Want Authentic Brand Engagement? Ask Your Fans.

Imagine having two million followers on Instagram. That’s a whole lot of eyes on you and your activities.

Now, if someone said to you “hey, could you get just 36 of those followers to buy a t-shirt from you?” your answer would be a most definitive yes!

36 from two million is just 0.0018 percent. Easy.

Well, not quite. Recently an Instagram influencer hit the headlines and sent shockwaves through the influencer marketing community. Presented with that very task, she failed to get 36 of those two million followers to buy a t-shirt.

The big question…what is going on?!

Influencers do not Come with a Guarantee

That warning should come with every influencer on social media. Two million followers is a lot, but the problem isn’t the size of the audience…it’s the quality.

For a start, how many of those two million followers are fake? Big brands found out that many of their followers were not really there, with Ritz-Carlton discovering 72 percent of the “people” it reached were fake. Instagram recently tried to purge fake followers, but reports say the efforts had little-to-no effect.

Then there are the kinds of followers the influencer has. Are they active, or passive? Are they engaged with every post, or are most of them just ignored?

Finally, there’s relevance. In the case of the t-shirt flunky, she was pushing a product line that looked nothing like her feed. When that happens, people tune out. It’s not authentic, it’s clearly a money grab.

All this adds up to a depressing outlook for influencer marketing. But brands have a way to avoid crashing and burning, and it starts with their own fanbase.

It’s Time to Tap Into Microinfluencers

These are the people who already have a relationship with your brand. Think of the Apple junkies and Starbucks addicts.

They’re hungry for content. They want to be involved in making it. And by leveraging User-Directed Content on an app like Cinebody, you can make it happen…and spread the word like wildfire.

Let’s think back to the influencer who failed to sell 36 shirts. What do you think would have happened if that influencer was speaking directly to brand loyalists, offering a product they would eat up? Thousands of shirts would have been sold in a heartbeat.

That’s the difference between a loyal, dedicated fanbase who wants to be part of your story, and a passive tribe just scrolling through a feed.

What’s more, by asking your fans to help create content, it will become more viral. After all, they’re going to be thrilled to team up with you, and will push that content to other fans who are just as loyal.

This is how influencer marketing is going to evolve. The traditional model is no longer effective, but by talking to fans, through fans, you can turbocharge your results.