Confessions of an Instagram Influencer

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2016-11-30/confessions-of-an-instagram-influencer

by kevinbluer • 10 years ago

282 131 10 years ago

sAbakumoff• 10 years ago

Black Mirror, s03e01 in reality.

platz• 10 years ago

I only skimmed it, but I'm feeling this is exploring the world of fashion models more than Instagram per se, or at least being in that world incents a certain behavior. It's fine to wonder if tech if serving us correctly, but also it's good to know that some people have very different lives from us, and thats ok too.

cyberferret4• 10 years ago

Thing is, its not just happening in the 'fashion model' world. The focus seems to be coming down to 'regular' people. Artists, street musicians, developers, moms and dads, single parents, cat lovers, bike enthusiasts, amateur chefs... you name it.

If you have a sizeable following, you have the option to sell your soul to one or many companies who will then organise your social media flow for you, suggesting what to post, when to post, and what to hashtag. All for a fee or discounts on their products.

At least when you see a racing driver's suit plastered with sponsor logos, you know they've paid him/her or the team for the privilege of doing so. Nowadays it is not so obvious, but rather the inference is that it is all natural and common and 'real'.

cyberferret4• 10 years ago

My wife and I were just talking about this today, coincidentally.

She follows a few people around the world who are artists or collectors on IG. She pointed out to me that when she started following some of them more than a year ago, they had a few hundred followers, and were posting general stuff, but which all felt heartfelt and 'in the moment'. I think 'genuine' was the word my wife used. Kids doing silly things. Artwork in various stages of completion, etc.

But now, she has noticed a couple of them have rocketed to over hundreds of thousands of followers, and their posts have changed to become quite soulless and fake. Obviously they have been engaged by a marketing or promotional company that sanitises and sets up their posts for them.

All of a sudden, an artist who was formerly struggling to raise a family and make meaningful work is announcing (and posting photos) that they are in [insert brand name here] health spa having a weekend pampering. Continuous shots of not the art or kids, but of bath products, massage companies, drink companies etc. all heavily hashtagged. Following up a few days later are pictures of the kids, but this time around a brand new laptop with the manufacturers name and laptop model hashtagged to the hilt.

As @sAbakumoff pointed out here - this is "Black Mirror" Season 3 Episode 1 come to life. I have nothing against someone doing promotional work to earn money to live, but I do have a problem with people portraying a totally fake and unrealistic life as a reality.

We are just seeing magazines starting to push back against "Generation Photoshop" and go back to 'real' shots of people again (Pirelli 2017 calendar a case in point), but are we now going to replace Photoshop with 'posed reality'? I know a lot of us do that to a certain extent on social media anyway, but not for discounts or monetary compensation, usually.

icebraining3• 10 years ago

This is just celebrities cutting out the middlemen (gossip magazines), not a new phenomenon.

shellehs• 10 years ago

I guess(and hope) more and more people are going to accept the fact, most beautiful photos on social media are fake and crafted reality. The people appeared in a photo just like a cartoon character similarly. What you see is not reality but dream you want to live with. Just like you are watching a movie, sometime you can get out from the movie, but you know it is a movie deep in your heart

cyberferret4• 10 years ago

But when I pay for a movie ticket or rent in on NetFlix/Apple TV/whatever, I am expecting it to be fiction, and I am mentally prepared to lose myself in the experience. Same with books, theme parks, plays etc.

However, when I follow people on social media, I am expecting something that is a little more 1 to 1, and a lot more real. I am interested in programming, guitars, aviation etc. and follow people with the same passions.

If I have to do extra detective whenever someone posted a picture of some guitar gear, in order to find out whether they posted it because they were really inspired by it, or whether they were paid by a manufacturer to do it, then it really renders the interaction meaningless, and I would rather do without it.

I'll never pay to go see a live music performance if I know the players are just miming to backing tracks. I go to experience the actual process, pain and joy of someone working hard to create music. The odd mistake and off key note all ADD to the performance for me, not detract. It reminds me that we are all not perfect, but we still try to reach out to each other to connect.

If we are all just living in a plastic world now, where we have to question every interaction to ascertain whether it is real or not, then I am not sure I want to participate in that world anymore.

pierrefar• 10 years ago

FWIW, the FTC is getting really interested in influencer marketing. Also from Bloomberg: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-08-05/ftc-to-cr...

