So What Should We Call Them “Influencer or Manipulator”?
Hey!
You, me, and everyone is watching there is a flood of influencers around everywhere on almost all social media channels! and This Era is on Boom for influencers!
Let’s take a deep dive into the history of influencers!
History of Influencers
It was started by Ted Murphy in 2006 when Murphy Launched a Pay Per Post, which was the first marketplace to pay bloggers to create content for the brands. Let’s first understand about Ted Murphy first:
Ted Murphy is a well-known serial entrepreneur who is also known as the father of paid blogging which is in this era is known as influencer marketing. Currently, he is the founder, CEO, and Chairman of IZEA which is also an influencer marketing platform. Well, Ted Murphy is the father of the Influencer Marketing Industry!
In 2004 Ted Murphy realized that a few groups of creators have a good influence on the people and their perception and he knew very well that these bunch of people are the tastemakers in the market. Their opinion can help their audience to shape their choice or their opinion as well. Murphy knew that the opinions of these creators can drive a huge amount of traffic on the website if they share their opinion online.
And then Murphy created a team named “e-seeding” who would reach out to the creators and ask them for a post or content about the brand and in exchange for that company would offer them a promo code or a gift card and it worked well!
So this is how influencer marketing started and right after that, this trend started increasing, that time there was less usage of social media as compared to now, but as the number of social media channels increased, people from various places started having a large amount of audience on their social media profile.
now lets discuss that the product or service these influencers recommend or advertise directly on their social media profiles
- Do they use themselves too?
2. Do they actually use that product or take the service they are promoting?
3. Did they even try once before promoting the product?
4. Did they even check the certification of the product they recommend to you?
5. Are they responsible or are they ready to take responsibility if the product cause someone side effects?
Let me tell you guys, the typical answer to all the questions is “No”! So you are mature enough to understand to read between the line!
Harsh Truth about Influencer Marketing
An Influencer directly shift products to their followers to make money. Now its not sure that everyone they influence would be getting benefit form the product. Nor do you know it can cause someone harm.
The Influencers are putting their own interest first
Is there any Eligibility for Being an Influencer?
You know what, there are the people online (talking about bloggers) who claim to have a “Legal Checklist for Being an Influencer”, isn’t it sound funny! Well, these all are click baits by bloggers because there is no legal checklist to be an influencer!
Then who the heck influencers are?
In this digital era, if a person has a large number of social media following and is capable to influence the people with their content is influencer!
Now it's time to share a story with you!
Currently, I am working with a Digital Marketing Agency I won’t take their name here! 1 Year back they pitched a client for their digital marketing service, and converted that client to a customer.
That client has a variety of skincare products, he has launched a new brand, and he wanted to market his brand online. So my agency started advertising it, I am a Search Engine Optimization Executive there, so they said me to list their business on Google My Business, I listed it there!
Right after 1 month, I got to see from my agency there were 8 to 9 people who added reviews on GMB Listing, everyone their review was praising the product as they used it themselves, and am damn sure about it that hardly anyone of them is using their product!
Things were not stopped here only, my agency pitched him an influencer marketing plan, then all the influencer that was in their budget segment were searched and influencer marketing took place!
My agency was trying to sell his product on Amazon and Flipkart as well! After a few days they saw their listing on amazon and Flipkart was not doing well, and amazon’s Algorithm was pulling down their listing day by day, they thought to manipulate the Algorithm through the review!
I checked the influencer’s they hired reviewed on the Amazon’s and Flipkart clicking their highly quality designed photographs that were not even looking like added by customers on Amazon.
So you know I saw a TED talk a few times back and the title was:
Fake it! Till you make it
This is what the people are doing! They are trying to create a positive illusion everywhere on the internet about the product!
Now you people need to decide that “should you guys believe in reviews or not?”
I myself check the review before ordering something online but beware because:
Everything you see is not True!
