Online influencers have been used for nearly twenty years now and continue to get even more popular and used every year. Influencers, in general, have been around for a while and have been used to promote all different brands and products to help improve sales. Online influencers are a form of social media marketing. Influencers that brands hire to help promote themselves have been a selling technique and way to bring in engagement for many years. This started back in the year 1997 for the L’oreal company, they decided to use a celebrity, Jennifer Aniston, to help market their hair products. Since at the time everyone knew who Jennifer Aniston was because of her role in the very popular show Friends, it helped attract many individuals to purchase their hair products because Jennifer was promoting them. This was just the very beginning of online influencers which then paved the path to the now very successful brands who use online influencers. The brands use their online influencers to help sell and promote their products. This can be done in two ways, the first way is by the brand posting about the influencer on the companies platforms to help market their products. This can be done when the influencer is personally posting about the brand and their products on all of their accounts on either just one platform or multiple. The overall main purpose of the company hiring the influencer is to both help endorse and sell the products to help improve the companies sales. The platforms that are typically used to help the market by the online influencers are Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube. Recently in the past year, since TikTok has blown up companies have started to make accounts for this platform since it has become so popular to use by many individuals from all over the world.
Positives and Success from Influencers
It is very clear from an outside point of view to see how online influencers have impacted a lot of brands in a positive way. If a company hires an influencer for the right age group and the target market for the product they are trying to sell it will help make an impact bringing in more sales. In order for the company to be most effective using their platform, they need to figure out what platform will help the company become more successful and help grow their following. This way they are able to achieve their sales goal and the influencer will help attract more people to the brand as well. It would be favorable to the brands’ social media team to focus on hiring an influencer who already has a big following. This way all their followers will either follow the brand on social media or turn to the brand for the products they are selling. It would be a bad idea for the company to hire an influencer who would not reach their intended target audience. For example, if the brand hires someone who is fifty years old and the company sells college decor, it would fail and not be an effective use of hiring an online influencer. The brand would have to hire a college-age student to help sell the college decor because then it would be in the same age group which would be the most effective way to promote. Also, it would be a bad idea for the brand to only use the influencer once. This is because followers want consistency and the company needs to focus on building trust with its audience. The brand’s followers would not be in favor of there being a new online influencer each post. It would look disorganized on the companies behalf and it would not give them enough time to allow the influencer to help spread the word on the brand and their products.
An Accepting Community
The use of online influencers has a strong impact on society because it helps more companies become successful by individuals with a large following help build a company to become more successful. This helps our society connect and unites more individuals from all over the world and with all different backgrounds, ethnic groups, socioeconomic statuses, and age groups. Since individuals from all different countries can follow the brands and influencers it will help further relationships regardless of who the individual is. The online influencers could bring in more individuals to follow and buy from the company than the company ever expected. It will also help more people within society have more interest to create social media accounts if before they did not have an interest in having any social media before. No matter what an individual’s sexual orientation does not matter or affective in a bad way at all. Through the use of social media, brands have brought more awareness to the LGBTQ community and help bring awareness to the community. To help more individuals from the LGBTQ feel more comfortable using these platforms it would be effective to hire an online influencer within the community. This way followers who are gay, lesbian, and transgender also feel comfortable buying from the brand. Also, this is a great way to show that the company has awareness and is very accepting of any individual no matter who they are. No matter what online influencers could affect different genders, ages, or minorities. But a lot of brands have acknowledged how they could impact people and have learned the best and right way to show that they accept anyone and everyone through their platforms. If a certain brand is showing in any way that they are not like this in today’s era they will be canceled which means nobody would buy anything from the brand going further.
Personal Impact
Since online influencers started being used back in 1997 they have impacted social media platforms and the brands that use each and every platform in a positive way. Everyone I personally know who uses social media has their favorite influencers and as do I. They are a great way to help more individuals find out about brands from all over the world that they never heard about before by someone’s favorite YouTuber or celebrity. Personally, it has affected me because if I love a certain influencer and they promote a certain brand, it would help encourage me to then buy the brand’s products. Since my generation loves and uses social media daily in their lives it has impacted so many of us to learn about brands that we have never even heard of before. Since social media is such a vast component in our everyday lives with our age group a lot of influencers are also roughly the same age as well for many brands. In a time like the COVID-19 pandemic, influencers have helped companies still bring in profits during a difficult time for the economy. Overall, online influencers have made such a powerful impact on helpings brands improve their following and help with their overall sales.
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