Or ask your favorite search engine about FTC influencer marketing.

personlurking2• 10 years ago

For anyone not familiar with French philosopher Jean Baudrillard, I recommend reading up on his ideas around 'posed reality', as it were.

____

"Simulacra are copies that depict things that either had no original to begin with, or that no longer have an original.

Baudrillard believed that society has become so saturated with these simulacra and our lives so saturated with the constructs of society that all meaning was being rendered meaningless by being infinitely mutable."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulacra_and_Simulation

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Baudrillard

SuperPaintMan4• 10 years ago

Recent cultural developments are showing a shift away from this infinitely malleable meaning and unique definition (towards a shared consensus definitions that can be used for communication.

See Metamodernism and present day echo chambers.

icebraining3• 10 years ago

"All that once was directly lived has become mere representation."

"Where the real world changes into simple images, the simple images become real beings and effective motivations of hypnotic behavior."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Society_of_the_Spectacle

HeroOfAges• 10 years ago

I remember being exposed to that novel for the first time as a young man while watching The Matrix. Neo was hiding a data disk in a hollowed out copy of the book on his bookshelf. The ideas were far beyond what I could relate to or understand as a 22 year old. I doubt I still have the old paperback I ordered from Amazon, but I intend to track down a copy and have another go at it.

_pmf_• 10 years ago

Unfortunately, society has made its choice that art itself is completely worthless unless artists engage in person cults. It'd be really nice if concepts like Pinterest could change this (in small ways, I'm sure they did).

NumberCruncher• 10 years ago

> I do have a problem with people portraying a totally fake and unrealistic life as a reality.

Knowing the real nature of life and your fellow human beings may have some undesired side effects. It may need a greatness of mind for not stopping to love them. Be careful what you wish for.

Sometimes it is better letting people to show a fake and unrealistic picture and acting the fool letting they think you belive what you see.

johnchristopher• 10 years ago

But that's not really the point of that episode. It dealt more with alienation and stigma associated with artificial social constructs that have real serious life-threatening consequences than undercover advertising.

Everyone seem to spot those ad-sponsored social network objects/constructs though so I don't know if things are that bad.

AndrewKemendo5• 10 years ago

I have nothing against someone doing promotional work to earn money to live, but I do have a problem with people portraying a totally fake and unrealistic life as a reality.

They are simply responding to what people want to see. If people wanted to see real life then that's what people would give them.

People want inspiration and to feel like they are associating (by liking and commenting) with people they aspire to be like. That's nothing new, that's basic human behavior.

cyberferret4• 10 years ago

Is this 'celebrity culture' gone wild though? People regard other people more highly if they are 'celebrities', therefore even if the average Joe or Jane Schmoe is perceived as a 'celebrity' then they are automatically worthy of more recognition that your peers?

Does the movie, TV, music and magazine industry have something to answer for when a person is famous for just being famous, whereas people who do meaningful, life changing/saving work are just glossed over?

stevekemp• 10 years ago

Same for me. I do rock-climbing (bouldering) and weight-lifting. I used to follow a bunch of "fit men" and "fit women" which were both fun to look at and a little inspirational.

These days the vast majority of the "fitness model"-type accounts exist solely to sell their diet/workout plans, along with supplements. Sometimes this is subtle, but mostly it is not.

keyle• 10 years ago

I find my feed, even though filled with different people is really really repetitive. You've got the ones about their image, sometime sneaking in some never-heard of brand of protein you wouldn't give your dead dog, you've got the arty ones posting their latest work, you've got the "I'm only doing shots of my girlfriend from behind", the cute dogs with the outfits, and so on.

I swear if I could compare it to my timeline from a month, or 3 months ago, it'd be the same.

Turns out, even though a picture is worth a thousand words, we keep writing the same sh#$% over and over!

thinkloop• 10 years ago

I would have liked to see him continue the test without the photography, keeping just the bots and offshore friend farming - I have a feeling that's most of it.

