The Very Big Business of Becoming a Paid Social Media Influencer

The original concept was that social media users would follow their friends to the cash register. That has not worked out quite as planned - not surprisingly, the fact that you love your BFFs does not necessarily mean that you trust their judgment when it comes to life insurance, used cars or computer security.

But we're way beyond that now. The era of specialization has hit the advertising influence game hard. Marketers have decided they dont have time to wait for the magic of personal interaction. They are following the big data to those with the big followings. And they are discovering that those with fans may well be able to deliver on a scale that rivals the past glory of television commercials.

There is, of course, that tricky question of measuring influencers' impact which continues to bedevil so much of the online marketing space. Which is important because it involves deciding how much to actually pay them for their influence. The usual response is to experiment - pay the freight - and see if there's an uptick in sales. But at some point, the suits always demand numbers not theories.

The other issue involves morality and ethics. Mentioned in the same breath as an article about marketing! But the growing question is whether to disclose that the influencer is being paid to shill and if so, how much as well as whether they have any familiarity with the product beyond having been comped with some free samples. The quick answer, it seems obvious to say, is yes, to disclosure, since word will leak anyway - quite possibly on the influencer's own blog, Twitter feed, Facebook page or whatever. So better to be credible that considered a sneak.

This remains a tricky and uncertain business. But then that's why they pay you...whatever. JL

Hannah Kuchler and Shannon Bond report in the Financial Times:

“A lot of influencers now have more followers than the Today Show has viewers and than the circulation of some magazines. It is a paradigm shift in how marketers reach consumers."
American teenager Brent Rivera spent the holiday season posting six-second videos online of himself dressed as his grandmother in the hope of persuading shoppers to spend more at retailers such as Best Buy.

He is one of a new generation of so-called social media influencers used by marketers to replicate the benefits of word of mouth recommendations — but on a far greater scale.

Rebecca McCuiston, senior vice-president of influencer marketing at agency 360i, says 92 per cent of people trust word of mouth, according to a 2012 Nielsen study and influencers help marketers gain “word of mouth at scale”.“A lot of influencers now have more followers than the Today Show has viewers and than the circulation of some magazines. It is a paradigm shift in how marketers reach consumers,” she says.
Mr Rivera’s Vines reach 5.8m viewers.
Large companies from Best Buy to Bravo, Fidelity to Fox and United Airlines to Universal have all used influencers on social media, while entire advertising agencies have been sprung up to cater for the demand and PR companies such as Ogilvy and Weber Shandwick are adding new units to handle influencer marketing.
Social media marketing spend in the US is forecast to more than double to $18.7bn in 2019, from $8.2bn last year, according to estimates from Forrester Research, though influencer marketing has not yet become its own category.
Brands use influencers in an effort to stand out in a “cluttered space”, where users are bombarded with adverts, Ms McCuiston says. “Influencers are a great way to have a real person tell your message,” she says, adding that they were not just being used to excite teenagers about the latest gifts but also to promote recipes and holiday decorations. The idea of a social media influencer began with “mom bloggers” who were paid to promote food, homewares and baby products.
Marco Hansell, chief executive of Speakr, an agency that connects social influencers with brands, says companies want to “piggyback” on the relationships such influencers build with their followers. He works with large companies including Colgate, Microsoft and T-Mobile.
“A movie studio doesn’t have a personality, per se, that I’ve hooked on to. I don’t have a relationship with Universal Studios. But I do with this guy on YouTube and when he lends his name to something, or says this is awesome, or creates content around it, I have a whole different level of interaction.”

Part of the authenticity comes from brands allowing the influencers to create their own content, instead of handing them an advertisement to broadcast to their followers. This could also help marketers in the struggle to stretch their budgets to cover the sheer number of campaigns they are expected to run on social media.

No matter what I do, people are going to take my brand message and reinterpret it. I might as well work with somebody on my side and help craft what happens - Marco Hansell, Speakr CEO

Losing control of a brand can be nerve-racking for marketers, however. Mr Hansell says companies should realise they already have lost control of their messages in the fast-moving world of social media.
“No matter what I do, people are going to take my brand message and reinterpret it. I might as well work with somebody on my side and help craft what happens,” he adds.
It can also take time and money to co-ordinate influencers, who often have day jobs — or school. Some have agents, or parents acting as agents, but advertising agencies have still had to change the way they work.
Ms McCuiston says it has been a “big transition” for her team. “When you work with teenagers you forget you can’t call during the weekday, you have to call on Saturdays — but you can’t call before noon because then they are asleep,” she says.
The two biggest challenges are measuring influencers’ impact and deciding what they disclose about what a brand is paying for the promotion.

