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Are Business Falling out of Love with Influencers?
November 24, 2017 -
Anyone who’s ever been to a spa will have probably seen that girl pouting into her phone at the edge of the pool without daring to get her costume wet. “What is she doing?” you might have whispered. Quite possibly posting her review to thousands of Instagram followers.
She might later go for a nice lunch, courtesy of the latest trendy opening in town before heading to a free show, all of which she’ll blog on her popular and well-read online outlet. It might seem like a dream for the brands, who get to reach Anna’s (let’s call her Anna) followers for very little effort.
However, for every Anna, there are a thousand Sarahs, whose reviews never make it onto social media – and if they do they’re badly written and missing the point – or whose impressive “reach” actually comprises a load of paid-for bots.
In 2011 Anna Sward started her website proteinpow.com as a blog based on cooking with protein powders (as opposed to using them for shakes). She says, “I was one of the first people pushing this message to a mainstream audience by posting hundreds of recipe posts and content about using protein powders to make healthy snacks. My blog’s mission was simple: expand the reaches of protein powder cooking.” Soon after she launched the blog, big brands in the UK and US started getting in touch sending her products to cook with and magazines started asking her for content. Then she started a column for a bodybuilding website and was offered a book deal. The brands loved being featured by Sward and in turn she was able to pursue her mission of expanding the reach of protein powder cooking. Sward’s story is not unusual. It’s a classic influencer journey, in fact.
In 2015 she shed her influencer cloak and began launching her own retail products. “I got to experience the ‘birth’ and rise of influencers first-hand, not as a blogger but as a company owner,” she says. And a couple of years ago something changed.
Sward believes that posting branded products has gone from “being something people do as a ‘by the way’ into something people want to do as either a job or a way to get free products, any free products. The influencer marketing world often collides with authenticity and, in so doing, prevents actual influence.”
As this world of ‘influencers’ grew, so too did companies designed to herd them (and extract money from them). This is all fine and no problem for big brands with gigantic marketing budgets that can afford a ‘mass attack’ of influencers and it’s great for the bloggers who have suddenly found a way to monetise their presence. But, says Sward, “SMEs with small (or no) marketing budgets get left behind and it’s harder for them to get out there when, even many of the people who post branded products that they genuinely like, start thinking, ‘Hey, I’m not going to post this unless I get paid or get X product for free.’”
If you combine this trend with the fact that social media has markedly reduced the organic reach of small brands, then you end up with small brands losing the kind of reach they once organically (and genuinely) had on social media platforms.
Virgin
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