‘How to be an influencer’ courses are a load of rubbish

The increased desire to get paid thousands to live your best life and document it all in the form of carefully curated pictures and videos for your friends, family, and a throng of strangers to fawn over is understandable, but you should never let the desire cloud your judgment long enough to have you enrolling and paying for a course on how to become an influencer.

In layman’s terms – an influencer is a person on the internet who is considered to be the general definition of cool. They also often dress well, look great, are often able to do a professional-looking job on their make up. These people seem to live pretty interesting lives, which they document through the expert level content they create and post on to their social media accounts.

As a result, they have managed to amass large numbers of followers which brands and advertising agencies will pay to access in the form of targeted advertising disguised as social media posts.

Some of South Africa’s most popular influencers include the likes of Jessica Van Heerden, Mihlali Ndamase, Tshepang ‘Twiggy Moli’ Molisana, and Gemaén Jordan Taylor and they have worked with brands such as Revlon, Olay, Corona, and Haig Club.

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The question they are all frequently asked is how they got into content creation followed by a plea for tips on how to crack it as an influencer.

Their answers, however similar they may sound, are never the same.

That is because there is no formula.

You can do all the basics such as creating innovative and quality content, posting it regularly and at optimum times using all the correct tags and hashtags, paying to promote your content on each platform and paying enough attention to each of your platforms and you still might not reach the pinnacles that some of your faves have reached.

If anything, influencer courses are merely the marriage of social media management courses combined with a bit of marketing and public relations (PR) knowledge.

No amount of studying and practice in the world can give you that x-factor that draws people in and keeps them coming back to your profile for more. The thing that has people wondering about your personal life beyond the snippets that you share with them. The thing that gets a simple bikini picture trending so much that it becomes front-page news the following weekend.

A forum called the Dubai Press Club recently shared the advent of their own “Diploma of Influencers” programme on social media with a call to action for applications.

Set to take place later this year in partnership with a media college in the region, the “Diploma of Influencers” programme has been described as “the first academic programme of its kind in the region, aimed at exploring new forms of relationships that can arise between influencers and followers, and evaluate the interactive effects that enable the development of new dimensions of the work of these platforms, along with the understanding of their future trends, and the development of the capabilities of Arab social entrepreneurs, within an integrated academic curriculum, recognised by the ministry of education in UAE”.

Through conducting this programme, the Dubai Press Club reportedly hopes to take advantage of the growing role of social media platforms in shaping the future of media work in the region among other things.

Various local and international colleges and online platforms also offer similar courses which they promise will teach people how to “become a successful social media influencer” and “boost your business while making a difference in the lives of others, successfully market yourself as an expert in your selected industry, have the ability to creating captivating branding and engaging content and work to obtain sponsorship, allowing you to work as a full-time influencer”.

Again, none of these things are a guarantee for courses that can range from R100 per lesson to R12,000 for a full course.

Paying someone to teach you how to be an influencer is the same as attending a ForEx seminar in an effort to learn how to become a millionaire or asking a sangoma to give you the winning lotto numbers.

And if that still doesn’t put things into perspective, remember the two rules of success:

1. Never reveal everything you know

Two rules for success | Image: Twitter

Your favourite influencers live by this rule and you’re better off learning through experimentation, trial and error, and the innumerable explainations that are currently freely available on YouTube.

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Kaunda Selisho

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