Social Media Influencers are new Entrepreneurs

There are several terminologies that exist nowadays for a "business owner" such as entrepreneur, tycoon, magnate or even CEO, that is a person who starts and runs own business. It is considered to be someone who has (not always) resources, plan, dedication and etc. Honestly, there is no ideal formula for becoming a successful entrepreneur. In the world of stereotypes, the business owner known as someone who establishes the physical company and operates from the head office or maybe a garage. Those opinions are based on the information that is given to us about the successful entrepreneurs such as Steve Jobs. However, we forgot that it's already 2018, and its been 43 years since Steve Jobs set up a company in a garage. Thanks to innovators like him, we moved faster towards the technology, which is one of the change factors in today's world.

The technology plays one of the major parts of our everyday life. Leaving a house without a phone for someone might be a huge struggle. Nowadays, there are thousands of online-based companies, including banks, who don't have the psychical brunches, that way they reduce any extra costs and help people make transactions easier at the same time. The problem always needs a solution. With help from digital marketers, the companies can double or triple their sales. I will give you a better understanding of offline and online marketing based on the examples, some terminology and numbers. 

So let's dig into that in the details.

If a company wants to hire a famous person to promote their product or service, its called "celebrity endorsement". Let's take the most recognized celebrity that has influenced the beauty industry for the past years, an interest of different generations, for example, Jennifer Lopez. We have seen her in many commercials and as a brand ambassador for companies such as L'Oréal. Even being a millennial, those commercial can still be remembered. Why have I mentioned the millennial generation? In digital marketing, this term is used most of the times, based on the Goldman Sachs research about millennials (1980 - 2000) those are the generation that has grown up in a time of rapid change, with a set of priorities and expectations sharply different from the previous generation X or baby boomers. Yes, they are digital natives, grown up with the internet and smartphones in an always-on digital world. That should explain the reason behind the digital marketer's usage of this generation as their main target audience to sell the product online. 

The different research shows that most of the millennials are unemployed or doesn't have a stable income. They usually don't have TV broadband, however, they use Digital TV such as YouTube, where they gain as much information and content, but it is filtered based on their preferences( TV can't do that). So, let's assume Jennifer Lopez does influence your style and maybe behaviour. The same for millennials, but instead they have YouTubers who have gained an online reputation for those past years. Millions of followers not only on YouTube but on other social media channels, such as Instagram or Twitter that help them stay in touch with their fans, reach the bigger audience internationally and be connected every day (again TV can't do that either). We can notice, nowadays, more TV celebrities start to have their social media profiles, right, why, because it pays off the hard work. 

Nowadays, social media influencers becoming a new type of entrepreneurs. They get sponsored by lots of companies, become ambassadors for different brands, create collaborations and their own, psychical product that they sell online or in stores based on the industry of interest. However, for many people, it might seem that becoming an influencer is an easy process and doesn't require that much effort. The truth is that the niche is already taken by those who started blogging and vlogging back in 2011, and has improved to the level where it is no longer considered as just fun, it actually became their nine to five job. Coming up with an entertaining content nowadays is not enough for the audience, it takes much more effort, the same as any entrepreneur would take. This article explains the whole process of becoming the successful influencer in more details. Worth reading. 

The use of "influencer marketing" has shown the positive results on the return on investment (ROI). However, It is becoming a huge issue for the companies to figure out which influencers are worth to invest. It is good to mention that the average price for influencers with more than 100,000 followers is around $763 per post and $1,000-$5,000 per collaboration for blogs that receive 500,000+ monthly impressions.

Why followers and likes don't matter as much as impressions, simply, because they can be easily manipulated by different bots or just bought at a cheap price, which is not beneficial either for the brand or the influencer. As was mentioned before, technology grows rapidly, and fake identity can be easily spotted. Nowadays, to have fake followers, likes and comments is comparable to a fake designer item. All the social media users always get checked by the special bots that spot the fake or bought accounts, which usually leads to losing your account forever. So don't do that, it is waste of money and time. 

Those influencers, who know their audience, reach, impressions and etc, basically, with the full package are the most worth investing. 

You might ask, but how can you spot fake from real? You won't see it right away, usually bought followers and likes would look not "organically gained". Very common example, the person has 15K followers, and almost equal amount of likes on each post (for example 744, 690, 856). If there are no comments, the account is fake, but if there are comments such as "That is nice" or some kind of standard phrases, it also means that the account is fake. 

There is no perfect way of spotting the fake account by just investigating yourself since the bots became very realistic and it is becoming harder to understand which one is real or fake by just looking at the profile. 

To conclude, the magnates like Steve Jobs or Bill Gates has completely changed the world we live in today, opened new opportunities that have formed a new type of entrepreneurs and transformed the study and management of exchange relationships. TV still exist in our everyday life and we shouldn't underestimate its power since that is a huge innovation of the history. It is great to see that it is moving forward and example is YouTube that performs the same way as a TV for a millennial generation. Due to the internet, many dedicated people became a new type of "business owners"/"influencers", but measuring their success is a high request, in fact, measuring any type of online performance including companies website is not only helping to raise sales but also build a trust between the customers.