TL;DR:

How to get Instagram followers:

- photo quality is very important, pay for a professional

- submit 3 posts a day, try to make them interesting, but that's only medium important

- pay for bot to like and comment on posts with similar hash tags, so their owners can see your profile and hopefully follow

- use offshore friend farm to boost numbers. They don't outright say it, but the last service had to be that. One day his followers surged for a couple of hours then stopped.

Freak_NL3• 10 years ago

Presumably without the professional photography no one would be interested in buying advertising space (product placement, hashtagging brands) on his account, so you need a veneer of 'authenticity'. I guess that at a minimum this means having a model unique to your account (himself in this case) along with the other trimmings of an influencer (the muesli with lime curd blob type of shots).

Here is my recipe for a golden (if ephemeral) business opportunity:

* Live in a country with low costs of living, in a city with a historical city centre (backdrops! texture!)

* Have access to professional photography equipment

* Have access to a bunch of attractive, but cheap (hence the locality, think Odessa, Bratislava, or Baku) generic looking models

* Compose a team of decent writers and photographers

* Create 'inspired', 'authentic' Instagram profiles for each model, provide content

* Profit?

Don't forget to tag each post #bohemian. Guaranteed hit.

mccoyspace• 10 years ago

This is a good idea, but why do you have to actually live there? You could approach this as a co-ordination problem between remote participants. Find a stringer in Odessa and Baku to get a model and photographer. The writers can come from wherever. You are the manager/agency running it all from LA or NYC (where you can make the ftf media deals).

mrtksn• 10 years ago

I wonder what will happen when AI is good enough to imitate real internet users and ad agencies just spin up some servers in some datacenter that handles millions of bots that are indistinguishable from real people and follow the formula of the influencers.

throwanem• 10 years ago

"The Singularity Wears #prada", coming soon to a digital content delivery service near you.

Paul_S• 10 years ago

Bots creating content for bots to click on. Perfect. Seal it in a bunker and launch into space (together with the marketeers).

shostack2• 10 years ago

Direct response advertisers would see crap quality and stop paying. Brand advertisers would probably be slower to stop but their measurement tools to map impression data to purchases, whether offline or online is improving dramatically.

Advertisers who aren't savvy about analytics will continue to prop up the cottage industry of fraudulent eyeball providers.

imh2• 10 years ago

That arms race is like some bizarre analogue to bitcoin mining.

SuperPaintMan4• 10 years ago

The most important is the 20hashtags/post and hiding them eight newlines to be below the fold. Bots can work, but are mostly for inflating numbers to try and game the explore page. Best to have a bot set up to follow other bots and let the hashtags funnel in organic searches.

It's a lame game though. Instagram is a crap platform anything other then mindless scrolling and gaming likes.

exp: Went from 0-2k followers in a week

peteretep• 10 years ago

Posted three new photos today with hashtags from the app he mentioned. 10 new followers, which is probably all I've had in the last 2 months. Interesting!

panorama2• 10 years ago

We live in a society where, because ad dollars drive so much of online commerce, attention _is_ currency. And right now influencer marketing is outperforming many other channels, so naturally a lot of money is headed this direction, allowing many 'ordinary' people to monetize.

I don't think this is a problem - I believe in the power of the internet democratizing revenue opportunities and disrupting outdated media channels.

(Bias disclaimer: I run a startup that helps brands find Instagram influencers to work with - won't plug it here but it's in my profile).

mtrn• 10 years ago

In one way, this is sponsorship taken to a micro level. And sponsorship is fine - and usually open, for the benefit of both parties.

But if I open a random influencer agency website, I can read something like this: "Influencers drive trust". The message here seems to be: Yes, trust is super valuable - and now the price is finally dropping! But is it really?

panorama2• 10 years ago

It's a weird middle-ground. I myself constantly ask people for their recommendations on books and such. I trust them and act upon their suggestions. The only difference is that influencers are paid to suggest, and sometimes this leads to low-quality products being touted by low-quality influencers appearing in your feed. Definitely bad.

DHH suggested a book in an interview with Tim Ferriss[0]. I read what DHH says often and trust his taste - is this bad? I don't think so. Obviously DHH wasn't paid to talk about this book, but it wouldn't matter either way to me; a lot of his influence comes from the fact that I know he wouldn't willingly shill for something he doesn't believe in.

[0] http://fourhourworkweek.com/2016/10/27/david-heinemeier-hans...

