Is influencer marketing really a safe bet for 2018? Here’s bit more on the state of the industry, and what marketers can do to minimise the risks involved. 

Authenticity and trust is key to any successful influencer campaign, as consumers become all the more sceptical when it comes to forced and purely-commercial partnerships. 


Celebrity Intelligence’s Age of Social Influence report also highlights confusion around ROI, with marketers finding it difficult to measure true success, and instead relying on outdated metrics such as mainstream press coverage.

Finally, another reason investment in influencer marketing might not come to fruition could be due to changes in what actually generates real success. Last year, the general consensus seemed to be that micro-influencers were the key – i.e. individuals with 10,000 to 100,000 followers and theoretically a highly engaged audience. However, it has been suggested that the trend is perhaps a scam started by influencer marketing platforms. Essentially, as brands work with an increasing pool of small-scale influencers, ‘high’ engagement levels could be misleading - failing to translate to legitimate or large-scale impact, as well as diluting the quality of content.