International Journal of Strategic Communication

ISSN: 1553-118X (Print) 1553-1198 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/hstc20

Social Media Influencers in Strategic

Communication

Nils S. Borchers

To cite this article: Nils S. Borchers (2019) Social Media Influencers in Strategic
Communication, International Journal of Strategic Communication, 13:4, 255-260, DOI:
10.1080/1553118X.2019.1634075

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/1553118X.2019.1634075

Published online: 04 Sep 2019.

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INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF STRATEGIC COMMUNICATION
2019, VOL. 13, NO. 4, 255–260
https://doi.org/10.1080/1553118X.2019.1634075

INTRODUCTION

Social Media Influencers in Strategic Communication

Nils S. Borchers
Institute of Communication and Media Studies, Leipzig University, Leipzig, Germany

ABSTRACT
In this editorial, I (1) explain why social media influencers bear relevance for
strategic communication, (2) provide a brief introduction to research on
social media influencers, and (3) unroll the rationale behind this Special
Issue of the International Journal of Strategic Communication.

Social media influencers: New stakeholders in strategic communication

Social media influencers (SMIs) are astonishing beings. Anyone who has tried to pigeonhole SMIs
will have noticed that this is a very hard task to do. It is a hard task because SMIs cross traditional
boundaries in many ways and oscillate between intimacy and publicity, authenticity and commer-
cialization, ingratiation and critical distance. From a strategic communication perspective, this
variability makes SMIs hard to capture: Organizations can cooperate with SMIs to achieve both
marketing and PR objectives. SMIs can act as cooperation partners, integrating commercial content
into organic narratives, or as independent critics. And finally, SMIs potentially combine different
roles, which, have traditionally been occupied by separate actors. For example, SMIs can serve the
roles of intermediary, content distributor, creative content producer, community manager, testimo-
nial, strategic counsellor, and event host. The combination of these roles in just one actor opens new
opportunities for strategic communication and can produce appreciated synergy effects.
But these roles, in addition to other functions that SMIs fulfill for organizations, can also help to
determine the SMI concept more precisely. From a strategic communication perspective, SMIs can
be considered “third-party actors that have established a significant number of relevant relationships
with a specific quality to and influence on organizational stakeholders through content production,
content distribution, interaction, and personal appearance on the social web.” (Enke & Borchers, in
this issue) This definition considers the mentioned variability of SMIs in strategic communication;
thus, it indicates the complexity organizations face when working with SMIs.
Nevertheless, it is not least its boundary-crossing qualities that make strategic SMI communication –
a term Nadja Enke and I (in this issue) suggest adopting instead of influencer marketing or influencer
relations to emphasize the versatility of the instrument – a useful strategic communication instrument. And
indeed, strategic SMI communication has become a new mass phenomenon within only a few years. For
example, 75% of surveyed United States brands cooperated with SMIs in 2018 (Association of National
Advertisers, 2018) and 2/3 of U.S. businesses already budgeting strategic SMI communication said they
intend to increase their budgets within twelve months (Influencer Marketing Hub, 2019). At the same time,
influencer marketing as an industry has more than doubled its figures in the USA between 2016 and 2018
from $1.7 billion to $4.6 billion (Influencer Marketing Hub, 2019).
This popularity rests on a range of considerable advantages which are often, but not necessarily,
related to SMIs border-crossing qualities (Enke & Borchers, 2018b). For instance, SMIs have a wide
reach in attractive and contested publics, in particular teenagers and young adults, and acceptance
rates for SMIs’ promotional activities are high (Defy, 2016). Communication practitioners consider

CONTACT Nils S. Borchers nils.borchers@uni-leipzig.de Institute of Communication and Media Studies, Leipzig University,
Nikolaistraße 27-29, D-04109 Leipzig, Germany
© 2019 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
256 N. S. BORCHERS

strategic SMI communication a remarkably effective instrument (Linqia, 2017; Mediakix, 2019) that
offers them a rare way to create content that audiences perceive as authentic (Olapic, 2018).
Furthermore, strategic SMI communication allows for image transfer effects, specifically if organiza-
tions and SMIs cooperate on a long-term basis rather than in onetime activities. In terms of
variability, organizations can employ strategic SMI communication across various platforms and
content formats like text (e.g. blogs), pictures (e.g. Instagram), videos (e.g. YouTube), and, increas-
ingly, live streaming (e.g. Twitch). Finally and arguably, strategic SMI communication might re-
establish an illusion of control over at least some part of subjectively substantial (Zerfass, Verčič,
Nothhaft, & Werder, 2018) user generated content, an impression that might be of value to those
strategic communication practitioners who still cling to a control paradigm (Christodoulides, 2009).

