Influencer marketing–as most of us know it–has risen to new heights in the last few years. As one of the primary ways to market to consumers online, influencer marketing is an effective way to reach the “power user” base and reach a huge audience of people who are seeking, or have discovered, your product or service.

The power users are often “influencers,” but they can be a lot more than just celebrities and have other types of expertise in their field. These influencers can have a lot of influence in your industry–for instance, many of my students that work in the social media industry are often surprised to learn just how much the majority of Silicon Valley is influenced by my friends and colleagues in social media marketing.

The truth is, many companies go to extreme lengths to cultivate influencer relationships with their customers and product owners, so that those relationships can be leveraged for their promotional and marketing efforts.

However, influencer marketing is clearly not without flaws. One problem is the concept of influencers themselves.

Although influencer marketing is a new (and seemingly promising) way to promote and sell products, it is misguided in that the people who pay to become influencers rarely actually know what they’re talking about.

Why this problem is bad

Let’s take a closer look at why this problem is bad for anyone involved in the social media marketing ecosystem.

Influencers are inherently unqualified

I’ve spoken to many authors who have sold book rights to film producers, as they do when they publish a book. In order to do this, they must become an author, and they will be paid accordingly.

However, they have no idea what it takes to get a book published, and they certainly have no idea what’s involved in being an author and a famous one.

They usually say something like this:

“It all seemed like such a simple idea. We just wanted to write a book for ourselves and share our beliefs with the world. It all sounded so logical at the time. We sold the rights to our book to a film producer, and things went great. Everyone thought our work was brilliant.”

And it did look great! But then the film producer cut a piece out of their movie to get it more funding.

They let them keep the profit for a while, and then the profits were soon gone. The book wasn’t exactly a roaring success, and neither were the movie projects they sold the movie rights to.

Yet, they have kept the copyright of the movie, and made some pretty serious investments in creating a brand name for themselves and promoting themselves in the social media economy as an author and an influencer. So why is it that so many people choose to do this?

Because people pay them

There are many reasons people pay to become an influencer. For a lot of them, it has to do with the image they wish to project.

For others, it has to do with them simply getting something for free, but many even go as far as to say that it has something to do with them needing to “entertain” the consumer, in order to get them to buy something.

In all cases, the end result is that an “influencer” is simply someone who thinks highly of themselves. They want to be liked.

They want to appear successful. They want to say they are the experts. They don’t want to be experts.

They want to say that they know more than they really do. They want to look smart, or good, or maybe even talented.

That’s it.

What does this say about you and your ability to be a self-aware brand?

In order to be a self-aware brand, you must be humble and remember that you are not a self-made person. You are not inherently the best.

You are not the smartest person in the room. You aren’t the most handsome or beautiful person on the planet.

You are not anything special, unique, or even particularly interesting. You are a person, who is trying to share your thoughts, passions, and beliefs with others, and you should be proud of that.

In the process, however, there will always be people who don’t like you because of the brand that you are trying to build.

So who are they, and what do they say about you, as a brand?

Why this problem is bad for you and your content

Let’s take a look at the recent Myspace News piece, and then we’ll get into my thoughts and ideas.

Over the weekend, Myspace announced that they will be shutting down their social network, leaving behind an impact that will have a wide variety of negative and positive effects on their brands, ranging from frivolous and mindless to impactful and life-altering.

However, even those impacts don’t have to change the brand completely. That’s where this story comes into play.

One of the many stories that were floating around was the one where the brand shutters, and leaves behind everything they own, except for the title and logo. The story goes that the family will be going off to live their lives and rebrand themselves with no ties to the brands they helped build for years.

On the surface, this sounds a lot like the stories we heard about Amazon, Uber, and many other successful companies that often did it in a more covert, subtle way.

How to be a self-aware brand

So how can you avoid this type of situation?

First of all, you must know that the Internet is a tough place for a brand like you to exist. On the one hand, there are a whole lot of brands that want nothing more than to destroy you.

Likewise, you have a bunch of folks who want to “buy” from you.

In order to survive, you’ll need to be savvy enough to know which group you fall into, and who you can become friendly with in order to maintain an audience. Don’t be intimidated by their efforts.

Don’t be afraid to engage with them. Maintain your “cool factor”.