Our office is always quite a lovely and chaotic place to be in. Even though we (Taxumo) deal with one of the most tedious and complicated processes in a business or a freelancer’s life, our team still remains joyous and positive about this reality. We still have our daily banters and laughs. One of the things that we talked about recently was to urge one of us, Kuya Jojo, to be an influencer. And I really think that he could be one!

Since we’re talking about influencers, I’d love to share my opinion on such a term.

I think that each one of us has the ability to “influence” another individual. Hey, I could influence my husband right this instant, but probably not when it comes to exercising… haha! The thing about influencing is that WE could ALL possibly do it given we have these things.

1. Right audience: When I say the RIGHT audience, it means that the person has a receptive audience who trusts him/her. As you know, trust is built over time, and trusting a person stems from a previously established relationship or at least from borrowed trust from another person or entity (example: referred by another trusted friend, or they have mutual friends, etc.).
2. Right message: RIGHT message means content that triggers a response from the audience, and this may be because it’s a shared, relatable experience. It may be something also that appeals to the emotion of the chosen audience.
3. Right timing: If you want to get people to buy a cold drink, the perfect time will be on a hot day. If you want to get people to go to the gym, the perfect time to tell them will probably be after the holidays. Timing is very important in convincing people to do a certain action.
4. Right “messenger”: Which I will expound on more below!

Now looking at people whom we consider influencers, you’ll notice that what differentiates any Tom, Dick and Harry from them is just basically the scale of their influence. But don’t mistake the scale of influence with the number of followers. One may have a massive amount of followers and yet, still have a minimal scale of influence.

The thing though about Influencer Marketing is that only a few get to see its benefits. And as a marketer, it’s mostly because of the lack of tracking of metrics and key performance indicators. Understandably so, we can’t tell the influencer to wear a shoe that she endorses and give a code to everyone who compliments her shoe. That would just be a bit too forced! But we all still try our best (brands, agencies, influencers) to work towards understanding how influencer marketing can work for all of us.

In this journey of understanding the world of influencers, many have become disappointed and disheartened.

My personal belief is that a lot of confusion stems from the fact that the term “influencers” itself is a bit unclear and confusing for many (since we always think it’s the number of followers). A lot of the content creators who strive to be “influencers” end up disheartened when they don’t easily get to their target number of people. A lot of brands and agencies are also disappointed because the influencer-strategy that they implemented didn’t result to achieving their target objectives.

Instead of striving to be Influencers, strive to be Thought Leaders. The reason why I like this term is that it involves not only gaining a number of followers, but going to the extent of being an authority or an expert in a certain field. People will naturally will flock to you because of what you know and the value that you can give them. With the exchange of values, a true relationship is built.

I also like this the term thought leaders, because it feels like these people are thought of to be partners of the brands who commission them. These people think of ways on how to improve the industry, improve the lives of their followers — basically, they truly and genuinely care.

Maybe the change of terminology will help, or maybe it won’t. These things actually make the world of marketing and advertising such a fun industry, don’t you think? 🙂

Hope I influenced you today. 🙂