In today’s global market businesses need all the help they get identifying trends and prospective clients. Marketing teams need people who know what consumer wants even before those consumers know they actually want a certain product or if they want to buy from companies that claim to be the best in a certain business sector.
Key Opinion Leaders are the people executives turn to when they need an answer that will increase revenue and bolster their standing in a specific industry. Key opinion leaders developed the ability to influence people’s opinions and win their trust.
These unique opinion leaders are able to come up with advice and original ideas that help businesses, individuals, and entrepreneurs achieve organizational and personal goals. Marketing teams and executives follow these vocal business soothsayers in order to plan for the next big product or service. Some companies even enter partnerships with opinion leaders to maintain company, as well as personal growth.
What’s The Difference Influencers and Key Opinion Leaders?
The debate over the difference between an influencer and a key opinion leader rages on in the corporate world. Some corporate executives claim opinion leaders have the knowledge to influence people’s opinions. Influencers earn respect for their opinions. So in a sense, influencers do the same thing as opinion leaders.
Trying to determine the difference between an opinion leader and an influencer is hard to do in some cases because some influencers are opinion leaders, but not all influencers consider themselves opinion leaders and an influencer at the same time.
But the one key difference between an opinion leader and an influencer is influencers operate online through social media sights, YouTube videos, and blogs. Opinion leaders don’t necessarily operate online. They are the go-to people companies depend on to get information about the subject that earned them expert status.
Opinion leaders may appear in court cases as expert witnesses. The prosecution and the defense use these experts to win cases. The press uses opinion leaders when they need a special quote or credible information about a current issue or product.
There are opinion leaders who earned expert status in the political arena, or they have a lot of knowledge about gun control. University professors and weather experts serve as opinion leaders thanks to their reputation and their ability to express their knowledge in an understandable way.
NetBase Quid Uses Key Opinion Leaders To Support Analytic Information
When NetBase and Quid decided to merge, social media analytics took a giant step forward in the quest to develop the next generation marketing and consumer intelligence platform. That platform delivers important insights that uncover business trends using unstructured, as well as structured data.
NetBase Quid has access to a plethora of indexed resources. Those resources include key opinion leaders, consumer reviews, news articles, and product reviews. That information goes through an analytic, vocal, and visualization process in order to establish insights that help identify consumer and market trends.
A Lot Of Opinion Leaders Are Superstars In Their Industries
Trying to list all the current opinion leaders is a challenge because of the diversity that exists in the business world. But people like Arianna Huffington, the founder of The Huffington Post, earned the title of opinion leader in the media world.
And Seth Godin earned the title “Godfather of Modern Marketing” by writing 18 books on the subject. Lori Greiner, the Queen of QVC and one of the sharks on Shark Tank, is a consumer product expert and a reputable opinion leader thanks to her business success and the 120 patents she owns.
