Opinion: Today, Everyone is an Influencer
A PR is a person involved in public relations. Being a PR (also known as an influencer of recent) has suddenly become a highly sought after job by the youths. A PR publicizes events and businesses. A PR also knows a lot of people and has high networking skills.
There are different categories of fake influencers. While I was in Lagos, awaiting UI admission, I used instagram a lot. I viewed a lot of my friends’ profiles and almost all accounts I saw that had over a thousand followers had the word “influencer” in the bio section. I concluded it was a phase, as we had just finished secondary school and being idle was the only thing we did then. You finally have more than a thousand followers on instagram or twitter but no engagements and you claim the title of “influencer” just because…
Just as the secondary school graduates gradually moved into different universities this PR effect has followed them to their various institutions.
Everybody seems to be a PR these days. There are a lot of influencers’ pages; ui_students, ui_crib, uiparrot etc. pages like these keep springing up. The people behind these pages give no thought to its continuality. The only thing on their mind is the moment popularity. PR jobs have gone beyond daily posting pictures of people who have taken a photo with a good camera and giving such photos vain captions. I do this and the only thing stopping me from claiming to be an influencer is my followers are far from a thousand. Now this is one category of fake PRs.
The second category is the whatsapp story influencers (WSI). As an influencer, yes you should be able to reach a lot of people in a short time; you should also be able to actually influence these people’s decisions. WSI go around exchanging numbers with people, posting links to their direct messages everywhere just to increase views on their status. Quality will forever be better than quantity. So you, as an influencer have a maximum of more than a thousand views on a post that is on your status daily but only five people are in your dm showing really slight interest on what you posted. Why? It doesn’t just end at the collection of numbers, you have to establish a relationship with the person and this requires sending more than broadcasts to the person’s dm.
The last category, Twitter influencers. These are actually the funniest. Imagine someone winning a giveaway that he also planned. Twitter influencers do anything to get retweets or likes including winning their own giveaways. The most recent practice is impersonating people and using their pictures for display pictures. There has been a lot of calling out and exposing of such people, but this hasn’t stopped the impersonators as it gives them the avenue to gain more followers.
Some influencers have even said farewell to their home training and personal morals, just to post raunchy photos to get engagements. It is a digital world and the world was made for man and not man for the world. Not everybody is a PR and PR jobs are not for everybody.
There are different categories of fake influencers. While I was in Lagos, awaiting UI admission, I used instagram a lot. I viewed a lot of my friends’ profiles and almost all accounts I saw that had over a thousand followers had the word “influencer” in the bio section. I concluded it was a phase, as we had just finished secondary school and being idle was the only thing we did then. You finally have more than a thousand followers on instagram or twitter but no engagements and you claim the title of “influencer” just because…
Just as the secondary school graduates gradually moved into different universities this PR effect has followed them to their various institutions.
Everybody seems to be a PR these days. There are a lot of influencers’ pages; ui_students, ui_crib, uiparrot etc. pages like these keep springing up. The people behind these pages give no thought to its continuality. The only thing on their mind is the moment popularity. PR jobs have gone beyond daily posting pictures of people who have taken a photo with a good camera and giving such photos vain captions. I do this and the only thing stopping me from claiming to be an influencer is my followers are far from a thousand. Now this is one category of fake PRs.
The second category is the whatsapp story influencers (WSI). As an influencer, yes you should be able to reach a lot of people in a short time; you should also be able to actually influence these people’s decisions. WSI go around exchanging numbers with people, posting links to their direct messages everywhere just to increase views on their status. Quality will forever be better than quantity. So you, as an influencer have a maximum of more than a thousand views on a post that is on your status daily but only five people are in your dm showing really slight interest on what you posted. Why? It doesn’t just end at the collection of numbers, you have to establish a relationship with the person and this requires sending more than broadcasts to the person’s dm.
The last category, Twitter influencers. These are actually the funniest. Imagine someone winning a giveaway that he also planned. Twitter influencers do anything to get retweets or likes including winning their own giveaways. The most recent practice is impersonating people and using their pictures for display pictures. There has been a lot of calling out and exposing of such people, but this hasn’t stopped the impersonators as it gives them the avenue to gain more followers.
Some influencers have even said farewell to their home training and personal morals, just to post raunchy photos to get engagements. It is a digital world and the world was made for man and not man for the world. Not everybody is a PR and PR jobs are not for everybody.
Dictargh.
Comments
Post a Comment