Post 9: EOTO Online Influencers

 The Rise of Online Influencers

Online influencers are people who have gained a large following on social media due to the things they have said and the things they have done. These people have large amounts of influence, which can be a very effective tool when used in the right ways. With all of this influence, many positive and negative events can occur. To elaborate, if an influencer decides to spread awareness about a lesser known charity, the amount of donations to that charity will likely increase significantly. Influencers can easily spread positive messages, as long as they understand their audiences. If Kim Kardashian posted about a charity for helping feed homeless children in California, it would be significantly more effective than if she advertised a charity for wounded warriors. This is because the majority of her fanbase are young females, and they are more likely to support something they can somewhat relate too. Negative ways influencers can impact their audience is if they believe and support something that has a negative impact on the people around them. For example, some influencers in the past few years got caught promoting scams, such as NFT, cryptocurrency, and gambling scams. This basically means that they told their audience to perform a specific task, with intentions of financial gain. These are just a few examples of how online influencers can make a huge difference of somebody's life. 

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The first online influencers looked completely different than the ones that we see today. They consisted of early bloggers, TV show hosts, and news personality's. Some of the first bloggers that were considered influencers were "mommy bloggers." In short, mommy bloggers were new moms that posted tips, tricks, tutorials, and struggles on their blogs. Many women across the world followed these blogs as they wanted to be educated on how to properly take care of a baby. This concept grew throughout the early 2000s, which led to blogs to spread to almost any topic imaginable. Online influencers began spreading to platforms such as Youtube, Instagram, Twitch, and recently, TikTok. These relatively new apps allow them to create and post monetized content for others to enjoy. Influencers of these platforms hold significantly more influence than you could imagine. For example, some big name youtubers gain over a billion views every year. That is more people impacted in one year than the population of nearly every country in the world. With this, these influencers can significantly impact politics and election results. With a large number of followers, people can create an opinionated post and have thousands of people agree with what was said. Fortunately, many large influencers stay away from talking about politics, as if they chose to be a republican or democrat, they could immediately lose half of their fanbase. Obviously, vocalizing your political opinions isn't necessarily good for business, as not everybody is going to agree with you. 

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