Brand communication through digital influencers: Leveraging blogger engagement

What is it about?

The growing power of bloggers to influence their connected network has emerged as a new commu-nication venue for brands. This study elaborates upon the role of bloggers in brand communication,and reveals how brands can engage with bloggers, currently considered as online opinion leaders, fromthe perspective of the two-step flow theory. Following clarification of the aims of the study, we reporton in-depth interviews with 17 brand and digital agency representatives, selected because they regardcommunication with bloggers as an important strategy in increasing the influence of their brands amongonline communities. This exploratory study reflects current blogger communication implementations,and concludes with a discussion of seven major issues arising from the literature review and inter-views (definition of bloggers, blogger selection criteria, digital integration, power of bloggers, long-termrelationship building with bloggers, measurement, and budgetary issues in blogger communication).These areas represent relatively unexplored areas of blogger engagement from both an academic andmanagerial perspective. Based on the findings of the interviews, we propose a model which traces theinfluencer role of bloggers from the two-step flow theory perspective. This model is named as the brandcommunication through digital influencers model.

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