Until ten years ago, an opinion leader, in general, was someone who had earned the credibility of millions of people because he had excelled in his profession.
The classic opinion leader model has given way to a huge diversity of profiles that include YouTubers, influencers, and Twitter stars.
Everything has happened very quickly. Until ten years ago, an opinion leader, in general, was someone who had earned the credibility of millions of people because he had excelled in his profession. We also assumed that, always with the help of the major media that disseminated his messages, he was capable of changing the way of thinking of very broad groups. No one really knew how to measure their influence.
At the same time, the credibility of their worldview was associated with certain experiences and knowledge that the public valued and that generally required a certain age. This does not mean that they were very old, but they were not usually under 35 years old either, except in the cases of some actors, singers and athletes.
The explosion of blogs first and social networks later in the last fifteen years has transformed this context. Some of the great protagonists and influencers Instagram, Twitter or Youtube (youtubers) did not need to resort, initially, to the large mass media to accumulate millions of followers. In addition, many of them were under 35 years old and, sometimes, under 30 as well. They didn’t need to be stars in their profession and, in fact, some didn’t even have much work experience.
The main thing was his extraordinary capacity for communication and mobilization, which could now finally be roughly measured. We had tools to evaluate their impact and influence thanks to big data and the different technologies that measure the interactions of their profiles with their followers on social networks. It was now possible to compare, approximately, the influence and credibility of two opinion leaders.
It is difficult to predict the future of such an incipient phenomenon. It is still the large mass media , especially television, that help generate the most opinion leaders. Companies are only beginning to learn how to squeeze the impact of these new characters to sell their products in the market and the media do not know whether they should interview them, invite them to talk shows or commission them programs. At the same time, part of the public has also begun their romance with them, but there is still a long way to go in the conquest of the over-40s.
No one rules out that new opinion leaders will create their own communication empires or consumer products, that they will ally themselves with traditional actors or that they will be eclipsed by others and disappear as quickly as they emerged. The unknowns make the scenario even more fascinating.
