The best influencer marketing news fit to share this week. Stories, articles and content collected throughout the week of August 27-31 and curated by our influencer marketing experts especially for you in this weekly thought leadership roundup.
Making a Living Before Making It Big on YouTube
The Atlantic
When it comes to the subtle hierarchies of the world of online video stars, YouTubers are the cream of the crop. The site, with its nearly 2 billion monthly active users, is the largest online video platform in the world. Its top names generate tens of millions of dollars in revenue and wield enormous cultural capital. “YouTubers are today’s celebrities,” said Justin Cadelago, the senior vice president of partnerships at Studio 71, an agency that works with social-media stars. “Gen Z is not looking at your traditional celebrity as someone they look up to—they’re looking at these top YouTubers.”
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Photographer petitions for Instagrammers to be more responsible while travelling
Metro
Social media has become a large part of travelling. Instagram is full of envy-worthy snaps of beaches, colourful doors, and hot dog legs in front of a swimming pool. Though most of us are just looking to capture that perfect selfie or the like, there are some people that take advantage of holiday spots.
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Instagram announces verification requests, transparency tools and stronger 2FA
TechCrunch
Instagram has introduced a wide-ranging set of new tools today with security and transparency in mind. In a blog post titled “New Tools to Keep Instagram Safe,” the company is announcing three significant updates: an “About This Account” section to provide users more context about accounts with large followings, a form through which accounts can request a coveted blue verified badge and support for third-party authenticator apps.
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How the Rise of Outdoor Influencers Is Affecting the Environment
Racked
hen Katie Boué heard Sen. Mike Lee was introducing legislation to block the protection of public land in Utah, she knew exactly what she needed to do. “Utah’s @senmikelee is being awfully un-American this week,” she wrote on Instagram. “[He] wants to abolish the Antiquities Act and claims that western land should look more like ‘Illinois or Missouri’ — no offense to those states … but they’re not exactly known for their pristine landscapes.” She posted the message alongside a photo of a “protect public lands” sign that looks like it was taken in a climbing store. It got almost 3,000 likes.
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How Flat Tummy Gets Around Instagram’s No-Before-and-After Photo Policy
Jezebel
Flat Tummy Co., the appetite suppressant brand that was catapulted into the national discourse after an Instagram plug from Kim Kardashian and subsequent backlash, wasn’t always so big. It seems to have always relied on a special kind of turbo-charged word-of-mouth marketing to sell its products to women. A new report from Julia Carrie Wong, a technology reporter at the Guardian, pulls back the curtain on how Flat Tummy Co. built its business around influencer marketing and gets away with breaking Instagram’s rules about what kind of content advertisers can post on the platform.
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Beauty influencers are allegedly making extra money for negative reviews
The Verge
Influencers have long made money by striking deals with companies and brands to promote products on their channels and streams — in the case of more popular influencers, sometimes upward of thousands of dollars for a single post or video. According to members of the beauty community, however, some companies are now paying influencers extra money to badmouth those companies’ competitors. Makeup artist Kevin James Bennett called this practice out on Instagram, decrying it as “mobster-like behavior,” and claiming that one influencer’s management company requested between $75K-85K for a “dedicated negative review of a competitor’s product.”
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