Fake Sponsored Content is Changing the Landscape of Influencer Marketing

We have all become accustomed to seeing sponsored posts from influencers littered all over our social media. What you may have not considered before is how someone becomes an influencer. The Atlantic ran an article which discussed how influencers are posting fake sponsored content on Instagram in order to kickstart their influencer career.

When a brand is selecting an influencer to promote their message, they are looking for someone who has sufficient reach but also has track record of success. Similar to how a page with many inbound links form reputable sites looks attractive to Google’s search algorithms, an influencer who already has many sponsorships is more desirable for brands. Essentially an influencer gains more credibility with each additional sponsor they add. Given this dynamic, the first deal for an influencer it is often the hardest to land. As a result, what aspiring influencers are creating fake posts to give the appearance that they are already have sponsorship deals.

These fake posts are intended to mimic a sponsored post in everyway except that the influencer has no relationship or is being paid by the brand. To the average person it would be difficult to tell the difference, if they even cared to stare long enough at the post to scrutinize them. Given all this free publicity, it would seem that brands would stand to benefit from this trend; however, it is a bit of a mixed bag for them as well. When an aspiring influencer creates a fake post, the brand has no control over the content and it runs the risk that these posts can be off-message. Brands are caught in an interesting position where they want to continue to benefit from the free publicity, but they also want to ensure consistency in the brand message.

How quickly influencers have increased their digital presence makes you wonder if the influencer marketing is here for the long-term or if we as a society will be all “influenced” out in a few years. Me personally, I’ve already become numb to these ads and sponsored posts (or at least I think I have) and with fake posts on the rise it could accelerate the whole process. With brands getting free posts from these fake influencers, could this saturate the market and undermine the whole influencer marketing society?

The popular in Instagram Stories on the marketing campaign

Refer to the survey in February 2018 from Activate, influencer marketing agency, nearly 90% influencers worldwide were active in Instagram for the marketing campaign with the brand rather than in Facebook like before. Apart from the ordinary post on Instagram, Stories becomes the most powerful and favorite among the other features.

Source: eMarketer.com

As of June 2018, there are 400 million people daily using Instagram Stories. People use this feature to matching with their preference to fast, fun and playful update their lifestyle or kinds of stuff within the day with the interacted function that allow the viewers to respond on the Stories posts. Moreover, the full-screen resolution results in the better audience’s experience. That is not surprised why Instagram Stories becomes such a favorite feature even it just launched in August 2016.

 Source: Facebook Business

Not only just for fun with friends and families, but people also discover the Stories for what they are interested.  Therefore, it is the opportunity for the brands or influencers to work on the campaign to connect and increase brand engagement with their customers by creating the content in Stories. Moreover, there is the function that the users can attach the link to the webpage within the post that facilitates the audience to explore more about the posts, and it is possibly helpful for the brand to increase the conversion rate as well.


Reference:

https://www.emarketer.com/content/instagram-is-the-leading-platform-for-influencer-marketing

https://www.facebook.com/business/news/stories-theyre-where-your-customers-share-and-discover-things-they-love

Brand Collabs Manager from Facebook connects brands and influencers

Nowadays, Influencer marketing becomes one of the effective ways of digital marketing since the digital disruption and the increase in using mobile and social media. Consumers also prefer this type of marketing because they think that it seems to be real and credible compared to the official marketing from the brand. To support this method, Facebook just announced the launch of a new tool, Brand Collabs Manager, to help brands better connecting to the influencers in Facebook platform. This tool will facilitate brands to match their preference with the right influencers. Brand Collabs Manager requires both brands and influencers to sign up and provide the different service for each side.

The list of influencers showed up for the brands. 

Source: Facebook Brand Collabs Manager

For the brands, they can explore the content creators who have followers in the range of 25,000 to 8 million with attribute filter they need to match with their promotion. The brands can see influencer’s information and Facebook portfolio to know about the past partner that the influencers work with for the decision making. The tool also provides the in-depth detail of the demographic, the influencers’ follower background and percentage of matching to see if those influencers can contribute to the right consumers or not. 

The creator's profile on Brand Collabs Manager

Source: Facebook Brand Collabs Manager

For creators or influences, they can create their profile and customize their portfolio. The tool helps the creators to know more about their insight and performance data. Furthermore, the creators can discover the brand profile to see the previous collaboration which is useful for the decision of being a future partner.

Brand Collabs Manager will help the brand to create a better engagement from the more efficient creator selection and also facilitate the creators to control their profile from learning the brand profile before they become the partnership. The tool assists both sides to have a good relationship for being a business partner as well. But for the first phase, the service is available in the US only. If this function works, it will help the brand around the world in better working in this part of digital marketing.

