So you want to be a social media influencer? Well, becoming a social media influencer is every child’s dream. Literally. A Study by the toy production company, Lego, found that almost 1 in 3 kids want to be a YouTuber when they grow up. All you need is a social media account to begin your journey.
Today, there are millions of social media influencers worldwide. You can find social media influencers everywhere you look. What would be considered ‘macro influencers’, influencers such as MrBeast, Charli D’Amelio, and Addison Rae, have become role models and celebrities each with their own loyal following and a large audience in their own particular area that impact many people’s lives every day.
But becoming a social media influencer is not an easy feat. While it may seem like social media influencers have overnight success, the truth is that many industry experts would tell you it takes a lot of hard work, dedication, and strategy to reach the level of influence your favorite influencers have.
Finding not just your particular niche but also the right target audience who resonates with you and your personal brand is extremely difficult. The best social media influencers differentiate themselves by getting this part right.
Here are a few reasons why influencers, whether you call them nano influencers, mega influencers or macro influencers, find it difficult to not only become social media influencers but to sustain their success and turn into a long term career:
1. Competition with other social media influencers
With the rise of social media, the number of internet users trying to become influencers has skyrocketed. This means that there is a lot of competition out there, making it harder for new influencers to make a name for themselves.
According to HypeAuditor, only 1% of users on Instagram are considered “power users” with more than 100,000 followers. Anyone from 3,000 followers to 100,000 followers would be considered a micro influencer. Which highlights just how competitive it is for social media influencers on the platform.
2. Social media algorithm changes disrupt influencers
Social media platforms like Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube regularly change their algorithms, which can affect the visibility of content. Influencers have to constantly adapt to these changes to maintain their reach and engagement.
Instagram for example made a big change in direction to compete with TikTok. TikTok introduced ‘For You’ which is an algorithmically driven format of media sharing. So rather than seeing what your friends and family are posting, you are seeing a random (but not-so-random) collection of videos and images based on your interests.
As the graph above shows, the distribution of video views for follower-based formats vs. algorithmically driven formats is not comparable. The highly variable nature of algorithm-driven content means influencers have to change their current mindset when creating content.
Before this change, influencer marketing functioned more like a direct media buy in which brands would find influencers and pay them to have messages amplified to their audience to promote products. And you could easily quantify the reach or return on investment of this by calculating the follower count and the average engagement rate for the creator.
However because of TikTok and the rise of algorithmically driven formats, the reach of a post is now far from guaranteed. Therefore influencers cannot strategize for their content in the same way they have in past, nor can they guarantee an influencer campaign will get higher engagement for brands looking to tap into new audiences.
3. Earning a good income as a social media influencer isn’t easy
In a 2019 poll by Morning Consult, 54% of Americans between the ages of 12 and 38 would become influencers if they had the chance. Yet YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram don’t pay influencers as much as you think they do.
In ‘How to Find your Target Audience’, we studied the monetization potential of beginner creators and found that over 200 million people could be classified as a social media influencer, but fewer than 6% of those influencers have earned more than $10,000 in their careers.
4. Authenticity sells for influencers
In order to become a successful social media influencer, you need to be authentic and have a unique voice that your audience resonates with. The days of buying social media followers and fake engagement are over, and people can easily tell when an influencer’s following is fake.
Furthermore, many of the popular social media platforms offer sponsored posts which allow influencers to bring their Instagram posts or Twitter posts to a larger audience. Yet sponsored content is not as effective as it may seem.
Social media influencers struggle to get measurable results on these types of posts and for many, there is an over-saturation of sponsorships where users can easily tell what is organic and what is not.
5. Influencers need marketing skills
There is no doubt of the impact of influencer marketing campaigns. The industry itself is worth $13.8 billion. And in order to become a popular social media influencer, you need to have a strong understanding of marketing and branding.
Social media marketing means that you need to be able to effectively promote your content and collaborate with brands in a way that aligns with your values and resonates with your audience.
And according to Hootsuite, influencers must have a strong social media marketing strategy that outlines their social media goals, the tactics they will use to achieve them and the metrics they will track to measure your progress.
6. Community building is mandatory for influencers
Many social media influencers want quick wins and fail to truly engage with their audience in a meaningful way. Social media influencers who focus on community get much higher levels of engagement on their social media posts.
Community building brings more loyalty to you as a social media influencer which can provide a more stable and reliable audience for the long run.
Even if your audience is smaller than you want, popular social media marketing tool Linktree finds that micro influencers with a small but highly engaged audience monetize more effectively than mega influencers with a big audience but a disengaged one.
7. Consistency is key for influencers
In order to grow your following and maintain your influence, you need to consistently create high-quality content that resonates with your audience. For example, the best influencers find relevant hashtags on social networks like Twitter and LinkedIn, and consistently create content using them to build community.
Great influencer campaigns require a lot of time, effort, and creativity, which can be difficult to maintain over the long term. Influencers who dip their toes in and out will struggle to make it long-term.
8. Collaborating with brands can be mind-numbing for influencers
Collaborating with brands is a great way for social media influencers to monetize their platform, but it also means that they need to be picky about which brands they work with. They need to ensure that the brands align with their values and that the collaboration will benefit their audience.
A survey by CreatorIQ found that only 33% of most brands are satisfied with their influencers social media campaigns, suggesting that it can be difficult to effectively collaborate with brands and monetize on your social media platform.
9. Influencers have to evolve with the social media platform
As social media platforms evolve, so do the expectations of your target audience. Social media influencers need to be able to keep up with these changes and adapt their content strategy and other marketing strategies to stay relevant.
As previously mentioned, Instagram took a big turn in direction when they launched Instagram Reels to compete with TikTok’s home feed style of short form videos. This took away from the platform’s focus on Instagram Stories and now this feature accounts for over 20% of the time users spend on the app, reported by TechCrunch.
Instagram remains one of the most popular social media networks in the world, but social influencers on the platform had to adapt to the demand and create influencer campaigns for Instagram Reels rather than the older picture-based format on the platform. Even your favorite mom bloggers or nano influencer had to conform to the new feature!
10. Influencers struggle to maintain creativity
As a social media influencer, you may have to work with a different collaborator, creator, or brand on a daily basis, which means your creativity can take a serious hit. Every collaborating brand has a message different from the others. Every marketing campaign is different from the next one.
And this can be a challenge as it limits an influencer's options in terms of creative expression. The more brands an influencer associates with, the more restricted they can feel within creative boundaries. And their audience will notice this too.
Put in the work: Becoming a social media influencer is not an easy task. Social media influencers work extremely hard, dedicate crazy amounts of time on social media feeds and put a lot of strategy into each social network to reach the level of influence they have.
About Lifetoken: Lifetoken takes creators and brands from impressions to actions. Digital marketing today is driven by impressions. $200 billion a year is spent to get those impressions. Creators and brands now realize impressions don’t connect with actions. Lifetoken bridges that gap. To fans and followers, it’s social and fun. To brands and creators, its audience management done right. Learn more about Lifetoken at lifetoken.ai.