TeMPOraL2• 10 years ago

I think those agencies seriously misunderstand what trust is.

Or just write bullshit copy. It doesn't matter to them, as long as it attracts customer.

It's actually fun to watch how ad/marketing sector is stewing in its own bullshit - as the sector subdivides and specializes, each component has to employ the same "tried and true" bullshit tactics to attract customers within the sector.

j1vms2• 10 years ago

Upvote for posting a disclaimer that you have a horse in the race. People need to try and start doing this more when posting opinions.

askdjso• 10 years ago

I know a local "artist" that lives off Instagram and not her "art".

She publishes all her "songs" on Youtube for free, and lives off sponsored content on Instagram and media appearances.

Is she lazy and getting "free-money"? no.

Is she talented? also no.

Freak_NL3• 10 years ago

She's just gaming a system that rewards her output. Whether the advertisers are getting a good return on investment is debatable, but apparently they are convinced that advertising on her channel is worth it.

The only drawback is that she might be investing a good part of her career in something that may prove prone to inflation and whim.

WA• 10 years ago

Since when is the commercial aspect of art about talent?

razakel6• 10 years ago

I'm with Bill Hicks when it comes to advertising and marketing.

I adblock. I pirate. I don't use Facebook or other social networking sites.

I don't want advertising in my life. It's propaganda. It shits in your head.

If there's anybody reading this who works in those industries: you thought Generation X was cynical?

mozumder2• 10 years ago

Bill Hicks never figured out the meaning of life.

The entire purpose of life is to market.

You get up in the morning and brush your teeth so that you're more marketable than the slob that doesn't.

Everything you do can be traced back to marketing. The more people understand that, the better off they will be at handling life.

razakel6• 10 years ago

The entire purpose of life is to market.

Maybe my target market isn't slavish devotees of a vapid consumerist culture who assert their identity with commercial brands?

walterstucco• 10 years ago

I don't brush my teeth every morning. And I still manage to have a life that is more than enjoyable

celticninja2• 10 years ago

I brush my teeth so that they last longer and I can chew food longer and thus stay alive longer, marketing only comes into it for people in marketing.

Inconel• 10 years ago

I brush my teeth several times a day mostly because I had a cavity once when I was a kid and didn't particularly like the sound the drill at the dentist's office made. That and I enjoy various types of jerky and hope to continue enjoying it for the foreseeable future.

zeroer• 10 years ago

You get up in the morning and brush your teeth so that you're more marketable than the slob that doesn't.

Speak for yourself.

padolsey• 10 years ago

Just because we are biologically tuned to "market" ourselves, for leverage in survival/gene-spreading, I don't think it's correct to state that the "entire purpose" of life is to market oneself. Nor does it make sense to say all actions are rooted in this need. In-fact, it seems _most_ actions are in service of other basic or secondary needs. Where is the marketability in taking a piss? Or reading a novel? Or taking the dog for a walk?

hmmwell• 10 years ago

The entire purpose of life is to market.

The sun doesn't give off free energy to market itself to anyone, and even the the most succesful whore will end up dead. The main difference will be having been a whore.

iaskwhy• 10 years ago

The purpose is not being marketed, is having sex. You market yourself so you can have better sex. At least that's what some people say, like when they claim Zuckerberg started The Facebook so people could get easily laid.

I've also had interesting conversations saying the purpose is not sex but power. We do stuff the way we do because that might get us more power.

Sociology is really interesting.

apatters• 10 years ago

And yet the most creative and inspiring marketing is paradoxically that which is not done for marketing's sake: in other words, the authentic.

You can be a marketer or you can be yourself and I know which one I want to be.

brbrodude4• 10 years ago

As Nassim Taleb says, "the map is not the territory", just because you can say a lot of things are "kind of like a market", it does not, in any way, means that everything is a market, for example, higiene exists before market, nature exists before market, just because you can draw parallels it doesn't mean you've figured everything out. In the age of machines people wanted to think as if everything was like a machine, then in the age of systems they think everything is "just a system", then "everything is market".. This is faulty cognition, IMHO, in other words: fallacy.

