Of course, the degree of influence can and does vary greatly. Some influencers have a couple thousand followers while others have several million. Regardless of the size of their “influence,” an influencer is one with a privileged position in the eyes of a number of individuals online. They have the power to sway their followers’ purchasing behavior, thinking, and even beliefs. This means an influencer can manipulate them into buying unnecessary products, adopt inimical values, and become obsessively materialistic. Or they can help them in ethical and service-oriented ways, this is micro influencer defined.

However, individuals with the power to influence masses of people are not new by any means. Still, the manifestation of this age-old phenomenon through the advent of digital and social technologies is unique and exclusive to this generation. It has transformed the way businesses, non-profits, government agencies, and even churches reach and communicate with their constituencies, be that to help sell a product or champion an ideal.

Like most instances of technologies and their multi-varied use, the rise of the social media influencer is a complex reality with both benefits and costs to society. Yet it’s worth considering the phenomenon nonetheless, which is why we sat down with a PLNU faculty member as well as two PLNU alumnae to get their thoughts, insight, and expertise on the subject.

A Closer Look at the “Influencer”

The term social media influencer can loosely be applied to any individual who has the capacity to incite a behavior with his or her followers (in this sense, anyone with a social media account and a circle of following friends and family can be deemed an influencer). But it’s most commonly used to refer to individuals who have the capacity to encourage a significant group of followers to make purchasing decisions. In other words, the term often refers to individuals who are aiding with the marketing and advertising efforts — be that officially or not — of one or more organizations.

From a marketing perspective, this notion has been around for over a century. As one article from Forbes details, the use of an individual by a business to influence potential customers’ purchasing behavior dates back over a hundred years. For example, the actor Fatty Arbuckle was encouraging potential customers to smoke Murad cigarettes in 1905 and Nancy Green, a former slave, was the face of Aunt Jemima pancake mix in 1893.

PLNU professor of marketing, Michael Wiese, Ph.D., explains that social media influencing is simply an extension of what companies have done for a long time. It’s only the tools that have changed.

“We have had sponsorships, testimonials, and product placements for a long time. In the past, the tools were controlled by the marketers, and they were the ones who decided what was said. The medium was somewhat limited in terms of access to the customer, giving a lot of power to brands. What social media has done is idealistically shifted power from the brand to the customer. Because now marketers can’t control the brand message as they did and now customers have the power to inform the perception of the people in their network about a given brand,” Wiese said.

People want to hear from those who are relatable, people they can trust because they are just like them.

Major brands have certainly caught on to the value of employing social media influencers to expand their marketing reach. One representative from Estée Lauder admits that somewhere around 30 to 50 percent of their social/digital budget goes toward funding social media influencers. And overall, from 2015 social media influencer platforms have grown from 190 to 740, reaching a $6.5 billion market value.

But one of the major differences between influencer marketing today is the apparent authenticity and familiarity that can be conveyed to customers. As opposed to watching a commercial of an NBA star sporting a clean shave (courtesy of Gillette), now potential customers can follow the star on Instagram and see him actually using the product in his everyday life. But even the celebrity social media influencer (though usually sporting a large following) is not always the most effective influencer.

Instead, the non-celebrity influencer can be more compelling because of their apparent authenticity and familiarity. People want to hear from those who are relatable, people they can trust because they are just like them. This means a teenage girl might be more likely to take makeup advice from a fellow teenage girl who demonstrates knowledge, authenticity, and relatability than a popstar. These influencers are known as “micro-influencers” (or “nano-influencers”), and usually only have a few hundred or thousand followers as opposed to hundreds of thousands. It can also be more financially beneficial for a company to employ a couple dozen micro-influencers over celebrities with massive followings. Not only can this be tremendously cheaper, but brands realize that sometimes these types of influencers are more effective in actually convincing followers of the benefit of a given product or service.

“If a micro-influencer is someone I respect and I connect with through social media, YouTube, and/or a blog, etc., I may view that person as more credible and authentic, as opposed to a celebrity.  For example, if someone ‘more like me’ is helping me with my home décor or with my physical fitness, I will likely trust them over traditional brand messaging,” Wiese said.

Life as an Influencer

When people witness people “just like them” garnering a large following by simply talking about certain products and services (and even getting paid for it), they can be tempted to try to become an influencer themselves. It’s easy to imagine why a company sending you free things to merely review in a five-minute YouTube video would be an easy, lucrative, and compelling gig. It’s true that those with massive followers can and do make a lot of money. And brands do pay certain influencers (in both free products/services and money) who can reach at least tens of thousands (if not more) of individuals. But becoming an influencer and making a decent salary — or at the very least accruing a ton of free products and services — is much more difficult than it looks.

There’s a misconception that this type of career is easy to get into and to execute. It took me five years to build my platform and now I work a full-time schedule alongside my management team and assistant to run my platforms.

PLNU alum Elena Taber (18) has been crafting videos on YouTube for a few years now, producing content related to fashion, beauty, and travel. On her YouTube channel, she currently has over 375,000 followers. After graduating from PLNU, she moved to New York to produce content for YouTube full-time and created her own brand. Because of the size of her influence and talent in video production, she has been able to craft content full-time for companies, non-profits, and other organizations for a salary. She has worked with clients like Marc Jacobs, Bloomingdales, Adobe, Nissan, Project Runway and the tourism boards of different cities and countries.

But the operative term is “full-time,” and she is quick to say that it’s a lot of work to make a living doing what she does.

“There’s a misconception that this type of career is easy to get into and to execute. It took me five years to build my platform and now I work a full-time schedule alongside my management team and assistant to run my platforms. Creating videos for a brand often means you have to wear all the hats of a production company. You basically are the creative director, producer, editor, talent, stylist, and marketer all in one,” Taber said.

She doesn’t like the term “social media influencer,” and prefers to use content creator, which is understandable since the former can carry a pejorative connotation of being unserious, superficial, or even manipulative.

When Taber first started, she didn’t have any goals of doing it full-time. She simply liked to travel, capture her experiences on film, and share them online with her friends.

“I enjoyed making videos growing up. I started my channel as a freshman to have a creative outlet and wanted to capture my outfits or moments going on adventures with friends. For years, I would spend 10 to 15 hours a week making videos on top of being a full-time student and having a part-time job but I loved it. With time, I saw my audience gradually grow and it inspired me to keep going. When I finally reached 50,000 my senior year, I realized this could be something bigger than I could have ever intended,” Taber said.

She was told that when one reaches roughly 100,000 subscribers on YouTube, there are opportunities to monetize one’s efforts to the equivalent of a full-time salary.

 

Another PLNU alum, Lauren Lebouef (19), has also had success as a social media influencer. She currently has over 34,000 followers on Instagram. Before attending PLNU, she was modeling with agencies in L.A. and S.D. While doing this, she started to learn that brands were willing to give models free clothes and products in exchange for modeling them on their social media accounts. She started to get involved and was soon contacted by brands like American Eagle, Forever 21, and other small boutiques partnering with Nordstroms. She started doing this initially for the free products but eventually fell in love with it because of the community aspect.

“It kind of started with the idea of modeling, and it turned into more of me loving the community side of it,” Lebouef shared. “I didn’t know that these young girls looked up to me, and it turned into more than just a surface-level thing. It was about community.”