Social media influencers create a powerful impact on the customers and more likely, it will grow in the upcoming years. However, due to constant flux in the market, it is important for marketers to continuously evolve their marketing strategies in order to stay relevant.
When it comes to marketing products on social media platforms like Instagram, one of the biggest concerns for consumers is whether we can trust the influencers on Instagram?
There is no doubt that the influencer marketing industry has seized its share of controversy and criticism by revealing the hypocrisy of big-name celebrities, innumerable celebrity scandals, etc. This is the reason why trusting influencers on Instagram and other social media platform have become questionable for customers.
Gone are the days when influencers were believed just as the Gold Standards, nowadays its effectiveness is questioned even by professionals, in spite of its growing popularity. According to the Association of National Advertisers, at present, around 75% of the marketers are working with influencers and among that 43% of them plan to increase their spending in the future.
As per the information from the Wave study, there are only 4% of internet users who trust influencers. Moreover, in an article by Drum, it has been found that about 61% of consumers think that most of the brands don’t want to reveal that they use influencers on Instagram for promoting their products and services online.
US marketing specialist Captiv8’s report exposes that in 2017, $2.1 billion was being spent on Instagram posts sponsored by influencers but it was found that more than 11 of the engagements on those posts were created using fraudulent accounts. Not only this makes a tough job for the brands as they fail to realize their true customers; it also makes it questionable for the customers to trust the activity of the influencers.
At this point, Unilever, one of the biggest brands, leads the charge and call for a rapid change in the way Instagram and other social networks are handling fake followers and bots. The brand promised that they will never buy followers not work with influencers who do so.
In case, you are a business that is providing writing paper service, then it’s completely dependent upon you whether you will be hiring influencers on Instagram for promoting it or you will promote it reliably using basic marketing techniques on social media. Well, the second option will be great as now it’s high time that entrepreneurs and brands should avoid investing in influencer fraud.
According to a research conducted by an advertising agency Carmichael Lynch, it has been found that around 23% of the influencers on Instagram have accepted the fact that sometimes they themselves don’t find the brand to be authentic, neither they find any genuine in the brand-sponsored content that they have to post. In fact, there are tribes who act as middlemen between micro-influencers and brands that allow them to provide campaigns at scale.
Apart from detecting and engaging with influencers, what’s the more effective idea is to distribute and curate any content that displays your products, services, or brands. Chances are more than your prospective customers will be more influenced and think it to be more credible as they will get social proof regarding this.
Moreover, credibility issues will remain stick to influencers on Instagram, but what’s good is that you can also look for alternative software platforms like Miappi for identifying and leveraging existing conversation. This allows you to work with authentic marketing who will have a passion for your brand.
