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Instagram influencers: Have we stopped believing?

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Re: Instagram influencers: Have we stopped believing?

#81

Post by asdff »

MuffinFlavored wrote: post #31

I'll believe we've stopped believing when there aren't hoards of vapid swimsuit/skimpy athletic wear "models" with 1m-10m followers. I know of one brand that charges you a monthly fee to sell you a monthly PDF aimed towards physical, mental, and spiritual wellness. Let's just say that... the group behind that isn't starving because enough people are buying it up. How did that business get started? Why... skimpy bathi…

Probably 95% of followers on large accounts are bots. And I can tell you of my friends who follow models on instagram, they sure as hell aren't looking at the product placement.

Re: Instagram influencers: Have we stopped believing?

#82

Post by criddell »

cgriswald wrote: post #69
criddell wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I dont have [social network] cause why the fuck I would? Because you have friends, family, and former coworkers in far away places that you enjoy keeping in touch with. It's one thing to write them an email or letter regularly, but it's also nice to open the app and see a random picture of your nephew at the zoo or see a pic from an office birthday gathering or maybe a short clip of a former coworker playing their…

> it's also nice to open the app and see a random picture of your nephew at the zoo or see a pic from an office birthday gathering or maybe a short clip of a former coworker playing their new guitar. Serious question: Is there a social network that allows me to do any of those things anymore? The first 10 things on my Facebook feed are: 1. My own un-republished 'memory'. 2. A 'humorous' re-post. 3. Someone else's re-…

Instagram is the only social network that works for me. Photos are exactly what I want to see when I open the app (which I do once or twice a week). I follow only people I know personally and I don't follow hashtags or brands.

The percentage of ads is going up and that bothers me. If I could pay a reasonable fee (maybe $5 / month) to get rid of them, I would.

Re: Instagram influencers: Have we stopped believing?

#83

Post by smohare »

criddell wrote: post #63
dubliner2077 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dont have Facebook as I found it stupid as fuck when it started. I dont have Instagram cause why the fuck I would? I don't even have a LinkedIn since I like privacy on my carreer and because I wanted to do it before it existed lol I have a "read only" Twitter to follow some friends and technical people which I barely use. You know what the problem is? Dota2, Hearthstone, Overwatch... Too much time "wasted".

> I dont have [social network] cause why the fuck I would? Because you have friends, family, and former coworkers in far away places that you enjoy keeping in touch with. It's one thing to write them an email or letter regularly, but it's also nice to open the app and see a random picture of your nephew at the zoo or see a pic from an office birthday gathering or maybe a short clip of a former coworker playing their…

That is an entirely unconvincing argument. Social Networks facilitate those sorts of activities to an astonishingly marginal degree.

Re: Instagram influencers: Have we stopped believing?

#84

Post by TeMPOraL »

asdff wrote: post #79
TeMPOraL wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Other than a click through and sale, it's hard for any advertising to prove effectiveness. Advertising industry has a vested interest in keeping things this way, and only maintain perception of effectiveness to milk customers.

Then what happens when competing ad agency calls up your client and explains how bullshit your metrics are? Advertisers compete more than they collude, we don't have a cartel (yet).

How would they know what my metrics are? Chances are, their whole business is based on pulling the same bullshit as I am anyway.

Competition in an industry whose core competency is lying to people doesn't breed trust.

Re: Instagram influencers: Have we stopped believing?

#85

Post by faeyanpiraat »

louisv wrote: post #54
memset wrote: post #38

I have experimented with influencers for a notebook that I sell. It has been a mixed bag, but mostly unprofitable. My target audience is musicians - not lifestyle bloggers - so the people I've tried to work with don't quite have the following as the person in this article. Also, I have never experienced an "entitled influencer", though I have come close. Here was my process: 1. Email 20 people with > n followers aski…

I've also dealt with a lot of Instagram influencers for sales promotions, and there's one factor that I found has correlated a lot with the success of my campaigns: The fact if the account has promoted/is promoting a lot of products. I found that the fewer products an account promotes, the more your sales/ product awareness increases. This is not just because followers become saturated with promotions - I believe it'…

I'm not sure how Instagram works, so sorry if my question is too far off topic:

Your insight seems reasonable, but what is your opinion about Youtube influencers, where the audience is huge, truly engaged, and all of their videos contain ads in the beginning and at the end aswell ALL the time?

