Key Opinion Leader Marketing: How to Use Social Media Listening Tools to Find True Experts
The internet is crowded, busy, and increasingly perceived as inauthentic. Your audience is tired of the seemingly endless advertising, but marketing is still essential for maintaining top-of-mind awareness of your brand.
So what can you do to adapt your marketing strategy? Talk to people, not at them. Better yet, collaborate with a key opinion leader who can speak to them about the topics they care about, in the communities they frequent. This is known as key opinion leaders marketing, a long-form strategy focused on connecting with your audience, rather than selling to them. It’s generally used to build awareness and trust in your brand.
What are KOLs in Marketing?
Key Opinion Leaders (KOLs) are trusted experts in their fields. A few examples include Neil Patel in digital marketing and Cory Doctorow in copyright law. These individuals earned the trust and respect of their peers through their contributions to their fields, becoming influential voices among both professionals and broader audiences. Some key opinion leaders, like Tim Cook, are generally known outside their industries. Others, like David Greene, real estate investor and former co-host of the BiggerPockets podcast, are largely only known within their niches. The common characteristic among key opinion leaders is that they have the credentials and influence to shape audience opinions within their spheres.
It’s important to note that there’s no exact criteria for being a key opinion leader. In academic fields, for example, one might have an impressive CV that features important contributions to their area of study. In tech, an influential voice could be somebody who built a successful startup or invented a piece of technology that gained widespread use. These credentials position individuals as trustworthy voices. But there’s more to reaching this status than being an expert in one’s niche—a leader becomes a KOL by participating in their field’s ongoing discourse. This could be through books, media appearances, videos, podcasts, articles, and/or a social media presence.
In marketing, brands collaborate with KOLs to nurture their relationships with their audiences. KOLs aren’t spokespeople; they’re independent experts who offer valuable insights and perspectives on topics audiences care about.
Sheena Iyengar, the S.T. Lee Professor of Business at Columbia Business School, is a key opinion leader in the psychology of choice. She’s best known for her book, The Art of Choosing, which makes her academic findings accessible to a broader audience.
For a brand that targets an introspective, choice-conscious audience, such as a life coach who focuses on major life transitions, Sheena Iyengar could be a strong KOL partner. Collaborations might include guest appearances on a podcast or publishing an interview with her.
KOLs are often referred to as thought leaders. The blog posts, videos, books, and other content they publish are often referred to as thought leadership.
What do KOLs Do?
KOLs contribute to their fields’ discourse in a variety of ways. Popular forms of thought leadership include:
- Hosting and being featured on podcasts
- Publishing articles
- Public speaking engagements
- Media appearances
- Writing books
- Blogging and social media content
- Publishing newsletters
Thought leadership is often educational, teaching audiences about newly published research, industry trends, future predictions for their field, and strategies followers can use in their own lives and careers. Although some thought leadership is purely informative, a large portion of this content can be described as edutainment. To hook audiences and keep them engaged, KOLs often blend insight, drama, or humor (and sometimes all three) into their work. As their work gets published, shared, reposted, and quoted, KOLs often develop followings. Through social media listening, you can identify KOLs whose audiences overlap with yours, which is crucial to this type of marketing strategy.
Are KOLs and Influencers the Same Thing?
No, KOLs and influencers are not the same. However, there is some crossover between these categories, and in some cases, an individual can be both a KOL and an influencer.
Here’s a quick look at the differences between KOLs and influencers:
The primary difference between influencers and KOLs is that an influencer leverages their high follower count to promote products and services, while a KOL leverages their expertise to drive conversations online and offline. In a way, influencers are to direct response copy as KOLs are to content marketing. Both are valuable components of an overall marketing strategy, but while one pushes sales through clever hooks and instant connection, the other grows awareness and engagement through valuable information. If you’re not sure whether a KOL or an influencer is a better choice for your brand, ReadPartner’s Market Analysis tool can show you what’s trending in your niche. With this data, you can see exactly who and what your audience responds to best.
Why do KOL Partnerships Matter for Brands?
For a brand, a KOL partnership is a way to participate in the conversation their audience is having. The goal can be to address users’ questions, prepare them for upcoming changes or trends, offer an interesting or helpful perspective, or educate them about a relevant subject. Producing this type of content lends the brand credibility while showing that they view their audience as a community, rather than simply customers.
How do I Find KOLs to Work With?
One of the most effective tools brands use to find KOLs is social media listening. Key features to look for include:
- Noise filtering
- Trend detection
- Real-time alerts
- Sentiment and context analysis
Social media listening enables marketing teams to isolate valuable content, track mentions and keywords, and identify trending topics to understand how their audiences feel and their engagement patterns. The goal is to identify the key players driving conversations and shifting sentiment.
