How to Win Friends and Influence People


I was once a member of a social media panel for a local Chamber of Commerce. I am not a social media guru, but I was very flattered to be invited. (Honestly, they probably just needed someone desperately to fill that fourth seat.) The panel discussion ended up focusing mainly on how to use social media to grow your business.  


One of the topics we began discussing was social media influencers. I was of course familiar with influencers--I have followed several lifestyle, fashion, and home improvement influencers over the years, and let me tell you, I have been influenced plenty. But those people always seemed like celebrities to me--tens or hundreds of thousands of followers, book deals, product lines in big box home improvement stores, partnerships with big-name brands. 


So, imagine my surprise when I realized that one of my fellow panelists was a local influencer with over thirteen thousand followers on one of her social media channels. 


I was floored. First, I knew an influencer? Then, our area was trendy enough to influence? Looks like my local metro area and I were both more sophisticated than I thought. 


Since then, I have met and worked with a college student from the same area who has a million followers on Tik Tok, While the concept of a brand ambassador has been around for quite a while (think Britney Spears selling us all on the Joy of Pepsi—at least until she was caught by paparazzi with an ice-cold Coca-Cola in hand), the social media influencer arrived after the launch and rise in popularity of social media channels (because of course it did). The very lucrative business of social media influencing in particular has grown enough that it is an established part of communication and marketing in today's world. 


Social media influencers are defined as “an individual who has a following in a particular niche, which they actively engage with and has the power to affect purchase decisions. The size of the following depends on the size of the niche” (Influencers, 2018). Influencers can be broken down into four categories: micro-influencers, content creators, celebrities, and industry experts, with content creators and micro-influencers as the two largest groups (Influencers, 2018).  


Social media influencers can be major assets to the strategic communications professional, particularly to those in marketing. Partnering with a social media influencer means strategic communications professionals have a ready-made audience that they do not have to work to capture on their own. If the strategic communications professional did their homework and aligned themselves with an influencer that matches well with your product or message, said audience is exactly who they need to target to sell their idea or product.  


But giving over your message or product to a social media influencer if not in the form of a paid advertisement (which must be disclosed to the audience), can be scary—or an absolute disaster. On the low end of the scale, the influencer may just not like your product or message and end up giving it a negative review instead of the positive one you were hoping for.  


Or it could be worse. Like, Fyre Festival worse.  


In their article “Top 5 Influencer Marketing Fails: When Influencer Marketing Goes Wrong,” MediaKix collected examples of five disasters in influencer marketing. The influencer campaign for the Fyre Festival was the first on their list. Although they started with an impressive strategy of using not one but around 400 popular influencers to generate buzz and increase ticket sales (imagine the lineup for Woodstock except its influencers), the festival itself was poorly planned and could not live up to the hype. Several influencers fell afoul of Federal Trade Commission sponsorship disclosure regulations and lost followers. The festival that never happened became a Netflix documentary and the reputation of many influencers was damaged (Top 5, n.d.). 


Another failure was influencer Olivia Jade, daughter of Lori Loughlin of “Full House” fame. The young influencer had millions of followers on multiple platforms and endorsement deals with big name brands like Amazon, Dolce & Gabanna, Marc Jacobs, Sephora and TRESemme. But when the scandal broke that her mother had essentially bribed USC to admit Olivia, she lost several of those partnerships (Top 5, n.d.).  


Those examples showed how influencing gone wrong negatively impacted the influencers themselves. (Fyre Festival was never going to happen, and Sephora seems to be doing just fine without Olivia.) But a strategic communications professional must worry about how the actions of an influencer can negatively affect their product.  


MediaKix offers several tips on how influencer marketing could go wrong—and subsequently, how you can keep that from happening.  


