The ra­tio­nal and con­scious thinking

The ra­tio­nal and con­scious in­di­vid­ual rep­re­sents the largest of all in­flu­encer groups. They are most­ly ex­treme­ly pro­fes­sion­al in their ap­pear­ance and pri­mar­i­ly mon­e­tar­i­ly mo­ti­vat­ed. They re­gard so­cial me­dia as an es­sen­tial part of their lives. Their con­tent on the plat­forms has a fun­da­men­tal­ly jour­nal­is­tic struc­ture, based on ex­ten­sive re­search and crit­i­cal analy­sis. Their con­tent is so­cio-po­lit­i­cal in na­ture, but can al­so be on top­ics that are of par­tic­u­lar con­cern to their fol­low­ers (such as the con­scious use of nat­ur­al re­sources in the form of avoid­ing plas­tic waste, con­scious pur­chas­ing of re­gion­al prod­ucts, etc.). Char­ac­ter­is­tic is the de­mand they make on them­selves : They are al­most per­fec­tion­is­tic and have a “bro­ken soul” be­cause they are al­ways crit­i­ciz­ing them­selves and con­stant­ly have to com­pare them­selves with others.

Brands can ab­solute­ly re­ly on this group of in­flu­encers be­cause they have be­come high­ly pro­fes­sion­al in their work and know how to con­vince through me­dia train­ing, ap­pro­pri­ate ed­u­ca­tion in the field of me­dia and com­mu­ni­ca­tion, or sole­ly through their many years of ex­pe­ri­ence. Com­pa­nies and brands should ac­cord­ing­ly pro­vide clear in­sights, facts and fig­ures to cov­er the con­tent pref­er­ences (for ex­am­ple, mar­ket analy­ses) of ra­tio­nal­ists ide­al­ly. The fa­vorite chan­nels of ra­tio­nal­ists and con­scious­ness thinkers are YouTube, In­sta­gram and, in a (still) small mi­nor­i­ty, TikTok.

The ex­tro­vert­ed “ubiq­ui­tous musters”

Near­ly one in four on so­cial me­dia con­forms to this be­hav­ioral pat­tern. They have an (over)high lev­el of recog­ni­tion and par­tic­i­pa­tion and the ob­ses­sive feel­ing that they al­ways have to at­tract at­ten­tion every­where. They en­joy hav­ing the at­ten­tion of their fol­low­ers by in­form­ing their com­mu­ni­ty about top­ics that mat­ter in their lives (but that doesn’t mean it’s in­ter­est­ing or even rel­e­vant to the followers).

But this is al­so in­creas­ing­ly about prod­ucts : Four out of five of them, for ex­am­ple, say they want to share their ex­pe­ri­ences in or­der to in­flu­ence their fol­low­ers’ pur­chas­ing de­ci­sions in the cor­re­spond­ing di­rec­tion. They see this task less as com­pul­sion and rather out of pas­sion. Their fa­vorite plat­forms tend to have a vi­su­al fo­cus (In­sta­gram, Tik­Tok, Snapchat and Pinterest).

Ex­tro­verts are not locked in­to a spe­cif­ic con­tent form, but are large­ly open to any­thing. Rep­u­ta­tion-en­hanc­ing ben­e­fits such as events can de­ci­sive­ly push the im­pact of brand com­mu­ni­ca­tion. How­ev­er, un­like the con­scious thinkers, they have less pro­fes­sion­al­ism and thus less un­der­stand­ing of a cer­tain do­main of knowl­edge, so they might al­so share less back­ground about in their con­tent (e.g., why the con­sump­tion of plas­tic cos­met­ics is so harm­ful to us or how we man­age to cre­ate a so­cial cul­ture in which there is no com­pul­sion to strive for a cer­tain ide­al of beauty).

The ex­perts

This group of in­flu­encers works in two di­rec­tions : They ap­peal to the tar­get group just as much as the com­pa­nies them­selves. This is be­cause they pass on their ex­per­tise to their fol­low­ers while, in ad­di­tion, us­ing the ad­di­tion­al knowl­edge they gain from feed­back from their com­mu­ni­ty, they want to pro­vide com­pa­nies with valu­able in­put, e.g., to ex­pand their prod­uct range, pro­mote a bet­ter re­source pur­chas­ing pol­i­cy, or im­prove pro­duc­tion conditions.

Al­most one in five so­cial me­dia users be­longs to this group. They are high­ly pro­fes­sion­al­ized and al­most “crave” new (back­ground) knowl­edge on their main top­ics, which are os­ten­si­bly so­ciopo­lit­i­cal in na­ture. They are most­ly al­so po­lit­i­cal­ly ac­tive and based in or­ga­ni­za­tions such as the Fri­day for Fu­ture group, and have a high lev­el of so­cial com­pe­tence and em­pa­thy. Ac­cord­ing­ly, ex­perts are cred­i­ble in their com­mu­ni­ty. Com­pa­nies should thus pro­vide de­tailed in­for­ma­tion about their prod­ucts and em­pha­size spe­cif­ic prod­uct fea­tures here. In re­turn, mar­ket­ing and R&D teams can ben­e­fit from the feed­back – for ex­am­ple, in prod­uct development.

The ide­al­ists and so­ci­ety supporters

Ide­al­ists make up a share of 16 per­cent and are thus rather in the mi­nor­i­ty of so­cial me­dia users. They are main­ly mo­ti­vat­ed by their own val­ues and sense of re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and want to im­prove the world. Ac­cord­ing­ly, they like to sup­port good caus­es and con­sume brands that want to pro­tect the patch of earth re­spon­si­bly. They seek to do good and are con­cerned with things of so­cial rel­e­vance. They are not con­cerned with sideshows.

Char­ac­ter­ized by not tak­ing them­selves se­ri­ous­ly, be­ing hu­mor­ous, and pre­fer­ring to shine a bright light on the in­di­vid­ual in the mi­nor­i­ty is what shapes their per­son­al­i­ty. Livestreams such as IGTV, for ex­am­ple, are a nat­ur­al part of their way to con­nect with fol­low­ers in per­son and to hear even the small­est voice and make it work for them. Twitch is their fa­vorite chan­nel af­ter In­sta­gram, not least be­cause these live streams al­low them to en­gage in an in-depth di­a­logue with their com­mu­ni­ty. They are cre­ative in their in­ven­tive­ness and its prac­ti­cal im­ple­men­ta­tion. Brands work­ing with ide­al­ists must en­sure they have a strong CSR ap­proach. Prod­uct are crit­i­cal­ly re­viewed to rule out en­vi­ron­men­tal wasting.

The sto­ry­tellers

Sto­ry­tellers pre­fer to con­nect prod­ucts and their in­for­ma­tion with their own ex­pe­ri­ences. They are al­ways on­line and like to browse through the wide web and are there­fore a good source for friends, ac­quain­tances or fam­i­ly to pro­vide in­for­ma­tion about new prod­ucts. Pop­u­lar chan­nels here are In­sta­gram, Tik­Tok and, quite clear­ly, the per­son­al blog. When work­ing with the group of sto­ry­tellers, it is es­sen­tial that brands func­tion in an en­ter­tain­ing en­vi­ron­ment and can be in­te­grat­ed in­to sto­ries. Brands should en­able sto­ry­tellers to tell their own stories.