What’s an Influencer?

The other day I posted a story about the quick decline in Covid-19 cases in the US since Biden became president. I got pushback from a few friends who remarked that there was not necessarily a direct correlation between the two events and that I should be careful what I write as I’m an influencer. That kind of tickled me to think that I am influencing anyone. That said, I’ve been sending out a monthly email newsletter, The Eleven, since 2008 and it reaches over 6,000 inboxes and I have a healthy number of friends and followers on various social media platforms. Then, this question became even more interesting when I received an email from Intellifluence the other day.

Like many people, I receive a ton of emails trying to interest me in upping my SEO, website look and feel, and Google ranking — on a daily basis. Usually, I delete them just like you do, but I decided to click on this particular one and now here we are talking about social influencing. I tend to think of influencers these days as people who get paid to share or show off products for pay. My version of influence or the way that I think of what I do in the world is usually more often trying to get someone to change their behavior in some way — often with an environmental goal in mind. Stop cutting down trees. Don’t use gas-powered lawn equipment. My hope is to keep the planet as habitable as possible and so I write and create videos around…