Everyone has influence. But not everyone makes a difference.
The totality of our experience gives us a wealth of narratives about influence. The way we deal with our lives everyday would tell a lot of story on how we were influenced by few yet significant people. People we met either casually or occasionally. People we watched on television or movies or read in the books, or on magazines. People we browsed on social media gaining viral ripples of their posts and winning vast throng of followers.
Everytime they speak, we intently listen. Every thought they write, we avidly read. And everything they do, we tend to blindly follow. As we make choices everyday, either big or small, they seem to give us a hint or a signal on what to do. Consciously or unconsciously, they have changed our perspective. Gradually or swiftly, they have shaped our lives. These are the social influencers – either a conventional or social media type.
On one hand, I call it ‘conventional’ because in not-so-distant past before the influx of internet technology, the personalities we come in contact with may have touched our lives in the most ordinary ways. Either he was teacher in school or a coach in your chosen sports. He may be a local politician giving out promises during campaign or a priest known for his eloquent homilies.
And in the context of traditional media, they may have appeared as celebrities on television and movies. Or journalists in print media, novel writers and inspirational book authors. All of them we looked up to as role models because in one way or the other, they had touched a chord within us and somehow transformed our lives through the power of their influence.
On other hand, influencers nowadays are born of social media held in the cradle of cyber technology. As one website defined it, “a social media influencer is a user on social media who has established credibility in a specific industry, has access to a huge audience and can persuade others to act based on their recommendations.(https://www.pixlee.com/definitions/definition-social-media-influencer)
The Bipolar Impact of Social Influence
What used to be a more confined species of influencers has now metamorphosed into a new and broader breed of social influencers through the massive entry of social media technology. Eventually, it brings about a dual way of looking up to two types of influencers as role models in our lives. If not managed carefully, we may fall into the trap of blind following due to some issues on authenticity and reasonability.
These two poles of influencers have their own way of reaching to their audience with their own personal brands. For example, during his time, it took a lot of efforts and time for Don Sergio Osmeña Sr., to become a bar topnotcher, provincial fiscal, governor, congressman, Senate president, vice president and by succession, president of the Philippines before we could lay a claim the he is a political icon, a historical figure and great social influencer not only for Cebu but across the country and in all generations to come.
Whereas, it will only take a few minutes for a Cebuano blogger or social media activist to post on Facebook, twitter or Instagram, a video or pictures with a very compelling political content to become a social media influencer. Lo and behold, after few seconds, it will go viral. In hours, the engagements will rise exponentially. And in a few days the breadth of its reach and the depth of its social penetration will go higher, unimaginably by millions.
In the olden days, our social influencers were those individuals who had direct engagement in our daily life. For example, people belonging to generation X would tell us stories about their parents, teachers, priests and community leaders and other individuals who may have shaped their belief system and whose physical presence motivated them to become what the are today.
By contrast, the social influencers in today’s environment are morphing into a wider spectrum of personalities: the bloggers or vloggers, TV stars, journalists, social activists, photographers, innovation thinkers, mainstream celebrities. They glide and thrive along the cyberspace with their online presence pushing their thoughts, conveying their message and depicting their crafts without physical interfacing.
For conventional social influencers, what they usually talked about were the fundamental teachings of human life. We listened to them because of the social values they embraced and political beliefs they espoused; we looked up to them because of their deeper grasp of culture and broader sense of history and; we were inspired by them because of their love for the country and devotion of their religious belief.
However, the disparity widens into the realm of “Influencer Marketing” where social media influencers are now tapped by companies to push their brands to the target or niche market. Social influencing has been veering away from one pole of value-driven, principle-based into another pole of market-driven, business-based social influencing.
The Covenant of Social Influencers
Foremost, the very challenge for influencers — social media-based or otherwise — is how to sustain the responsibilities attendant to being a social influencer. It comes with it a promise to the audience for whom a social influencer would push an idea, advertise a product or call for an action. It is a covenant between the social influencer and the social recipients for the former to be true to his mission and the latter to faithfully fulfill the promise bestowed upon them.
Seven Cardinal Rules For Social Influencers.
For this covenant to have a breath of life, both in letter and spirit, I devise seven cardinal rules for social influencers to observe, to wit:
- Know thyself. You must be able to a gain a degree of self-awareness on the value and extent of your influence. You must go through the process of self-examination on what you possess in terms of value proposition and the sphere of your influence.
- Earn the trust of your recipients. Once you are aware of your influence, gain the trust of your followers. Earn it by communicating your identity and your relevance to their lives. Any iota of doubt about you will certainly tear off apart the trust your have earned.
- Educate your audience. As a social influencer, you have the obligation to impart knowledge with your ideas and thoughts and inform them truthfully about your product and skills. The more you educate your audience, the wider your knowledge will become.
- Be authentic in your campaign. When you are in touch with your online or direct audience, always show who you are and talk to them from the your essence. Any shade of doubt of your identity and what you stand for will adversely affect the mindset of your well-nursed followers.
- Embrace integrity at all times, in all climes. The challenge is not how to show integrity before your online followers. The most difficult is how to maintain integrity within the corners of your private life. But it will not sustain your as it will get your true self exposed sooner than expected. Thus, you must act with integrity both in public and private, at all times.
- Lead the way by example. What differs a great influencer from the mediocre is the action on his proposition. If you are a social activist with anti-corruption advocacy, be sure that you are not corrupting, however unintentional, the mind of your children by bribing’ them with material things to compensate the quality time you failed to spend with them.
- Always seek an opportunity to serve. As a social influencer, your role is not only to influence your converts with your innovative thoughts; with what products you use; and with what ideology you espouse. A great social influencer is he who is willing to be of service to others.
The seven cardinal rules for social influencers have reverberated through different climes even before the internet age. Regardless of what era you belong or what type of influencer you are, these principles still hold true today and will always find their applicability in the years to come with or without the intervention of information technology. After all, social media technology is only a tool to broaden the reach of your influence and deepen its impact on the lives of your recipients.
And the final test of a great social influencer is the difference he brings into the lives of men and women.
Be an in influence. But make a difference.
