desired outcome of an influencer marketing program.

Influencer marketing leverages our ability to communicate with the world at once through any number of platforms. Specifically, influencer marketing solves almost all traditional PR problems, as well as the more modern PR and marketing challenges that emerged along with social media.

People trust word-of-mouth marketing more than any other kind of marketing, but it’s challenging for PR professionals because it’s hard to predict and impossible to guarantee. Online influencers changed all this. Sponsored blog posts, tweets, Facebook updates, and Instagram pictures are all forms of word-of-mouth marketing. It makes sense for brands to enter into relationships with influencers where both their participation and the results (how many people they’ll reach on any given medium) are guaranteed. Press releases and traditional media outlets never gave this kind of guarantee.

Plus, influencer marketing is a boon to the influencers themselves. Unlike back in the early days of blogging, when a blogger’s only hope for revenue came from banner ads over which she had no creative control, today anyone who has developed an online audience can expect to work with brands collaboratively, and to be paid accordingly for their work.

What influencer marketing is not

In some ways, influencer marketing seems like the next generation of celebrity endorsements — except instead of glossy ads, we’re talking about endorsements that occur online and through social media. But the difference between the old and new world of endorsements isn’t just a matter of technological advances: Audiences everywhere are far more media savvy today than they ever were, and the success of online influencers is dependent on their transparency and authenticity.

Celebrities aside, most people who’ve grown to be influential online have done so because they connect to their audiences in genuine ways. They tell honest stories, share real-life photos, and make videos that resonate with everyday people.

There are two primary misconceptions about what influencer marketing is or should be. We tell you what influencer marketing is not in the following sections.

Paid media

You could argue that if a brand is paying influencers to write about them following brand guidelines, then yes, it’s paid media. What’s the difference between paying a top-influencing Instagrammer to photograph a product and post it to her account, and paying an advertising agency to photograph a product and post it as an ad online?

On the other hand, influencers aren’t advertising agencies. They’re real people and the only way their posts will be considered effective is if they seem real to their audiences. A brand can’t control the message the influencer creates — otherwise, the message misses the point. Plus, there’s no easy way to scale influencer marketing at the same rate you can with an ad. Advertisers can use a marketplace and, for a fee, click a button to have a single ad served millions of times. It’s much more time consuming to work with individual influencers to create content that’s custom to them and their readers.

When brands assume that influencer marketing must be paid media,

• Brands want complete creative control of the content, as opposed to handing the reins to the influencers.
• Content becomes too ad-like and, therefore, less effective.
• Advertisers get frustrated over lack of scalability. Instead of working with one agency on one creative plan, you’re working with as many influencers as you choose — sometimes hundreds — and they all have their own creative processes.

Owned media

Brands are engaging with influencers, asking them to behave as an extension of their own social media marketing efforts. Influencers may be asked to amplify a brand’s social media posts or to comment on them. It’s very easy to see how hiring social media influencers could fall under the umbrella of a brand’s owned social media — especially if the content that influencers create is then repurposed or syndicated on the brand’s own media channels.

On the other hand, even though brands are paying and instructing influencers to create media, brands still don’t “own” the content the way they would if they were creating it themselves. For instance, if a food brand contracts a blogger to create a unique recipe and post it to her blog, is that content “owned” by the brand or the influencer? They may have a legal agreement stating that the brand may use her content, but the content has authentic value to consumers specifically because it was not created by the brand. Plus, if a brand is used to considering owned media more or less free (except for staffing/resource expenditures), it’s nearly impossible to justify cash outlays for influencers.

When brands assume that influencer marketing must be owned media,

• There is little to no budget or resource allocation for managing the influencer program.
• Brands want to own the content the influencers create.

Earned media

Brands engage influencers so that their audiences will take action. One way brands measure success of influencer marketing programs is by how much engagement they receive. For example, consider the case of a food brand that contracts a blogger to create a unique recipe and post it to her blog. Say the blog post received 15 comments, was retweeted 257 times on Twitter, and pinned over 5,000 times on Pinterest. That’s a tremendous amount of earned media!

Sometimes brands don’t require that influencers do anything. Just as with the old public relations model, sometimes brands simply send bloggers a product. There is no guarantee the blogger will review that product or mention it on her social media channels. If she decides she wants to, that’s entirely her choice — and definitely earned.

On the other hand, when the influencer has been contracted and compensated by a brand, the influencer’s audience creates the “earned” media, not the influencer herself. Her content is paid, but when her readers share her content with their readers, those shares are earned. So if, for example, a blogger is paid to promote a new ice cream and shares a coupon with her readers, and then her readers share the coupon with their friends on Facebook, those Facebook shares may be considered earned.

When a brand sends a product or press release to an influencer with no contracted expectation of coverage, this approach tends to yield poor, inconsistent results. The very reason influencer marketing is gaining traction is because brands can move away from the earned approach and experience amazing results.

When brands assume that influencer marketing must be earned media,

• They approach influencers with a “spray and pray” mindset (throw tons of pitches out to influencers willy-nilly and hope that some of them take desired actions).
• The program results are mixed and inconsistent.
• Influencers don’t take the opportunity seriously. It’s easy to blow off or ignore.