Summer is unofficially influencer season. With the warm weather comes Insta feeds filled with festival fit pics, beach bods, and other enviable experiences of the socially wealthy.
The social currency of these “influencers” comes in the form of #sponsored content. Let’s be real, if you don’t have a post with any of the following, do you actually even have any influence?
- #ad #spon
- “I’m sooo excited to be partnering with…”
- Use my special code for 5% off [insert totally obscure product name here].
Look, I love a nicely placed #sponsored post as much as the next person. What I love even more is getting a good laugh in when the people who make these posts embarrass themselves chasing clout. We all do. So let’s do it and see what lessons we can learn in the process.
The influencer who posted through her motorcycle accident:
Tiffany Mitchell is a Nashville-based “lifestyle blogger” with a quarter of a million followers on Instagram. Like lots of influencers, Tiffany likes to post pictures of herself looking cute in “candid” situations.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BzYLDgWgF5a/
A couple of weeks ago, she posted some beautifully-shot and edited photos of herself in an extremely “candid” situation.
An Influencer Is Defending Her Decision To Post A Photoshoot Of Her Motorcycle Accident On Instagram
she also denied to me that the Smartwater featured in one of the professional photos is a brand endorsement https://t.co/pXe5HDcCF3 pic.twitter.com/r7tuXUNAS1
— Tanya Chen 陈天依 (@tanyachen) August 19, 2019
A motorcycle accident has never looked so good!
According to Buzzfeed News, Tiffany denies her mid-accident photo shoot was staged or sponsored. Her followers weren’t buying it.
Sponsored, staged, or not, using a motorcycle accident to clout chase is not a great idea. But it is a hilarious fail. Our lesson here is that you don’t always need to post through it. Some stuff is better left offline.
The influencer who photoshopped the same cloud formation into all of her photos:
Tupi Saravia is a travel influencer who is making headlines for a hilarious reason this week. Take a look at a few of her posts and see if you can figure out why.
Tupi is accused of, and now admits to, photoshopping the same cloud formation into all of her photos, which is just so funny.
She’s able to influence consumers and weather patterns
— The Inconceivable (@JoshEdits) August 28, 2019
A+ reply.
Two rules to be learned here:
- Be authentic.
- Pay attention to detail.
If you have a quarter million followers, at least one of them is bound to notice.
The influencer who got mad she couldn’t sell shirts:
@Arii is an Instagram influencer with 2.6 million followers. I’m not exactly sure what she does, but at the beginning of this summer, she did try to become a fashion designer of sorts. When she dropped her new clothing line to her 2.6 million followers, she only sold 36 shirts, then proceeded to get pretty angry online about the whole thing:
The influencer bubble is bursting. This young lady has well over 2 million followers and couldn’t sell 36 shirts. Focus on genuine engagement and not followers cuz they ain’t gonna buy a thing. pic.twitter.com/uOSVxc2k4D
— pink is my power color (@kissmyelite) May 27, 2019
A couple more lessons here:
- Quantity of followers doesn’t necessarily equate to influence.
- Never get mad online.
The influencer who went hiking in her backyard:
With 11K followers, influencer hopeful Casey Sosnowski had been spending her summer curating her glamorous lifestyle and personality on Instagram. Like a lot of other budding influencers, Casey’s brand is something along the lines of “looking cute in places you wish you were.”
Her misstep came when she decided to do a post looking cute on a beautiful hike at Lake Okahumpka Park and Trail in Florida. Only that’s not where she was. Her sister was quick to enlighten us on Twitter:
My sister said she was going hiking…..this is our backyard. pic.twitter.com/LDGhAHNSSp
— ℂ𝕒𝕣𝕝𝕪 𝕊𝕠𝕤𝕟𝕠𝕨𝕤𝕜𝕚 (@carlysos3) August 4, 2019
Oof. Again: be authentic, people. I assure you that the clout is not worth being a phony. And the content is going to be more impactful if it’s the real deal.
Did I miss any great influencer fails this summer? If I did, be sure to drop them in the comments because I’m always looking for another good laugh.
