Personally Owned Platforms To Disrupt Social Media Influencer Marketing

If you've followed my writing in the past, you'll know that I am a huge critic of the current state of influencer marketing and its ability to generate value for businesses. The attention economy is still a fledgeling industry and has not been formalised with metrics and level of influence not accurately measured which makes this sort of reach highly unregulated.

When a commodity like attention cannot be adequately quantified or understood, then there's always room for wasting of resources, which is why we're seeing brands pay over the top prices for collaborations with lifestyle influencers and why thought leaders are marginalised in the attention economy.

Decentralising the attention economy from traditional social media

Traditional social media has helped birth a new age of internet celebrity as well as bridging the gap between personalities and fans. The growth of Instagram and YouTube has only exacerbated this sort of interaction. The appeal of celebrity and influencer content and communication has kept millions of users flocking back to social media each day. Social media platforms have welcomed this trend and even helped it grow by edging their algorithms to support it for some time, but we have now seen a reduction in organic reach and influencers are starting to that social media isn't as viable as it once was.

If influencers and celebrities want to continue to monetise and leverage the attention they receive, they need to start broadening their digital footprint, and this is where personally owned platforms are looking to bridge that gap.

What are personally owned platforms (POP)?

Personally Owned Platforms (POP) are a separate application that allows influencers to share their content, own their data, control their monetisation and provide more control and reach while fans will get exclusive access to influencers and their content. Pop's offer several appealing traits for influencers, namely:

Limits of reach or risk censorship

The number of active followers for any celebrity or influencer on social media is not more than 3-4% but averages around 2% which is extremely low when you think of all the effort it takes to ammas a following on social media. This really hurts influencers value and cuts into their margins as they need to promote their posts in order to reach the users they originally attracted in the first place. 

Creating content on social media always runs the risk of being removed by the platform or even having your entire account removed if your message does not fit a certain narrative. We've seen a number of YouTubers, Facebook users and Twitter users banned over the years or having their content flagged and removed.

Owning your own data

Social media sites have a monopoly on the data influencers create via their interactions and the content they create. This data can be withheld or may not be as a reliable indicator as social media platforms can reduce your reach at any time with new updates.

Augmenting your current reach

Influencers can now have a multitude of digital assets all bringing in revenue and not only rely on brand deals and product placements and can now rely on:

• Facebook page video monetisation
• YouTube video monetisation
• Sponsored posts
• Sponsored blog posts
• Exclusive content that is paywalled
• POP's

Which gives their fans options to reach out to them on a medium they prefer and ensure that influencers still benefit financially from the various platforms they remain present on.

Additional monetisation opportunities

POP's will also make it easier for influencers to create rate cards to pitch for brand deals and provide new revenue opportunities based on their ability to garner fans attention.

Limitations of POP's

• The one main factor that drives the power of social media is its ability to scale quickly and benefit from network effects with POP's all being individual apps consumers may not want to bother downloading so many applications on their Smartphones.
• Given recent calls for more regulation of social media especially in the UK with the online harm White Paper and increasing concerns regarding potentially harmful content, it could also affect POP's too.
• Pop's are an isolated community, and this could also prove to be an echo chamber for certain ideologies.
• Micro influencers will undoubtedly find it hard to find and maintain an audience through an individual app rather than a social media platform such as Instagram which could give these smaller influencers more room to grow on traditional platforms. 
• Pop's may only be used as a “premium” fan club for mega influencers/ celebrities and not the primary source of interaction.

Defectors looking for decentralisation

While indeed an exciting development and I do feel it will disrupt social media to a small extent it will by no means be a killer blow to the giants like Facebook and Twitter. I do think that with more niche social media platforms launching it will slowly eat at the big player's user base over time. We're already seeing a reasonable churn rate of defectors, scandal, censorship and an over-reliance on ad monetisation are slowly starting to push users to look for alternatives. 

Tell us your social media story

Have you ever used influencer marketing or are you an aspiring social media influencer? Share your experience with us in the comments.

Are you looking for an influencer?

Do you need someone to help you promote your brand to their followers? Find local influencers and bloggers here

Are you a social media influencer?

Are you a social media influencer? Then why not register on nichemarket and put your business in front of thousands of nicheseekers every month. Registering with nichemarket is easy; all you will need to do is head over to our sign up form and follow the instructions. If you require a more detailed guide on how to create your profile or your listing, then we highly recommend you check out the following articles. 

• How to create a nichemarketer profile
• How to create a nichemarket business listing

Recommended reading

If you have time to spare why not dive deeper down the rabbit hole and check out these posts for help on influencer marketing:

• How To Calculate The Cost Of A South African Social Media Influencer
• What Are Micro-Influencers and Why Businesses Should Care
• 10 Ways To Run An Instagram Giveaway

Tags: influencer marketing , social media marketing