We’re sure you guys follow people on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook who aren’t necessarily “celebrities”. Maybe they’re a fitness model who inspires you, or maybe they’re a fashion blogger whose looks you’re always trying to imitate. Whatever the case, it seems that these social media influencers hold more sway over you than you think.According to a recent study conducted by Twitter and Annalect, they have found that users trust social media influencers as much as their own friends, which in some cases have resulted in users making purchase decisions after seeing a social media influencer they follow use said product. To be more specific, 40% of users claim to have made a purchase online after seeing it used, and 20% of users said that they have shared something they have seen from an influencer.
Twitter’s VP of market research and insights Jeffrey Graham says, “I think what this is telling us is that you don’t have to be a mass media star or a household name to be influential and actually drive people to buy stuff, but actually, this whole cadre of influencers through social media—especially Twitter because that’s what we know about from the research—are driving a lot of purchases by a lot of people.”
If you think that this is a little ridiculous, you might recall that last year we covered how one Instagrammer can get paid by companies as much as $15,000 per post. After all if 40% of her followers were to purchase an item that she posted, we reckon that $15,000 would seem like peanuts compared to what the company would make in the resulting sales.