EOTO: Online Influencing 

When people think of the word “influencers” they think of their favorite Tiktoker or youtuber. Many people think that influencers are a new thing but influencers have been around for as long as we’ve had advertisements and television. The only difference now is that we have online influencers that use social media platforms like instagram, TikTok, snapchat, and facebook to influence opposed to someone's face on a McDonalds poster that is plastered on their windows.

Influencers are well known people that brands will partner with to encourage their fans to buy their products. In return the influencer will get paid for making a post about their products and/or promoting fans to use a code that is linked to the influencer and the influencer will make commission off of that purchase. 

Influencers also make their money from their posts on social media such as Charli D’Amelio is reported to make around $50,000 for each tiktok post unsponsored and $100,000 for each sponsored post. This means that if Charli posts a 20 second video on Tiktok of her dancing to the new Tiktok trend, she makes $50,000. Social media platforms pay influencers to post on their platforms because these influencers are promoting their platform by posting on it.

The pros of having the job of online influencing is it is a job that you can do from home. Some cons are that this is probably not a career for most, your whole life is put on blast, and you may not have a steady income since if your views drop you will get paid less. The pros of online influencing is that this created more jobs. Online influencing is especially beneficial to businesses and brands because they can now pay an influencer to promote their brand and millions of people will see this post which increases the sales of that brand or business. 

Some cons of online influencing include influencers often post unrealistic lifestyles and since these influencers are getting paid to promote these brands they don’t care if these are good brands or not which their fans will not know and still buy the products. This is often referred to as “deceptive advertising.”

For example Kim Kardashian faced a lawsuit against the SEC. The investors claimed that celebrity endorsements had misled them into buying cryptocurrency EthereumMax at “inflated prices.” Last month, the SEC fined Kardashian for failing to disclose the payment she received for promoting the crypto asset. Kardashian settled the charges by paying $1.26 million. This included a $1 million, in addition to the $250,000 she received for the promotion, plus additional interest.

Online influencing affects different segments differently. Online influencers are typically young, attractive, female, have a higher wealth status, are straight, and fit the norms of society. The percentage of female influencers to male influencers is 77% female to 23% male. Although there are definitely lots of popular influencers that don't meet this criteria, the most popular and majority do fit this criteria. 

Online influencing affects my generation more than any other generation because it was created in my generation and we are more easily influenced. My generation is more susceptible to buy the products that influencers promote and follow these influencers which further promotes the platforms and the businesses.