ReadPartner offers a suite of social listening features to help you find the best KOLs for your next campaign.
How to Create a KOL Marketing Campaign, Step by Step
Step 1: Determine your Campaign Goals
Set clear campaign goals and their key performance indicators (KPIs). This can help to determine whether a KOL campaign is the right strategy. If it is, the next goal is to find the best fit.
In some cases, KOL marketing is not the most effective option. For instance, a brand that aims to showcase new products or highlight current promotions might see a better result from an influencer campaign. Generally, KOLs marketing is best for brand awareness and positioning.
Step 2: Map Out your Content Strategy
KOLs marketing is content marketing, so it's important for brands to have a clear content strategy before approaching potential partners.
The type of content the brand already publishes can help them determine the best KOLs to collaborate with. For example, a brand with a podcast can seek KOLs with podcasts to do episode swaps, which comes with the added bonus of reaching each other’s audiences.
Step 3: Identify the Right KOLs for your Brand
After developing a clear content strategy, the next step with key opinion leaders marketing is to determine the best voices for the campaign. This is the step where social media listening can be most valuable. Through social listening, brands can assess:
- Whose posts are getting the most engagement
- What elicits a strong reaction from the community
- The latest releases, findings, or events the community is talking about
- Who the community follows and respects
KOLs aren’t necessarily prolific posters, but their content gets a significant amount of traction. Through social listening, brands can separate the accounts with the most followers from the accounts with the most impactful content—these are not always the same people.
Step 4: Send Well-Crafted Pitches for Collaboration
After identifying appropriate KOLs for your marketing campaign, the next step is to send each of them a personalized pitch for collaboration. Effective pitches often reference recently published work or discuss trending topics among the KOL and brand’s shared audience. The pitch should also include a proposal for the type of content your brand plans to create and how it will reach your audience, such as an article published in a trade magazine. Our Media Outreach tool streamlines the pitching process by connecting you with the journalists who are most likely to publish your stories.
Step 5: Collaborate on Great Content
Once a KOL accepts your proposal, the next step is to create the content. At this stage, it’s important for brands to remember that this type of marketing isn’t the same as influencer marketing. KOLs have their own interests, goals, and audiences, and they often request more creative control over the content than influencers request. To get the most out of your partnership, treat them as peers, rather than hired creatives. You should also be prepared to make concessions, such as allowing them to promote their book during a podcast interview.
Step 6: Nurture the Relationship
KOLs marketing is a long-term brand and community development strategy. The return on investment for this kind of marketing isn’t necessarily higher profits, but greater distinction within your industry. Consider ways to turn the collaboration into an ongoing relationship, such as recurring guest podcast appearances, regular social media collaborations, or permanent “fixtures” like offering the KOL to publish a column in your brand’s newsletter.
Getting Started with KOLs Marketing
What are KOLs in marketing? In a nutshell, they’re the voices audiences trust to help them understand their area of interest, whether it’s related to their career, lifestyle, or simply a hobby. In marketing, KOLs move followers down sales funnels by making them feel more informed, which drives more empowered buying decisions. They also lend brands credibility without explicitly endorsing the brands’ products or services. In fact, KOLs marketing works best when the content focuses on education or edutainment without mentioning the brand’s offerings. Remember, audiences see advertisements constantly. KOLs marketing that mentions specific products may be interpreted as veiled advertising, and this can actually hurt a brand’s credibility with their audience.
If your brand has decided that KOL marketing would be an effective strategy to try, the next step is to find KOLs who will resonate with your audience. ReadPartner can help through our social listening tools, like our advanced context and sentiment analysis. These tools go beyond simple analytics to give you a comprehensive look at the conversations your brand needs to be part of.
Interested in learning more? Request a demo with ReadPartner today.
Key Opinion Leaders Marketing FAQs
Are key opinion leaders (KOLs) the same as influencers?
No, KOLs are not the same as influencers. Influencers usually build their presence through large follower counts and relatable personalities, while KOLs’ reach and credibility primarily stem from their niche expertise.
Can a key opinion leader also be an influencer?
Yes, it is possible for an individual to be both a key opinion leader and an influencer. Key opinion leaders are defined by their expertise and influencers are defined by their social media following and sponsored content.
How does key opinion leaders marketing work?
Key opinion leaders marketing positions your brand as an authority in your space by associating it with an industry expert.
Is KOLs marketing effective for every brand?
No, it’s not effective for every brand. We recommend working with key opinion leaders if your brand is already producing long-form content like articles and video essays. Brands that primarily use short-form content like reels and carousels tend to see more success with influencer marketing.
Sources
https://www.indeed.com/career-advice/career-development/what-is-key-opinion-leader
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4500705/
