Summer Brons was a lonely stay-at-home mum seeking connection when she gained a following of thousands.
Her husband suggested she join Snapchat so they could communicate while he was at work.
She posted videos of their kids, herself doing chores, answering a question he'd often joke about: What is it stay-at-home mums do all day?
He saw the grind and so did other Snapchatters, who began to follow along.
"You just never know how one messy room can relate to so many people," Brons recalls. She soon switched over to Instagram and gained 41,000 followers in two years.
In the past year, she's juggled kids, a camera and contracts, making an income from online content creation.
The Pāpāmoa make-up artist captures the good and bad of motherhood, including hard topics like stillbirth, in the hope of helping other parents. She and Daniel Brons lost their eldest daughter Carter, nine years ago today.
"In a world of online, where it's so curated, they just want to feel normal," she says of her followers, who are 80 per cent Kiwi, with the remainder from Australia, the United Kingdom, United States and India.
"A lot of us can't relate to the picture-perfect white walls and Insta homes, or the lifestyle of the fancy things."
According to RNZ, the term influencer was only entered into the Merriam-Webster dictionary last year. It's defined as someone who "is able to generate interest in something by posting about it on social media".
In New Zealand, there are loads to choose from with followings on Instagram in the hundreds of thousands.
"Brands use influencers because of their ability to connect with audiences in a way that traditional advertising can't," RNZ said. "We ignore ads. They're interruptive. Following influencers on social media on the other hand is something we've opted into. We control it."
Brons' likeability has seen her speak at the event Real Talk and partner with 30-plus businesses, including Hello Fresh, Karicare, Farmers, and Aim'n for a fee.
A mention on her page has generated businesses anywhere between $6000 and $20,000.
She gets paid well but to put it in perspective, "it's not what we're relying on for our mortgage".
She and Daniel own Blaze 24H Fitness in Rotorua and Gate Pā and she is saving her influencer earnings for a "passion project".
"I know of influencers where that is their fulltime job and some do charge a ridiculous amount. There's kind of no rule book at the moment, which is really hard."
The Advertising Standards Authority in New Zealand requires any paid promotion from influencers on social media to be marked with #ad. Brons says it allows for transparency, whereas previously it was a grey line.
She appreciates it's new territory for some but Kiwis aren't watching television like they used to.
"Advertisers need to go where the attention is and a lot of it is on social media now."
What's more, people trust what their friends recommend, Matt Cowley, Tauranga Chamber of Commerce chief executive, says.
Influencers play a role in increasing awareness and preference for businesses by using credibility they've built up with followers.
However, businesses need to understand their customers in order to know which influencers are the best fit.
"A health and wellness blogger is unlikely to be well suited for a fast-food chain.
"With a large number of influencers out there, there are traps businesses can fall into where social media personalities overvalue their ability to convert sales."
He advises businesses to seek expert guidance.
Tasha Meys, a content creator at Tastefully Tash and co-founder of Ace the Gram, says someone like an established videographer will be pricier because they spend more time and skill creating the content.
She says The Social Club website has a calculator to show ballpark influencer rates.
"I think people turn their noses up at influencers who make a lot of money but those influencers are basically one-man creative studios."
She reckons if you added up the costs of what goes into a campaign - design, copy, content creation, plus the distribution channels - it's only fair influencers be fairly compensated.
"Some influencers pull in numbers higher than TV watchers, but they're not getting paid TV advert rates.
"The days of an influencer holding up a [cup of] tea and creating sales are gone. The days of smart campaigns that match the right influencer with the right brand and create awesome content together are alive and thriving."
One influencer who has seen the change first-hand is Makaia Carr.
One of the country's first health and wellness influencers, Carr joined Instagram in 2012 when she launched her business Motivate Me NZ on Facebook.
Now an ambassador for big names like Dose & Co, which Khloe Kardashian has bought into, the 40-year-old's brand flourished thanks to the quick social media reach she could achieve eight years ago.
Nowadays, she has more than 128,000 Facebook followers, more than 55,000 Instagram followers, and a brand partner who generates an average of $40,000 in sales per month, from a discount code she shares.
Carr has also just set up a school-focused charitable trust, Kura Kai.
In the early days of influencing, she did contra work, promoted brands in return for free product and that evolved into discount codes and commission payments and then into negotiating rates for posts and videos.
Businesses, PR, and advertising agencies that were exploring the influencer market for clients came to her and she managed her own negotiations before taking on an agent.
