What are influencers on social media

Influencer fame

When Instagram had not yet launched its advertising platform, influencers began to build their audiences by posting about their friends, family and daily life and this made the audience feel very close to them.

As users were able to comment on their posts and, in many cases, get a response, this type of marketing was strongly promoted and brands began to recognize that the influence of these social leaders was greater than that of celebrities.

Micro-influencers are social media users who specialize in a niche market or specific area, share content on their social profiles about their interests and publish sponsored posts when associated with brands.

Brands and marketers focus on the interactions between influencers and their audiences, and this is measured by engagement, i.e. the likes, comments and full trust those who follow you have in the influencers they are following.

An influencer is considered to be someone who has 1000 followers or more.

How is influencer marketing just the beginning of this space? Influencer marketing is a type of social media marketing that uses a lot of help through sponsorships and products mentioned by influencers. These people have dedicated social followings and are considered experts in their particular area or niche. This type of marketing works because people trust the social influencers they follow. And recommendations from these influencers will function as social proof that companies can target their potential customers. Social media has started to gain momentum recently, especially in the post-pandemic era. While sitting at home, people were more glued to their screens and realized they were missing out on a lot. That's why so many people have joined social networks, or have re-activated their long-lost accounts and gotten back into the swing of social networking platforms.

Productive influencers

FanCentro is a subscription-based website platform created in 2017[1] that allows adult film performers and other influencers to sell access to their private social media accounts. Due to the rampant removal of platforms and the hidden banning of sex-related content on social networking sites,[2] the platform began allowing fans to subscribe to content feeds directly on the site.[3] The emergence of premium social networks such as FanCentro, OnlyFans and JustForFans is a significant change in the structure of the porn industry, as performers can own and continue to profit from their work and better control working conditions.[4]

The FanCentro platform was developed by entrepreneurs Stan Fiskin and Alan Hall[5] of AdultCentro following the success of their ModelCentro tool, which allowed individual adult performers to create their own subscription websites.[6][7] Unlike previous platforms, which relied on social networks or external visitors, FanCentro provided content creators with the ability to build their audience from the platform's existing audience.[8]

Influencer scale

Through Influencer Marketing, businesses choose a "spokesperson" to transmit their proposals to the audience. This spokesperson must be a popular and charismatic person, since the objective of this strategy is to take advantage of his or her ability to influence people and their choices.

Since then, the stars of Influencer Marketing became movie and TV celebrities, a situation that lasted for decades. To illustrate this point, in the following GIF you can see the character Joey from the series Friends (1994-2004), when he is hired as an influencer by a Japanese company to sell a male lipstick.

With the advent of the Internet, the practice of Influencer Marketing took a turn and became more powerful, mainly for three reasons. The first is that the Web makes it possible for anyone to be an influencer, as long as they have a sufficiently large audience. This enables accessible costs for businesses.

To explain the success of Influencer Marketing, we will start by mentioning the psychological factor: people are much more susceptible to be influenced by those they admire or love. Combining that fact with the qualities of Social Media, an advertising message can thus be promoted very effectively.