Guest Post: What’s It Like Working In Influencer Marketing?

I recently wrote about the latest debacle in influencer marketing which concerned ex-Love Island store Georgia Harrison promoting a product which most would largely argue was unethical.

I’ve dabbled in influencer marketing, but I’m no expert. Nevertheless – I’m intrigued by it. So, to help out with the post I employed Scott Guthrie (who’s an expert in anything concerning the word ‘influencer) and Bryony, who works in influencer marketing herself. When Bry gave me her responses, she came back with more than I could have ever expected and thus – I decided to turn her answers into a guest post of sorts instead. After all, I find the world of influencer marketing so interesting and am completely intrigued to know what it’s like working within that remit.

Here’s what Bry had to say.

Guest Post: What’s It Like Working In Influencer Marketing?

In today’s world, influencer marketing is considered a full-time job. Which in ways is great as it not only helps boost confidence for the influencer but also means they can work a job they love with ease and get to work with brands they have been loyal too for a long time.

However, recently there have been a lot of people trying to tap into influencer marketing and trying to make a living from it. I personally believe lots of younger girls think that this is the easiest and quickest way to make money and get things for free. By looking at more traditional influencers you’ll see that this is not the case and over many years they have built a brand and a trusted following.

Working in influencer marketing can be tough as there are so many people who may have bought followers who give a false impression of an audience. Resulting in no sales or even awareness for the product they are trying to promote. Sourcing influencers for a product or service is a rigorous task, firstly you need to have the initial discussion of who the client wants to target, and how they will target them. For example, I’m currently working with a Luxury Baby brand wanting to reach the UK market. Their products are at a slightly higher price point than an average retailer so we came to the conclusion to target mum bloggers with an audience who have a greater spending power (e.g they will live in a richer area such as Surrey).

Influencer marketing takes up most of the profiles on Instagram (in my eyes) therefore it’s really difficult to track who is genuine and who just wants easy money. The quickest way to tell if an influencer has a genuine audience is by checking their engagement. If they have around 12,000 followers, they should nearly reach 1,200 likes per post or at least average out to that. If an influencer has around 5% engagement then the client won’t see results as it’s essentially an empty audience. Which brings me to the influencer’s achieving the least amount of engagement. Respectively, as another year passes ‘reality stars’ become less and less relevant to the public eye. Their followers will become less interested in what they have to post however will still be following them, but as they are un-interested they won’t engage with the post.

Georgia Harrison, an ex-Love Island star is currently under scrutiny for promoting a ‘starvation diet’. Now I’ve worked with her and plenty of other typical, modern influencers such as Ashley Cain, Georgia Cole and Frankie Foster and each time, I’ve written the caption for them and told them what image to post and even what time to post it, paid them a huge fee (for one post) and all they have had to do is press send. Influencers like these are not genuine and they don’t care what they promote as long as they are getting paid and I wish brands would learn this and stop working with them just because they are attracted to the high following. These influencers need to learn how to make an honest living, such as people like Olivia Buckland and Emily Atack who work hard and raise awareness for good causes.

Personally, I believe the way forward is to work with micro influencers (up to 100k followers) who will only promote products that they are interested in and will genuinely use. I’ve had influencers turn me down before because they feel the product doesn’t work for their audience or brand and that’s fine, and I respect that because they are making an honest living and will have built a trusted audience, however I’ve worked with many an ex-reality star who don’t care what they promote as long as they are getting paid for it and they don’t care about what harm this may cause to younger girls who look up to these people as role models and aspire to be and look like a face tuned, enhanced image.

But where there are frauds, there are also those who are honest and genuine. These ar the types of people that are the backbone of the influencer marketing industry, and are the ones who keep it alive and purposeful. To name a few, some of those people are…

https://www.instagram.com/eleanorjadore/

https://www.instagram.com/chasingdieu/

https://www.instagram.com/tobyandroo/

https://www.instagram.com/the_naughtyfortydiaries/

https://www.instagram.com/whatkathydidnext/

https://www.instagram.com/wanderlustruby/

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