Social Media Marketing, and "social authority"
Building “social authority” is one of the main components in successful social media marketing implementation. Social authority is established when an organization or an individual defines themselves as an “expert” in their given area or field, thus becoming an “influencer” in that area.
One of the basic concepts in social media is that you cannot completely control your message through social media. Rather, you can start to participate in the “conversation” with the desire to become relevant in that conversation. It is through this process of building social authority that social media becomes effective.
People are generally resistant to marketing in general. They often are even more resistant to overt marketing or direct marketing through social media platforms, therefore; this conversation participation needs to be cleverly executed. In order to successfully build social authority, providing credibility is extremely important. Typically marketers cannot expect their audience to be receptive to the marketing message in itself. The majority of respondents, 58% in the 2008 Edleman Trust Barometer, reported they most trusted a product or company with information coming from “people like me.” This inferred to be information from someone they trusted.
Conversely, the 2010 Trust report showed that the majority switched and 64% and preferred their information from industry academics and experts. According to Inc. Technology's Brent Leary, "This loss of trust, and the accompanying turn towards experts and authorities, seems to be coinciding with the rise of social media and networks." The 2010 Trust study implies that it is most effective if marketing efforts through social media revolve around the genuine building of authority. Therefore, anyone performing a marketing role within a company must genuinely convince people of their knowledge, intentions and expertise in a specific industry or area through providing accurate information on a continual basis. When this can be done regularly with trust, the message itself eventually begins to develop naturally.
This organization or person becomes a value provider and a thought leader. They are able to set themselves up as a trusted “advisor” instead of a marketer. The consumer naturally begins to gravitate to the offerings or products of the influencer as “top of mind awareness” develops. There are a variety of ways that authority can be created including: utilizing social networks on platform like Twitter, and Facebook, participating in Wikipedia, as this verifies user-generated content and information, providing fact-based answers on social question and answer sites such as Yahoo! Answers and EHow as well as article writing and distribution through sites such as Scribd and Ezine Articles.
Due to the indirect or direct influence of social media marketers and as a result of social media, consumers are more likely or as likely to make purchasing decisions based on what they see and read in social platforms but only when presented by an authority we have grown to trust. This is one of the main reasons why a purposeful and carefully designed social media strategy has become an integral part of any directed marketing plan. It must be designed using newer “authority building” techniques to be completed appropriately.
