Influencer marketing is an increasingly common endeavor for any company seeking to make a splash with a new product or service. As new research from the University of Pennsylvania shows, however, it’s often not quite as straightforward as we might think.
Indeed, the study suggests that while influencers are hugely popular, they’re unlikely to actually change someone’s behavior simply by virtue of the example they set. Indeed, they may even do more harm than good.
“When social influencers present ideas that are dissonant with their followers’ worldviews—say, for example, that vaccination is safe and effective—they can unintentionally antagonize the people they are seeking to persuade because people typically only follow influencers whose ideas confirm their beliefs about the world,” the researchers say.
Planting ideas
The study examines who are the most influential people in any social network and finds that it is often the individuals we would least expect. To truly shape opinion, they argue that the best people to target are small groups on the fringes of the network.
The findings emerged after examining over 400 public health networks to understand how ideas and behaviors spread. They tested a huge range of possible permutations to understand who would be most effective at spreading the memes.
“Dozens of algorithms that are currently used by enterprises seeking to spread new ideas are based on the fallacy that everything spreads virally,” the researchers say. “But this study shows that the ability for information to pass through a social network depends on what type of information it is.”
In other words, while influencers are great for spreading easily digestible and uncontroversial tittle-tattle, they are far less effective at spreading information that may challenge the beliefs of their followers.
“Our big discovery,” the researchers conclude, “is that every network has a hidden social cluster in the outer edges that is perfectly poised to increase the spread of a new idea by several hundred percent. These social clusters are ground zero for triggering tipping points in society.”
