Instagrammers signed up to Indahash have to include #ad or #spon in paid-for content, and these are approved by the platform before being posted.
Getting endorsements right
The trick with influencer partnerships is to get the tone of voice right, whatever the content. If a social media star is paid to say something that jars with their personality, it won’t come across in an authentic way.
“It’s a really interesting point about what is authentic now,” Andrew Hirsch, chief executive of content agency John Brown Media told CNBC via phone. “I think if we are creating content for brands and we have a celebrity or an influencer who we pay to write that column or blog, if we have done our job properly and got the right celebrity or influencer, it’s only enhancing the [brand] positioning.”
Ross Brown, VP of brand strategy and content at entertainment agency PMK.BNC, agrees that tone is crucial.
“The emphasis will continue to be placed on influencers positioning themselves as excellent creators of content, rather than as great sign posters of where the paycheck is coming from. If the messaging is lazy, or the influencer an inauthentic choice for the brand, then consumers may start to care,” he told CNBC by email.
A social media show-down
Businesses are now extremely wary of what they put out into the public, at the same time as having more ways than ever to do so, according to Jeffrey Greenbaum, managing partner at law firm Frankfurt Kurnit.
“When you make a mistake today in advertising, because of the reach of social media and the speed with which information gets communicated, social media makes small mistakes [into] big mistakes,” he told CNBC by phone.
Added to this, consumers scrolling through their Instagram feeds don’t really scrutinize what influencers are posting, but brands need to be aware of the rules, he said.