Research on social media influencers: Some selected stages

The boundary-crossing qualities of strategic SMI communication pose a challenge to both practice
and research. They do so because they imply that we need to draw on the expertise of various
research streams to fully grasp strategic SMI communication. Luckily, ever since their emergence,
SMIs have attracted attention from different fields. Historically, research on SMIs has its origins in
studies on weblogs – a term coined by Jorn Barger in 1997 (Blood, 2002) – and bloggers, and the
“blogosphere.” An early interest in SMIs can be traced back to the mid- to late- 2000s, by which
point political blogs had become a debated phenomenon. While we can already find references to the
noticeable personal style of bloggers in the respective studies, the main research interest was in blogs
as sources of news and (political) information. Research conceived of bloggers as new actors in the
public discourse and sought to determine the role of blogs in the public sphere and the information
ecology of a society (cf. Carlson, 2007; Johnson & Kaye, 2004; Wall, 2005; Wallsten, 2008).
Accordingly, a study on blog users conducted in 2003 found that these users tended to be young,
highly educated men with high incomes, whose political involvement predicted their motivations to
visit and engage with blogs (Kaye, 2005).
Against the backdrop of this interest in political blogging, Herring, Scheidt, Wright, and Bonus
(2005, p. 142), based on a content analysis of 203 blogs, noted in 2005 that researchers (as well as
journalists and bloggers themselves) “underestimate the importance of blogs as individualistic,
intimate forms of self-expression.” It was celebrity and popular culture studies that started engaging
with these aspects of blogging. In her seminal work “Camgirls,” Senft (2008) studied women who
broadcast themselves over the web. To more thoroughly theorize the phenomenon she was obser-
ving, Senft introduced “microcelebrity,” a concept that is able to capture many specific features of
SMI communication. According to Senft (2013, p. 346), microcelebrity designates a specific form of
celebrity that is characterized by a “commitment to deploying and maintaining one’s online identity
as if it were a branded good, with the expectation that others do the same.” Microcelebrity is distinct
from traditional mainstream celebrity because it originates from establishing connections to other
social media users. In contrast, mainstream celebrity rests on distancing strategies that elevate
celebrity rather than emphasizing that bloggers (or vloggers) and their audiences meet on equal
grounds (Jerslev, 2016; Senft, 2008). Senft’s research has paved the way for a whole range of
comprehensive studies that tackle issues such as self-branding (Khamis, Ang, & Welling, 2017),
relationship building (García-Rapp, 2017), the construction of intimacy (Abidin, 2015), and aspira-
tional labor (Duffy, 2017). Many of these issues might actually be of interest to strategic commu-
nication scholars, particularly the works that examine the various ways in which SMIs and their
audiences mutually relate to one another.
It took some more time for research in strategic communication to realize the relevance of
bloggers, vloggers, and streamers, etc., as new organizational stakeholders. Yes, some early works do
exist that discuss the relevance of bloggers for strategic communication (Halvorsen, Hoffmann,
Coste-Manière, & Stankeviciute, 2013; Schmallegger & Carson, 2008; Smith, 2010). Yet in general,
research activities have been sparse and only recently have begun to pick up speed. To start drawing
 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF STRATEGIC COMMUNICATION 257

