似乎有一些争论关于是否关键opinion leaders (KOLs) and influencers are the same. After all, people recognize key opinion leaders for their knowledge, so therefore they should influence people’s decisions. And people clearly respect influencers enough for people to take notice of them, so presumably, influencers must be key opinion leaders to their followers.
The real answer is probably that some key opinion leaders are influencers, and some influencers are key opinion leaders, but not all would consider themselves both.
Key Opinion Leader - What are they and Why Should You Care?:
- What are Key Opinion Leaders (KOLs)?
- 影响者与关键意见领导者有何不同？
- 许多关键意见领导者成为巨型或宏观影响者
- Key Opinion Leaders Work Full-Time. Influencers Spend Their Work Time Online.
- Influencers have a Ready-Made Audience for Influencer Marketing, KOLs Less So
- Sometimes Brands Can Help Turn Influencers into Key Opinion Leaders
- As Always, Brands Need to Begin a Campaign by Setting Goals
What are Key Opinion Leaders (KOLs)?
Wikipedia adds fuel to the fire, by defining a key opinion leader (KOL) as being “also known as an "influencer,” is a person or organization who has expert product knowledge and influence in a respective field. They are trusted by relevant interest groups and have significant effects on consumer behavior.”
However, there is one key difference between a key opinion leader and an influencer. In modern use, at least, influencers operate online, making their name and exerting their influence on social media, in blogs and on YouTube. There is no requirement that a key opinion leader operates on any online or social platform. They are merely the “go-to” people for their subject of expertise.
在传统媒体中，您遇到的主要意见领导者最常见的地方之一。KOLS是新闻界在想要有关某些主题问题的报价或可靠的声音时呼吁的主题专家。例如，您当地的电视新闻很可能会提供一些KOL来赋予信誉，并就某些话题的新问题发表意见。他们可能是天气专家，有人了解枪支管制，政治专家或大学教授。关键是他们以对某些专家主题的知识而闻名。
You regularly see KOLs making an appearance in court cases. Both the defense and the prosecution try to find some key opinion leader to support their argument. They then present the KOL to a jury as an expert witness – even if the opposition also uses a KOL with an opposing viewpoint.
影响者与关键意见领导者有何不同？
Influencers can be key opinion leaders and vice versa. However, there is no need for the two roles to overlap.
There have been key opinion leaders for virtually as long as humans could speak. Many key opinion leaders actively avoid the internet because they have little spare time to devote to it. Some consider social media a massive waste of their time. There is no requirement that KOLs to operate any social account or have any followers. They just need recognition for having expertise on a topic.
There are probably many small towns, where the local population unofficially treats their doctor as a KOL, just because of respect for his or her work. If people have health problems, they will immediately go to their GP for assistance. If the local paper wants to know the effect of some local medical issue, they too will unquestionably go to the doctor for advice.
同样，许多大学教授因其头衔而被赋予KOL身份。如果有人想了解新发现的历史文物的重要性，他们通常会去当地历史教授寻求帮助和咬人。
Of course, no one saying that KOLs can’t spend time online, and gain influence. Many authors have followed that route. Stephen King clearly is a key opinion leader when it comes to horror writing. He made his name offline, by writing extremely popular novels. He has also made a name for himself amongst aspiring writers because of his seminal “how to write” bookOn Writing。但是，这并不意味着他也不是一个影响者。斯蒂芬·金（Stephen King）有515万追随者推特account，定期发推文，并与他的追随者互动。
Another key difference between most key opinion leaders and influencers is one of geography. If somebody is accepted as being a KOL (and they don’t double up as an online influencer) their fame and recognition is probably restricted to a particular area. It may be a small town, a city, a state, or even a nation. The internet has no bounds, however. If people recognize you as being an influencer, you probably have fans across the entire globe.
An exception to this global differentiation, though, is with key opinion leaders who gained much of their fame on television. Like the internet, TV shows play across the world. So somebody like Gordon Ramsey, famous for his cooking shows (and almost as much for his colorful language) is renowned from the United States, to New Zealand and everywhere in-between where his shows play.
许多关键意见领导者成为巨型或宏观影响者
As we have discussed in previous posts, there is a range of different influencer types, depending on the number of followers they have. While the definitions appear to be fluid, a current view is that there are now有影响力的五层:
- Nano-influencers: 1,000 - 10,000 followers
- Micro-influencers：10,000-50,000个关注者
- Mid-tier influencers: 50,000 - 500,000 followers
- Macro-influencers: 500,000 - 1,000,000 followers
- 大型影响者: 1,000,000+ followers
大多数成功的在线影响者往往是微型和中期影响者，尽管纳米影响者在真正的专业领域中越来越受欢迎。
然而,已经使他们的名字的人啊ffline as key opinion leaders often become macro- or mega-influencers if they choose to operate social media accounts. As we referred to above, Stephen King’s Twitter account definitely places him in the mega-influencer category. Gordon Ramsay, with 6.93 million Twitter followers, along with 5.9 million on Instagram, also fit this category.
传统上，品牌选择与名人和大型影响者合作，但他们面临一些挑战。首先，名人倾向于为他们的帖子收费很多。据报道，凯莉·詹纳（Kylie Jenner）和金·卡戴珊（Kim Kardashian）为一个职位收取了25万美元的收费。其次，这些关键意见领导者与追随者的参与度要比专业的在线影响者少得多。例如，戈登·拉姆齐（Gordon Ramsay）可能会上传诱人的食物图像，并在发表帖子时发表评论，但他似乎很少回答别人对他的图像的评论。面对现实吧，他是一个忙碌的人，经营企业，制作电视节目，并营救几乎崩溃的餐厅。他没有时间完全管理繁忙的Instagram帐户
Key Opinion Leaders Work Full-Time. Influencers Spend Their Work Time Online.
