Qualitative Approaches to Evaluating Social Media Influencers: A Case-Based Literature Review

Abstract

With the age of the Internet upon us, many marketing strategies have come to be focused on social media influencers. Current research about social media influencers conveys the quantitative values of influencers’ capacity and values, but the numbers are easily manipulated with automated bots and other methods. Therefore, this empirical-conceptual paper is aimed at demonstrating legitimacy and possibility to evaluate influencers’ performance in qualitative perspectives. 10 qualitative factors such as credibility, appearance, and connectedness and so on, are found from a review of relevant 24 papers. The factors are redefined and remapped by reviewing 13 popular social media influencers in the area of lifestyle, which results in 52 indicators. The indicators are semantically and systematically classified with three larger qualitative themes and nine sub-themes: (a) credibility: expertise, trustworthiness, and quality content, (b) engagement: interpersonal interaction, quality presentation, and personal branding; (c) connectivity : participatory activities, collaborating with others, and socially networking. For qualitative approaches to social media influencers, applicable analysis methods to each sub theme are articulated. This research demonstrates the potential of an alternative to existing quantitative evaluation methods that marketers could consider in their recruitment and evaluation of social media influencers.