6 The Oregon Surveyor | Vol. 45, No. 5 From the PLSO Office Aimee McAuliffe, PLSO Exec. Secretary Marketing is Changing, Are You? If you are on social media, have children or grandchildren, you may have heard of the term “influencer.” It’s not something that often comes up in the land surveying community. We tend to be a little more introverted (except for maybe Mike Berry and Shaun Fidler) and detail oriented versus big picture highlights. With that said, we are trying to appeal to a younger crowd to replenish our workforce, so it’s time we got a little savvy. In essence, an influencer is someone who promotes and creates trends by using their celebrity personality status. Before you roll your eyes and start blaming everything on Millennials not wanting a “real job” let’s understand that, while it hasn’t always been a job title, the idea of someone being an influencer existed in American culture for centuries and even longer in human history. In ancient Rome, gladiators would endorse products, the 1700s saw England’s royalty give its stamp of approval on tea sets, and in 1930s America the dawn of celebrity influence on fashion began. With our history in mind, according to the Oxford Dictionary the modern-day term influencer is “a person with the ability to influence potential buyers of a product or service by promoting or recommending the items on social media.” Seems easy enough, right? You can’t technically claim the job title of influencer until you have a platform. What is that, you say? It’s pretty much the modern-day stump—buyer beware, as the truth is ambiguous. If you want an official definition for context, Technopedia explains that “social media platforms are used by people to publish their daily activities, comments and photos as well as re-publish information posted by others.” “Oh, but that’s easy,” you think! “I’ve been doing that for years on Facebook since 2007 and I’m certain I opened an Instagram account once.” Calm down—you’re not quite a Kardashian yet. The next step to becoming an influencer, of course, is to get people to follow you on said platform. “Easy again,” your mind brags, because your Gen Z intern has 1,200 people following them. (You or your admin checked because you didn’t want any details about projects being discussed.) This is where it gets more interesting. Your intern could be considered a nano- influencer, but for the purposes of this column we’ll break it down into two major categories. A micro-influencer generally has 2,500 to 100,000 people following them and can make anywhere from $40,000–$100,000 a year. A macro- influencer has 100,000 or more and Being smaller often feels more like a friend you can trust, thus contributing to quality community engagement. Therefore, it is important to understand a campaign’s goals and objectives.
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