The concept of an influencer and the industry that has grown up around influencer measurement and marketing has come a long way since 2011 when I was running influencer platform Kred.
I fear though that brands substitute influence for “reach” which is what they are really getting.
Back in 2011 the influencer market consisted of the influencer platforms Kred, Klout & PeerIndex. Each provided a “score” based on an algorithm tied to social media engagement & activity.
Kred was unique because it explained in great detail how the score was calculated, it was completely transparent – showing every interaction for every person.
Many of these platforms were easily gamed by fake influencers who knew what they had to do in order to fool brands that they were “influential” based on the (artificially) high influencer score.
Back in 2011, one of the original and authentic B2B influencers was my good friend Brian Solis. It is therefore fitting that I am at the Wave Influencer Marketing Summit in London where Brian is doing the opening keynote “RIP Influencer Marketing, welcome to Influence 2.0”.
As someone who was in the thick of influence 1.0, I can’t wait for the reboot.