✅ Listening with influencers. Rethinking how we engage stakeholders

Have we been underestimating the role of influencers? What if they’re not just content creators to support marketing and public relations, but a route to hearing what your audience really thinks?

We’ve spent the past decade working with influencers as both earned and paid endorsers. Get the right face, match the right brand, push the right content. Job done.

But what if we’ve missed their real potential?

A new research paper by Hanna Reinikainen and Taina Erkkilä, published in Public Relations Review, challenges the traditional playbook. The researchers argue that social media influencers could be harnessed as audience advocates. Not just as content creators, but as credible go-betweens who gather the hopes, fears and ideas of their communities and feed that insight directly back into your strategy.

Not just promotion. Dialogue

The idea is straightforward: influencers aren’t simply media channels. They are trusted figures, with daily, often intimate conversations taking place in their social media comments and direct messages. They know their audiences better than your brand trackers ever will. And when followers share their real struggles - parenting challenges, career anxiety, money worries - they’re not sending that to your corporate inbox.

In two case studies of Finnish non-profits, Reinikainen and Erkkilä demonstrate how organisations collaborated with influencers not to broadcast messages, but to pose meaningful questions and listen attentively to the responses. The influencers were briefed and paid for their time.

The influencers reported insights. They became advocates for their audiences in campaign workshops. The organisations didn’t just reach people - they learned from them.

Five steps to doing it well

The research study suggests a clear process for working with influencers as audience advocates: