About
My goal for this project …
was to obtain a better understanding of how influencer marketing worked and what was the genuine opinion and attitude toward influencer marketing. I identified an audience for this research as social media users, predominately millennials. I being a millennial who has a decent amount of followers on Instagram and friends on Facebook decided that surveying my followers and Facebook friends was the perfect way to conduct my research.
Social Media…
has become one of the, if not the largest form of marketing and advertising in recent years. With that being said, it is now one of the easiest and most common ways people in the 21st century interact with one another. The problem I have chosen focuses on Influencer / Blogger Marketing and how it is perceived by the public. The human-centered factor into this problem is that this is how so many people on social media platforms now interact with brands and purchase their products. Whether someone follows the brand directly or follows one of these influencers/ bloggers. Through my research and this project I hope to find a way to make the experience of this new form of marketing a more genuine, trustworthy, and enjoyable process for all.
I decided to focus on this problem because in my social circles and also in my age demographic, everyone is a blogger or has at least 5 college friends who are now bloggers. When this topic comes up, it’s always a heated conversation on whether this is a viable career. I thought to my self , if this is such a hot topic of conversation with just my friends, and we all have varying opinions on, then I am sure that a lot more people feel the ways we are. I wanted to first gain a better understanding of how people really felt about influencer marketing outside of my social circles.
Based on my research, influencer marketing is a love or hate it deal. I conducted multiple surveys of my Instagram friends and Facebook friends, all who had varying opinions on the matter. What I found was that even those who enjoy influencer marketing and following these bloggers, there is still not a whole lot of trust in the process. My idea for the solution for this project started shift when I made this realization. I realized many people did not understand what all influencer marketing meant and how these influencers were paid. I also realized that their needs to be a better way to sift through what is genuine and what is just strictly a paid promotion. I also realized for the experience to truly be more enjoyable for everyone that some sort of regulation probably needs to be put in place to help all of these goals come to reality.
Most of the comments from people were mainly focused on how these influencer presented a false reality on their feeds and the wished it was a more genuine trust worthy way of finding products from brands they love or discovering new brands.
I feel like if there is a way to have more people educated on what this form of marketing is and combine that with a more regulated, genuine, open type of influencer marketing then the entire process would help everyone: the consumer, the influencer, and the brand.