According to a new Social Networking report from Hitwise, we will see the “emergence of the ‘super’ brand advocate” in 2008.
Whether via a personal blog or as a key member within a community, super-advocates are well informed, opinionated and have the ability to make or break a product launch or ruin a hard-earned reputation.
This sounds scary. But it also sounds just like a 2007 Yahoo! MediaVest study that (misguidedly) tried to coin the term a “Passionista”:
… highly-engaged consumers called “Passionistas” are much more likely than typical consumers to create and share content online about their passions and the brands associated with them. By tapping into the power of Passionistas, marketers have a unique opportunity to engage these credible, influential advocates to spread brand messages through digital media.
Because of their intense engagement around sharing information about their passions through digital media, Passionistas are natural brand advocates and 52% more likely than typical users to recommend or influence others about brands aligning with them.
Passionastas, super-advocates, influencers, brand ambassadors… whatever you call them, they aren’t new to the scene. Online editorial outreach to bloggers and discussion communities has been a cornerstone of our Digital team’s work for a while now (check out the Nokia Trend Lab/Hyves case study from our Amsterdam office). However social networks are centralizing youth online communications. Many young people are skipping the personal website route, opting to microblogging on a Tumblr page, a Twitter feed, a Facebook group… probably all of the above. One point to note is that these advocates who are “creating and sharing” are much more likely to be female. They are the real communicators online, and hence are wielding more and more power.
These niche channels are becoming increasingly defined, making it a lot harder for marketers to monitor online conversations. Indeed, Passionistas are popping up everywhere. Thankfully such aggregators as Relevant Mind, a search tool for online verticals, can help collect and mine all that data. As discussed within our Digital Media Council today, there are even a number of ways to monitor Twitter including Tweetscan.com, TwitterTroll.com, and quotably.com (to name a few of many). Now that we’re monitoring Twitter, outreach can’t be far behind (if it’s not already here). The long tail just keeps growing longer. How micro will we go?
Another question: is this annoying? or welcome? The Hitwise report notes that marketers should “court” super-advocates “carefully”:
One word of caution: super-advocates will be high maintenance because they know that they hold all of the cards and, if badly handled, brands will have an influential detractor on their hands. Marketers must be prepared to do everything in their power to keep these key influencers onside and set aside marketing budgets to court them.
Everything in their power? Wow. We hope these micro-super-influencing-advocating-ambassabloggeristas don’t start getting big egos or anything. What they will be getting a lot of though = shwag.
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