I read many times ‘influencers‘ are dead; influencer marketing has been investing the wrong way; all the ‘influencing thing’ is a step away from the steep decline. A decade of online marketing and storytelling opened my eyes to today’s reality. A world shaped by several lockdowns and the request for fresh new content every hour, every day…
You get a better view of influencer marketing and ‘influencers versus reality’ if you are in the eye of the tornado. I’ve been living on the net, I wrote countless pages and I am ready to talk about the influencer trend pre and during COVID.
My influencer journey started in a remote Italian bed room; when I got interviewed by Alex from Intellifluence, I was in my own living room in Birmingham. Ten years of blogging have transformed my life; they also showed me how my socials have been changing as technologies do. Influencers’ style, media trends and public expectation followed it.
2009: when the blog ‘Valens… per voi’ was born
Undoubtedly, the hey-day of blogging was the early 2000s. It was the time of Blogspot/blogger and the defunct Splinder; while My Space was the main hub for youngsters and music fellas. Launching my blog late meant finding many competitors and well-established bloggers on my way. At the end of the decade, professional blogging was for passionate people only. It was actually hard to become profitable with new socials. Facebook soon took the place of MySpace to give plenty of space to everyone without any knowledge of SEO and HTML. The end of the ’00s saw the rise of YouTube gurus, some of which reached the stars and the screens.
In short, with new technologies and better broadband, socials changed faster with alternating luck for some platforms. However, at the core of this media consume there is a specific need: the call for practical knowledge and amusement. Know-how and entertainment are what people were looking for in 2001 exactly as in 2021. Who can fill us that content better than influencers – ‘the new starts of web advertising’ [2] – and beauty gurus with their style and catching videos?
2015: my much-awaited step into Instagram
Instagram just continued what Facebook was doing but with a complete visual-based concept. It didn’t sign the end of influencer marketing and blogging. The instant beauty of Instagram still offers some space for micro-blogging: photo captions, the area where natural-born bloggers express themselves just a bit synthetically than before.
Stories, IG TV and reels are the newest developments of this social. Instagram is gifting more playful tools for brands to market their services and influencers to market their personality. With this new potential, Instagram stretches towards the creation and consume at an incredible pace: it’s ‘fast content‘.
A succession of local and national lockdowns resulted in influencers creating more and more content, seeking the opportunity offered by endless boredom to fill and monetise long days. Influencers have been sprouting like mushrooms before COVID, lockdown just pushed the trend further with customers turning themselves into influencers. The gap I was feeling in the 2010s between newbies and established bloggers, is now deeper between the newest wannabe content creators and macro-influencers.
Spotlights are ephemeral, the competition is made harder and easy solutions offered by bots, paid likes and followers showed the weakness of influencing. Several companies and multinationals have turned away from this marketing strategy [1] because unable to trust influencers’ numbers and understanding the real audience reached by these one-person channels. The new stars of influencing marketing are micro-influencers; the winning card is UGC, content made by real consumers.
This is where being small is true strength, not a handicap. During the lockdown, my monthly session increased by +603%, my audience grew on Facebook and Instagram, more collaborations bloomed. I’m tiny, I’m what’s considered a micro-influencer. But if six years ago I was passing pretty much unnoticed; things started to change as PRs are looking for different people, voices that are virgin or almost pristine from corruption.
A niche blogger offers a freer view on services and unedited snippets of life which sparkle an insane curiosity among followers. What marks the difference between macro-influencers and smaller personalities, in my opinion, is passion and freedom. Content creation – forgetting deliverable deadlines and briefs – is done with more fun, although the secret wish for many is filling their pockets with some pocket money one day.
After moving abroad, I’ve been wondering if it’s possible to be successful as an expat blogger. Relocating abroad doesn’t mean changing audience with an auto-reset. The case of Mona from Mona Mode shows how blog and socials’ demographic can surprise. It’s maybe your old friends watching you, most likely your niche and promotional channels, then your style and personality hooking more and more people. My voice touched Naples – where I lived a while ago – but it’s much appreciated by Anglophones as far as Australia and New Zealand.
There isn’t an easy key to success as an influencer and many factors may play for or against creators. These ten years of blogging suggested me to trust my gut, play with new tools (like reels and videos for me), nurture my niche and show the person I am. There is still space for original people if they keep it original. Nobody likes a bland copy of someone else, fewer like a mannequin with a gorgeous dress in a nice location. At least not me, thanks!
Valentina Chirico aka Valens
Sponsored, paid READ POLICIES
Sources - further reading: [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2020/08/19/is-influencer-marketing-on-the-decline/?sh=6f1227c6198e [2] https://marketinginsidergroup.com/influencer-marketing/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-social-media-influencer/
Image credits: Ph. Laura D Vargas via Unsplash (cover) Ph. Mateus Campos Felipe via Unsplash Ph. Laura Chouette via Unsplash
2 Comments
Gemm
This is such an interesting post. I think often a lot of people that comment on the influencer industry that talk about it being on the decline are those that don’t really understand it. It’s basically jut become the new way of marketing and advertising, the industry is thriving! I totally agree about how lockdown has had an impact on things too! I’ve been blogging for a similar amount of time to you and I’ve seen how much the industry has grown and changed. I think it’s difficult to grow these days as thing have become more competitive but I also think that a lot of people are starting to realise that even with under 10k followers you can still be an influencer, work with brands and make money. It will be interesting to see how things change and develop over the next 10 years!
ValentinaChirico
Hi Gemm!
I love this ever-evolving nature of the media and I’m always surprised to see who kept writing/posting/creating over the years by adapting to new challenges, styles and channels. I have many blogging pals who kept their original bogs, while others moved to IG or got established on YT.
I’m as curious as you about the future but one thing is sure: the future is digital and it will be about fast content… the winners will be those who are able to surprise, entertain and give a personal touch to information. Let’s see what happens!