Professional Influencers ‘Need’ To Apply

Being a professional influencer could soon be listed in job roles as companies look for employees to market their brands.

Why it’s news

Social media influencers have been around for years but were relatively disliked by the masses for being inauthentic and out of touch with reality.

In the last few years, it has switched, and more influencers are becoming famous for their honest opinions and authentic personalities, and many people will buy an item just because their favorite influencer uses it. And many have to hire their own managers.

Now companies are starting to realize how valuable social media and influencers can be and are implementing the jobs into their workforce. Many companies are offering to train their employees to become influencers and promote their business brand. 

Through training, the employees can be a valuable asset to the business marketing team by creating authentic videos to reach the targeted audience without making it feel like an advertisement. 

Tech company Cisco has begun to offer training to all 83,000 of its employees to act as talent influencers—it even lets employees take over the company’s corporate socials for a day.

Other businesses training influencers include United Airlines, which has a team of 50 in-house influencers, ranging from flight attendants to bag handlers, and telecommunications company Ericsson, which trains employees on gaining more followers and making videos, according to The Future Party.

Not only does adding influencers to the workforce help promote the products, but it also helps promote the business brand as a whole. Many people, especially those in Gen Z, use TikTok and other social media platforms to look for good businesses to work for.

Job-search platform Zippia found that 57% of job seekers use social media to learn more about companies and brands, and #corporatetiktok, a hashtag on TikTok consisting of videos about career advice and jobs, has 3 billion views, while #worktok has 1.5 billion views.

Having influencers speak about the brands and how much they enjoy their job and the company they work for authentically could help more people apply for the jobs. Younger generations in the workforce rely on social media, and if they see a company being shed in a good light, it is likely they will look to apply as well.

While adding social media influencers to corporate jobs can be very beneficial, there are also downsides. Social media is a large platform, and videos can reach millions of people per day, so anything that is posted to social media from a company typically has to be looked at by many executives in the company before going live on social media.

TikTok especially has many trends that are only popular for a short amount of time, so if a business is trying to hop on the trend quickly by the time the video is approved, it will likely already be outdated, making most companies avoid trends and stick to evergreen content.

Another downside is influencing can pay a hefty amount of money. A micro-influencer, someone with 10,000 to 50,000 followers, can earn anywhere between $40,000 and $100,000 per year, while an influencer with 1 million followers can make thousands per social-media post.

Suppose a corporate business hires someone to be an influencer, and their social media gains traction. In that case, they will likely be offered thousands of dollars in brand deals for other companies, which they most likely would not be able to take while working for their current company.

If the brand deals and other pay outweigh what their corporate boss is paying the influencer, there will always be the chance that they could leave and go their own way leaving the spot open for someone else.