a more comprehensive picture of the current state of research on strategic SMI communication, it is,
I argue, useful to apply conceptual frameworks that help to inform and systematize research
activities. Such a framework is the process model of strategic SMI communication (see Enke &
Borchers in this issue for a process model of SMI communication). The model identifies actors
within the field of SMI communication and how they are interconnected. Research activities can
then be organized along the actor groups on which the activity is focused. In the field of strategic
communication, one can identify studies that focus on SMI clients (i.e., organizations and agencies
that cooperate with SMIs) (Hutchins & Tindall, 2016; Uzunoğlu & Misci Kip, 2014; Wolf & Archer,
2018) and on SMIs and their involvement in strategic communication activities (Archer & Harrigan,
2016; Pang, Tan, Lim, Kwan, & Lakhanpal, 2016; Walden, Bortree, & DiStaso, 2015). I have the
impression, however, that research that focuses on SMI audiences has gathered the most traction,
particularly research on effects of SMI postings (cf. de Veirman, Cauberghe, & Hudders, 2017; Evans,
Phua, Lim, & Jun, 2017; Van Reijmersdal et al., 2016).
Yet even despite these important and insightful pioneer studies, to date we still know comparably
little about the specific practices of strategic SMI communication, its challenges and opportunities,
and how it is organized within organizational contexts (see the literature review by Sundermann and
Raabe in this issue). From a conceptual perspective, we lack proposals how to define strategic SMI
communication and to integrate it within the framework of strategic communication (see Enke &
Borchers in this issue for a suggestion). Against this background, this Special Issue seeks to
contribute to the growing body of knowledge on SMIs and specifically on SMIs in strategic
communication.

Drawing a comprehensive picture of strategic social media influencer communication

This Special Issue is organized in four sections. The first section seeks to provide conceptual
foundations for studying SMIs in strategic communication. The remaining three sections follow
another logic. Here, the focus is on specific key actor groups within the process of strategic
influencer communication: (1) SMI clients, e.g., client organizations and agencies; (2) SMIs them-
selves; and (3) SMI audiences.
The first section starts with an article by Nadja Enke and I, “Social Media Influencers in Strategic
Communication: A Conceptual Framework for Strategic Social Media Influencer Communication.”
In this article, we seek to establish conceptual grounds for research on SMIs from a strategic
communication perspective. Specifically, we define SMIs on the basis of the functions that they
fulfill for organizations. We also distinguish the concept from other concepts that have likewise been
tagged with the “influencer” label, i.e., mainstream celebrities, ordinary internet users, and corporate
influencers. The widespread use of the influencer tag has caused some confusion in research, as
I have also noticed while editing this Special Issue. In a next step, Nadja Enke and I use the SMI
definition to define strategic SMI communication and to further elaborate on the concept. Finally,
we develop a process model of strategic SMI communication that, hopefully, can serve as
a framework to inform and systemize research agendas. If we strategic communication researchers
are to gain a deeper understanding of SMIs as organizational stakeholders, we require appropriate
concepts that help theorize our empirical observations and add conceptual clarity to our arguments.
The second article in this section is a literature review by Gerrit Sundermann and Thorsten
Raabe, “Strategic Communication through Social Media Influencers: Current State of Research
and Desiderata.” To my knowledge, it is the first systematic literature review on research in
strategic SMI communication (or on SMIs in general, for that matter). In their review,
Sundermann and Raabe provide a much-desired overview that systemizes and synthesizes the
current body of knowledge. Equally important, the authors identify research desiderata that can
serve as possible directions for future research. Among others, they argue that implications of
SMI communication for strategic planning are understudied. Moreover, the literature review
reveals that research on SMI in strategic communication resembles “a rag rug of fragmented
258 N. S. BORCHERS

