Influencer marketing. Ouch.

Every week I get requests from companies: Ms. XY, the assistant to CEO XZ, would like to politely ask if an interview with him would be a great thing for you, my readers. You would of course pay me. Or, for example, “Tom”, who constantly sends me invitations to some paid events for weeks, which are free for me “as a blogger”. Or company XX, which simply sends me one of their notebooks for free, without mentioning that it would be “cool” to write about a technical gadget. I guess I’ve become the target of today’s influencer marketing.

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The first few times

The first few requests are of course very flattering and I thought to myself: Ok, let’s do something. It shouldn’t be that difficult. An article, an interview perhaps. Something like that. And get paid for it. Sounds cool. If you put a lot of time into a blog alongside your company and family, collecting money for it always sounds cool at first, admittedly.

But the longer I thought about it, the more impossible the undertaking seemed. The blog had somehow taken on a life of its own and I remembered why I had started it in the first place: for the joy of it, as a kind of accompanying therapy measure for my daily life. I never expected that so many people would ever read it.

Make money

If I had wanted to make money with the blog, I would have had to approach it differently and I would have approached it differently. I would have had to write about something that has a lot of reach per se and is much more specific. For example, a blog about online marketing or a page with the “cutest” cat videos. Both would still work very well today, btw. I almost wouldn’t have to care about the content, as long as the numbers were great.

Betrayal

But that’s where the dilemma begins. I do care about the content. It’s what makes this blog what it is. And when I start writing about notebook xy, it’s immediately obvious that I’m only doing it because I have to. You can see it in the article.

Or the interview with the CEO of XZ can only work as content if I myself find what the company does exciting. I believe that many of my readers who write to me that the blog is authentic mean exactly that when they give me this feedback. Which, incredibly, happens every day.

I feel that it’s a bit of a betrayal of the readership to want to clumsily mix something in just because I’m being paid for it.

Credibility

This is, if you like, a classic journalistic dilemma. How do I remain as unbiased as possible on certain topics? How do I guarantee a certain degree of independence? This is actually an impossibility, especially for a site that portrays opinions. Simply because nobody is independent. It starts with the choice of topics. Having an opinion and trying to maintain a certain objectivity is difficult enough.

As an “opinion blog”, dealing with (however) paid content makes the endeavor completely impossible. And it eats away at your own credibility. So I’ll leave it alone.

Influencer marketing is nothing?

Whenever there is hype, I am always skeptical. Influencer marketing is such a hype. There’s a lot of talk and writing about it now. As if the concept was only invented yesterday.

Which is not true, of course. We have long been familiar with influencer marketing among celebrities. A brand ambassador is basically nothing more than that.

However, I am amazed at how clumsy the requests usually come across. As if you can just buy a spot from any blogger. I think many companies are on the wrong track here. They make it too easy for themselves.

This might work for “product reviews” or fashion blogs etc.. For blogs that portray opinions and ideas, it can only go wrong. In this rather strategic field in which I operate, however, it should be recognized that this is the wrong way to go. I’m also not aware of any colleagues who do this.

Influencer marketing in B2B

But that doesn’t mean that influencer marketing doesn’t make sense. Last year, for example, I went on a lecture tour with three different large companies. I was able to give presentations and take part in panels at around 25 customer events. I was free in terms of content. There was no discussion about it at all. And yes, everything was fully and solidly paid for. In my experience, such cooperation is always crowned with success. It is based on a creative, well-rounded concept that makes sense for everyone.

It’s the how that counts

I hope you can see that I am not “against” influencer marketing per se. I just wish marketers, especially in B2B, would make more of an effort and be more creative. As we all know, there are no shortcuts to goals that are worth achieving. Not here either.