#1 Reason Influencers Are More Prone to Sabotage Their Business
Public figures spark the ‘cancel culture’ wildfires
The influencer industry is too oversaturated nowadays, everyone seems to suddenly call themselves a “public figure” once they cross 100k followers. It is not an easy milestone to achieve and does, in fact, require some hard work. However, there are unmissable questions we must ask ourselves such as:
What qualifies a 16-year-old to recommend, advise, and make people buy anything? And how does he/she succeed in doing so?
It all comes down to one common trait all “Influencers” seem to adopt and that is Over Confidence. The latter quality is a double-edged sword though and can single-handedly jeopardize someone’s entire fanbase that took them years to build.
Follow are several signs that can make you smell an influencer’s overconfidence from a mile away.
1. Illusion of control
You might have noticed that almost all influencers have a tendency to address people believing they have some sort of control when in fact they have none. That behavior definitely has an impact on people’s mindsets when they listen to those public figures talking.
If you have great, long, shiny hair and land a sponsorship deal, it is very likely you will convince loads of people to buy any hair product if you stress enough how it changed your life and show them actual results.
if your personal brand revolves around tech gadgets and you demonstrate how impressed you are with a new phone that came out, many will probably go check it out for themselves.
So, yes, they can influence — as much as I hate the word — and it shows through people’s engagement with their posts. All that plays into making them think highly of themselves and overestimate the power of their words.
I mean we’ve all thought to ourselves that influencers are extreme narcissists, whether it be a good or a bad thing for their career. Nonetheless, a recurrent mistake public figures commit is following the “Fake it till you make it” premise and inevitably fall for their own lies.
Believing to have this extreme power to tell ‘mundane’ people what to buy has led a lot of influencers to completely discredit their brand.
Big YouTuber Shane Dawson who’d been known throughout his career for publishing comedy skits, music videos then conspiracy theories, had released out of the blue in 2019 a makeup collection with Jeffree Star.
Needless to mention the millions who went crazy over the cosmetic product, many others started questioning Shane Dawson’s authenticity. The man who had nothing to do with makeup, learned to do it the week prior to launching the collection suddenly grew an interest in the industry.
The only reason that would make me purchase the item is Makeup artist Jeffree Star’s name on it. A beauty guru can definitely talk me into buying her makeup products, not an actor/musician no matter how big of a name she/he owns.
2. The belief of being forgiven no matter what
In April 2020, a famous TikToker posted a video dancing over a guy reciting the Quran. The 17-year-old oblivious to what she’s done is met with thousands of people unfollowing her, others calling out to “cancel” her and overall angry reactions.
The teenager certainly felt pressured to follow up with an apology video for unprecedented behavior on the platform especially offending a sacred practice. However, her “I’m sorry…I think” didn’t cut it — It felt ingenuine and the TikToker heavily relied on making excuses for ‘not knowing’ the language or the words.
One of overconfidence’s side effects is taking people who support you for granted. Humans treasure apologies. If you’re a public figure who inspired others in any way and you undermine the word “Sorry”, you lose a great deal of respect. The truth is, it isn’t so much a word as it is a promise to act in a better manner in the future.
We all feel entitled to pardon people who are dear to us when they hurt us, we know we’ll forgive them but we need to hear them say they’re sorry. I once lost a childhood friend, confident there’s no way we’ll be separated for the sole reason of satisfying my ego.
If people lose their best friends over apologies — or lack thereof — influencers can definitely lose their follower base.
3. Crossing the line to areas out of their expertise
It all comes down when influencers feel the need and/or pressure to have an input on everything. Local news, social media drama, worldwide events…etc. They are in general pretty opinionated and their career, after all, revolves around talking about themselves and others.
A month ago, a famous Egyptian influencer and entrepreneur posted an Instagram story to express how she feels about the hottest topic at the moment, an ongoing investigation about girls who got raped by the same sexual predator.
The influencer, as overly confident as possible, said she ushered the violated girls as well as the rapist to contact her in a conference call — Stating this way she’ll form an objective and informed opinion hearing both sides of the story.
This definitely sparked a huge lash out and she was faced with the harsh reality of everyone going against her and getting pretty disappointed with her poor rational. Facing hate comments and counter videos accusing her of irrelevance must have been hard but she was the one initiating the fall down of her empire.
Psychologists call it the Dunning-Kruger effect when people with low experience in a certain field overestimate their competency.
Influencers tend to drift away from their initial interests and it is the first step towards disrupting their own name. When their entire business is based on selling their trustworthy face, it gets tricky if it slips away even for a second.
Final thoughts
Overconfidence may work sometimes but it definitely kills one day. It is the number one trait to avoid to be a successful influencer.
Public figures can unpredictably become oblivious to the fact that people still judge. Taking their followers for granted, manipulating them into buying whatever they recommend, or being too proud to provide the answers/apologies others need are all different habits of overconfident influencers.
In standard jobs where one risks getting fired by their boss, it’s not quite the same for public figures. In the social media world, influencers should only fear themselves and that is why the blame can only be placed on them.
“Confidence is good, but Overconfidence always sinks the ship” ~ Oscar Wilde