From Gen Z to Gen Alpha many social media users follow a plethora of marketing influencers online. Such influencers do not necessarily have to be popular personalities, but can even be everyday people who have built a rapport with their audience. They make their lives on social media seem absolutely interesting and ever-so-appealing, dressing well, eating well and also holidaying well into the bargain. A great deal of these are paid promotions, but because these influencers are trendy and admired their followers aspire to emulate their lifestyles. And this, obviously, is not as easy and glamorous as it looks. The content that such influencers post online takes a lot of hard work, planning, time and money.
But Artificial Intelligence (AI) is now changing the game for such influencers. At the start when social influencers were a fledgling community of online promoters, the market was not exploding in the way it is now. Social influencers then rode on the success of their own merits and follower numbers. However, as the market has now grown exponentially (it was worth $16.4 billion in 2022) competition amongst influencers has intensified. This has posed problems to companies looking out for the best influencers for their brands, as influencer fraud has become rife. Thankfully, AI is now helping to combat this.
Influencer fraud
Influencers showing fake numbers in followers, along with false engagement rates have become a heavy cost to companies who don’t do their due diligence before hiring such unscrupulous people. AI tools are able to dig into these influencer profiles and wean out frauds whose intent is to make money at any cost. Noteworthy also is the fact that greater follower levels do not translate to better engagement levels, which AI tools are able to expose. Another area that these AI tools help with is looking into issues with the previous content of these influencers that could potentially harm the brand of prospective companies. Staying away from trouble and controversy is paramount to any company in this day and age.
But with so many possible problems to investigate and work around with social influencers, is it even possible to find the right person to promote your brand online?
It is. Once again, the proper AI tools will do the job for you.
Getting the best influencer on board
Artificial Intelligence tools carry out all those tasks which are essential to building strong brand influencers by using analytics to ascertain their follower engagement levels and how well their previous promotions have worked out for the brand concerned. Companies also rarely work with just one influencer and employ a number of influencers across various brands. Staying on top of the data of how these campaigns are doing can be cumbersome and without the proper results it may not be possible to make the necessary adjustments to ensure success. This is where AI comes in by introducing measures like brand mentions and conversions to yield information that can help tweak company promotions. This, in turn, will also demonstrate how competitor brands are doing and aid the decision-making process on where to increase influencer marketing and where to cut back.
AI for influencers
With so many conversations and topics out there dominating the marketplace, audiences can be engaging in discussions on various subjects and habits. This is useful information to any marketer which can be passed on to influencers who can then use it in the content they design. Here is yet another area where AI can be useful as its tools can design the most appealing content for influencers to use based on their individual demographics; such as their online history and follower preferences. Human content can often become stale and tired; AI can mitigate this by creating fresh content based on innovative ideas and technological acumen. Since certain AI tools produce superior infographics, images, videos and so on, the content available for online influencers is more attractive and efficient.
Influencer tasks too, can add up and create more stress and AI will be useful in aiding their human counterparts in conversing with and answering follower questions. With the provision of chatbots or virtual assistants, AI will provide the required information and also track discussions that are relevant to the influencer’s brand. This effectively makes previous impossibilities extremely possible in managing one’s social media presence.
Speaking of impossibilities, did you know that busy social media influencers have now been given the opportunity of creating digital avatars of themselves in order to deal with rising demand online? These digital avatars further expand their presence across various social media platforms such as TikTok, Instagram and YouTube, making the influencer behind it a greater success in terms of audience engagement.
Here we go…
No matter how much negative feedback AI has attracted, its advantages in the social influencer field cannot be denied. It is making maneuvering the online space quite easy, efficient and successful allowing to cut down on the white noise and expose the true data. This is just the beginning. AI, as with all technology, will transform and become bigger and better as time goes on. And yes, there may be pitfalls in the process, but that’s why human presence is equally important when digitizing tasks. Clear thinking and ethics will still need to be monitored.
And don’t forget that influencer marketing rides on one thing alone- credibility. AI provides this in a gamut of ways. Anyone who is not using it to leverage on online visibility and brand building has not yet experienced the best of AI.
(Anouk De Silva)