Social Media Influencers for Small Business Success

Businesses have to be cautious about selecting the influencers they wish to collaborate with; they should also take into account the effect those influencers would have for the businesses.In their Social Media Influencer Value model, Lou and Yuan (2018) highlighted the influencer credibility as a crucial element determining the persuasiveness in the process of advertising goods, services, or brands. The way users of the social media platforms view

them defines their legitimacy. Three elements were shown to affect their credibility: attractiveness (McGuire, 1985); expertise; trustworthiness (Hovland, Janis and Kelley, 1970); An influencer will have more impact on the users of social networks the more these traits he shows.This methodology helps us ascertain whether the followers view the influencers,

whether they follow on social media as reputable, and if this credibility is crucial for the firms selecting the influencers to deal with.Paid cooperation's transparencyEither through agencies or not, influencers and companies can form partnerships. All paid collaborations now days are under legal rules and under monitoring (Pophal, 2016). On Instagram, indeed, all the

compensated relationships have to be shown

to the followers of the influencers (Conik, 2018). This was started to guard customers from confused marketing messages and to expA para-social connection is a one-way one whereby a person feels as though he or she is intimate with an imaginary, renowned person he or she does not actually know. These interactions are a development from actual society.Influencer

marketing has several drawbacks as well. First of all, the legitimacy of the supposed message suffers when sponsored participation is open for the customers (Moore et al., 2018). Moreover, consumers are seeking authenticity when following influencers but when recognizing the paid character of the contents, might feel influenced by the influencers and

the brand and lose trust which will harm the businesses and influencers image (Evans et al., Furthermore, all the buzz around fashion and beauty encouraged by celebrities results in conversation about distorted beauty standards, the rise of cosmetic surgery, or even mental health problems (Greenwood et al., 2008; Perloff, 2014). Indeed, brands are not renowned for their capacity to establish genuine expectations and image of physical beauty and notably for

the women Solomon Bamossy and Askegaard

This can cause worry and poor well-being about the women's and all consumers in general physical appearance (Greenwood et al., 2008). The media continuously exposes social conventions, even if more acts against the "beauty ideal" are taken nowadays it will take time to see changes. Advertising and the brand behind it both influence this concept (Solomon et

al., 2006). As they want since the development of the marketing, brands indeed construct and alter this ideal of beauty. Changing their weight, clothes, and makeup, consumers—especially women—tried to attain this ideal of beauty (Solomon et l behavior, 2019; Yuksel and Labrecque, 2016). Consumers and influencers have often para-social interactions (Sokolova

and Kefi, 2019; Gong and Xu, 2014; Hwang and Zhang, 2018).By affecting their beliefs, interests, moods, emotions or their creation of ties, this kind of relationship affects consumers cognitively, practically, and behaviorally (Yuksel and Labrecque, 2016).Generally speaking, buyers follow likeable influencers (Djafarova and Rushworth, 2017). Although customers start

to interact with them frequently this para-social

relationship between an influencer and a consumer is not a real one. Though the followers can connect with influencers by liking, commenting, sharing their posts and sending personal messages, this relationship is not fully one-sided (Sokolova and Kefi, 2019). However, it is difficult to discuss two-sided relations since influencers cannot interact with all of their

followers—even more in cases of great numbers (Sokolova and Kefi, 2019). Influencers fuel this relationship and magnify this sense of intimacy for the followers by sharing materials relevant to their daily life, honest opinion, or statement (Chung and Cho, 2017).Moreover, the two-way relationship gets more challenging or impossible the more influencers there are in

the community (Sokolova and Kefi, 2019). Instagram helps these relationships between influencers and customers to grow by providing simple tools for sharing and conversation. By means of stories and their posts, influencers inspire their fans to interact with them (Chung

Conclusion

Attractiveness has no always importance in these relationships (Sokolova and Kefi, 2019). Still, it can have occasional influence. Consumers are indeed used to evaluating themselves against people they know (Greenwood, Pietromonaco and Long, 2008). Influencers stress this concept of comparison by include in their material copy-my-style or copy-my-makeup. Consumer behavior then depends on their self-esteem. Those who have strong self-esteem

or self-confidence are indeed more able to pull back from this relationship and clearly identify the goal of the material supplied. Though consumers know the intent behind the materials they view on influencers' profiles, this does not indicate that influencers do it only for profit. Indeed, Hall (2016) claims that consumers cannot be convinced that influencers forming

alliances trust and use the product they are pushing. Furthermore, Evans clarified that consumers' attitude or conduct suffers when they come across a post stating it is a collaboration with "Sponsored" or "paid advertisement". Conversely, customers are not significantly affected when it is not very clear, such as an indication like "SP," sponsored.