Social Media Influencer

The other day I saw this really cool place on this model’s IG story, let’s go check it out this weekend! Probably you and your friends did go out to that cool place and it was actually pretty amazing. That is how basically social media influencing works. It isn’t something new, if you are a heavy social media user you know the tons of beauty products or food products or restaurants that are endorsed by the trendsetters as I like to call them on a daily basis.

As soon as you notice the @, you know that the particular brand is being endorsed. So what is it all about being a social media influencer? To put it in a very lucid way, it is saying” I used this product and I liked it, you should try it too.” The difference between your/your friend’s recommendation and that of an influencer is that they are getting paid for their apparently free advice.

Social media influencers are people who have a large audience, who built a humungous outreach over a period of time. They exercise this ethereal condescendence over their followers. And they use their creative ability to sway people into buying certain products or services which in turn profits the brands they endorse.

The who’s who

Influencer marketing is probably the fastest way to convey your message to the world, using the social media platforms to market brands, products, even people or causes. It is not just for small businesses who cannot afford the traditional marketing practices, all big brands know the criticality of this method and how effective it is for them. These are people not just limited to the entertainment industry as you’d think although they do make a large part of the influencer’s community, there are people from across professions. People who are connoisseurs in their field as well as in using the internet.

Gary Vaynerchuck, Micheal J Schimer, Mary Smith, and Amy Porterfield to name a few come amongst the top influencers. There is a high chance that a lot of people might not have heard about them, or would relate more to names like Lele Pons, Liza Koshy, Juanpa Zurita or Amanda Cerny. These internet sensations with their million plus followers constitute  what we call the influencers.

Types of influencers:

There are primarily three types of influencers, Micro level influencers having a following of 5k to 10k, Mid-level influencers with 100k to a million followers and any one above the 1 million mark come under the Macro influencers. The bigger the outreach the bigger brands you get to work with. Based on the number of followers these influencers get paid per post on Instagram and that is just one of the various social media platforms available.

The rates may vary from $50 to $500 per post for micro influencers and so goes the range like $1000 for per 100,000 followers. Then comes a whole different genre of the celebrity influencers, the ones whose stories swarm your IG feed. It is not surprising that the famous Kardashians make a fortune out of the crazy fan following. Kim makes almost $500,000 per sponsored post. It is almost stupefying to imagine how celebrities like Selena make half a million dollars through one single post!

 

The good use

As an influencer you are touching lives, could be at any level. You have the power to move people , to make them think about the actions they take and what they give back to the society.It is a moral duty of the influencers to use their tools to good philanthropic use. There are many celebrity influencers who do fund raising programs. They collaborate with organizations and try to help out the society as much as possible.

With a major earthquake with a magnitude of 7, Hit Mexico, Juanpa Zurita teamed up with his best friend Jerome Jarre, they applied the #LoveArmy model to raise money for the victims of the earthquake.

It is of utmost importance that when need be, the social media tools are put to use in every dimension and in any way possible to help the society. Influencers need to use their platform and their outreach to put such philanthropic plans into quick action.

Yes, it is a type of marketing and mostly based on how creative you can get with advertising a certain object or brand. But the social impact which is unobtainable otherwise becomes comparatively easier through hashtags.There have been movements on women empowerment , gender equality, the various communities.

Employwoman

Employwoman is one such initiative with one goal of empowering women in the current world in each and every society and providing them a platform using which they can start their journey to independence from the drawbacks of the male predominant society.(Read more about Employwoman at Historically famous women throughout history).Social media is a platform which gives the community a unanimous voice which is imperative to bring about change, and if you can be a channel to help the change for a better world then it is a duty which ought to be done by one and all.

 

Have faith and move forward

If you think this could be your thing, I mean if you spend almost more than 50% of your day on social media, why not make money out of it. But it isn’t as easy as pie. You need to build your personal brand, be unique in a world where almost everything you think of has already been done or someone is working on it. Creating a social media presence and maintaining it is an arduous task. The need to come up with indigenous creative content can be highly overwhelming. It is not just that you would get to work with brands based on the number of followers you hold. Companies are very wary when they pick the influencers they want to work with. Keeping in mind a lot of aspects, the major one being how much profit these people can turn out for them.

How creative are you in your content?

They consider the knowledge you have in your specific field, how creative you are in your content. You’ve got to keep up with what’s new in the world pertaining to your specific field and keep vying with the other people just like you. You cannot always fabricate being unique. Since social media is for everyone and anyone can do it, this profession isn’t age-bound like almost all others. Starting from Mila and Emma being the fun twins bagging photoshoots and endorsing toy brands to having their own youtube channel. There is no age limit and also the competition is unimaginable. To be able to keep up with that is a challenge. Another key thing is collaboration, amongst the many influencers and their reach, it is even more interesting collaborating with another influencer and creating something new which could be beneficial for both of you.

Be the change

If you think this could be your thing, I mean if you spend almost more than 50% of your day on social media, why not make money out of it. But it isn’t as easy as pie. You need to build your personal brand, be unique in a world where almost everything you think of has already been done or someone is working on it. Creating a social media presence and maintaining it is an arduous task. The need to come up with indigenous creative content can be highly overwhelming. It is not just that you would get to work with brands based on the number of followers you hold. Companies are very wary when they pick the influencers they want to work with.

Aspects:

Keeping in mind a lot of aspects, the major one being how much profit these people can turn out for them. They consider the knowledge you have in your specific field, how creative you are in your content. You’ve got to keep up with what’s new in the world pertaining to your specific field and keep vying with the other people just like you. You cannot always fabricate being unique. Since social media is for everyone and anyone can do it, this profession isn’t age-bound like almost all others. ‘

Starting from Mila and Emma being the fun twins bagging photoshoots and endorsing toy brands to having their own youtube channel. There is no age limit and also the competition is unimaginable. To be able to keep up with that is a challenge. Another key thing is collaboration, amongst the many influencers and their reach, it is even more interesting collaborating with another influencer and creating something new which could be beneficial for both of you.

Novel ideas:

The power of influence on the masses is a responsibility that needs to be taken seriously. Amidst all the brain-wrecking activities going on and the immense amount of effort that goes into this crucial but equally interesting type of marketing, it is compulsory to take care of the personal aspects as well. Don’t let social media overwhelm you. There is always something new that is coming up and the prevalence of social media influencers is increasing day by day.

There are sleep-away camps for influencers claiming to enhance the potential of young creators. The 10 days immersion camp costs $2400 where there are classes on various aspects such as filming, music, video classes. Lately, pet influencers have taken the gram by storm. Hamlet_the_piggy, @toastmeetsworld, @lion_the_hog to name a few. Social media influencing is a profession that needs novel ideas every day, it might be exhausting but is equally rewarding. Anyone can be a social media influencer but not everyone can be successful at it. Find that unique attribute and get going.