As the economy fluctuates, so does job security. We aren’t in an era in which most of the population has a full time permanent 9-5 position with benefits—a lot of us have differing hours and differing incomes based on the ebb and flow of what is popular, who is purchasing, and what the current trends are.
Social media as become much more than self expression—it has become a career for many, many people across the globe.
Instagram has become a particularly lucrative method of income for those who know how to create an online persona.
Things like brand deals, fan engagement, and even deals with Instagram themselves have the ability to yield high profit and high social viability.
The thing is, brand deals tend to depend on fan engagement, meaning that how much you make tends to directly correlate with how many people like and comment on your posts.
Earlier this year, Instagram privatized their like numbers.
This means that only people who run an account can see how many people have liked a post.
For the average person, this ends up being anything from a minor annoyance to perhaps even actually productive for our social media obsessions.
However, these changes drastically affect those who use the platform as income.
Companies wanting to work with “influencers” cannot tell what their engagement is, and are less likely to work with them.
A number of Australian influencers specifically have noticed a rapid decline in their profits since the Instagram change.
However, Aussies aren’t feeling a lot of sympathy for the wanna-be celebs.
According to the Daily Mail Australia , a lot of these Instagram Influencers have their photos flooded with comments like “you’ll have to get real jobs now.”
“I’d be devastated too if I found a job that I had to do basically nothing and then had to now work for it.”
“Thank God Instagram found a way to rein in this freeloading lifestyle these influencers live,” another person added, “I’m sure they’re hiring at Woolies and Coles.”
This is likely because of Instagram’s new changes.
Not only are brands less likely to want to endorse someone whose engagement they aren’t sure about, but fans are less likely to ‘like’ or engage with a post that has an unknown amount of likes.
The majority of the accounts feeling the effects of the “like” changes are verified, but without enough followers to be “famous.”
Most of these accounts are sitting at between 75K to 500k followers, and steadily losing between 200-700 followers a day.
The problem isn’t exactly the easiest to solve.
Instagram doesn’t seem like they’ll be re-implementing the like count anytime soon, soon companies and influencers alike will need to use different metrics in order to track their engagement.
What do you think about the new Instagram ‘like’ policy?
Are the changes legitimately hurting those trying to make an income through an online persona, or are they simply shining a light on line of work that is getting too much praise for very little work?
h/t: Daily Mail Australia
