Hiring Social Media influencers? Do your research first. Using social media influencers to promote brands is big business and has had a huge impact on PR strategies and campaigns.
Done well, it can have a huge impact and the right influencers can really help to move brands forward – and help them to shift stock as well.
But the key is finding those ‘right’ influencers from the growing number of tosh out there. Here at London PR we are contacted on a daily basis by ‘influencers’ eager to be hooked up with brands willing to pay them for a social media post or mention. Easy money if you can get it right?
The success of the best known social media stars has led to a thousand wannabes setting up accounts offering to influence every possible sector of business and commercial life. These influencers aren’t even always human. We were recently contacted by a dog who sent us emails in the first person, telling us about his 50 thousand Instagram followers. Pet accounts are huge on the platform.
The proliferation of influencers means it’s essential for brands to do their research and make sure the influencers are worthy of their attentions and support.
Fake influencer accounts
It’s easy for brands to be hoodwinked into believing a social media account has influence when in reality its reach is minimal. This was highlighted recently when agency Mediakix set up two bogus accounts, bought followers and then approached brands for support.
They were able to persuade a couple of different brands to pay fee in return for a mention on these two bogus accounts – one in fashion and the other a travel account. The fashion account was named calibeachgirl310 and claimed 50,000 followers – all fake.
To create the account they just used photos of a model from one shoot. The second account they created was even easier to make – it featured purely stock travel images.
While the fee paid out was only minimal the exercise showed just how easy it is to fool brands into forking out cash for fake accounts – and how easy it is to create a social media account with big numbers of followers – all totally fake.
It raises questions on how much of the content we consume on social platforms today is real and how much is fake. Sadly the amount of bogus content is growing as fraudsters seek to cash in.
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ENDS
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© London PR 2017
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