It seems that the topic of influencer marketing seems to continue to grow and grow in the industry. I have noticed over the past few years, I have been doing more presentation talks, workshops, and consulting in this area than ever before. This will continue to be apparent as we enter 2019.
Influencer marketing is still at an early stage of maturity in many ways. Yes, there are tools that can measure influence either on one platform or multiple ones. We used several (Talkwalker, Klear, Zoomph and Delmondo) for the work we did this fall semester with The Breeders’ Cup.These were helpful to gauge who are the main influencers to engage with, and how to validate the impact they had on the campaign as a whole.
There are a lot of benefits for influencers. They raise awareness about new initiatives and have an established voice in their community. They have more credibility in many ways compared to other forms of media out there presently. For the right audience and brand, influencers can be the way to go if they are the right fit. This is where having strategic insight is truly necessary and a checklist in hand to identify the right ones.
However, while there are many benefits to using influencers in our daily professional practices, we are seeing more challenges and even cases where influencers are in the news for the wrong reasons.Case in point – with the pressure to be perceived as ‘”relevant” or even have a certain number of followers, some new influencers are starting to have “fake sponsorships” to create the illusion they are important.
These are unethical practices – plan and simple. These are the types of things that make people change their perception of what influencers actually do, and also hurts the individuals – based on real expertise and insights into community building – at the end of the day. That’s not fair and these practices need to be called out more from the industry.
If you are not following the work Taylor Lorenz is writing about influencer marketing, please do so. Taylor is doing some of the best work on this subject and uncovering the details and rising issues we need to be aware of when it comes to influencers in today’s practice.
With this being said, what are some of the ways we can identify influencers for their ethical behavior and how do we incorporate this into our own practices and classroom activities for our students?
For students:
Discuss the balanced view of influencers. You can’t just focus on the positives of what influencer marketing can do, but show and discuss what are the challenges. Discuss these current issues and case studies. Find out what are some of the common themes and ask students for their take on what needs to be done.
It is so important to have an honest conversation on the dark side of influencer marketing. We have to have more discussion on what are some of the risks and challenges here, and what can be at stake. So many times we see the bright side of influencers, but there is, like all things, a dark side to consider. Whether it is cyberbullying or stalking, or even death, these are real risks and challenges that need to be discussed and highlighted in this space to have a balanced perspective.
Create a class checklist for screening influencers. This has been the TOP thing I have heard from brands and agencies I have consulted with on influencer marketing. Some have checklists for certain things, and others never had a checklist. For students, if you are able to create a list of items you feel are necessary to review and evaluate for influencers, you will have a job. In fact, you will be viewed as a genius!
For the workshops and class projects I have done related to this, there are certain things you want to evaluate of course like metrics, community, etc. However, what about the impact metrics the influencer has been able to bring to the table? What about analyzing the content of their media kit? Do they have metrics and results in their media kits? Have they had long term relationships with previous brands? Do they have *real* testimonials?
Let me know if you would like a copy of this checklist! Happy to share.
Creating an ethical code of conduct for influencers. This may be viewed as common sense, but really, sometimes it’s not as common as you think! We need to have some sort of standard policy for this – and I think if influencers want to separate themselves and say they are a “media outlet” – well, they need to have an ethical policy. You see brands like NYT, NPR, and others have an ethical policy – so if an influencer has this front and center, they are able to distinguish themselves from others. However, it’s one thing to have a policy, but another to use it. That’s the key thing to note here.
For professors:
Add new emerging risks to ethical and legal implications lecture in class. These are the things you need to have here as part of your classes. Create scenarios for how students could deal with influencers who are fake, who create fake sponsorships, etc. It would be good to have students get this experience ahead of time and see how they respond and react to this scenario.
*HINT Stukent, Hootsuite, HubSpot, and other social media education platforms!*
This would be an amazing addition here for your certifications as well!
Conduct workshops for industry and educators. I think more education and awareness of these issues and topics is so important, and I think it’s key to be able to present why this is relevant for what we are doing today, and what we can do to address this proactively.
I think workshops can cover a range of topics that can combine both research and teaching purposes. In addition, I think this could lead to some great future collaborations and discussions.
This is such a big area to pursue right now, and I think having a collaborative partnership with an agency, brand, or other researchers is so important now.
Show professionals and students what you have done. Evidence is so important since people are already skeptical about influencer marketing. I have seen both in practice and academia how people have built up their career based on what they have “said” they have done, rather than what they have actually done.
That’s why I have been very transparent on the work I have done with brands and campaigns. You can’t say you work with clients without saying – hey, I did this for this brand and worked on this campaign here, etc. A red flag is where you see someone who says they work with clients but NEVER discloses what they have actually done.
Overall, I think there are still issues and challenges we have to be aware of here moving forward with influencers in 2019. Will this go away? Not quite yet. Will people be more aware of the ongoing issues and opportunities. Absolutely.
Will we have to keep up with training and education to be able to forecast what emerging issues come up next? This is a given.
I think this is an area that will continue to grow in the practice, but will become an essential part of our core classes moving forward in the next year. More research, collaboration, and discussion is needed on both side of the aisle between industry and academia to address this fully.
Hope you all are having a great day!
Best Wishes,
