Why influencer marketing will persist no matter what comes next

Influencer marketing has been under constant attack for the last two years and now the Facebook/Instagram Industrial Complex seems bent on taking away “likes” — the lifeblood of influencer engagement success.

My smart friend Christopher S. Penn had an interesting insight on this in a new free research paper, claiming there are economic, not altruistic, reasons for the change:

Influencer marketing has become a multi-billion dollar industry. Which is why, to no one’s surprise, major social networking companies are looking at ways to take back some of that money, from punitive algorithm changes to outright removing key influencer metrics (like hiding Likes or YouTube subscriber numbers).

From companies like Facebook’s perspective, every dollar that goes to an influencer is a dollar that they didn’t get for advertising. And you can believe that Zuckerberg and company won’t stand for that very long. They’ll make a vacuous claim (“mental health improvements” in regard to hiding likes) while they change the game for influencers in the same style of bait and switch that they pulled on brands. And that’s entirely fair; something-for-nothing was never a sustainable strategy for anyone. Combine this with increasing regulatory interest, and the clock is ticking for influencer marketing as we know it, before social networks pull the rug out from under everyone’s feet.

That begs the question: in this new landscape, who will be influential?

Influencer marketing today is not what you think it is

I partially disagree with Christopher because his premise is hung on “influencer marketing as we know it.”

What exactly is that? What IS influencer marketing “as we know it?” I would have to rely on Christopher for his interpretation, but I’m guessing most people think of influencer marketing as paid sponsorships that fuel product-infused posts on Instagram and other social media platforms.

I’ll argue today that this is NOT influencer marketing any more. In fact, for many brand the strategies are evolving to a new direction — unpaid “micro-influencers” (people with under 1,000 followers). And this is why the future of influencer…