From Huda Kattan ( founder of famous cosmetic line Huda Beauty) to the famous Youtube celebrities, the famous social media influencers have filled their banks and made their fortune thanks to their social media and crazy following.
While social media defines and is the latest trend, social media marketing is something that is taking the industry on various levels. Social media influencers are the new age marketers and can be termed as a new source of “silent manipulators”. Top marketing experts from leading companies and industries have always focused on finding a way to sell the product to the customers and manipulating them for the same, in the 21st century, social media seems to be the beginning of what we know as the future digital marketing universe.
Influencers are someone who tends to put themselves as the customers to influence other people to use the product or avail the services whereas they might by the third party who will be getting paid to.
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Is Influencers a new concept?
Influencers have been a major source of marketing for decades. In traditional marketing, your example is evidence of their presence. These are the examples that you can relate to and understand how influencers have been a major part of marketing.
Let’s talk about personal selling for a few moments. From this part of traditional marketing, we have influencers who are a source of personal selling. From movie stars to teachers, all these influencers have been directly or indirectly influencing people to buy products from decades now. Teachers generally worked on commission for recommending publisher’s books to the children in their class. Whereas the commercial Bollywood actors and other personalities are also used as influencers to sell products as Sachin Tendulkar did for Coca Cola in the ’90s.
In the modern world, social media has proved to be a platform that has given a chance Influencers to become a mainstream industry.
How Social Media Influencers Work?
Well, influencers use the very famous “Trust Factor” to sell the products. A social media influencer creates content that people wants to see, read and engage with. They create platforms through their social media handles that create information that people are interested in and share them with consistency.
Once the users get consistently unique and relevant information that is useful for them, they follow these influencers and resulting in popularity which beats some of the known faces from prime time television.
As social media influencers get enough (at least 10k followers), they start to get offers from brands to showcase the product through social media posts.
“One Out of Three People Believe Influencers Over Brands” – Reports
In this millennial age, people tend to have got over influencers, while major section still believes that they are being inspired by the influencers to buy a product or avail the services.
Studies have shown that one of three people believe in an influencer’s word over a brand. While this proves their trust game is strong and that they are successful in terms of creating loyal customers, it also creates a question of how much of these promotions are the truth and how much is just fake reviews.
As an industry, social media influencers are being approached by big and small brands in a huge number. The popularity and demand of these influencers are a result of constant increasing usage of these platforms by the general public.
While these social media influencers seem so relatable and are approachable, the people do believe them and follow their path and buy products they promote.
Influencers and Trust
Being an influencer today is creating yourself and portraying yourself as a Brand. And the influencers are aware of this fact pretty well.
So, now audience are following these influencers and watching their content day in and out. They are a following their paid promotion posts as well, the question now is why they are not able to stop if they know they are being manipulated? Or are they not even aware of it?
The influencers work with various models that make them a successful business model and get them a fortune as well. The most important one of them is TRUST.
Today, social media is a platform where people from all over the world and of a wide age range spend hours of their days and nights. The influencers today create content that is useful for people or that people are inclined towards. And they tend to make it consist to get the attention of people.
As this industry is becoming more and more popular, and the competition is increasing the influencers are converting their social media into television with ads.
Influencers share a very special relationship with their viewers and they are very active when it comes to buying the products and services the influencers are using. The influencers do have pressure to sustain this following. But as we see beside us there are various scandals that are appearing in front of us, influencers will do anything to survive their popularity and status.
And we can see ourselves how the lines are blurring between paid promotions and authentic recommendations. Besides the Instagram, facebook and youtube’s guidelines to be followed while promoting, the influencer pages tend to overrule them and promote brands through their posts.
While women and men still tend to make their ways to these influencers for fashion, beauty, health and lifestyle tips, the following of the influencers tends to be on the risker side compared to when the concept was new and they were budding.
Today, everyone can become an influencer. It is not very difficult to become one as the idea of buying followers is practiced very well now. So analyzing your social media influencers are more crucial now and harder than before.
And hence the role of micro-influencers comes in who tend to have fewer followers and more concentrated relationship. It means that their followers would listen to them better and brands have a better chance of selling their products.
Conclusion:
Social Media is a booming industry and so are social media influencers, As the industry is on its journey of fall and rise, as audience our decision really impacts how the brands and influencers work. It is a two-way communication where users are the ultimate decision makers.
As a social media user, it is essential to make sure that you are aware of what you are seeing, while a post you are seeing is a paid partnership or just an authentic post. So awareness is the key, awareness of the brand, the product, and your self. To know if the product is something that suits you and is quality.
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