Eric Dahan from Instabrand works with influencers. He says it is a “new frontier in traditional ad buying and selling”, where metrics such as impressions, clicks and key performance indicators that brands are used to buying against do not work on Vine, Snapchat and Instagram.

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Michael Platco's snapchat jokes, art and stories have led to work with brands including Disney

These social media platforms, unlike Facebook and Twitter, are in the early stages of working out their paid advertising model. They do not provide detailed data on who sees each image, so marketers are forced to rely on how many followers an account has. Mr Dahan says it was “an education process” with “a lot of the savvier brands dipping their foot in the water this year”.
Laundry Service, a social media marketing agency in New York, in April created Cycle, a business managing more than 1,000 top Instagram photographers with huge followings. Brands working with the agency include Michael Kors, Disney and Stella Artois.
Cycle’s photographers are paid to share photos with their followers, as well as to create photos for brands that are used across other social networks. They are required to disclose every sponsored campaign they work on.
Jason Stein, Laundry Service president, says brands that use Instagram photos in their email and Facebook campaigns see higher click through rates, engagement rates and conversions — getting consumers to do or buy something after seeing an ad.
Cycle now accounts for 15 per cent of Laundry Service’s revenue, pulling in sales “well into the seven figures”, says Mr Stein.

Many influencers include brands in their posts without saying that they have been paid to promote them, which can cause problems. In the UK, for example, the advertising watchdog criticised popular YouTube stars for promoting Oreos without disclosing they had struck a deal with Mondelez, the global snack group that owns the biscuit brand.

Mr Dahan says the UK has a stricter disclosure requirement than most countries, with the US being more lenient and Spain, Italy and France being even more relaxed than the US. “How it is disclosed — that is where the devil is going to be. If you are trying to pull a fast one on your audience then it will be detrimental to you as an influencer and a brand,” he says.

Sam Ciurdar — Photographer
Sam Ciurdar’s Instagram is filled with pictures of adventures with his wife: hiking in the mountains, walking the dog in the woods, sunsets and silhouettes. On one of these adventures, a trip to Canada, the professional freelance photographer took some pictures that led to him becoming a social media influencer for Tim Horton’s coffee.
Tim Horton discovered Mr Ciurdar’s snaps of the Canadian coffee were popular with his 35,000 followers and so signed a deal with him to promote them officially. Now, in among the landscapes from his holiday pictures, are glowing photos of a Tim Horton’s coffee cup, a doughnut and another surrounded by fairy lights.

Mr Ciurdar, 29, says he thinks brands are “smart” in the way they approach influencers, asking them to be creative in a way that matches their other posts on a given platform. “It is not ‘Tim Horton’s, check them out, do it or else’ — but they see me enjoying a cup of coffee, think ‘I want coffee’ and check it out,” he says.

Michael Platco — Snapchat artist
Michael Platco, 26, has created a business out of being a specialist in Snapchat, the disappearing messaging app that has soared in popularity with teenagers. He has his own account but often takes over the accounts of brands such as Disney to send out amusing snaps, which he enlivens with colourful sketches.
So far, Snapchat has not made it easy for influencers and marketers. It is hard to measure who a “snap” has reached and they are almost impossible for a recipient to send on.
“Snapchat in every way is different than Instagram and YouTube and Vine,” he says. “It is such a different platform that it calls for a whole different playbook.”
He adds he is cautious with brands he chooses to represent.

“I need to be cool with that brand. I’ve turned down a good amount of work because I thought anything I did with this brand would be super spammy,” he says.

Brent Rivera — Teen vlogger
Brent Rivera, 16, kicked off the holiday season on Thanksgiving with a series of posts for the teen-focused retailer Hollister. They started with his mum waking him up by throwing water at him, continued with him eating pumpkin pie and ended with him hauling home hoards of Hollister goods from the store.
The teenager made his first brand deal last year and devotes hours a day to his social media presence. He entrusts the dealmaking to his manager.
“[My manager] is really good with social media, he knows CPM [cost per mille, an advertising measure] and what other people are charging for an Instagram post or tweet and for which companies,” he explains fluently. “It depends on engagement, so, like, I have pretty high engagement, which means I get a lot of likes.”