My original solution…
was for there to be a “shop” page featured on Instagram where influencer posts would appear. This would clean up your personal timeline and allow you to just see your family and friends post without being bombarded by influencer posts. You would still be able to view and shop brand and influencers and stay up to date on the hottest trends, but now just keeping shopping and your personal feed separate. Apparently Instagram agreed with this idea because on the newest update this feature appeared. Now, instead of just having your feed and the popular page feed, there are categories of pages you can filter through. With Instagram adding this feature to the new update, it proves the need and demand of consumers to separate real life posts from brands and influencers posts.
So, I had to go back to the drawing board…
My first step after realizing Instagram created my solution for me was to go back to my research I conducted, and see what people really wanted and thought about my problem. The Instagram update with the category pages solves a lot of the issues people had with having to follow influencers to keep up and shop brand they like. However, I believe there is still more that can be done to help make influencer marketing flourish and not loosing the original purpose of social media sites: to stay connected to people around the world. Not to be told what to buy, when to buy, and why you should buy a certain product. This snag in my project solution gave me a big dose of the real world. You have to be able to adapt in the real life and in business, because you will always have curve-balls thrown your way.
“The lifestyles they project are so “perfect” that they cannot be real. They don’t feel like real people and that is dangerous to their main audience (middle school-college students) who are highly impressionable. It also seems very hard to keep up the view of perfection.”
“Truth in advertising is hard to discern from business fluff. More stringent guidelines for advertising should be adopted by all outlets.”
“I personally get annoyed seeing influencers in social media. I want to see what is going on in my friends’ lives. I do not want to be sold something.”
“They are an interesting addition to traditional marketing strategies. However, their reputation as a group is starting to color the perception of the brands they promote in certain demographics. For instance, being an influencer is unbelievably corny in my social circles, and brands they promote also seem lame for reaching out to these guys.”