The following are a few ways that using social media influencing can backfire, and my thoughts about each: 


A LAPSE IN JUDGMENT FROM EITHER PARTY 

Influencers are human and can make mistakes. A strategic communications professional must do their homework when it comes to researching potential partnerships, looking for potential problems. (Even though it is a pre-social media example, it was a problem for Pepsi when Britney prefers the taste of Coke in public.) In the same way, an influencer should carefully evaluate a company that approaches them for a partnership—companies are made up of humans, too.  


A GENERAL LACK OF EDUCATION ON HOW TO CONDUCT AN INFLUENCER CAMPAIGN 

It goes without saying that you should know your way around the platform a social media influencer uses—otherwise you may end up wasting your money by placing a product or message intended for Gen Z on a platform like Facebook. 


FAILURE TO CLEARLY DEFINE OR UPHOLD AGREEMENTS 

Being clear and having a detailed contract is important. Is it one Instagram newsfeed post and two Stories? Will they demonstrate a product?  


UNCERTAINTY ABOUT PROPER FTC COMPLIANCE 

As mentioned earlier, influencers must disclose when they are participating in an ad. I remember following influencers before that became standard regulation and that would always be a major complaint from followers—they could tell that the product the influencer was sharing was not something that they typically used (think someone who used La Mer every day suddenly talking about how wonderful Aveeno lotion was). It can be discreetly done without making it look like a commercial--which you would have made if that was what you wanted. 

 

A LACK OF COMMUNICATION 

This negatively impacts everyone in every situation, so of course, it would be the same in this circumstance. If an influencer does not understand how you want your product to be featured, they may do so in a way that you did not intend. Communicated fully and in detail can keep that from happening.  


INAUTHENTICITY 

Pick an influencer that matches your brand. My current employer’s target audience is potential college students—so I do not need to be the one dancing in the Tik Tok videos. That is why we have student social media ambassadors who create content under our direction. The younger generations can spot something inauthentic quickly.

  

TIGHT RESTRICTIONS ON INFLUENCER CREATIVITY 

The influencer is popular for a reason—if they were not creative or entertaining, they would have three followers. Letting them use their own special brand of magic on your product is the experience you purchased, so let them do their thing.  


SHORT, UNREALISTIC DEADLINES 

Planning is essential. It’s difficult to get the best product when there’s not a lot of time to come up with the best idea.  


POOR CAMPAIGN EXECUTION AND MEASUREMENT 

Knowing how to use all the analytical tools offered by your social media or other monitoring programs lets you know how much your product or message has impacted your audience. Data is useful if you must report on the outcome of your social media influencer campaign to higher-ups or stakeholders (Top 5, n.d.).  

 

References: 

“Influencers vs. Brand Ambassadors.” (2018). Subsign. https://subsign.medium.com/influencers-vs-brand-ambassadors-4e2ae6eaadd2 

 

“Top 5 Influencer Marketing Fails: When Influencer Marketing Goes Wrong.” (n.d.). Mediakix. https://mediakix.com/blog/influencer-marketing-fails/ 

 

Comments

  1. Starla LewisFebruary 11, 2022 at 11:13 AM

    Taylor,
    You have shown social media influencers in a different light for me. I was chosen to be a brand ambassador for a workout gear company, and their main question was how many followers do I have? Sadly, my number was on the low end for them, but it did encourage me to post more and go ahead and accept the people waiting to follow me so I can do their brand justice. For me, I use social media to follow not post for the most part, so me being an ambassador for them wouldn’t hurt their brand. After reading your blog, it really does shed a light on how things can go so wrong if people choose the wrong influencers to market the, their company, their brand, or their product. I remember the Fyre Festival incident and how people names were thrown through the social media mud following the incident. The buzz about it did die down, but how much harder is it going to be for those involved to even attempt to do another festival, or something smaller, a concert. It makes it hard like you said to entrust the lively hood of your company to others that won’t be impacted as great as you if things go wrong. Me personally I get my perfume from Sephora, so luckily Olivia wasn’t influential enough to make a detrimental impact on their company!

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