The internet has provided everyone with access to it the unique opportunity to achieve fame and wealth. Making money off of social media and leveraging your following base to make money has become a dream and reality for many. Influencers have taken over as the new generation of celebrities with meteoric rises to fame but often short lived relevancy. In a generation that has a notoriously short attention span, influencers provide immense value by harnessing the attention of their audience. While some aspiring influencers want to be in front of the camera, others can remain anonymous and still bring in millions.
In a study done by CNBC, 54% of millennials and Gen Z want to be influencers and profit from a large following, while 86% would at least be willing to sell sponsored posts on their page. One major lesson when it comes to influencer marketing is follower counts are fairly meaningless. People dream of hitting that million follower mark and believe with that large of a following the money will follow. While this is somewhat correct because some brands just see the number and assume that number carries influence, they could be losing all the money they spend paying this influencer to promote their product. The important metric to focus on is the engagement of their followers. An influencer with 1 million followers may charge $5,000 for a sponsored post but only get an average engagement rate of 1-4%. Another influencer has 500,000 followers and charges $2,500 for a sponsored post, but they get a 15-20% engagement rate. While brands often buy into that million follower influencer, the influencer with 500k is by far the more profitable option. The engagement rate shows that they have a stronger fan base who is consistently interacting with every single one of their posts. These are the types of influencers who will be able to profitable push brand deals. Famously back in 2019, an influencer on Instagram with over 2 million followers wasn’t able to sell 36 shirts from a fashion brand she started. This is the result of having a large follower base, unengaged followers and not understanding the wants and needs of your audience.
TikTok has created a new generation of younger internet celebrities with astronomical rises to fame. The unique TikTok algorithm is designed to reward creators for posting enjoyable content. It has become increasingly difficult to get on the Explore page on Instagram even with a massive following. However, TikTok creators can have 20 followers and still have one of their videos get a million views. Most notably, Charlie D’Amelio has only been using TikTok for a little over a year, in that time she has amassed over 66 million followers on TikTok, 21 million Instagram followers, 2.4 million Twitter followers and 5 million YouTube subscribers. She isn’t the only one that has been receiving this type of fame from TikTok. With the integrated features within the TikTok app to bring viewers to your other social channels, it is easier than ever to build a loyal following across your whole social network. Back in the days of Vine, its top creators amassed millions of followers very quickly, however, when the app announced that it would be shutting down, those creators had to quickly lure their followers to their other profiles on mainly Instagram and YouTube. The Vine app didn’t have these same features which is why many of the top creators had to rebuild their networks after the app was officially shut down.
Starting from Vine and then transitioning to vlogging on YouTube, David Dobrik has become one of the most successful and popular content creators. He pioneered the short form vlogging style with quick cuts, lots of comedy bits and the ideal video length of four minutes and twenty seconds. Due to the nature of his content and use of copyrighted songs, he barely makes any money from YouTube. However, he has changed the game in influencer marketing with how he makes his sponsors apart of his videos. Most notably, he works with the ticket company SeatGeek for the majority of his sponsored videos. These videos sponsored by SeatGeek, he usually is giving his friends cars or expensive tickets. The reason SeatGeek is willing to shell out the money for these types of extravagant videos is because of the attention Dobrik is able to get from his audience. When his fans see that his video is sponsored by SeatGeek, they are aware something crazy is going to happen and one of Dobriks friends will most likely be given a car. This results in people wanting to stick around to watch the whole video, but also creates that memorable name recognition for the next time one of his viewers is thinking about buying tickets to an event.
Similar to others, I am not the best at being in front of the camera and talking to the camera as if my audience were directly in front of me. However, this doesn’t stop people like me from being able to monetize their social media followings. Meme pages have exploded in popularity over the last 5 years with some of the most popular pages on Instagram boasting over 10 million followers. Despite not having a face behind the account, these meme pages can still create a loyal following that then creates the market for advertisers to want to promote on their pages. The use of meme marketing has blown up in the last 3 years with promotions ranging from dropshipping websites, the infamous Fyre Festival, to the Bloomberg 2020 presidential campaign buying memes on some of the biggest meme pages on Instagram. Meme pages are dominated by the 18-36 age group, so with the right product and creative, marketing on meme pages can be highly profitable for brands targeting this audience.