B2B influencer marketing: They can own your brand better than you
In a crowded digital space, implementing a B2B influencer marketing strategy can reap big rewards for brands, earning net-new interest and gaining loyalty.
I’ve thought about this for a long time: The information age is over. We’ve entered the age of curation.
The expression, “Knowledge is power,” has fueled us for years. The expression is mostly true: The world has always dealt in the reserve currency of knowledge. But millions of people have been seeking knowledge for hundreds of years, which, since the printing press, has been mostly recorded. And knowledge hasn’t increased linearly, but exponentially.
In a world with an abundance of data, the power begins to come from the ability to sort through knowledge and utilize it more effectively.
This is becoming more important the more information exists in readily available formats.
Long before the information age, we sorted to survive
People learn by copying others because there’s always been too much information. A child 3,000 years ago looked up to parents and became like them to survive the wilderness and avoid the inevitable death that would come from indecision at a key moment. We imitate the most confident person in the room because their body language signals that they’re less likely to die when hunting or being hunted in a jungle.
The people that came before learned something useful. That’s way more important than learning something. You could learn a lifetime worth of knowledge and fail at everything you attempt if you learn the wrong thing.
How many famines did a culture have to go through before a strange plant that was poisonous to eat raw was studied, and someone found a way to prepare it to make it edible? How many lives did that critical process cost? That same culture already knew hundreds of edible plants that would die off during a drought. But they didn’t need that knowledge. They needed to know about the plant they did have.
For someone 300 years ago to have a piece of knowledge wasn’t enough. They needed the right piece of knowledge. And that hasn’t changed.
Why we follow social media influencers
The rise of online influencers isn’t shallow or insignificant. It’s another attempt of humanity at filtering data, and it’s a big deal. Whether it’s a big tech entrepreneur or a flashy style icon, it doesn’t matter. It’s more useful information to an average human being than a graph or a chart.
We’re desperately trying to find people who have sorted through information and thrived, so that we too, can thrive.
A lot of idealistic data-driven people believe that we just need to find better ways to present the data (which we do) and then other people will become data driven. But the minority of humanity is data driven because using data uses calories, and every time you make a decision based on data…on one hand, it’s an opportunity to do the right thing or innovate beyond what people normally do, but on the other hand, it’s wired deeply into our psyches to understand that it’s incredibly dangerous.
This can be improved over time. We’re learning how to utilize and present data in more and more useful ways. But that only reinforces my original premise.
Curation has shown itself to be the key.
Someone is presenting that data, or someone is creating an algorithm that presents the data. Either way, there’s a process of curation involved. And the instinct people have to make judgements on whether a piece of information is worth looking at is incredibly valuable.
The rise of curation from the information age
Every person is a filtration system of information. The ones who survive represent useful data. As our society changes, our definition of survival changes. We’re trying to survive, always, and if we stop, there’s a problem. But as we grow, we start to do things like alleviate suffering, and be better. Ultimately, this is an extrapolation, because someone who has done these things is, in our minds, “more capable of surviving.”
We’re watching and learning. We’re collecting as much data as we can. But it’s become an ocean of information. Oceans hold their own dangers. And knowledge isn’t power – it’s potential power. So what made humanity the beautiful beast that it is, has become more important than ever, to stand on the shoulders of giants.
We must stand up and put a finger on what we believe is worth noticing. This is what all great leaders, artists, creatives, and makers do. They all curate by the act of living, perceiving, directing their attention, and directing the attention of others.
Shining a light for humanity
The choices we make inform the people around us on how to better their lives. Whether it’s by good influence or bad.
Because coming out of the information age, we’re at a stage in history when we need those meta data points of living humans more than ever.
So if you’re thinking about showing yourself to the world, do it. Go make something, go be something, go point out what you think is important.
Because one human filters multiple data sets. Every person has sorted through millions of points of information. And every time we live a full life and make it visible to those around us, or choose to show a portion we believe holds value, it gives others an opportunity to observe, and decide whether or not to use it to move towards better.
The people who curate knowledge by showing an aspect of their lives that they believe has value, allows the free market of human choice to adapt and thrive.