THE AGE OF INFLUENCE

A practical handbook for those looking to leverage the power of social media influencers to advance their brands.

According to Schaffer, an instructor at Rutgers Business School, the marketing power of influencers is a natural consequence of the world’s “digital transformation.” The barriers to content creation and its publication and distribution have never been lower, which has resulted in an unprecedented democratization of the online marketplace. Influencers, he notes, often possess more power than celebrities and brands, as they convey an “authenticity and human touch” and “emotional resonance” that’s difficult to replicate. The author explains that extraordinary opportunities exist if one knows how to leverage the power of influencers with not only a targeted advertising campaign, but also the deep engagement with an online community: “This concept of community…underlies a fundamental mind-set shift,” he writes. “Building a community is a longer-lasting way to gather people around your brand or product. Once you’ve established a community, any campaign you launch has a foundation to start with and a cumulative effect to follow.” To that end, Schaffer provides an impressively thorough tour of the influencer’s cosmos; he describes, in lucid but granular detail, the various kinds of influencers, the most effective ways to find and contact them, and 16 different strategies for collaborating with them. The book’s orientation is relentlessly practical throughout, and the author provides actionable counsel on influencer discovery tools and marketplaces, the use of agencies, and the most effective ways to measure one’s returns. Nevertheless, for all the analytical minutiae, the author remains focused, sometimes to the point of redundancy, on the big picture—the “grand scheme of your social media strategy to holistically understand the layout of the landscape and where influencers fit in.”

Schaffer has considerable experience as a marketing educator, consultant, and influencer in his own right, and his tone over the course of this book radiates the reasonable self-assurance of expertise. Despite the brevity of the work, it still manages to be astonishingly thorough, and it’s written in an informal, accessible style that doesn’t assume any special knowledge on the part of the reader. The work could be even shorter, in fact, as the author has a tendency to belabor points at times. Nevertheless, it offers everything that a reader could possibly want in an introductory primer: an overview of the relevant field and its history, prognostication about its future, and a step-by-step commentary explaining how to take advantage of trends. Also, the author makes a powerfully convincing case that no viable business can afford to neglect the potential of social media—and that one must be hands-on when it comes to strategy: “If you’re not engaged in social media, then you miss your chance to connect with this generation. Basically stated: To have any pull in media, you have to be seen on social media….[Y]ou will still need to be involved in social media yourself to some extent.”

A comprehensive resource for anyone who’s looking to capitalize on the gathering strength of social media.