Facebook may be the undisputed king of Social Media kingdom, but Twitter is blessed with attention from celebrities. Similarly, Instagram is an instant hit amongst celebrities but LinkedIn falls behind in the race. In a quest to stay in vogue LinkedIn roped in the God of Influencers to use the platform.

Ever since LinkedIn got acquired by Microsoft in a 26 Billion Dollars, industry practitioners and analysts have drawn a list of permutations and combinations on what the alliance would mean for the professional social media users.

In fact, the platform has introduced major changes to enhance user experience with hashtags and a lite version for low internet demographics.

The company has beefed up the recruitment offering with LinkedIn Placements as well and the biggest update till date is the focus on Influencers across verticals. Featuring power profiles from India is one such step towards engaging mass Influencers. Narendra Modi and Priyanka Chopra are some of the biggest Influencers LinkedIn has managed so far, the latest addition to this list of power Influencers from India is - The God of Influencers - Sachin Tendulkar

Yes, you heard it right, Sachin Tendulkar kick starts his LinkedIn journey with this post titled My Second Innings

In a rendezvous with Ramya Venugopal, Senior Editor at LinkedIn Sachin spoke how he has shaped up his second innings with philanthropy and sports entrepreneurship at the core and his vision of Sports for All.

Roping in mass influencers and icons seems to be a part of LinkedIn’s strategy to drive more user sign ups on the platform and at the same time building a forum for real conversations. This move from LinkedIn can be compared with Facebook’s efforts to populate Facebook Live amongst artists or YouTube’s initiative to encourage content creators. In my opinion all these user acquisition strategies have their foundation lying in the principles of communication theories.

The Case for Communication Theories

They say MBA’s don't teach you the practicalities of business and your only takeaway is a spoonful of theories. While I am always open to a parallel debate on this, I believe the essence of these theories is the foundation of your communication strategy which in turn is a part of your business strategy.

If you have been following my stories here or even skimmed through them at some point in time. You would have realized that I am a big fan of the application of communication theories. Right from the diffusion of innovation to the balance theory to the Aristotle's  model and the likes, I tend to draw instances from these theories to understand and explain the working of the social media ecosystem.

An interesting application of the balance theory explains the psyche of brand endorsements by celebrities. A Brand signs up a celebrity to creative a positive impact on the consumer’s perception about their offering.

In simpler terms, if a person has a positive affinity towards Aamir Khan and Aamir Khan endorses Star Plus, the person would develop a positive to neutral liking towards Star Plus to maintain the psychological balance.

The reverse of this psychological balance theory also stands true if the person has a negative affinity towards Star Plus or Aamir Khan for that matter, to balance out the forces in perception the person may abandon one because of the other. Something which Snapdeal and Incredible India experienced in real-time and they dropped Aamir Khan as an ambassador during the intolerance debate times.

I will leave it to you guys for connecting the dots and correlate this theory with LinkedIn’s latest move to rope in the God of Influencers - Sachin Tendulkar