Last Updated on June 29, 2024 by Rovamedia
Oh, you follow this amazing influencer on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, or even LinkedIn and they are really amazing to the point where you always look forward to their posts and contents. But, as soon they begin to promote some products and services of various companies, you begin to wonder why they’ll do that. After all, you really rated them and as a matter of fact, you begin to lose interest in their content gradually till you forget their username/handles.
Influencer Marketing is not a new thing, it has been existing for decades but has just come to the spotlight years ago. Influencer marketing is a form of social media marketing involving endorsements and product placement from influencers, people, and organizations who have a purported expert level of knowledge or social influence in their field. Probably, because everyone is doing it (yes, even non-influencers). Influencers are brand advocates, using social media to increase their credibility about a particular thing.
A good influencer can persuade followers to change their purchasing behavior. You can use influencer content to promote your brand, grow your business and increase consumer trust. That’s why many brands use the services of an influencer. Influencer marketing is a form of social media marketing involving endorsements and product placement from influencers, people, and organizations who have a purported expert level of knowledge or social influence in their field.
So does follower engagement really drop when a social media influencer starts posting sponsored Ads?
The Ad Reaction
What does influencer marketing do? Influencer marketing is a type of marketing that focuses on using key leaders to drive your brand’s message to the larger market. Rather than marketing directly to a large group of consumers, you instead inspire / hire/pay influencers to get out the word for you. Sounds cool right? Not so cool, until your audience feels they are being used for profit-making.
The fact is that you don’t seem to like it when you’re interrupted for a few seconds each time you visit YouTube to watch that video. You still don’t like that Facebook pushes exactly the same topic you just googled via an ad. No one loves being interrupted. But before you freak out, the internet is business and business is the internet. Thus, influencers have to earn and support themselves. Even on YouTube, there are various influencers who quickly pause their videos to talk about a sponsored ad. Yes, they exist. Bills have to be paid.
The Two Sides of the Coin
Yes, there are actually two different sides to the coin of an Influencer dropping Ads and if his followers will avoid their channels/platforms. In all sincerity, there are no ways about it and it all boils down to how the influencer actually pushes the sponsored Ad. Here are the two sides of the coin on the influencer ads push reaction by their followers.
- Positive Coin: On this positive side of the coin, the followers are happy with the influencer (of course) if the sponsored ad includes giveaways and other goodies such as Promo Code, Coupon Codes, and links to Free Trials of services. To be honest, followers are always looking for what to gain from their favorite influencers. This can also include Money and Outings with their favorites.
When an influence pushes the sponsored ad and how they push it matters because if done very well, the positive vibe remains on the minds of the audience. For instance, if an influencer pushes sponsored ads in all their posts it becomes spam, but if they push it moderately it becomes a vibe the audience can resonate with. Influence on Twitter from Nigeria is found of this, and as a result, they lose their followers because their followers see too much of their sponsored ad on their posts.
It’s good to observe the need not to overdo much when sponsoring a certainly paid ad. Keep the relationship between your audience and you mutual. - Negative Coin: In the negative coin of this influencer-sponsored ads phenomenon, the audience has zero happiness towards the influencer, because of excessive flaunting of the sponsored ads.
This is the case when an influencer doesn’t understand the user behavior of their audience as they (many influencers) do not use data analytics from their social media pages to actually denote the attitude of the audience regarding a specific or a variety of posts they put out.
In this case, a once-famous influencer will see a drastic reduction of impressions and followers gradually as time goes by if they continue with the same protocol of pushing and shoving sponsored ads on their fan base throat.
While it happens gradually, is because the influence doesn’t see the immediate effect of pushing sponsored ad on their audience, so along the line they’ll think it’s just a normal trend (fooling themselves to think their audience will come back).
Unfortunately, it never happens!
Conclusion
Does follower engagement drop when a social media influencer starts posting ads? We believe we have done justice to this question, why? Remember, Influencer Marketing is not a new thing, it has been existing for decades but has just come to the spotlight years ago. Influencer marketing is a form of social media marketing involving endorsements and product placement from influencers, people, and organizations who have a purported expert level of knowledge or social influence in their field.
In full sincerity, there are actually two different sides to the coin of an Influencer dropping Ads and if his followers will avoid their channels/platforms.
Finally, it all boils down to how the influencer actually pushes their sponsored ad to their audience.