research questions, combined with a lack of theoretical integration and a widespread methodo-
logical monism.” This state is, I would argue, somewhat typical for a subfield in the making. At
the same time, however, this conclusion is an unmistakable call for further substantial and
coordinated research initiatives … a call that, by the way, also provides legitimation for this
Special Issue.
The second section of this Special Issue tackles organizations that cooperate with SMIs. In their
article, “Social Media Influencers as a Crisis Risk in Strategic Communication: Impact of
Indiscretions on Professional Endorsements,” Kylie Sng, Tsi Ying Au, and Augustine Pang discuss
how SMIs can trigger organizational crises and how organizations may try to manage these. Their
study delves into image transfer effects that cooperation between organization and SMI may
produce. But while organizations desire these image transfer effects as long as they are positive,
the effects become problematic as soon as the cooperating SMIs act in a way that contradicts
organizational values. Kylie Sng and her co-authors are interested in exactly these negative outcomes.
They discuss five cases in which SMIs’ personal indiscretions actually triggered paracrises. From this
discussion, the authors develop a valuable framework for crisis identification and response strategies.
This way, their article offers profound insights into how organizations can manage the eventualities
of strategic SMI communication.
The next section brings into focus the very actor group around which this Special Issue circles: the
SMIs. Jamie Woodcock and Mark Johnson in their article, “Live Streamers on Twitch.tv as Social
Media Influencers: Chances and Challenges for Strategic Communication,” present the first study on
strategic SMI communication on the live streaming platform Twitch. Thusfar, Twitch has remained
in the shadows of Instagram and YouTube, the leading platforms in strategic SMI communication.
Twitch is, however, a real heavyweight that attracts 200 million viewers, most of them teenagers and
young adults, and 2 million regular “streamers.” Drawing on their expertise on Twitch gained
through several years of ethnographic research into the platform, Johnson and Woodcock discuss
the implications of live streaming for strategic communication. Given that practitioners regard live
streaming as a promising new direction in strategic SMI communication (Enke & Borchers, 2018a),
the authors provide sought-after insights into the actuality of strategic SMI communication practices
on a platform on which influencing via live streaming is already firmly established. In addition, their
article offers useful insights into how strategic communication messages should be integrated into
SMI content so that they gain acceptance within Twitch’s life streaming community.
Finally, the last section of the Special Issue is dedicated to SMI audiences. The article “A Call for
Authenticity: Audience Responses to Social Media Influencer Endorsements in Strategic
Communication,” by Essi Pöyry, Matilde Pelkonen, Emma Naumanen, and Salla-Maaria
Laaksonen, allows for a smooth transition to this last section: In a two-step empirical procedure,
Essi Pöyry and her co-authors surveyed both SMIs and their followers. The authors are interested in
studying attitudes toward SMI content and purchase intentions. Specifically, they look upon differ-
ences between sponsored and non-sponsored Instagram posts and disclosure practices. Essi Pöyry
et al. find that an exact fit between organization and SMI is central for effective SMI communication.
Thus, their study contributes to a growing body of research into the effects of SMI communication.
Authenticity also plays a decisive role in the final article of this Special Issue: In “Primed
Authenticity: How Priming Impacts Authenticity Perception of Social Media Influencers,” Vilma
Luoma-aho, Tuisku Pirttimäki, Devdeep Maity, Juha Munnukka, and Hanna Reinikainen study how
audience expectations and engagement influence the perceived authenticity of SMI posts. Luoma-
aho and her co-authors find that the same sponsored vlog post can bring about significantly different
effects, depending on the way in which viewers engage with the post. This way, the authors
demonstrate the relevance of addressing stakeholders in appropriate situations, i.e., situations in
which they are actually willing to engage with the SMI content. Bad news for SMIs: Posting content
that viewers perceive as inauthentic is held mainly against the SMIs and not against the cooperating
organizations. This way, the article makes a valuable contribution to advance our understanding of
 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF STRATEGIC COMMUNICATION 259

authenticity, a central concept in strategic SMI communication and a suggested main driver of the
instrument’s effectivity.
As this short overview demonstrates, the idea of this Special Issue is to draw a comprehensive
picture of the current state of SMIs in strategic communication. To possibly achieve this aim, the
articles in this Special Issue tackle strategic SMI communication from multi-disciplinary perspec-
tives, from varying actor foci, and from different methodological frameworks and methods. In
addition, they also constructively engage with specific advantages of strategic SMI communication –
advantages that I discussed above.
Despite these efforts, this Special Issue is only a piece in a far larger jigsaw puzzle. Many issues of
relevance to strategic communication remain untouched. This is why, personally, I hope that the
Special Issue might give the extra push needed to stimulate further research activities on strategic
SMI communication.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

ORCID
Nils S. Borchers http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9600-066X

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