Managing strategic influencer communication: A systematic overview on emerging planning, organization, and controlling routines

Abstract

Strategic influencer communication is a relatively new domain in communication management. Organizations and their agencies have to adapt existing or even develop new management routines for planning, organizing, and controlling their influencer activities. This article provides a systematic overview on their emerging routines and rationales. On the basis of 20 explorative expert interviews with organization and agency representatives, we found that organizations deploy strategic influencer communication mainly for pursuing marketing objectives, while the potential for achieving Public Relations objectives is not fully exploited. In organizing influencer campaigns, organizations and their agencies have to balance the organization’s control expectations and the social media influencer’s demand for creative freedom. But despite the considerable investment that organizations make in strategic influencer communication, the controlling of influencer activities is only slowly coming out of its infancy. We conclude that strategic communication professionals are still learning how to best manage their influencer activities. From a conceptual perspective, we argue that strategic communication outsources traditional Public Relations functions to influencers. These outsourcing processes carry implications for theory and conceptual development in strategic communication research.