Why Courses Sold By Instagram Influencers Are Never Worth The Money You Spend
How to be an Instagram ‘Travel Influencer’ in 2019: By Someone Who Isn’t
Every expert was once a beginner — Robin Sharma
Like many I only have a couple hundred Instagram followers. Although I have no desire to be a “travel influencer”, I know this isn’t going to get me any paid gigs soon.
But people do have this dream and no idea how to get there. I’ve seen lots of courses offering to teach you how to be an influencer but one thing about this really bothers me:
The first influencers didn’t pay to learn how it was done. And others have done it for themselves since. If they can do it for free, why can’t others?
There’s a bit more to this story if you keep reading but the long and the short of it is:
Do I really have the audacity to give advice on something I have no experience in?
Well, you can either choose this free article or ‘training courses’ costing up to $2000.
What Caused My Frustration
It’s best to be honest and say the basis of this post is a response to a recent sponsored advert being force-fed to me on both Instagram and Facebook anytime I open the apps.
The two travellers in question have a great promo video, it showed them living the dream life — travelling around the world — and claim to do it all through paid social media work. Now they have the golden formula for how you can do it too!
The advert is designed to hook their audience in to join them for a live webinar. Here they will give you an introduction to how they achieved this success and can help you to do the same through their paid-for course.
But having sat through their webinar — the curiosity was too much — and seen what they offer, I couldn’t understand why anyone would part with their hard-earned money.
I know people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones but you’ve come this far so hear me out. Yes they’ve earned more money than me, and yes they have travelled more than me, but their offer is not the shortcut to success they imply.
The three main problems I had with this advert/webinar were:
1) Misleading Information In Their Adverts
The first advert running said they had been travelling for 6 years. WOW! 6 YEARS! Pretty impressive right? They must make loads of money!
When you delve deeper it turns out one has been travelling for 4 years (now 6), the other for 2 years. Still, no mean feat. And now their adverts are saying they’ve been travelling for 3 years. Which is it?
You can’t add, multiply or divide numbers together to make it sound more impressive. It’s like saying you’ve done 1000 press-ups when the reality is you’ve done 1 press-up 1000 times.
I personally felt that this raised questions over their integrity and businesses collaborating with them should challenge this.
Then I read that they travel for 6–8 months and go home to work. Anyone experienced in the art of backpacking knows this happens.
Money is finite, returning home and taking on some shitty job is par for the course. But this isn’t something they tell you. Why? Because it shatters the illusion.
2) They’re Good. But Not That Good.
I’m not going to rain on their parade. It takes a lot of hard work to be influencers with a combined total of 300,000+ Facebook followers and 150,000+ Instagram followers. But calling themselves experts…hold on.
It’s easy to call yourself an expert, but there are people who spend decades working in certain areas that don’t refer to themselves as experts. Mark Zuckerberg might be considered a social media expert, but he is still referred to as the Founder of Facebook.
Listening to their webinar reinforced what I already thought. They were not teaching anything I didn’t already know, or hadn’t already learnt, by reading free articles on social media and marketing. And I could read more useful articles in that time than the 45 minutes I wasted on the webinar.
I judge things based on quality. What I heard was not high-quality. I could go to a local business networking meeting, meet a marketing company, explain I’m a startup, ask for their five top tips I should do, and this would be of better quality than what I heard.
Yes, I understand they have a product they are selling so they will only give free information away, but if the free information is low quality then this probably speaks volumes.
3) All of this can be yours for $2000. Or less than $100.
I have a burning sensation — steady now — that the video was pre-recorded. The comments coming through (bots), coupled with their responses (faked), just didn’t line up (my opinion). I have serious concerns about how much they are misleading people at this point in time.
My biggest issue is that they use the webinar as a lead magnet. This is standard digital marketing behaviour: 1000 people watch a video, you convert X% into paying customers, and it makes the time, money and effort invested worth your while. That part is fine.
