Recent studies suggest that Indian social media influencers receive many more offers and assignments compared to Bollywood celebrities.
However, in spite of their huge following on platforms like Instagram, the influencers earn much less, compared to even small Bollywood personalities or TV actors. This is probably because most influencers focus only on social media and do not build a consistent presence on Google.
Thus they are not able to expand their brand value outside social media and only compete with other influencers, instead of Bollywood celebrities or film stars.Top advertisers and corporate brands mostly judge the star credibility of most celebrities depending on media articles and Google presence. But journalists and news editors are not even familiar with names of most influencers.
Thus, whenever influencers want articles, news releases, features or interviews on news websites, they end up taking the paid news route on legacy websites and veteran websites. Most of these paid articles come with disclaimers, which further weaken their standing among advertisers and corporate brands.
New-age websites which carry organic content hardly feature influencers, and thus their sphere of influence stays limited to social media or paid news media."I agree that influencers having a better Google presence will be rewarded with more assignments and bigger monies by advertisers and marketeers," says Bollywood PR guru Dale Bhagwagar.
The entertainment PR professional points out that the profession of influencers is relatively new, so we should not judge them yet. "Some of the influencers are really smart and intelligent. Give them time. They will soon realize they can earn more with a strong and consistent Google presence," says Dale.
