In my fashion marketing class, our professor shared a list of the current top fashion influencers on TikTok. To her surprise, nearly none of us had ever heard of anyone on the list.
If we’re not watching the fashion giants of social media, then who are we following?
Before jumping in, it’s important to understand the different tiers of content creators:
- Nano-influencers (1k-10k followers)
- Micro-influencers (10k-100k followers)
- Macro-influencers (100k-1M followers)
- Mega-influencers (1M+ followers)
Throughout the rest of this article, “big influencers” refers to both macro and mega, whereas “small influencers” refers to nano or micro. A common misconception about influencers is that the bigger, the better. However, having a large following doesn’t help creators be relatable. In fact, it might do the opposite.
The Business of Believing
I once followed a fashion influencer during the pandemic whose content I truly adored (though I won’t share her name for privacy reasons). While I was genuinely happy for her when she gained thousands of followers, I found myself no longer connecting with her videos. She seemed much more distant and, as much as I hate to admit it, more focused on being marketable.
The truth is that achieving success as a freelancer while building genuine connections with your followers may not go hand in hand. In a social media landscape that operates on driving content creation towards monetization, influencers are encouraged to constantly push products to their audiences regardless of personal feelings toward them. The question remains: how long will it take for an audience to see through this tactic?
Consumers today are bombarded with countless advertisements across different platforms. With commodities being sold to us at every waking moment, consumers are both overwhelmed and fatigued. There are simply too many essentials, must-haves, and run-don’t-walks to justify the hype surrounding all these products. This fatigue is fabulously exemplified by creator Heidi Becker’s satirical slam poetry about overconsumption on TikTok.
With big influencers starting to sound like characters from a Black Mirror episode, it’s no wonder audiences are beginning to not trust them. In the same way that you would be suspicious of a cow telling you it’s all the rage to go vegan, big influencers just aren’t believable anymore.
The Future of Influencers
If big creators don’t have as much swaying power anymore, small influencers might be the future of social media sponsorship. Creators that showcase realistic, attainable lifestyles and creative pursuits can feel more like a virtual friend than a walking, talking ad.
The influencer may not be dead yet, but our overconsumption tolerance is dwindling. In honour of this changing cultural mindset, here are some of my favourite influencers of various sizes who create to create — not just sell.