At the end of the webinar they offer a course/access to learning materials worth over $2000 for just under $100. To quote a favourite film of mine:
“It’s a deal, it’s a steal, it’s sale of the f**king century” Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels
I don’t care what planet you live on, selling something at 1/20th the original price tells you two things:
- It’s not worth $2000 in the first place;
- They don’t believe people will pay more than $100 for it;
It might seem like a bargain but is it as good as it sounds? Spending $100 on second-hand digital marketing textbooks, or books by Gary Vaynerchuk or Dan Lok (you can also check out their videos on Youtube), would be better value.
You can also spend your time reading those, or articles and blogs online, learning as much — if not more — for less. It doesn’t add up!
Don’t Waste Money, Spend Your Time
And so I used my past experience in helping startups with their sales, marketing and copywriting, along with my recent experience of six months travelling South America, to think of things I would do to grow my influence base (if I wanted to).
Everything you’re about to read you can do yourself. You don’t have to commit money, you need to spend time learning. Here’s what I came up with:
There Is No Quick Route To Success
The one thing I did agree with in the seminar: success is not immediate. It takes hard work, it takes long days, it will not happen overnight.
Anyone starting this journey thinking it’s a quick way to make money will be sorely disappointed. The only way to achieve this is to have lots of money in the first place. Seeing as you’re reading my article, I’m guessing that’s not the case.
Starting out on this means knowing what you need to learn to achieve it. Yes you can pay for courses. Or you can learn the hard way through practice and repetition. Some obvious things you will need to master, and can for free online or simply by doing, are:
- A basic comprehension of (affiliate) marketing methods
- Facebook/Instagram advertising
- Basic understanding of Search Engine Optimisation/Data analytics
- How to write interesting and useful travel blogs/social media updates
- Photography/HTML skills
- Photoshop (Because those amazing photos aren’t always pretty in the first place!)
Is this an extensive list? No, but if you look at current-day Instagram Influencers this is what you would see they have taken the time to develop their knowledge of.
Pick a niche, or not
One of the things I often see when reading various articles on travel influencers is this need to ‘pick a niche’. While I understand the principle, no one really does it. The niche is travelling.
What you have within that are subcategories: hiking, type of travel (e.g. motorbike), adventure (climbing, kayaking, cycling etc.,), high-end travel/food (5* hotels/restaurants), etc.
It’s less about the niche and more about the value you give back. Let’s be honest, most people just want to see pretty pictures, but for those who really engage with what you do, the information you give is important.
So if you are picking a niche that’s fine, use it, exploit it, make it the single thing you’ll gravitate to. But if your niche is just giving good information about the places you go, that’s fine too!
Research and Planning
Just like your trip, you need to research and plan how you’re going to achieve/measure success. This means taking time to look at what others have done, their style, methods, and what audiences like/don’t like. You want to use all of this to engage your audience.
This also means researching the skills you’ll need to master in order to develop the style of influencer you want to be. This includes looking at the platforms you are going to be using and understanding how they work, becoming an expert in the mechanics of them.
If your trip has a set route, a content plan should map onto this. Where are you going? What will you be doing? Are there key things that you can produce content for that will naturally fit into the plan? How much time will you need afterwards to create content?
Your research and social media plan will dictate your success, but they will also dictate the level of effort you need to put in to achieve this. It will be a test of your commitment at this point in time as to whether this is the path for you and the focus you will need.
Use What You Do
As part of my travels I spent two weeks as a tourist in Cusco and two weeks volunteering at a hostel. During this time there was the opportunity to get under the skin of the city and surrounding area. It was also a hostel with over 200 people a night staying there in peak season.
By being knowledgeable, and social, it soon became clear I was someone to speak to for advice on things to do around the city/information on Machu Picchu and guests would actively seek me out to ask questions.
Turning this kind of opportunity into a ‘Do you have Instagram?’ moment would have been ideal. I believe I could have added between 500–1000 followers during that period alone, more than just organic/paid growth.
If you are travelling for a long time, with the intention of volunteering in hostels, or animal shelters/schools/eco-lodges etc., this is a great way to meet people and to boost the influencer numbers.
But it’s not just working in a hostel. Everyday you are seeing something new, learning what to do, what not to do, what to spend money on, what to save money on, where to eat, where to sleep. This is all useful to the right person and turns into…
CONTENT! CONTENT! CONTENT!
