Are Influencer Collaborations harming your brand image?

Planning to hire an influencer to increase likes on Instagram – Think again, it might be a mistake!

As Instagram takes over as the most powerful and most watched platform, influencers crop up from every nook and corner. Everyone wants to be the next big thing on Instagram – result – everyone is an influencer now!

Negative Publicity due to Influencer Image - More times than not, people with no field experience and no subject knowledge, start collaborating with brands to promote products. These “influencers” will promote just about anything for money, they make Instagram reels with no genuine research and minimum efforts. As a result, when your brand associates with an influencer with a bad image (for creating mindless reels and promoting substandard products), your audience will identify your brand as inferior as well.

Short-high but no brand value – Most people follow influencers for their funny content, they don’t want to see them doing product advertisements. So even when influencers create reels for your brand, all they can do is get a momentary increase in views. They cannot help you reach your target audience because they don’t have access to them. People will watch the reel, laugh, and scroll over. Did they bother with what you were trying to tell? Nope!

High Cost No Return – Every investment is made keeping in mind the return one can expect, because influencer reels get so much traction, brands expect the same engagement with their partnership content -the return is always disappointing. Influencers charge tons of money to create one reel or post a story, but you never get any organic following from them. You expect an increase in likes on Instagram -keep dreaming, as soon as you put up the next post or reel, your engagement will be back to what it was earlier.

Lack of trust – Influencers promote a lot of brands on Instagram. After a certain time, they loose credibility. People have now developed an aversion to brands that influencers promote because they see them advertising so many every day. The audience is bombarded with so many of them, they don’t know what to trust and buy!

Brands on Instagram are stuck in a loop, they want to make Instagram reels that increase likes on Instagram for their brand and feel the best way to do it is to hire influencers. As they spend more and more of their marketing budget on these influencers, they fail to understand why their engagement rates are still low. Marketing on Instagram is tricky, brands need reels videos that do not feel like blatant advertisements. Perhaps a production partner, who understands their brand, its needs and vision and accordingly creates high quality reels for them.