Being a #Eventprof Influencer — by our Event Manager Contributor
For this week’s contributor blog topic, our event manager contributor explores influencer marketing in events. Here are her thoughts on being a event professional influencer and how to get started in influencer marketing;
“Word of mouth has always been identified as a very powerful and leading marketing tool — you trust your friends (well you should) and endorsement by someone who knows their stuff is key — the question is who does know their stuff and who is just shouting about being an “influencer” in our events world? In general, the topic of influencers in our event world is interesting now with lots of debate over what it means to be one, who should we be following in our #eventprofs community and more importantly how do you become one?
It’s quite ironic that when I put out a post on LinkedIn to my connections asking for their thoughts on what it means to be an influencer not one person commented. It is ironic because I currently sit 5th place out of 650 #eventprofs in a social media influencer table and surely if I was that much of an influencer then someone would have commented?! Social media influencer tables, I am sorry to tell you won’t highlight someone whom knows their stuff ahead of someone whom can share a hilarious dog video on their Facebook account therefore raising their “Klout”. Anyone social media savvy knows that your Klout score (the measure of your influence) is based on the interaction on each of your connected social media profiles. The more interaction, the higher the score and thus the higher you move up the influencer table and have yourself a lovely high Klout score. As mentioned above, everyone loves a dog video and if you ever need to boost your score, share one… trust me! A high Klout score does recognise influencers but do try to remember that doesn’t necessarily mean they are sharing content relevant to our events world!
In our industry, I strongly believe those we deem influencers should know their stuff. They should have spent time working in the industry and they should have a following that has grown steadily, one follower at a time, organically (believe me there are a few people assigned to the #eventprofs world that have clearly bought followers ha ha). To me, I am influenced by people whom offer their own insights, advice and opinions. I am influenced by people whom highlight new trends in the events world and bring new thoughts and ideas to our world and most importantly, they have their own experience in the industry to back it up. They aren’t just regurgitating information, they are adding value and experience and to me, that is how you become a recognised influencer. Know your stuff and provide valuable insights, based on experience. We have one of the most amazingly creative roles, the sky’s the limit in regards of content we can share and offer our own opinions on.
Being a recognised influencer can grow from having a strong network that you, yourself are an influencer in. I believe you should try and build your network and encourage the promotion and support of those people within your network… a kind of pay it forward. You are helping our industry by actively promoting and supporting those people whom influence you, people whom make an impact on your career and whom help you with their knowledge and incites.
One of my top tips, would be to look for micro influencers, those with perhaps a smaller following but when they do post they have a lot of engagement. The ones that are sharing information and offering opinions. Those are the ones that work the best and you will gain far more knowledge from them. The people working day in and day out in events roles, whichever part of our fabulous events industry they work in. Look for how they engage with their followers, do they respond to questions and offer useful incite or do they just post for posting’s sake! Let’s support those that have crafted beautiful careers for themselves in our fabulous events world! There are a lot of them, just do your research.”