Building on that last point is turning what you do and what you know into useful, quality content for others. Whether it’s a three thousand word blog, a 3 minute video or a series of separate (video) blogs, get it out of your head and onto the Internet.
IMPORTANT: Be yourself and be honest when you’re doing this. Don’t try to fake it. Don’t Lie. If you drop an f-bomb in your video/content, that’s cool. It’s you. And that’s what people want.
It will help when you’re speaking to people by saying it’s on Instagram, or on your blog, and it also becomes part of your engagement strategy in your ‘Planning and Research’.
For example, a lot of backpackers use #travel<insert country> on Instagram. If you search for that hashtag you can easily send a quick DM saying: ‘Hey, I can see you’re in <country>, check out my blog on Things to do in… or 10 free things you can do in… Follow me for more information’.
People may be surprised to get a DM from a stranger but if they are also travelling they will want the knowledge other travellers can offer. Get on forums like Lonely Planet or TripAdvisor, answer questions you know you can and direct people to your social link/website blog.
Focusing on one channel to disseminate information will hold you back. Cast the net as far and wide as possible. Remember:
“Content is value and there is value in content” Andy M. (Yes, I said that)
Get engaged with your community
Coming back to those who provoked me into writing this, being engaged with your followers is something that should happen all the time.
On their adverts, which are still running, they actively replied to the first 30–50 comments, but now the comments are up near 600, with some asking genuinely challenging questions…silence.
Whether you’re a pro, or just starting out, the value you give is the value of engagement. This could be offering a response or just recognising someone tagging a friend. These things matter. Neil Patel is a true advocate for this and I recommend you popping to his YouTube channel next and paying attention.
I’m not saying it’s feasible for you to reply to every person but replying to the right people, the right question, the right time (as soon as possible, not 8 months later), will improve your status and reputation.
People follow people — Literally!
The human sheep process crosses both the physical and digital world that is social media. The more followers you have the more you will get, because people trust strangers.
If you have ever bought something off Amazon, or eaten at a restaurant, purely as a result of online reviews, it is the same thing. Your followers will be a digital benchmark for your authority, so use this to your advantage.
The reason for this is because you have their attention. You have their attention because you have something of interest. And you have something of interest because you’ve taken the time and effort to learn this, develop it, improve it, and sell it to them.
What you know becomes your commodity, your key product, and that is where you have a viable business. Commercialising it is the hard part.
Social also means professional
If your end goal is to monetise what you do it’s not enough to have a social presence. You need a professional one too. As much as life might be about Instagram and Facebook, it’s also about LinkedIn.
When you become an influencer worth listening to, companies are going to want to know why they should work with you. I talked about having a good grasp of analytics, this is where they wield the power to generate income. These should form the basis of a media pack.
This should be a professionally crafted document designed to connect you with brands you want to work with. The pack should link to a ‘professional resume’ and demonstrate you have commercial awareness beyond an Instagram/Facebook account with pretty pictures.
Conclusion
As much as there are set ways to do things, there are also new paths to tread. Don’t try and walk in someone else’s shoes. Try them, see what works and slip your own back on.
If there’s one thing I really want to emphasise, it’s that you don’t need to spend huge amounts of money to achieve ‘influencer status’ in the early days. Maybe some of those who are influencers took this route, but I’d guess the majority didn’t. They worked hard and it paid off.
When you see sponsored content, and the person advertising has less than 5000 followers, you know they are trying to shortcut their way to success. And people see through that.
Don’t get me wrong, there are times you will need to spend money. This might be to make a push from 10K — 25K followers, or 50K — 100K. That’s fine, but it comes at a time when your knowledge, experience, and instinct tell you that.
It’s important to look at the process of becoming an influencer, in any arena, in three parts:
- Planning/Development — Spending time to learn what you need to do
- Being, Seeing and Doing — Engaging in that subject and applying #1
- Going Commercial — Turning #1 and #2 into income generation
It is a process. It will take time. But if you have the commitment and dedication to do so, you can make it. Others have, others will. The only question is: how are you going to do it?
Do you agree with what I’ve written? I’m particularly keen to hear from Instagrammers with over 10’000 followers as to whether this maps onto their experiences.