Angostura3• 10 years ago

You should check out the 'Ultimate Bill Hicks' DVD available. Amazon have got it at reduced price at the moment and it is excellent. I laughed and laughed.

carrot• 10 years ago

Ironic that you literally threw an ad right in the parent's face through this simple comment.

ikeyany• 10 years ago

Ooh, he's playing the cynicism angle--that's a hot market right now. Very huge potential for profit.

ladytron• 10 years ago

I love Hacker News.

mememachine• 10 years ago

shouldnt be afraid of information friend, cant hurt you. closing yourself off is bad for you

tvanantwerp• 10 years ago

Separating signal from noise is work. Dealing with new information is not costless, and there comes a point when closing yourself off is probably the best option.

tempestn• 10 years ago

“You sell part of your soul. Because no matter what beautiful moment you enjoy in your life, you’re going to want to take a photo and share it. Distinguishing between when is it my life and when am I creating content is a really big burden.”

I didn't realize just how realistic that Black Mirror episode was.

Illniyar• 10 years ago

So he hired a bot for a month to do 30,000 likes. Anyone wonder how many of his own likes are from bots?

All this social media advertisement seems like one big fraud to me - from profile farms to click frauds, has any of the people buying the ads actually attempted to verify the actual increase in sales? Or maybe it just looks good in powerpoints when showing to the clients where the money is spent.

SuperPaintMan4• 10 years ago

There's a good chance if you do not recognize the user liking your post, it's a bot hoping to get a followback.

Yeah it's fraud up and down the feed, and it looks great in spreadsheets. IG provides metrics on profile views and website clicks, that's one way to measure engagement as bots will usually skip that.

jokoon2• 10 years ago

The more I read about that, the more I want to start an instagram of a stereotypical loser.

razakel6• 10 years ago

The more I read about that, the more I want to start an instagram of a stereotypical loser.

It wouldn't be popular. People crave escapism.

The very fact that you're satirising exactly that is what defeats the purpose.

TeMPOraL2• 10 years ago

You'd be surprised. Everything can be sold. Companies have figured out how to monetize anticonsumerism long time ago.

Related: Black Mirror, S01E02 - Fifteen Million Merits.

jokoon2• 10 years ago

I think it would. I'm sure many people would relate to it. /r/me_irl has a success of its own.

There are many many people who feel guilty because their life could be more successful. It's a very hard thing to unroot out of your mind, but laughing about it is a huge relief.

johndoe45893• 10 years ago

Was just thinking about this recently as I started following a few people.

We are increasingly living in a world of fiction. Previously it was mainly fed through television. You'd grow up on television series, and as a young man/woman you'd try to be cool like them, dress like them, talk like them. You build your world view around "influential" portrayals.

Nowadays, we haven't freed ourself from media controlled television at all. It's actually worse, because now advertising is blurring the lines even more between real people and fiction. We eat and breathe fiction, then we live our own life trying to resemble it.

Nothing is new there. But what's new for me is I started to recognize that fiction in and of itself is probably as detrimental to our society as fear is. It's well known that fear drives self centered way of life and when we are in survival mode, we just don't make good choices and we lack compassion.

Lately I'm thinking that fiction, on a collective scale, is just as bad as fear. It keeps us unconscious. Just like fear it dissociates us from what we are, and from one another. It's really detrimental to us as individuals, and as a society. Unlike fear, it isn't immediately felt in the stomach.. so there is no sense of urgency.. And yet it is there... one just looks at the world to see the massive disconnect in our life on a day to day basis. I guess fear and fiction are best friends. Fear drives us to dissociate, and fiction provides the perfect happy place to dissociate.

John Berger, Ways of Seeing

"But where is this other way of life?"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5jTUebm73IY

qznc• 10 years ago

I don't think that we are increasingly living in a world of fiction. We always have. It is human. Kids believe in Santa Claus, adults believe Saddam has weapons of mass destruction. Some believe in Mohammed, Jesus, Jahwe, or Dharma. Some believe they will become rich in Silicon Valley, others on Wallstreet. Some believe in articles from mainstream media, some don't. Many people have dreams for their future, which is just fiction they are telling themselves.

