The thing about social media is, on the one hand, I feel like it is so filtered and fake. On the other hand, I feel like it’s an amazing marketing platform. The more followers you have, the greater your pay cheque because the more people come to your shows.
The problem with fake followers, though, is that they can’t go to shows.
Yes, but it’s the amount of ego involved that gets to you. In Afrikaans, at one point I was the leading Afrikaans alternative musician, in terms of followers. Maybe because my audience was so young, or maybe because I put a comedy spin on posts. But then suddenly guys like Jo Black and Francois van Coke started overtaking me. Then you start looking at other people, how they grow, and you start wondering about your own identity. You doubt whether people still like you. If it is perhaps your own fault that you’re not keeping up?
Bouwer is sharing this important insight in the hopes that you realise that:
Even people with 100 000 followers: “go through this identity crisis, but you should know that the algorithm is all about how frequently you post. You need to keep up a very high frequency. And, of course, it also matters what you’re posting. People loved it when Leandie [du Randt, his ex-wife and also a well-known actress and influencer] and I posted stuff together. Maybe because it held some sort of romantic aspiration? Those posts enjoyed so much engagement. That, and ones about feeling vulnerable and battling with depression. It shows you where we are as people, hey? We also want to know that other people are also scared, that they also battle.
The American digital and influencer marketing strategist Joe Scott manages global campaigns for Fortune 500 companies (the top 500 companies in the United States, as rated by Fortune magazine). I had the opportunity to work with him on a campaign during Rugby World Cup 2019 in Japan. Besides boasting a phenomenal karaoke voice and the ability to speak both Korean and German, Joe is an absolute student of the influencer industry. He concedes that brands cannot tell 100% if someone has bought followers, but that there are strong indicators they look for.
With tools becoming more sophisticated, we can measure the activity of the followers, the rate at which the followers grew, and then the location of the accounts. For instance, let’s take John Doe, an American influencer from Chicago, Illinois. This influencer grew from 50 000 to 500 000 followers in two months, without a particularly viral post. We also notice that Doe’s average engagements haven’t increased proportionately with the follower size. Finally, we see that over 25% of Doe’s followers are randomly from the Middle East or another region outside the United States, without a clear connection between that region and the influencer. These could all be coincidence, but it raises many red flags.
I also asked another ad industry specialist – this time a leading voice here in South Africa – for advice on this topic. Mike Sharman (@mikesharman) founded Retroviral, an agency that has made more brands “go viral, globally” than any other agency in Africa. You will have seen his work on RocoMamas. Retroviral is the leading creative agency for the Smashburger brand, Russell Hobbs, Martin and Martin brands, and M-Net, to name a few. He has developed campaigns that have been classified as “truly viral” (like the “Last Dictator Standing” ad for Nando’s). He was named one of the Mail & Guardian’s top 200 young South Africans in 2013 and is the co-founder of the influencer marketing platform webfluential.com, as well as retroactive.digital, a disruptive sports storytelling agency. Make sure your next read is his first book, The Best Dick.
Mike warns:
There’s an important distinction between buying bot-followers from click-farms in Asia versus paying to amplify your content, because all social channels now need a paid element. Organic is a very difficult thing to grow your base from.
When you buy bot-followers you might get followers but no engagement and you’ll soon be found out. There’s a whole lot of fraud associated with presenting yourself to a brand as something you’re not. The brand won’t get the sales though. And they’re moving more towards a cost-per-click and cost-per-conversion sort of space. So, there’s a lot of revenue sharing.
This is an interesting new innovation you’ll see more of on webfluential.com and similar platforms. Basically, how this works is: “You drive the sales, you get the value ...” If you punt a company’s sale, you earn commission on click-throughs or sales off the back of that. If you’re a real, authentic influencer, you’ll be able to make more money from conversions than off a paid post. Ultimately, it’s a job, you need to make money. As an influencer your value is determined in your output.
As an influencer you will often deal with people like Mike and Joe, so I thought I’d take this moment to outline a few key terms and phrases that people bandy about in boardrooms and on e-mail in the influencer industry. Knowing this jargon will ease your progress through these conversations.
Ellen Ward-Collins – a planner with the UK-based branch of the advertising giant M&C Saatchi Performance – outlines the top three terms as follows:
• Reach: In order for your campaign to influence the largest number of people possible, the ideal influencer should be one who has an above-average audience size in a specific niche or market. However, as Donald Trump’s millions of Twitter bots may demonstrate, the size of your audience is not actually the most important aspect. The way an influencer engages with their followers, and how lasting an impact they have on them, are much more valuable assets for a brand.
• Resonance: It is essential that the influencer selected for a campaign supplies content that resonates well with their audience, in a way that encourages further action. An influencer who creates
