The rise of social media has allowed common man to become the influencers for brands. Gone are the days when companies had to rely on celebrities or big media outlets in order to promote their product. Social Media influencers have now become a cost-effective strategy for organizations in order to control the initial perception of the products.

The beauty product industry has always enjoyed a large customer base. The Cosmetic market industry is expected to grow to USD 465.0 Billion by 2026. This highlights the need of the organization to collaborate with social media influencers in order to market their product.

A study was recently put forth by RedFame Publishing which discusses about social media influencer’s reputation of a beauty company. The study was done in order to understand the customer’s perspective in judging the social media influencer who is promoting a beauty product and highlights key parameters which brands need to consider while choosing their influencer.

Four parameters which constitutes reputation of the Social Media Influencer

The study aimed to find participant’s view on the four parameters which summarizes the reputation of the social media influencer. These are Communication skills, Influence, Authenticity, and Expertise.

Communcation skills: – As per the observation, effective communication skills is not only limited to bringing out the facts and the pros of a product but to do it in a manner that illicits trust. It also highlights that open and reciprocal communication allow emotions of familiarity in the consumer’s mind which can boost the reputation and sales of the marketed product.

Influence: – Social Media influencer’s promotional words and positive brand talk can have a large impact on the followers. The accessibility of Internet has significantly grown in the last few years and therefore, the influencer’s message can reach millions of people within a short span of time. Having an influence means having a large no. of followers, ability of influencer to create ripple effect on public opinion through his words, having a persuasive effect on a large section of followers or having a distinct unique advantage in a related industry of the marketed brand.

Authenticity: – Being authentic is all about presenting the unfiltered opinion based on sound facts and information. The paper highlights the importance of authenticity from Woodroof et al. (2020) which states that consumers can identify the behavior when the influencer is trying to deceive his followers through the untruthful narrative. And in such cases, the followers become even more alert and critical of the product.

Expertise: – Professional knowledge based not only on presented facts but also from critical thinking and cross questioning is a major part of expertise. When an influencer demonstrates expertise with authenticity, it is easy for followers to gain trust and that helps the brand promotion.

Findings

The study was done on the Internet users of Malaysia and 73.2% of the responders were females while 26.8% were males. The majority of the people who participated were between the age of 21 and 25. which shows that the Gen Z look for beauty product information from the Internet or Social Media Influencer (SMI). The study also highlighted that 54.7% of respondents had average income between RM2001 (~ $427.32) and RM3000 (~ $640.66), which implies decent purchase power. The findings of the study are shown in below table.

From the above table, it is evident that followers highly perceive the expertise of the social media influencer more than Authenticity, Influence and communication skills.

What Brands need to Consider?

This is not the first time that such results have come up demonstrating the importance of expertise in social media influencer. Similar results were seen in the study of the findings of Chekima et al., 2020, Chan et al., 2021; Sharipudin et al., 2023.

Brands can learn from this study to carefully place prime importance on expertise rather than on communication skills, influence power and authenticity of the social media influencer. The study can be download from ResearchGate.