Influencer marketing. What about that?
Yes, this is another article about influencer culture, yet please bear with me. There are a billion influencers on the Internet making a living by posting pictures of their #OOTD and cars they borrowed from rich Arabs. Many of them started as bloggers but have somehow become influencers with “paid-for-partnership” tags on their posts. But how does it really work?
The concept
Influencer marketing focuses on influential individuals rather than the target markets themselves. Brands partner with bloggers having influence over potential customers so companies may promote their products or services without direct advertisements.
What influencers do is be the centre of a topic, but they should never be overshadowed by the product. Instead, with the help of personal charisma, influencers may seem to be the ones in control of what they promote, therefore gaining attention from their followers.
To be an influencer
Being an influencer is pretty cool like wearing some skinny jeans with a short leather jacket. With some effort it can be done by anyone. And if you want to become one, there are a variety of influencer types to choose from: fashionista, auto blogger, wine connoisseur, food conquistador, etc.
For example, if you want to be the wine connoisseur type, all you need to do is review enough wines (paid by yourself) on social media until you acquire a huge follower base. Then perhaps a small, independent wine maker will send you a proposal for partnership. Once you accept it, you become the official ambassador of the brand. However, unlike a regular business endorsement, you may be able to promote more than one wine brand at the same time. Since what potential customers focus on is you, not the brands, this also creates an illusion that you are a “professional buyer” — someone who only promotes good things. In fact, you do not choose the companies, the companies choose you, which will be discussed later on. Anyway, you will earn money from these endorsements. Once you have acquired partnerships and acquired an enormous fanbase, the big names will probably come to you. That’s the pinnacle of an influencer’s career.
However, while it is true that everyone can be an influencer, not everyone will succeed. Wearing jeans and a leather jacket, for example, you can dress like that and everyone may look at you, yet it is not necessarily because you look good. Only those who like you enough will like you online and follow your profile.
Conspiracies
Ironically, sometimes chance chooses you rather than the other way around. A friend of mine who works in the digital analytics team of a famous cosmetics company once told me that some brands may take advantage of analysis provided by consulting companies (like the notorious Cambridge Analytica) to find out who are the most “investment-worthy” influencers. This sounds good to influencers, or does it?
Consulting companies receive data from social media companies, mostly legally, and then they offer data analysis services to brands seeking budding influencers. The illegally accessed data include some very sensitive information like your sex-orientation, religious belief, political views, frequented social media pages, follower lists, blocked lists, and even payment details. The more demands there are, the more supplies there will be. In a world linked by the World Wide Web, everyone can be the victim of information theft, including the influencers themselves. So who is the winner?
Problems
I once read an article about a British influencer who asked hotels to provide free rooms for her; in exchange, she would write something good about the hotels on her social media page where she had tens of thousands of followers. Unsurprisingly, the hotels could not be bothered, and one hotel even published a notice on their website claiming that they “extremely disapprove of such behaviour” and that she was “a shame to her country”. Some influencers are so proud that they don’t really know what is the right thing to do.
What’s more, influencer culture also generates an ethos of the pursuit of material life. This shallow concept may lead to problems, like people who go into great debt trying to live like influencers do. They want to live better lives, and they choose influencers as role models. However, in this case the pursuit of vanity is the worst influence influencers can create. People should try to strive for goals, not just mimic a bunch of commercial puppets.
The future
Apparently, influencer marketing increases with advances in technology. In essence, it is just like normal business endorsement but with a different name. However, this is what the world wants now. People like things that are new, but not totally different.
Endorsements have been with us for a long time. With the flourishing of influencer culture, global business seems to be refreshed. But one day this technique will become outdated and will no longer work. Influencers will not be as influential anymore, and something new must be invented.
Originally published at taidajournal.tumblr.com.
