
No, Your Instagram ‘Influence’ Is Not as Good as Cash, Club Owner Says - chewz
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/03/world/phillipines-hotel-influencers-social-media.html
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jawns
I think a lot of people find the word "influencer" to be, for the most part,
aspirational puffery, especially if preceded by "self-described."

But the actual phenomenon is really very interesting.

Brands used to primarily rely on in-house marketing teams or external
marketing agencies, who might try to get their products in the hands of people
with strong platforms, aka the ability to market to lots of people by virtue
of their fame, reach, etc.

Now you have a lot of what might be called freelance lifestyle marketers.
They're like a copy of InStyle magazine, where the editorial content is
themselves and the lux life they (purportedly) lead, and the advertising
content is the products they market.

I think a lot of the consternation about social media influencers is because
it's a new marketing avenue with fairly little gatekeeping. Someone with 4,000
Instagram followers and someone with 4 million Instagram followers might both
present themselves as influencers, and it's hard to tell who's legit.

It's especially hard for smaller businesses, such as an independent hotel or
bar, because who has the time to research all of these claims?

What I think we're already starting to see is that some of the people with the
largest followings, who legitimately can be called influencers, are being
approached by agencies who represent them, because then the agencies are doing
the gatekeeping.

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DoreenMichele
It's also inherently problematic. Getting "sponsors" to pay you to talk about
their product is in direct conflict with becoming/remaining an _influencer._

Your audience needs to trust you. If your audience knows you are shilling for
someone, they fundamentally can't trust you.

They can no longer trust that you are saying "This is an awesome product!"
because you genuinely believe that. Maybe you actually think it's shite, but,
hey, you needed to make rent this month. So, whatevs.

I've even seen people on the internet say "I used to read such and such
...until they began getting free samples and the like to support the blog.
Then it went to shit and I quit reading."

It's a problem space I've thought about a lot because I blog. I am trying to
get my writing supported primarily via tips and Patreon.

If my audience wants quality content it can trust, my audience needs to pay
me. If they aren't paying me, "they are the product, not the customer" to
borrow a popular phrase.

But selling out my audience so I can eat is not a thing I am interested in
doing. It's flies in the face of the very reasons I blog.

Over the years, a lot of quality free content has either gone to shit or gone
away. The expectation that good content should exist, but be free, is simply
unsustainable.

Quality content takes time, effort and expertise to produce. It needs to pay,
or most of the people who are any good will eventually go do something that
does pay.

That's just reality.

And then we are left bitching about how _there 's nothing any good on the
internet anymore and where is all the good stuff I remember from the good old
days?_ (A fairly common refrain currently, actually.)

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Konnstann
You can get sponsors and remain trustworthy, you just need to disclose
sponsorships, and curate the people who you actually take money from. This can
be a problem because genuinely good product sponsorships are probably not the
first ones you get offered as a content creator, but I've seen plenty of
examples of this working and it pays more than ad revenue for most people.

~~~
DoreenMichele
I heard once of a small business that was in a remote and scenic location. It
added a live webcam to their website. It showed the weather for their scenic
locale. It eventually ended up with a crazy high amount of regular traffic.

They eventually sold ads for big money to a couple of big name companies.
IIRC, Disney was one of them.

People were visiting the site for the live view from the webcam. The value
they found in checking the live view from the webcam was not inherently harmed
by having Disney ads on the site. (Those ads probably paid the business owners
more than they made all year at their mom-and-pop shop in the middle of
nowhere.)

There's also Everyday Carry. They interview people and do photos of the things
they carry every day, then have links to where you can buy whatever these
people carry -- their brand of cell phone or pen or whatever. I think it's
brilliant.

I also know of content producers who make t-shirts and mugs and the like with
their content on it. The ones that are successful tend to be entertainers
doing something humorous. Effin' Birds and Questionable Content both do some
of this.

Some problem spaces are easier to monetize than others. The above examples of
success in no way changes anything I said in my previous comment.

Maybe I shall someday figure out how to be funny and make a mint selling
t-shirts with my witticisms on them. But, so far, that doesn't seem to be my
schtick.

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justboxing
> We are receiving many messages regarding collaborations with influencers,
> Instagram influencers. We kindly would like to announce that White Banana is
> not interested to “collaborate” with self-proclaimed “influencers.” And we
> would like to suggest to try another way to eat, drink, or sleep for free.

> Or try to actually work.

Love this quote from the Owner.

~~~
kylek
"Influencers" (what a crock of a term, by the way) who try to do this are
essentially beggars and/or fraudsters, who likely needs to get his/her ego in
check.

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kelnos
I wish we'd call them what they actually are: "freelance marketers".

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DannyB2
Some people say there is no harm in the "influencers" asking.

From TFA...