At the peak of her influencing career from 2014-2017, she was earning $150,000 to $200,000 a year.
"I've worked in corporate roles many years ago earning that much and the amount of work and stress those roles carried compared to the role of an influencer just does not compare.
"It is a privileged role."
However, she says it's easy to be sucked into an entitled state of mind, expect a lot for your time, name, and social pages, and to start living in an unrealistic world.
"I started to see signs of all this with the people I was hanging out with and even coming up in my own life and needing to shift my priorities and focuses. My views on the industry were changing and I started distancing myself from certain aspects."
Part of the problem was the space grew too quickly.
"Everyone wanted to be an influencer and many came up with dishonest and unethical ways of doing so."
She was heavily involved in pushing the Advertising Standards Authority to produce clearer guidelines, alongside the public who have become more "vocal and savvy" about how influencers operate.
"Some influencers are well equipped to deal with this, many are not," she says.
"There will always be the good ones and the not so good ones, brands and agencies just need to do the work to know who is who."
Bridgette Tapsell, Village PR chief executive, agrees "not every influencer is created equal".
She works with hundreds of influencers a year and with 2020 events like Black Lives Matter and Covid-19, there's been a shift in how influencers can use their platforms for good.
"Just look at Lady Gaga, she used her influence [last] week on Insta for Joe Biden's campaign, asking her followers to get out and vote and letting them know she'd be at his next rally."
During Covid-19 lockdowns, social media engagement increased as the public searched for information and scrolled for entertainment. Some influencers were charging between $500 and $5000 for a post.
"It is a financially viable career with a great work-life balance – however, to achieve this you need reach, relevancy, purpose, and great creative output," Tapsell says, cautioning influencer campaigns aren't a silver bullet.
But when it works, it works well. Just take the success story of 19-year-old Holly Mathis.
She launched her Mount Maunganui food box business Noodie Foodie three months ago and being a daily user of Instagram, naturally had the thought to post about it.
Mathis lives a low-waste lifestyle and offers a sustainable option to a popular convenience service. She contracts out a chef for recipes but is otherwise a one-person start-up.
She sent out half a dozen food boxes to local influencers and said "100 per cent it helped" to get people on to her Instagram and web pages.
"[The influencers] tag me and then lots of people click and see if it's something they're interested in, and then they follow me and all those people are potential customers."
Her enthusiasm is backed by brothers and keen outdoorsmen Keith and Eric Kolver, who are making a steaming success of their one-year-old luxury business Secret Spot Hot Tubs Rotorua, in the Waipa Valley bush, partly thanks to "collabs" with internet celebs.
"I'd never done any social media in my life," says Keith, 50. "I didn't even have a Facebook page."
His Generation Y and Z staff were all quick to advise: "You should get some influencers in here."
"I thought: 'Well, who are they?'"
He and Eric did some research and then worked with Destination Rotorua who vetted influencers, co-ordinated itineraries and brokered the deal, which is a free experience in exchange for written feedback and imagery, which Secret Spot also gets to use.
Using influencers has been part of a wider marketing campaign.
"I wouldn't say it's a be-all and end-all but it's definitely an arrow in the quiver of our activity out in the marketplace and [influencers] are in front of our target market."
On the surface, using them can be a scary proposition. It's an exercise in risk, and backing yourself, Keith says.
"They let you know if you're doing well, and they definitely let you know if you're dropping the ball anywhere. If you put yourself out there, you stand there to be judged."
He says overnight, influencers have connected Secret Spot with customers that might have otherwise taken a year or two to find them, with online reviews regularly sitting at five stars.
"The influencers have helped us spread that word."
Ways to make money off social media
• Affiliate codes. The influencer takes a percentage of sales generated through their code being used.
• Retainers. A business pays them 'x' amount per month to promote their product or even just the product alone in exchange for exposure. Influencers' charges can vary.
• Exchange. A company exchanges a product, i.e., a vacuum cleaner, for online promotion. Most influencers would choose to work with brands that align with them and promotion would benefit their audience. Businesses also need to ask: "Is this the right influencer for my business? Is their audience aligned with their product?" If yes, it can be a win-win for both parties.
Questions to ask influencers:
• How many posts will I get in return for what services?
• What has your engagement and reach previously been like in recent posts?
• Have you had any success with other brands in similar industries to ours?
• Can I get a screenshot of your insights? This provides the age, sex, and location of their followers. It can also show the level of exposure a product is getting and how discount codes are doing.
