At the Social Media Day event recently, we had some interesting panel discussion on ‘Social Media Endorsement’.
The discussion was one of the best I have heard in recent times. On one side of the discussion was Tinu Cherian with about 100k followers on Twitter, on the other side was Ramesh Srivats, Mahesh Murthy and Prem Panicker. Have shared some interesting coversation on the topic in my Social Media Day post.
The point being made by many of the participants and panelist was, why spoil a platform by doing paid social media endorsement.
But, I would like to take a different approach to the entire paid social media endorsement and I see,
3 reasons why social media endorsement will work
1. Absence of Guidelines
No law still states that you can or cannot run social media endorsement campaigns. In absence of such guidelines, we might always see some serious endorsers, whose only job is to run such campaign and few who might just do it to earn some quick bucks. Few you might already know and other’s just appear as flash on your timeline. You just cannot stop them. While you might report few for spam, but few are smart to escape such scrutiny.
2. Influencer Monetizing Efforts
As ‘influencer’ is not made overnight. The person is investing loads of time into curating, creating and sharing content that other’s find informative. They also ensure to engage with followers and make sure that the platform is not just used for broadcasting. This by no means, it’s a small feat. End of the day, these ‘influencers’ have to pay bills and run a decent life. So we should not be surprised to see if few of them decide to leverage their follower base and start monetizing their efforts to do social media endorsement campaigns.
3. Brands are taking a call
The brand before approaching an ‘influencer’ would have do a lot of background check. For brands, this is the easiest way to reach the masses. Their investment in an individual doing a paid social media endorsement will be much lesser than spending on campaigns in other mediums and still have a focused reach. So ultimately, the onus would lie on brands if we would like to see some sanctity on social platforms.
The other point I would also like to make and which Prem Panicker also mentioned was, each platforms are opt-in. So, if someone feels that the ‘influencer’ is running paid social media endorsements, they have all the rights to unfollow the person.
Your Turn
1. Which side of the fence are you?
2. If a brand approaches you, would you be willing to do paid endorsement?
3. How much does a belief in brand matter for you before endorsing it?
Photo Courtesy: Ape Lad
