As the director of an influencer talent agency I have to drag myself on to Linkedin sometimes. Actually, I say that like it’s a bad thing, the reality is when used properly Linkedin is one of the most valuable tools out there. However, there’s always exceptions to that point, and here is one of them.
A casual Friday scroll through the platform brought me this post at the top of my feed. I’ve got no idea why they’d put this dross there, but maybe they felt like it required a reaction…
The message from the clearly disgruntled ‘fan’ of influencer marketing read (shortened):
“This week we sent an offer to about 25 influencers (micro and nano). 2 responded (saying ‘not interested’, but that’s fine). Those who responded, will be receiving an offer again from us, just because they had at least the professional courtesy to respond. Those who didn’t, will never hear again from us. About 90% of influencers are a waste of time and money. They are not professionals and will never be.”
Linkedin
I’ll be honest, it’s the last sentences that got to me, but there’s so much to digest, so I replied:
“This is why influencer brand managers and agencies are so important. Social creators got into content creation to create, not to do admin regardless if it’d benefit them.
At Nano and Micro level they’ll also potentially be inexperienced and replying to brands can be super daunting.
Plus, if they’re doing it right they’ll get dozens of messages a week. In a perfect world they’d reply to them all, but sometimes it’s borderline impossible, especially when they have 100 other things to be doing.
Also, one point many don’t talk about enough, is although content creators appear and act extroverted they tend to be very introverted and doing stuff like negotiating deals or contract negotiation is quite literally their worst nightmare.
Your statement of 90% of influencers are a waste of time and money is clearly coming from a place of anger because it’s just not true.
Most influencers I know are without a doubt the single hardest working people I’ve ever met, and I’ve worked in finance because failure to continue to create puts them directly behind their competition and there’s thousands of people vying for their position.”
Linkedin
Then I checked his other messages, turns out he might just be one of those people. Despite overwhelming support for the creators on the dozens of messages left under his post he continued the tirade.
What did other people in Influencer Marketing say?
Here were some other messages of support for influencers in the comments:
What an incredibly innacurate and sweeping statement. There are so many variables here, most of them on your behalf:
1. Is what your offering of value to the influencer
2. Are you adding value to their audience
3. Are you offering to pay fairly for their time?
3. Was your email clear and concise and were you reaching the right person?I work on global campaigns with a whole range of different tiers of influencer and this is very much a two-way street. 10% response rate in the first week shows that there’s something wrong in the outreach?
You also need to consider that micro and nano influencers most likely aren’t doing this full-time, so will unlikely prioritise a free opportunity or will take longer to reply.
Sammy Albion – Senior Campaign Director – What They Said
This was another side to the debate I didn’t even consider from Influencer side. On top of brands and agencies reaching out to them, creators get bombarded by messages from fans daily as Versace Blonde details in her reply to this unnamed brand owner.
I don’t really think this is fair to assume an influencer isn’t professional simply because they didn’t respond to your message. Personally I only have 40k followers on IG but I get hundred’s of messages per day, I simply cannot reply to all of them. Additionally, to flip the coin, how can an influencer tell when the offer is genuine!? Only last week I was invited for a PR meal, which was a total hoax and the pub manager actually just wanted a date, to get me drunk and do god knows whatever else. But I won’t be saying all pub managers are unprofessional.
Moral of the story; no-one owes you anything and don’t paint everyone with the same brush.
Versace Blonde – Instagram
Don’t be like this unnamed brand owner and let influencer marketing pass you by. An influencer talent agency will be able to help you.
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