Experts and opinion leaders have the power to shift their followers’ purchasing preferences. Now Facebook has decided to put that power directly in the advertisers’ hands by allowing them to target those experts with their campaigns. How does it work?

Facebook’s algorithm is now capable of monitoring the rate at which a status update (a link or a photo for instance) is shared and measuring whose posting led to a swift increase in share rate in their network. Those users are regarded as being the influencers, while those they discovered the content from become the experts. Facebook could then target those people with ads and presumably charge businesses more to reach them.

Facebook’s “Influencer Marketing” measures influence by determining, not only who has the most followers, but whose followers re-shared the content. This means that even if a user has a small following, he or she can be regarded as being an influencer on a precise topic if his or her posts are shared by others. The algorithm further identifies experts as the ones responsible for producing content for the influencers to share.

As expected, Facebook will not ask for the influencers’ or experts’ permission to be targeted by these new “Influencer Marketing” campaigns, hence anyone who falls in these categories may end up becoming Mark Zuckerberg’s latest marketing tool!