Influencer marketing has been attracting marketers from different sectors with huge opportunities. With the growing demand for this marketing strategy, youth find it a profitable and glamorous career choice. Being an influencer offers many advantages. But like every other field, it has many unsatisfactory factors as well. Imagine yourself standing beside a poolside, an umbrella in one hand, thick makeup on your skin, camera flashes now and again, three outfits within 30 minutes, and more. It feels like a celebrity photoshoot. The fact is, you are a social media influencer who is posing in front of the camera to create dynamic and engaging content for your client.
Over the past six years, the influencer marketing career has grown aggressively. Influencers create dynamic and appealing content across social media throughout various fields, from food, beauty, and travel to health and beyond. Their day-to-day Instagram posts, blogs, and content seem glamorous and unfiltered, but, they also go through many difficulties and competitions. Choosing this career has many advantages. However, there are many reasons to reconsider the benefits, this field offers. Although it feels rosy and smooth, it makes life difficult too.
Being a social media influencer in 2021 is advantageous as a career. One should consider the pros and cons of this sector before joining:
1: Flexibility is an appealing feature of this field
When you are a social media influencer, you are free from the monotonous work schedule of a full-time job. According to your mood, convenience, wish, and time, you can decide how much you work and when. You just need a smart device, like a laptop or smartphone and a stable internet connection. It is just the reverse of a regular profession, where you need to go to the office every day and work on topics, your company orders.
There is also the flexibility to work on your preferred topics. After perceiving your expertise, you can choose a particular niche, such as travel, fashion, beauty, fitness, and more, to create insightful content that can attract thousands of people and expand your follower list. You can find a healthy balance between your personal and work life. Many mothers are happily working in this field after spending quality time with their kids and family. Mandy Cox is a micro-influencer who is a happy mother.
2: Building and Connecting with a group of people is truly inspiring
When you are an influencer, you have a social group or community of like-minded people. People carry and share the same interest in a particular niche when they are in a community. As an influencer, you can create and expand your community by creating engaging content. Not only does creating a community bring success, but your regular engagement will make you a rising star within a few weeks. Frequent posts, comments, replies to comments, messages, and frequent communication with followers will lead to strong engagement in social media. It helps you create solid connections with your followers, which, consequently, can improve your engagement rate.
When you have a higher engagement rate, the chances are better to deal with big brands. Day by day, you can charge higher when you have more followers and a higher engagement rate. Brands are ready to invest a much higher budget into influencer marketing. When you have a higher engagement rate as an influencer, you can develop your platform more strongly and securely to create content for brands. It will help you increase your income as well as allow you freedom of choice and time.
3: Being Authentic
People trust influencers’ words. So, being authentic is the most significant feature of influencers. Your followers want to explore the real facts of your life. You should stay truthful and authentic with your audience. Some influencers only share the good side of their lives, while others even showcase the struggles and difficulties they faced in the field. When your followers get a more realistic, human-like, and emotional story, it will show your enthusiasm about how hard it is to earn a single penny in this new age of advertising.
Kimia Kalbasi, a social media influencer, shares that creating and posting content is not her only task as an influencer; she also describes some tough experiences in her lifestyle during those initial days. Being authentic will touch your followers more emotionally and it will increase your engagement rate.
4: Free Gifts
Who does not want to get gifts and samples? Brands offer gifts and product samples to influencers. It is to motivate them to promote the brand more aggressively. Brands want to make collaborations with popular influencers. So, when you become an influencer dealing with top brands, the chances are great that you get freebies, gifts, and more as an additional perk. Daniel Wellington, a famous marketer, offers watches to many influencers on Instagram who, in turn, want to promote the brand. Not only do you have freebies and samples for your personal use, but some influencers also arrange get-togethers and parties where you can meet top brands as well as influencers from different niches. You will have different experiences and additional perks when you become a popular social media influencer.
Becoming an influencer has many challenges as well.
A: Maintaining integrity is a must
The influencer marketing field brings a lot of unique facilities and advantages but, maintaining integrity is crucial to enjoying a lead role in this field. Sometimes influencers exaggerate a product for a promotional issue. But does it benefit your audience? You may say something extra about a brand but you must stay authentic. Otherwise, you can regret it soon. If there are negative issues in a brand, as an influencer, you must convey them to your audience. It is more important when you work in the health and medicine fields. Many medicines cause side effects. When an influencer promotes medicines, he/she must showcase everything about the positives and negatives of products.
B: Getting consistent work is tough
It is tough to get consistent work as a social media influencer. There are thousands of competitors in your niche. To survive and rule the field, you should work very hard. Many talented influencers have submerged into the ocean of competitors. Maintaining a glamorous lifestyle requires money. Without a continuous workflow, it is impossible to stand still among competitors.
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Conclusion
Influencer marketing may seem very attractive from a social perspective. However, influencers struggle hard to maintain their followers. They remain relevant and authentic to boost the list of followers. It is not easy to build a strong community. It needs to post engaging content regularly so that people feel interested in being connected with you. It requires constant lessons on what to post when to post, and how to post. Maintaining integrity is also a difficult task. But if you can manage it all well, you can reap the benefits as a social media influencer. You have flexibility, gifts, and a good income with your hard work and dedication as a social media influencer.