You consider these thoughts dark or cynical. Why? Humans have built an amazing civilization with a global economy and messaging travel across the globe in milliseconds. We did all this as fallible meat bags believing in dreams and telling each other mostly false stories. That is a great story as well. ;)

RMacy• 10 years ago

That was uplifting.

johndoe45893• 10 years ago

Perhaps I should have defined my use of the term. "Fiction" for me was implicitly referring to a narrative which tends to revolve around self or collective identities.

I think there is a distinction that can be made, which happens to be echoed by an intuitive sense that we have. We all dislike self centered people. Why is that? What is it about it that makes us uncomfortable? And why do we not like lies? Why do we resent when people posture? Why do we feel uneasy when someone makes a fake smile? Or when someone tries to convince us and you can feel their motive is self centered?

We all have in us a drive towards authenticity, genuineness, truth, whatever you want to call it.

What's dark or cynical about that?

On the science side, there is recent research looking into the "default mode network" that highlights how it appears to be the source of our self-related ruminating thoughts. In fact it appears that 90% of our thoughts in any given day are about "me", or some made up collectives which we use to extend our identity.

This amazing civilization we have built is not built with the self-referential type of fiction. It was built with our abstract thinking, and language capacities. (which is a practical type of thinking or narrative)

True, humanity is not going to drop their stories in a day. But I wouldn't lump fiction and abstract thinking together as "fiction". One is obvious fiction, which is based on identities, which in turn is based on our sense of survival; The other is of a more practical nature.

johndoe45893• 10 years ago

By the way I just realized... kids do not believe in Santa Claus. WE make them believe in it. Big difference. And in fact in some parenting circles, it is suggested that you should never tell such stories to your children.

This is another big debate altogether and I genuinely have no interest in debating that. Just threw it out there because it sounds like you lump together things that are very different from one another.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/logical-take/201512/in-...

eutropia• 10 years ago

“In a word, they failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions.”

artur_makly• 10 years ago

thanks for sharing that mystically dark video

yk• 10 years ago

(#ad #sp #liveauthentic)

In some literary critique sense, it does not so much seem hollow as it seems like authentic expression of our time. The fact that people authentically believe in success in social media does not invalidate their dreams.

johndoez• 10 years ago

Influencer marketing will boom with the launch of social commerce. But startups need to be careful about advertising regulation. If someone has paid for a promotion, then it will have to be tagged as such, like Sponsored Ad.

Guyag• 10 years ago

I don't think tagging with something like #ad or #sponsored does nearly enough, especially if hidden amongst a bunch of other tags. (edit: And #sp - are you kidding me?) Traditional ads are obvious through specific placement on the page (sidebars) and/or a prominent "Advertisement" or "Sponsored" label and/or moreover simply having the general look and feel of a 'traditional' advert.

When your favourite media personality is gushing about some product it's really easy to forget it's an advert and they're being paid for it. I know that's what makes it great for marketing purposes, but it feels seriously dishonest and (to me) represents a decline in our standards.

Freak_NL3• 10 years ago

These type of advertisements are already garnering interest from national regulators. One reason is that a lot of these influencers have a lot of children and teens amongst their followers (think beauty vloggers on YouTube). Most countries have laws regulating advertising aimed at minors. By using popular social media channels brands can circumvent this limitation by simply buying advertising space from local influencers with predominantly teen or pre-teen follower demographics.

auganov• 10 years ago

Such a weird article. It's written as if he already had a large following and got on to monetize it. But it looks like a fresh account and in the end, he failed to gain any real momentum. Which goes to show that establishing genuine rapport still matters. Why would you even go from posting cat pictures to vaguely fashion/glamor content? Bloomberg should do what these scouts do - find a person that already has traction and pay them to journal their monetization process.

chris_wot2• 10 years ago

Fuck this for a joke. Thank goodness I'm not on any of these services, or even using them!

It's bad enough I use Facebook, but the Instagrams of our time are just ridiculous.

nojvek• 10 years ago

This is the sole reason why I liked snapchat. But now snapchat is getting so popular, the ads are being forced in my face. I'm gonna a probably jump ship to something less invasive.

alkonaut• 10 years ago

More than two hashtags on a photo is an instant unfollow. Obvious paid shot? Same.

Idk who enjoys following what's essentially just an ad? You can get glossy ad pics in a magazine?

Confessions of an Instagram Influencer

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