What is an Opinion Leader in the Media? What are the Benefits for Business?

Building business reputation and trust takes time. Not surprisingly, many consumers prefer well-known brands. If possible, one that has been operating for years.

However, that doesn’t mean you as a business owner need to wait years to build reputation and trust from consumers.

This article will discuss how opinion leaders in the media can help create brand trust for your business faster. Curious? Let’s take a look!

What is an Opinion Leader?

An opinion leader is someone who is trusted by the public because they have a lot of experience and skills in a certain field. This advantage is the reason why opinion leaders’ opinions are trusted and influential for many people.

Quite often, the words of opinion leaders in the media can shape new trends. In extreme cases, opinion leaders can also direct the market to do certain things. For example, in the case of rising or falling share prices in the financial industry.

Why Opinion Leaders are Important for Businesses?

Opinion leaders in the media can help your business gain the trust of potential customers in a relatively shorter time. Because instead of spending time and energy convincing thousands of people to use your product or service, you use opinion leaders who are clearly trusted by your potential customers.

In addition, opinion leaders usually already have a loyal audience base. You could say that whatever the key opinion leader (KOL) says, he or she is likely to obey. This kind of audience base is expensive and sometimes difficult for business owners to reach.

Because, as mentioned earlier, it takes a long time to introduce products and educate potential customers. Also, businesses still need trial and error in the process.

That’s why, this expert opinion is very powerful to build positive media coverage for brands.

How to Utilise Opinion Leaders for Your Business

Working with KOLs also cannot be done carelessly. Wrongly, you will end up losing money before reaping the results. Here are some tips on building brand trust from media opinion leaders.

1. Choose the right opinion leader

Despite having a large and loyal audience base, not all opinion leaders are suitable for your business. That’s why you need to find the right opinion leader to get maximum results.

Make sure that the opinion leader you choose has a mass base that you can turn into your ideal target customers. Because this is the most efficient way to reach the consumers you dream of.

However, in addition, make sure that the KOL you choose is really an expert, has experience, and is respected in the industry. Avoid KOLs that have a bad reputation, are problematic, or are currently embroiled in a case.

2. Build relationships with opinion leaders

Instead of rushing to work with KOLs, you should first establish a good relationship. The goal is to find out the compatibility of KOL with the brand you have. When everything feels good, you can continue more serious conversations and negotiations.

3. Determine the cooperation format

There are many formats of KOL cooperation in the media. One of the most familiar is cooperation on social media. You can do this through sponsored posts, Instagram Live collaborations, account takeovers, and so on.

However, apart from that, KOL cooperation can also be realised in the form of backlink exchange or news in the mass media. Compared to the previous format, this cooperation is somewhat more impactful. Because the effect can boost website ranking and increase audience reach over a longer period of time.

4. Provide special value

In order for potential customers to be moved to buy a product or service, don’t forget to provide special value. There are various ways to do this. Starting from access to exclusive content, discount coupons, to premium access to new products.

5. Evaluate the results

In the end, don’t forget to evaluate your strategy. Use analytics tools to see if there are changes in terms of followers, engagements, traffic, website ranking, or other important metrics.

Before collaborating with KOLs, you need to determine the metrics or things you want to measure. For example, the number of impressions and followers. This is useful to evaluate the performance and success of the promotion strategy through opinion leaders.

From here, you can decide whether the KOL collaboration is successful or not. You can know what needs to be improved if you want to work with other KOLs.

Ready to Build Brand Trust with the Help of Opinion Leaders?

In the fast-paced digital era, you don’t have to wait for years to build reputation and trust from customers. Collaborating with opinion leaders can be your way of introducing your products and services.

The good news is, you don’t need to know where to start. With Seedbacklink, you can publish opinion leader testimonials in the media of your choice. In just three steps:

1. Prepare the content or brief
2. Choose a publication medium
3. Deposit and checkout

Seedbacklink has a network with mainstream mass media such as Detik, Kompas, Tribunnews, and Suara. Needless to say, this promotion reaches thousands or even millions of people.