最终，关键人物领袖和真正的社会影响者之间的主要区别之一是该人如何度过自己的时间。当然，两者都必须是关于主题的知识基础。他们都是主题专家。但是，对于大多数影响者而言，社交媒体/博客/YouTubing是他们的全职工作。他们专门传播有关其专业主题的信息。
Key opinion leaders, on the other hand, spend the bulk of their time participating in their area of expertise. It is the doing, rather than the telling that they specialize in. They may spend some time on social media, but it is their spare time. They are not going to devote all day to build up their following, creating YouTube videos, or constructing the perfect post. They are far more likely to spend their day, cooking, writing horror novels, or acting as a Hollywood socialite (all right, the boundary is blurrier for people like the Kardashians and Jenners).
Influencers are expert communicators – it is one of their specialties, as much as they are knowledgeable about some niche or special topic. In many ways, influencers are like teachers. They have mastered the craft of explaining their specialist knowledge to their online audience. Although key opinion leaders need some communications skills, particularly if they are to appear credible on media such as television or radio, they usually don’t need to place as much emphasis on it as their online counterparts.
Influencers have a Ready-Made Audience for Influencer Marketing, KOLs Less So
A common mistake brands that are new to influencer marketing make often is to equate success with the number of followers somebody has. They think that the more followers somebody has, the more influential they must be. The logical next step from this thinking would be to assume that any business would gain their most significant marketing success by working with the people with the most followers whom they could afford within their marketing budget.
如果您遵循这一假设，可以得出合理的结论，这意味着所有大型成功的企业都将与名人和其他关键意见领导者合作。小型企业和较大的企业将不得不将自己限制在与微型和纳米影响者合作。
However, as we have seen in other articles on theInfluencer Marketing Hubthat is not how the influencer marketing industry works. Many of the best and most successful campaigns have involved relative no-name influencers, best known to a group of passionate fans. Some of the most expensive marketing failures have involved celebrities promoting products that they would never use in their daily life, or that seem to contradict their usual image. The regularly panned Kylie Jenner Pepsi ad is a case in point.
While some KOLs may be happy to participate in a campaign, others may be less comfortable. University professors, for example, may feel that representing a particular brand would affect their impartiality.
While celebrities often have large social accounts with millions of followers, that doesn’t mean that the celebrity is necessarily active on their account. Often he or she may pay a personal assistant to run the account on their behalf. Sure, the account may be useful for promoting the celebrity’s activities, a musician’s upcoming gigs for instance, but it may not be suitable for promoting third party products. Also, these promotions tend to come across more like advertisements, because of the lack of enthusiastic engagement between the KOL and his/her audience.
Sometimes Brands Can Help Turn Influencers into Key Opinion Leaders
许多品牌选择与微型影响者合作，因为他们拥有一些最佳的参与率。在知识的更利基和奥秘领域中尤其如此。随着时间的流逝，这些影响者的名声可能会增长，特别是如果他们成为多个竞选活动的品牌的发言人。
随着在线的增长，人们更有可能向他们寻求建议和帮助，并且通常会扩展到离线设置。这很容易使在线影响者成为其专业知识主题，当然是在主要城市外的镇专家。
今天的一些fashion designers began as influencersbefore they made the leap into the industry themselves. These include Natasha Oakley who had nearly 2 million followers when she set upMonday Swimwear。同样，佐伊·福斯特·布雷克（Zoe Foster Blake）在建立时尚品牌之前就以有影响力的身份出名Skin & Threads。丹妮尔·伯恩斯坦（Danielle BernsteinSecond Skin Overalls和Archive Shoes。
一些有影响力的人已经成功地做出tion to television. Perhaps, unsurprisingly, YouTubers have an advantage with this.Inc.报告successful social media influencers killing in TV include Franchesca Ramsey, Murray Newlands, Gary Vaynerchuk, Grace Helbig, Peter Shankman, Brian Solis, Tyler Oakley, and Adam Conover.
As Always, Brands Need to Begin a Campaign by Setting Goals
Every influencer marketing campaign should begin by the brand setting campaign goals. What are you trying to achieve with your influencer marketing? This will significantly affect the type of person you choose to work with to promote your campaign.
If you aim to promote awareness of a social cause affecting youth, and you have a sizeable budget, you may well benefit from working with high-level KOLs/celebrities such as Katy Perry or Justin Bieber. They speak to the youth you are trying to target. If your cause is important, enough Bieber or Perry might even mention it during a show, or in one of their media appearances. They are sure to refer to it in their social posts (and both have massive followings). Just be aware that their engagement rates are incredibly low.
However, if you were hoping to use influencer marketing to sell baby clothes to new mothers, using either of those superstars would be an incredibly expensive venture for the return you were likely to receive. If you were to spend that budget on hundreds or thousands of micro-influencers, who targeted the mommy market, you would probably be happier with your ultimate results.
同样，如果您是年轻的恐怖作家，那么您无疑会喜欢得到斯蒂芬·金的认可。但是，如果您的书不是特别令人不寒而栗，他不太可能花钱给您良好的评论。而且，如果您的书那么好，King可能会免费鸣叫，无论如何
