5 crazy myths every influencer will relate to

A huge task about influencing is explaining what exactly you do for a living. And, when they finally do understand, come along the myths. Silly to downright ridiculous – being an influencer implies new experiences every day.  

Influencing is a job of responsibility. Procuring knowledge about a particular industry, gaining trust of your TG to become influential in the true sense – indeed a responsibility!

Simplifying things, here 5 myths about influencers and influencing, debunked for your benefit.

Influencing implies free stuff

Absolutely not! You crossed 5, 000 likes on Twitter? Good for you, but, don’t expect brands to fall at your doorstep with sample products and free trips. Working as an influencer for a brand is pure business.

An influencer functions as a message dissemination medium and gets paid for it in cash or kind or service, depending on the objective of the brand and the influencer.

It’s just tweeting and posting

If that were the case, every socially active millennial would be minting money while you read this article!

In depth knowledge of the field or beat you represent, writing skills, photography and editing skills, and mainly – a healthy influencer score. How much are your readers impacted by your post? Are they impacted in the first place? If not, then you’re just spamming.

Day begins and concludes in front of the computer

“You should get out of the house once in a while,” – you will get a lot of this!

Let me break this once again – influencing means mastering a beat. This requires travelling, exploring, networking – becoming an influencer is not a desk job. NO.

Influencing is advertising

This one is for you brands! Please stop enquiries like – how much for x number of tweets or y number of mentions. That’s not how this works.

You cannot just ask anyone with a large amount of followers to speak about you. Might as well spend that money in traditional advertising.

Anyone can influence anybody

Biggest myth of all! Stop sending diaper briefs to food influencers or briefs like any and all influencers get in touch.

Influencing is an art that requires efforts, commitment and dedication. Mere acquisition of fans and followers is not influencing.

If you think you’re an influencer and boast of a following in the interior and decor space, check out Indian Decor Influencer Awards, powered by Asian Paints and Social Samosa. It’s time to go beyond the myths.