Reference:

https://www.facebook.com/collabsmanager/start/

https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/facebook-announces-brand-collabs-manager-platform-to-connect-influencers/526082/

Influencer Marketing

Influencer Marketing

Creating or distributing content with influencers starts a conversation with a built-in audience. “Five to 10 percent of social media users are responsible for 60 to 80 percent of influence”. Source: NinjaMetrics. It is a strategy that is increasing over the years; in 2015:

• “84 percent of marketers planned to include it in their strategy.
• 47 percent considering the strategy “very effective,” and 34 considering it “somewhat effective.”
• 22 percent said it's their top customer acquisition tool.”

 If you want to reach your target you have to:

• Ask yourself: who does your target listen to?
• Do research identify influencers
• Secure their partnership
• Develop campaigns through their platform to their audience

But, you have to be careful. Influencers care about their brand and their fans. So, you want to reach fans that are potentially interested in your product. Moreover, you have to find influencers whose personal brand and fan interests match your company’s.

In conclusion, some recommendations to find the right influencer are:

1. Focus on engagement rather than the number of followers. Also, the platform the influencer uses is key for your customers’ engagement. If your consumers are more into Instagram, find an influencer at this platform.
2. The influencer has to be fan of the brand. It is important to have brand believers influencers, because their fans will know when they are being used as a marketing strategy.
3. Be creative and try to meet halfway. Goals are different between influencers and brands.
4. No one-night stands. It is important to build relationships with influencers, both the brand and the influencer would feel better working together and the audience will be more engaged.

Sources: General Assembly, NinjaMetrics, AdWeek.

Influencer Marketing - the next big Thing?

I recently read a post on Adweek about why Influencer Marketing is the next big thing. Some of the points the author Misha Talavera (co-founder of the startup Neoreach, an Influencer Marketing service for brands) made, were the following: 

1. It’s Powerful: Influencer marketing presents a glaring opportunity for brands to leverage the power of word-of-mouth at scale through personalities that consumers already follow and admire.

2. It’s Social: People expect brands to talk with them rather than at them. They no longer expect brands to sell to them, but to entertain and inform them. In this new paradigm, influencers are a force to be reckoned with. 

3. It’s Sexy: When 50 influencers posted an Instagram picture of themselves wearing the same Lord & Taylor dress, on the same day, they told the Instagram fashion niche that the dress was a must-have article to be in the in-crowd. The dress sold out the following weekend.

Working with influencers and tastemakers will communicate to the market that your brand may very well be the next big thing. In addition, you can repurpose the content they create to impress your existing customers.

4. It’s An Arbitrage: There is a massive supply of influencers, but few marketers running influencer campaigns, meaning that the cost of buying an influencer promotion is below its real value (as measured by your ROI).

5. Consumers Are Tired Of Paid Ads: With all of the advertising interrupting them, it’s no surprise that people love products like AdBlock, Netflix, and Spotify Premium that take ads out of traditionally ad-saturated media experiences.

6. It Helps Your SEO: On top of building your brand and improving your sales numbers, influencer marketing also helps your search engine ranking.

I've worked with influencers at two startups, Chuisy and Freeletics, over the last few years. We found that this new form of online marketing indeed still is an arbitrage. Especially younger influencers often are not aware of the value of their massive audience and charge low prices for the reach they provide. However, we also experienced some significant limitations that have to be considered. 

If you have several influencers posting for you (e.g. if an agency sells you a package and just adds up their audiences to charge more), the actual reach is hard to estimate. Most social media users follow a long list of similar influencer accounts why you have a significant overlap in the audiences. Have people seeing your content several times isn't generally a problem, but tracking KPIs like reach or CPM is a challenge. 

Tracking also is a challenge if you are on platforms where links cannot be placed yet, like Instagram or Snapchat. That's why some companies consider influencer campaigns rather as a measure for awareness and accept not knowing about CTR or similar KPIs. 

Furthermore, we where sometimes surprised how imprecise information about  the audience of influencers where. Targeting audiences of a certain age or location is then extremely difficult if you are working on platform with no precise targeting tools. 

One last aspect, which is more a qualitative one:  We found that influencer marketing often lacks authenticity if product endorsement/placement doesn't happen in the context of a long term relationship between influencer and brand. Influencers who constantly post new products (especially if it's about subscription services or other items for long-term consumption) cannot authentically demonstrate brand loyalty. You want your product mentioned over a longer period and among a limited set of products, an influencer is recommending.

I think it generally helps to understand that influencer marketing is not just about the added total number of followers reached. A more appropriate formula is: Influence = Audience Reach (# of followers) x Brand Affinity (expertise and credibility) x Strength of Relationship with Followers. To be fair, most of these limitations are being worked on and companies like Neoreach contribute greatly to the innovation process. 

          BDMI Graph On Influencers