Social Media Influencers in Strategic Communication

This book explores influencer collaborations from a strategic communication perspective, highlighting the challenges of capturing influencers due to their variability between intimacy, publicity, authenticity, and commercialization. It emphasizes that influencers can serve as cooperation partners or independent critics, combining roles traditionally occupied by separate actors, leading to new opportunities for strategic communication and synergy effects.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 136 pages
Publication date: 29 January 2024
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd

This comprehensive book delves into the realm of influencer collaborations, exploring them from a strategic communication perspective. Contributors approach influencer communication from diverse multidisciplinary angles, considering various actor foci and employing different methodological frameworks and approaches. Influencers, in their multifaceted nature, transcend traditional boundaries, oscillating between intimacy, publicity, authenticity, commercialization, ingratiation, and critical distance. This dynamic variability poses challenges for organizations seeking to harness their influence effectively. However, from a strategic communication standpoint, this diversity offers opportunities for collaboration and synergy. Organizations can engage with influencers to achieve both marketing and public relations objectives, leveraging their ability to act as cooperation partners, integrating commercial content into organic narratives, or functioning as independent critics. Influencers also redefine traditional roles, combining functions traditionally occupied by separate actors such as intermediaries, content distributors, creative content producers, community managers, testimonials, strategic counselors, and event hosts. This amalgamation of roles within a single actor creates new avenues for strategic communication and yields valued synergy effects. It is thus no surprise that influencer collaborations have solidified their place as a vital tool in the arsenal of strategic communicators.

The chapters in this book originally appeared in the esteemed journals, the International Journal of Advertising and the International Journal of Strategic Communication.

Weight: 270g
Dimension: 254 x 178 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781032019840