Is being an influencer a stable career? – Career Advice

With the increase in the number of social media platforms and their usage, people spend half of their time on it. Everyone follows at least one influencer on social media as per their interested niche. This raises a question in minds of people, whether being an influencer is a stable career?

Social media is spread out across all ages, from age 12 to the ’50s. Followers, views, likes, these terms follow a 12-year-old schoolgirl, just like it follows retired stay-at-home senior citizens. Influencers can be a singer, an actor, foodies, techies, business people, or just Instagram models. They are doing their best of their work to share and promote their knowledge(thoughts and products) to others. The success of an influencer is measured by the amount of audience they have.

At the same time, people criticize influencers and troll them to demotivate and discourage them. Today, almost everyone is not only following influencers but also wanting to become one. Let’s start with the job of an influencer.

What does an influencer do?

An influencer uses and advertises products to their audience and then receives a marketing commission (their income!). They start with small businesses and once their audience gets larger, more successful and famous brands hire them for digital marketing.

According to statistics, 67% of the social media population want to become content creators and 37% already consider themselves influencers.

People find it easy and amusing to advertise their life and make money out of them. And of course! It sounds too good to be true, where no education or college is required, however, even though being an influencer may be an actual career, is it really stable?

When you think about it an influencer’s career depends on the amount of audience that they have. There’s a constant need to please their audience because if not, they lose followers, and thus their fame and business.

Some people don’t consider this to be an actual job, and that’s because it’s easy, or not the traditional 9 to 5 schedule. It doesn’t require degrees and it doesn’t require resumes. However, when you think about it, it’s better to have something to fall back on. A base of a stable job, where losing followers won’t reduce the money in the house. Pursuing this as a hobby, or a side job makes more sense than pursuing it full time.

If you think of an example, an influencer plus YouTuber named James Charles had a social media issue, where the particular situation lost him thousands of followers. This could’ve cost him his job. Only an apology video turned things back to normal.

Since we’ve discussed the cons of being an influencer, we can now look at the tasks and effort it takes to thrive as an influencer. Apart from the followers that a person has, brands and marketing teams also look at the genuineness of the content. People only follow influencers who are authentic with their product suggestions, or true about their life. Brands notice that as genuineness of a person represents the growth of the person.

Influencers now, turn into brand ambassadors and are a part of a brand’s marketing technique. Just like any model, or an actor it is a well-paid job with equal risks that every recognized person faces.

It is, however, a vocation that everyone in the world now recognizes. It is slowly becoming a part of business marketing and is promising for at least the next 10 years.

An influencer’s mindset is, why spend thousands of dollars on college tuition when they can, and anyone can start earning right at that moment.

So, let us come back to: Is this a stable career? When you ponder over any profession, each of them has its pros and cons. From a doctor’s role where years are spent on education to an actor’s role where there’s no promising future till a box-office hit movie. All professions have their upsides and downsides. So why do we question the future of an influencer? Is it because it’s social media-based? Or is it because this is a job that requires no degree? Either way, whatever society may think about any profession for that matter, these professions continue for years, where people grow and gain. Content creating and influencing are jobs right amongst these disciplines.

READ MORE: How To Carve Your Digital Marketing Career Path