The Future of Influence is No Influence at All?
There’s a new category of influencer in town and what’s most intriguing about her is she has no platform at all. She isn’t worried about view counts or algorithms, but she’s creating content and brands are still paying her for it. She doesn’t even share that content to her platform. In fact, people may not even know she’s doing it.
She’s a User Generated Content Creator, and she’s the new wave. But how does it work? And why are brands paying for it if they aren’t getting exposure?
It’s simple really. Brands on contracting with creatives to make content for THEIR accounts. These are every day people, and this is every day content that shows normal people using their products, and they’re using creators like us to do it with no expectation that we post it on our feeds.
Does this mean that the dawn of the influencer is dead? Hardly - there’s still a benefit to partnering with people of influence, but it does mean a few things.
- If you’re a creator, there are options for you to create content without the drama of having to worry about the algorithm and views and growth. You can get paid to do what you love, without the crap that made you not want to do it.
- If you’re a business, you should consider what adding UGC (user generated content) could do for you and your brand. At the very least, it fills your feed with content you didn’t have to create. You also didn’t have to pay hefty influencer rates for the content.
- If you’re the kind of person that studies trends in the market, the takeaway here is that as consumers, we’re boomeranging back to valuing content that looks and feels like us, instead of aspirational content. This is an opportunity for you to start bringing REAL and ORDINARY back into your content strategy.
So we want you to sound off on this - thoughts on UGC? Here for it? Don’t get it? Let’s hash it out.