> resorts in the Maldives were swamped with influencer inquiries

> has faced such an overwhelming number of inquiries from “influencers” over
> the past six months that the hotel has stopped working with them

It's like saying you don't see the harm in email spam.

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mfoy_
Yeah it's a pretty self-absorbed thing to do (and say).

Like, there's no harm if the outcome is mutually beneficial... but you just
_have_ to know deep down that posting one picture of a beach out front of a
resort for your 2,000 followers to see is not going to generate a worthwhile
amount of interest in the resort in reality... But I think most "influencers"
are completely deluded anyways, so maybe they really do believe that posting a
couple vacation photos is of equivalent worth to the vacation itself...

It's like people who approach photographers and request that they work for
free to "build their portfolio".

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DannyB2
That last line is a good one.

How about the 'influencers' work for free to build up more followers.

If you spend your own money to go on vacations and post videos / pictures,
then you will get followers.

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jedberg
I've sort of wondered how this whole influencer thing actually works. There
was a girl I ran across on Instagram (friend of a friend) who appears to have
no job other than posing in her swimsuit at exotic resorts (sometimes with her
boyfriend and sometimes with other women in bathing suits). She only has about
12,000 followers.

Do people pay for her to come to those resorts? Is she just not posting
anything about her real life on Instagram to make it look like she doesn't
work? Is 12,000 followers really a lot?

~~~
reaperducer
Reminds me of something that happened recently.

A co-worker brought her kid to work. Another co-worker asked the child what he
wanted to be when he grows up. The child responded instantly, "I want to be a
YouTube star!"

~~~
Konnstann
10 years ago, that kid would have probably replied "Movie Star" instead of
YouTube, not sure that a kid wanting to be a celebrity is bad.

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duderific
> “We found this disrespectful,” he said in an interview Monday night. It
> didn’t help that often the “influencers” had fewer than 2,000 Instagram
> followers. “How can you help me if you are no one?” he asked.

Burn!

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jaclaz
As a side note, if these influencers exist (and the actually largely followed
ones seem to make a lot of real money, besides the free stuff they are
offered) it means that there are huge numbers of _influenced_ , and that
presumably these people - one way or the other - actually "pay the bill".

Otherwise all firms/hotels/restaurants/whatever that actually - unlike Mr.
Casaccia - accept the "begging" are not capable of evaluating properly the
increase in revenue that the influencers allegedly cause.

Both the possibilities (huge numbers of gullible people or huge numbers of
clueless managers) seem to me like not good news.

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reidjs
I don’t see the harm in the “influencers” asking. For some places it’s
probably worth it to get the cheap promotion.

~~~
pedasmith
Indeed -- Tesla lived for free for years in a New York hotel. The hotel owners
felt that his mere presence made the entire building a nicer place.

~~~
EpicEng
I wonder how many of these "influencers" have as much to offer as Nikola
Tesla. I imagine not... any.

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dustindiamond
Are there companies that will ‘aggregate’ microinfluencers for advertisers?

~~~
cosmie
Something like Socialbakers?

[https://www.socialbakers.com/feature/influencer-
marketing](https://www.socialbakers.com/feature/influencer-marketing)

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hammock
These influencers should try the club promoters, not the club owners. They
will find more success.

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reaperducer
Yep. There are companies that recruit young, attractive woman in Los Angeles
and then bus them en masse to Las Vegas to simply exist in certain clubs.

I know they get paid for their time, plus the free bus ride, plus free club
admission. I don't know if they get to eat and drink for free, or if they stay
overnight, or if they are just bused back to L.A. at 6am.

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Beldin
This got me wondering: if people are suggesting to trade posts for a free stay
or meal, they must believe that their posts are worth something. So adding
value.

In case this is not a one-of thing, but the way they travel, then they are
basically professionally selling advertisements. Which is subject to value
added tax.

So should the tax offices of touristy countries start sending bills to
influencers?

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dontbenebby
Why can't these people just do couchsurfing if they want free lodging?

(Oh yeah, I forgot: it's considered polite to take your host out to dinner, or
at least a beer, and these people want to simply vacation for free, not
_travel_.)

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lordnacho
I wonder how many people are making an Instagram profile, buying a load of
followers, and using that to get freebies. Is it easy to know if someone has a
legit highly followed account?

~~~
dewey
They do, and it’s possible. There are a bunch of tools to detect fake
followers like on Twitter.

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HNLurker2
Bypass paywall:
[https://lm.facebook.com/l.php?u=https://www.nytimes.com/2019...](https://lm.facebook.com/l.php?u=https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/03/world/philippines-
hotel-influencers-social-media.html)

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HNLurker2
It works if you press continue Reading

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HNLurker2
(I want 501 karma to unlock down vote I am karmawhore sorry)

