{"id":1146,"date":"2021-02-07T17:09:17","date_gmt":"2021-02-07T14:09:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/persona.qcri.org\/blog\/?p=1146"},"modified":"2021-06-24T10:03:29","modified_gmt":"2021-06-24T07:03:29","slug":"the-what-why-and-how-of-influencers-and-personas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/persona.qcri.org\/blog\/the-what-why-and-how-of-influencers-and-personas\/","title":{"rendered":"The What, Why, and How of Influencers and Personas!"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you are a marketer who has grown tired of routinely targeted marketing messages or if you are simply looking for a way to boost your brand awareness and try something new for your marketing strategy, then read on! Influencers may be for you!\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

If you are an influencer or want to be one, then this article is also for you!\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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A tech-savvy social media influencer at work Source: <\/span>Unsplash<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

We explain the concept of an influencer, how using personas can provide insight, why it is important, and how the <\/span>Automatic Persona Generation<\/span><\/a> (APG) system can help generate personas for influencers easier, faster, and better!\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Now the next question on your mind might be \u201cSo, what exactly is a persona?\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

An ideal persona is a proxy for a person. The person is the targeted user group, audience, or customer segment. An ideal persona both describes a segment and predicts the segment\u2019s behavior<\/span>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Understanding influencer marketing and personas<\/b><\/h2>\n

So, personas for an influencer essentially are pictorial representations of the characteristics of an influencer\u2019s audience! These influencer audience personas can help influencers in crafting their social media posts and have more focused messages for their audience.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Next obvious question – what is an influencer? <\/span>\u00a0An <\/i><\/b>influencer is anyone<\/i><\/b><\/a> who has the power and ability to change consumer behaviors and impact buying decisions through the content they share.\u00a0<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

If you have used major social media platforms such as Instagram or Facebook, you must have seen accounts of individual users who have a large following promoting different products or services.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Take an example of the following Instagram profile of <\/span>Sierra Dallas<\/span><\/a>. She has a whopping 1.5 million people who follow (like or interact with her posts) on Instagram<\/span><\/p>\n

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Figure from the Instagram account of Sierra Dallas<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Apart from sharing updates from her daily life, she also frequently collaborates with companies to promote their products or services. Take an example of a watch from <\/span>Daniel Wellington<\/span><\/a> which she promoted a while back.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Sierra Dallas<\/a> promoting a watch through her Instagram account<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As you can see within 39 minutes from promoting the watch, her post had 9000 likes. What we do not see from the above image are also interactions from users who might have not liked the post but would have still clicked on the link above and subsequently bought the watch.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The whole idea behind influencer marketing is that companies collaborate with individual users from Instagram, Facebook, or YouTube who have a large user following to promote their products and service offerings.\u00a0<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

Some characteristics of an influencer persona<\/b><\/h2>\n

More often than not, influencers generally have the following in common:<\/span><\/p>\n