Some channels even come with an enragingly subtle transition where you only realise you are watching an ad when you watched half of the ad, but the content is so good you cannot hate them enough to stop watching the channel?

Do these ads perform poorly aswell?

Re: Instagram influencers: Have we stopped believing?

#86

Post by faeyanpiraat »

hiven wrote: post #5

There was a shop that said to influencers they could get a discount only after 30 people used their specific influencer promo code. None of them did (or could do) it. It’s highly ineffective and for the most part it’s just some entitled person with an inflated ego demanding freebies. Madness to think businesses can really believe they are of any real substance or significance. Instagram more and more has become a ces…

It is a complicated issue, because if you are reviewing products in a niche, and producing truly useful content around it, then getting all the stuff for retail price could be prohibitively expensive.

And doing all of that for hoping that posting the content with a promo code MAY refer 30 people, so that you could get the same item at a discount?

That seems unreasonable.

On the other hand, I have 1st hand experience on how hard it is doing marketing profitably. You are throwing most of your money straight out the window, most campaigns bring in 0 conversions, some even 0 impressions..

So being a busy businessperson juggling all the daily operations stuff, being so done with the bullshit marketing opportunities bringing in nothing, and the freebie seeker influencers, why would this next person asking for stuff be different?

Re: Instagram influencers: Have we stopped believing?

#87

Post by criddell »

smohare wrote: post #83
criddell wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I dont have [social network] cause why the fuck I would? Because you have friends, family, and former coworkers in far away places that you enjoy keeping in touch with. It's one thing to write them an email or letter regularly, but it's also nice to open the app and see a random picture of your nephew at the zoo or see a pic from an office birthday gathering or maybe a short clip of a former coworker playing their…

That is an entirely unconvincing argument. Social Networks facilitate those sorts of activities to an astonishingly marginal degree.

Maybe, but there's nothing better right now.

Re: Instagram influencers: Have we stopped believing?

#88

Post by dumbfoundded »

siruncledrew wrote: post #75
dumbfoundded wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

^ 100% this. I bootstrapped my business through Instagram influencers. You have to be extremely targetted around the audience. When judging if an influencer is worth working with, figure out who their audience is and the nature of that interaction. For example, Imagine I sell an awesome new cat toy for helping shy cats be more social. I don't want to find the cat pages with millions of followers. I want to find the c…

What cat toy do you sell? I have a cat, and would check it out.

Just a hypothetical

Re: Instagram influencers: Have we stopped believing?

#89

Post by rungekuttarob »

hiven wrote: post #5

There was a shop that said to influencers they could get a discount only after 30 people used their specific influencer promo code. None of them did (or could do) it. It’s highly ineffective and for the most part it’s just some entitled person with an inflated ego demanding freebies. Madness to think businesses can really believe they are of any real substance or significance. Instagram more and more has become a ces…

Apologies for my "lmfao" comment after reading hiven's post. The comment didn't add anything to the conversation and was a dumb mistake.

Re: Instagram influencers: Have we stopped believing?

#90

Post by wcunning »

bryanthompson wrote: post #15
wcunning wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hesitate to defend a Facebook property, but here goes anyway... My Instagram feed is 100% welding, machining and a small smattering of woodworking. Literally any project I post gets universally positive feedback, with the occasional constructive suggestion. If I ask for help on a project, I get advice in at most a few hours from someone with 40 years more experience than I have. Contrast this to the forum community…

Same here. I only follow woodworkers and immediately unfollow anyone who gets outside the line of what i want in my feed. It has allowed me to find interesting niches in the hobby and connect with people with 10x the skill who like teaching and talking about technique, but it takes a pretty brutal type of curating to keep the influencers & garbage out.

This comment is surely too late, but I feel like it's worth preserving. I think the woodworking community is more prone to that than the metalworking community. I hate to say it, but I think it's a question of barrier to entry. It's hard to be dilettante in metalworking when it requires a huge investment and moving tens of thousands of pounds of equipment.
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