7 Influencer Marketing trends for 2023 (3 of 7) : We Are All Influencers

Wanna know everything about the main Influencer Marketing Trends for the next few years? TREND #3 : We Are All Influencers

7 influencer marketing trends for 2023

I believe that 7 influencer marketing trends are now emerging for the next 3 years (for 2023):

The two first one were detailed in previous articles :

1. The scarcity of data, or the end of easy and free access to data from social networks.
2. The CIOs era (Chief Influence Officer), or the affirmation of Influence Marketing as a field in its own, transverse to the various functions of the company.

The third one is detailed below : We Are All Influencers, or the use and promotion of 100% of the stakeholders (employees, customers, suppliers, shareholders) of the company as Key Opinion Leaders.

TREND #3 : We Are All Influencers

All Influencers : use and promotion of 100% of the stakeholders (employees, customers, suppliers, shareholders) of the company as KOLs

Your employees are already your K.O.Ls

Companies are bursting with talents, some of whom are already content creators and influencers (or Key Opinion Leaders as we call them at Kolsquare). Many companies have already identified them or even encouraged them to develop their talents.

After having tried to build teams of brand ambassadors, internalized or outsourced, more and more companies are voluntarily recruiting influencers into their workforce in order to set up influencing strategies.

Brands have many opportunities to activate employees as company’s KOL

More and more companies are leveraging their employees as ambassadors.

Brands incentive their employees to post work-related content on their personal social networks, not only on Linkedin.

At Swisscom, for example, the strategy is based on a platform called Socciable, which allows employees to share content on their own Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other accounts.

Also in Switzerland, La Poste with its Smarp platform connected to Linkedin only, does the same thing.

Brands also select their influential employees to involve them in their communication. Sometimes they even support them by developing their image.

This is what H&M has done, selecting 15 of its employees in the United States to strengthen its influencer program.

These are not just salespeople, but also office workers chosen on « their attitude, their personality, or where they live, and the brand values ​​they represent and their style. » For one year, each of these ambassadors will have a dedicated web page with a brief biography where they will showcase their favorite H&M clothes.

Beyond employees, all of the company’s stakeholders are K.O.Ls

In B2C, brands’ customers are spotted on social networks through social listening tools. The User Generated Content (or UGC) as well as the online customer reviews are valued by brands and reused through dedicated tools.

In B2B, brands usually can partner with their clients to optimise each other social media power as a K.O.L.

Distributors’ customers are also chased as « resellers ». For a giant ecommerce company like Amazon, a consumer with only few followers has the opportunity to leverage his audience by creating his own “corner” and be paid on sold products using a classical affiliation program. That’s the heart of Amazon KOL strategy with its Amazon Influencers.

Suppliers can also become great brand ambassadors using their company social networks (or even the suppliers’ employees social networks). That’s a modern interpretation of what Tony Sieh (Zappos) suggest in “Delivering Happiness” (amazing book by the way).

And finally brands can leverage their shareholders as K.O.Ls: whether there is a limited number of influential shareholders, or simple small holders, all now have an interest in relaying the company’s communications, or even selling it.

At Kolsquare we are really lucky to have inspiring K.O.L as investors, such as Benjamin Kayser here, and they regularly share our news and achievements on social networks. Which is great for us!

So, HR and influence are converging, using the best of Influence Marketing technology to perform 

Companies will now systematically seek to leverage the power of influence of their employees by integrating them into organized HR management systems of influence:

• integration of the use of employees’ social networks in their contracts, incentives and training to influence
• promotion of talents and content creators
• incentive for the publication of company-related content
• etc.

During their recruitment process, companies will now systematically favor K.O.L candidates. Football clubs already do this to sell more jerseys. Book publishers already do this to sell more books. So, brands will do this to (social) sell more, and have a better communication impact.

After the employee contract, companies will now systematically try to leverage the best K.O.Ls among their alumni network.

Beyond the employees, companies will seek to centralize the media power linked to all the stakeholders of the company.

And you, did you identified this trend too? Did you already see clues of this trend in your company? Do you have a clear « We Are All Influencers » strategy in your company?