I drafted a post last year on online influencer marketing/engagement, which I’ll build on here. The premise remains that influencer engagement to support public affairs activity in Brussels can be a fairly futile exercise.
Why? Organisations conduct online influencer engagement in order to gain greater visibility and credibility by being ‘endorsed’ by someone influential. But the Brussels bubble is tiny. By extension, the degree of separation between a target and oneself is also tiny. So it’s quite easy to reach a policy-maker. Anyone who has worked in politics nationally always stresses how much easier it is to get a meeting with policy-makers in Brussels than any national capital. The same is true online: visibility is not overly hard. What’s harder is gaining trust and support, so I’d argue that it makes more sense for an organisation to itself be influential by being relevant, useful and interesting online, rather than hoping to amplify its message through others.
Moreover, people who have a substantial following online in Brussels tend to be generalists, while influence on most issues can only be gained by someone with at least a modicum of technical expertise.
I am not dismissing the practice of influencer engagement. While puerile Instagrammers are making influencers less appetising in consumer marketing, it is gaining ground in the more cerebral communications disciplines like public affairs, corporate communications and B2B. Indeed, it is often the most impactful tactic for building online reach and credibility in these disciplines.
But as mentioned, in Brussels, credibility, gaining trust, and standing out from the crowd tend to be the real challenges, not visibility. Therefore, looking to create better content should probably be the focal point online, not seeking the endorsement of influencers.
Having said all that, there is an influencer angle in generating better content: involving experts in content creation. Think pharma companies teaming up with patient groups to co-create content, for instance. I’d argue this is the more impactful approach to ‘influencers’ in a market like Brussels: not treating influencer engagement as an extension of media relations – as a means to get a 3rd party with a big audience to endorse you – but rather, collaborating with people who are influential in a niche in order to enrich your communications output.
Steffen Moller 