# What an opinion leader is, and why it is not a big name [Home](https://theonlyaxelj.com/en) › [Study](https://theonlyaxelj.com/en/study) › [Articles](https://theonlyaxelj.com/en/study/articles) author: [Axel Jedlitschka](https://theonlyaxelj.com/en/about) published: 2026-10-08 updated: 2026-10-08 language: en reading time: 5 min topic: Marketing & sales source booklet: [Who Are You Actually Talking To](https://theonlyaxelj.com/en/shop/introduction/publics-surveys-image) An opinion leader is the person your public asks for a view, and they are measured by their pull on your public, not by how many people know them. An opinion leader is the person your public turns to when it wants to make sense of what it sees and hears. They are not necessarily the important or famous name in your trade, and what counts is how much they sway your public, however small or large their own following is. That difference sounds thin. In practice it saves time and money. ## What an opinion leader is First a word about the term public, because everything else rests on it. In the source, a public is a group held together by something in common: an interest, a profession, a standing. Not everybody who buys from you, but a particular group among them. An opinion leader, by the source's definition, is someone people turn to when they want an advertisement or an event explained to them. Put simply: when something new reaches a group, an advertisement or an event, there are people the others ask what they make of it. What makes somebody one? The source lists several things. Wisdom, being close to where information comes from, personality, and other factors, popularity among them. Because of one of these, the rest of the group treats that person as someone who judges value for them. And the definition is wide. According to the source it happens in a group, a society, a community, even a nation. What decides it is not the size of the group, but that the others see this person as the one who weighs things up. Notice that popularity is on the list, but only as one reason among several. It can make somebody an opinion leader. It does not have to. In a small business you can actually see this. In almost every public there are two or three people whose word the others accept. Suppose a tradesman works with residents' committees in one area. In that public there are usually two or three long-serving chairs whom the rest go to for advice. Among freelance designers, it tends to be whoever runs their group, or whoever replies in it more than anyone else. ## An important person is not an opinion leader Here is the main warning of the chapter, and the source does not soften it: “it is professional laziness to assume that an ‘important’ person is worth knowing”. Right after that it allows that an important person can also turn out to be an opinion leader. It can happen. It is not a given. The word laziness tells you where the mistake is. It is easier to approach a name everyone knows than to find out who the people you want to reach really listen to. Assuming that the important person is also the influential one saves you the finding out, and you pay for it later. In a small business this shows up with followers. A person with a huge following may still not be the one your public asks for advice. Their followers share an interest of their own, and it is not necessarily the interest of your customers. Suppose a business owner pays for a mention from a well-known figure in her trade. The mention goes out, and not one enquiry comes in, because that figure's followers were never her public. Now suppose the same owner does a piece of work for free for the chair of one residents' committee. That chair knows twenty other committees, and over a year six jobs come out of it. How you phrase the question matters as well. Ask your customers who the biggest influence in the field is, and you will usually get celebrities back, not the real opinion leaders of your public. ## Why the real opinion leader is close to you There is good news in this too. Very often, the person your public really listens to is unknown to anyone outside that public. And that is exactly what puts them within your reach. They are part of the public you already work with. This is somebody you can meet, help and get to know, like the committee chair in the example. Which brings us back to the definition. A famous person may well be the opinion leader of a completely different public. For you they are just a known name, until it turns out your customers go to them. ## What an opinion leader is measured by The line that closes the idea in the booklet is simple. What you measure is the pull a person has on your public. How big their own audience is does not come into it. That changes the question you ask yourself. Instead of asking who is best known, you ask who the people you want to reach listen to. The booklet has four questions for this chapter that identify the opinion leader of any group, large or small, two exercises, a find-out exercise and an analyse exercise, and self-check questions. Before you go looking for the big name in your trade, find out which name your customers already trust. It is closer to you than it looks. - [Who Are You Actually Talking To](https://theonlyaxelj.com/en/shop/introduction/publics-surveys-image): Who your audiences are, and what each one wants to hear. That is enough to stop wasting a budget. --- [עברית](https://theonlyaxelj.com/he/study/articles/what-an-opinion-leader-really-is) · [Español](https://theonlyaxelj.com/es/study/articles/what-an-opinion-leader-really-is)