Influencer Watch Outs

A View from Shuku Egerton:

Influencers are a key tactic to effectively gain brand awareness with your target demographic, promote products and gain genuine insight and engagement.

Unfortunately, as a result of influencer’s often meteoric rise to fame, and a lack of regulation, we often see confusion around disclosing incentives for product promotions. The Competition and Markets Authority provides guidelines for this. These include requiring influencers to include #ad or #spon in the first 125 characters, so audiences do not have to ‘see more’ and risk missing the true aims of these promotions.

@SocialMediaToday has highlighted Instagram’s newest “prompts” feature, allowing influencers to confirm receipt of their incentives for posting, and is currently developing a new algorithm to detect posts that have not been disclosed.

As these regulations evolve, we must ensure our client’s customers and custodians are protected, we must constantly evolve and adapt to align with the channels, and, with this in mind, we must continue to push the boundaries of influencer marketing. How will these new channel features adapt and influence the Instagram of the future? Well, that’s what we’re here to find out. Watch this space!