So, I called up a few people in the influencer industry and asked them to open their books and share their knowledge with me and, ultimately, also with you. Instead of rejection and cynicism, I encountered the most amazing generosity. This shared passion ignited such a great spark of connection with people I’ve mostly admired from afar and we had awesome, compelling (and often very long) conversations – some of the most raw, inspiring and motivating conversations I’ve had in years. These lively conversations informed the writing of this book and they are available in full in an accompanying e-book, Conversations with Influencers.
Ideas shared really do go up in value. Please share yours with all the very generous people I have interviewed for this book. I can assure you that they are a remarkable collection of talented, committed and sharp-eyed experts in their fields. Thank you to each of them.
The influencer industry is not a fad
Some argue that the influencer market has peaked and that the downturn can already be spotted. However, the Internet certainly isn’t a fad. Similarly, the inherent social nature of humanity also isn’t, which is why I’d argue that social media (in one form or another) is here to stay. As long as the platforms attract users, there will be ways of turning influence on those platforms into income.
As Mike explains:
Even brands also realise that if they’re going to play in a social space, they have to actually be social. The brands who are doing well on social [media] are busy using banter, they are self-deprecating when they mess up. Brands now have very distinct personalities. Influencers are similar in that they are also brands, they are commercial properties, commercialised vehicles of audience.
This very interesting blurring of lines happens every day.
What brands and influencers have in common is that the foundation of everything they do when building a brand (as an influencer or as a marketer) is credibility. Anything that erodes credibility endangers the essence of what you’re busy building when you’re telling stories and trying to use your influence.
Joe Scott illustrates how this sets influencers apart from traditional media platforms in a very practical way.
Traditional media tells me what I should think or how I should behave. Influencers should tell me what they think and how they behave. Their connection to a product should not be a glowing endorsement, but a recommendation based on their personal use. Not “you should use this because its good!” But rather “I use this because it helps me with ___. If you’re like me, you may find value in it as well.” A seemingly subtle difference, but a big one.
If you’re actively positioning yourself as an independent voice you are also flexing your unique power to speak to a consumer in a way that brands cannot. This unique power, however, hinges on your trustworthiness. Trust is what turns your followers into a loyal community. When it goes missing, so does the work. This happened in Australia in 2019, when one small PR firm took the bold step to stop advising its clients to include social media as part of their PR strategies. The Atticism agency ditched spending on influencer campaigns altogether because it found that the same group of influencers in Australia would constantly be liking and commenting on each other’s posts, which drives up engagement, but in a false manner. The agency claimed that it had bust a group of influencers for actively defrauding its clients, because the industry builds its rates on clicks (likes, comments, views and shares).
If you cook the books on your metrics, you are misrepresenting what you are delivering to the client. If you are actively skewing the reporting because you don’t have confidence in your ability to deliver real value to your client, you had better know that they will eventually also notice it in their bottom line. They will change their approach sooner or later and the bottom of your influencer business will, ultimately, fall out.
Playing the long game – which is building a reputation that speaks of integrity and professionalism – is not only something that will stand you in good stead in the world of social media and making any kind of content, but it is also the hallmark of the influencers I interviewed for this book. These are the ones who have outlasted trends, who have earned their blue-ticked verified status, who have outperformed the norm and succeeded against the odds. They happen also to be the ones who under-promise and over-deliver, who treat their clients’ businesses as they would treat their own business.
Beware the Fyre flop
The most high-profile reality check for influencers to date came with the unmasking of the famously failed music festival in the Bahamas, the Fyre Festival. The festival promoters, Fyre Media, captured the attention of thousands of fans through a series of sponsored posts shared by some of the most famous models on Instagram: Kendall Jenner, Bella Hadid, Hailey Baldwin and Emily Ratajkowski, to name a few.
It was a disaster, though. Bands cancelled at the last minute and guests found tents without beds in them. Nothing lived up to the hype and, ultimately, when the festival was supposed to be at its most fabulous and Instagrammable peak, chaos erupted. It turned out that the influencers involved had not disclosed that they had been paid to promote the event.
As Matt Higgins outlines in a paper in the University of Cincinnati Law Review:
To the surprise of no one, lawsuits following the failed Fyre Festival piled up quickly. In a class action complaint ... plaintiffs named 1–100 “Doe Defendants” who deliberately and fraudulently marketed and
