Grouping customers on social media makes targeted marketing and listening to feedback easier. It allows businesses to focus on smaller groups with common interests. Brand ambassadors are paid to represent brands in a positive light and spread the brand through their own social networks. Influencers are individuals with large social media followings who may choose to promote brands but are not officially tied to any company. They are harder to manage than brand ambassadors since they can voice any opinion. The key difference is that brand ambassadors are paid to maintain a brand's image while influencers have more independence in what they say.

1. Unit 303 Social Networking Management for a Business
Learning Outcome 2
Gouping People in Social Networking Tools (2.1, 2.2)
Grouping people in social media can allow you to achieve a number of things effectively. It
allows you you carry out targeted marketing a lot easier as you are grouping up your followers
into smaller groups that are easier to target. You can much more easily target a certain
demographic in your followers if you group them together.
Grouping customers in social media also makes it a lot easier to listen to and influence certain
smaller groups on social media. If you are concentrating primarily on one smaller group, you'll
have a greater chance of success to appeal to all of those individuals if they have a common
interest or identifier. You'll also be able to monitor patterns in what they have to say about your
business or brand which will in turn allow you to act on critisism and focus on what your
audience like.
Using brand ambassadors is a potential way of grouping people on social media as they will
often have a certain type of following, a certain group of people with something in common. For
example followers of ex footballer Alan Shearer will more than likely be football fans, while
followers of Actor Rupert Gint will likely be fans of the Harry Potter films and franchise.
Brand Ambassadors (2.3, 2.4, 2.5, 2.6)
A brand ambassador is a person who is hired by an organisation to represent a brand in a
positive light. These people are often celebrities or otherwise well known individuals that have a
following of their own to advertise the brand to, with an increase of sales being the end goal.
Brands with the most iconic celebrities as their brand ambassadors will thrive on social media,
as they will spread their brand across a whole new network of individuals using social media. An
example of a Brand Ambassador is David Beckham, who is currently working with Jaguar to sell
their cars in China.
It is important for organisations to evaluate the need for a brand ambassador as a celebrity
could potentially boost their brand and increase sales of a product by multitudes. The individual
should be carefully chosen, as they must have the appropriate image for your brand. If you were
promoting a new itallian restaurant, itallian celebrity chef Gino D'acampo may be a more
appropriate ambassador than someone like chinese celebrity chef Chine-He Huang.
Brand ambassadors are recognisable due to the way that they promote the brand they are
responsible for. They will do everything they can to give the brand a positive image and will
convince their followers that the brand is worth investing in. They are almost impossible to
recognise due to their high celebrity status, some even being icons of their generation.
Brand ambassadors should be monitored closely by a business in order to both manage them

2. and maintain their validity and credibility. The closer an ambassador is to a business and it's
brand, the easier they are to manage. The worst case scenario for a business is to announce a
new brand ambassador and then for that individual to say something wildly inappropriate on
social media. This would instantly give the brand a bad name, and this is why businesses often
manage their brand ambassadors by entering a strict contract that outlines appropriate conduct
for the ambassdor. It is often a good idea to have your brand ambassador memorise a script for
when they are promoting your brand so that there are no surprises at any PR events.
Influencers (2.7, 2.8, 2.9, 2.10)
Influencers on the other hand are individuals with power and influence on social media that
have not nessacarily been selected to represent a brand, but may choose to feature it on their
social media plantform and influence a public perception about the brand. They are individuals
seperate from the organisation and brand, but an organisation can still build relationships with
the individual. They are in most cases completely impartial.
They are important to a business on social media as they can influence the view of a brand, and
organisations often make the effort to build relationships with influencers in order to give them
the best representation of their brand.
Influencers are recognisable as individual accounts on social media with a rather large and loyal
following. The most promonent influencers could be reviewers of particular products, for
example a restaurant may benefit from building a relationship with a local and well known food
critic, in order to best influence the outcome of any future reviews. Influencers are much harder
to manage than brand ambassadors, and relationships must be maintained to a high standard or
else they could influence the view of your brand negatively.
Research of an Influencer can be key in checking their validity and credibility. It is hard to
identify exactly how credible and valid an influencer is simply by looking at their social media
profiles, so attempts at building relationships with them can be the easiest way of learning the
validity and credibility of certain influencers. Before doing this a business should always
measure the risks of engaging with an influencer against the potential reward, as these
individuals could have the power to make or break a brand.
Comparrison (2.11)
As shown above, Brand Ambassadors and Influencers are very different, the key difference is
that Brand Ambassadors are paid by a company to represent a brand and therefore will do their
upmost to maintain the quality and image of the brand, where as an influencer is not.
Influencers are a lot harder to manage due to them not officially being tied with a company, and

3. they can voice whatever opinion they like while Brand ambassadors are often managed by the
company they are hired by and are expected to act in a certain way. Brazilian footballer Ronaldo
used to be a brand ambassador for Coke-Cola before he was dropped for being spotted drinking
a can of Pepsi just before a Coke Cola event. This goes to show how seriously brands take the
behaviour of their ambassadors.