The waning influence of mega-influencers
Source: The Atlantic | Taylor Lorenz
Three years ago, Lisa Linh quit her full-time job to travel the world and document it on Instagram, where she has nearly 100,000 followers; since then, she has stayed in breathtaking hotels everywhere from Mexico to Quebec to the Cook Islands. Often, she stays for free.
Linh is part of an ever-growing class of people who have leveraged their social media clout to travel the world, frequently in luxury. While Linh and other elite influencers are usually personally invited by hotel brands, an onslaught of lesser-known wannabes has left hotels scrambling to deal with a deluge of requests for all-expense-paid vacations in exchange for some social media posts.
Source: Mobile Marketer | Robert Williams
The declining engagement rates for Instagram influencers, as measured by InfluencerDB, indicate several trends that mobile marketers need to consider when embarking on a social influencer campaign. The good news is that sponsored posts tend to generate higher engagement than non-sponsored posts, likely because influencers put more effort into creating high-quality posts when they're being sponsored and because Instagram's algorithms give higher precedence to sponsored posts, per InfluencerDB.
The bad news is that engagement rates for influencer content are declining as Instagram feeds get cluttered with sponsored posts.
Source: Business Insider | Rachel Hosie
With certain influencers commanding followings into the millions, securing an endorsement from one can seem like an incredibly powerful move for a brand.
However, the tide is slowly turning, and brands are increasingly seeing the benefits of working with micro- or nano-influencers — meaning it's actually possible work with your favourite brands, even if you have only a few hundred followers.