Qualitative Approaches to Evaluating Social Media Influencers: A Case-Based Literature Review

With the age of the Internet upon us, many marketing strategies have come to focus on social media influencers. Current research about social media influencers conveys the quantitative values of influencers’ capacity, but the numbers are readily manipulated with automated bots and other methods. Therefore, in this case-based literature review, we aim to demonstrate the legitimacy to evaluate influencers’ performance from qualitative perspectives. We found ten qualitative factors, such as credibility, appearance, connectedness, and so on, from a review of relevant 37 journal articles identified from keywords searching on academic databases. Then, we redefined and remapped the factors by thematically reviewing 39 promotion video clips from 13 popular social media influencers in lifestyle, which results in 52 indicators. We semantically and systematically classified the indicators with three larger qualitative themes and nine sub-themes: (a) credibility: expertise, trustworthiness, and quality content, (b) engagement: interpersonal interaction, quality presentation, and personal branding; (c) connectivity : participatory activities, collaborating with others, and socially networking. For qualitative approaches to social media influencers, we articulated applicable analysis methods to each sub-theme. In this study, we demonstrated the potential of an alternative to existing quantitative evaluation methods that marketers could consider it in their recruitment and evaluation of social media influencers to find the right social media influencers.