18 Social Media Influencers
By Alyssa Riley
I vividly remember when influencers began taking over social media. I was 15 years old when I came across the YouTube page of Indy Blue. Originally known for her visually appealing travel compilation videos, she quickly climbed the social media ladder, becoming something of an obsession for teenage girls like me. I found her life captivating. Here was this girl, only a few years older than me, going viral while doing all the things I dreamed of.
Indy Blue later founded an apparel line (Lonely Ghost), participated in numerous marketing campaigns, and gained an audience base of more than 300,000 Instagram followers.
Influencing has massively intensified in the past decade. Now I keep up with influencers whose brands specifically cater to my interests, whether that be fashion, travel or food. They can influence what we eat, which products we buy and how we dress ourselves to fit current fashion trends.
Your Media Landscape
What characteristics or patterns cause you to trust or distrust a social media influencer?
The Basics
Now known as a standard strategy on social media platforms, influencer marketing is no longer restricted primarily to fashion. Influencers market everything from healthy, delivered meals and exercise supplements to Korean facial care.
The following brief presentation covers the most common elements of a social media influencer.
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Brands have expectations for marketing, and audiences are vocal about what they want to see. If an influencer’s content does not meet those expectations, it can lead to negative feedback.
The 2017 Fyre Festival is an extremely negative example. The festival’s goal was largely to promote the Fyre app, used for booking and promoting music talent. Organized by con artist Billy McFarland and rapper Ja Rule, promotions encouraged potential festival attendees to enjoy the “best in food, art, music and adventure” in the Bahamas.
Some notable influencers, like Kendall Jenner and Bella Hadid, promoted the festival, but it turned out to be nothing more than a half-finished construction zone and a complete scam. McFarland was sentenced to six years in prison for fraud, and many locals lost money contributing to the festival.
Here’s a trailer for a documentary titled Fyre Fraud.
After serving time in prison, Fyre Festival organizer Billy McFarland announced that he would organize Fyre Festival II, which was later canceled. And then in 2025 McFarland sold the Fyre Festival brand and social media assets on eBay for just under $250,000.
The Fyre Festival echoed a common problem with social media influencers. A study sponsored by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) found that a majority of social media influencers don’t verify information before sharing it. More than four in 10 influencers said they judged a source’s credibility based on popularity, not accuracy.
Levels, Followers and Qualities
Successful influencers can evolve from being typical social media users to garnering millions of followers. For instance, Emma Chamberlain used to record YouTube videos of herself doing mundane, teenager things. But as she gained followers, she attended Paris Fashion Week dressed head-to-toe in Gucci products, was the founder of Chamberlain Coffee, and appeared on the cover of prominent magazines such as Vogue, although she eventually decided to stop relying on YouTube videos.
Blurring the lines further is someone like Selena Gomez, who started at celebrity status with her acting and singing career but can now be described as an influencer as well. With an Instagram account that showing more than 400 million followers, Gomez has influenced large audiences through global fashion campaigns with Louis Vuitton, Puma Coach, and Pantene, to name a few.
Generally speaking, though, we can make a subtle distinction between influencers and celebrities. Celebrities, especially performing artists, are more likely to share and promote their own work, such as movie roles or upcoming albums and concerts. Celebrities often want to manage their own public persona through social media.
Influencers, on the other hand, are more likely to post content promoting brand awareness and sales for external clients.
The complicating factors are that some influencers gain followers and fame, thus becoming celebrities in their own right. And some celebrities are more active in the influencer realm by actively seeking promotional deals with external clients.
The table below shows some generalized categories and statistics.
| LEVEL | Nano-Influencer | Micro-Influencer | Macro-Influencer | Celebrities |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| FOLLOWERS | Up to 10k | 10k-50k | 500k-1 million | 5 million+ |
| QUALITIES | Personal relationship with the audience | Genuine brand connections and relationships with the audience | Specific skills, from travel to company development | Their standing and personal brand. |
The next presentation covers how influencers use social media platforms for different purposes.
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Becoming an Influencer
Social media influencing is not just about making fun videos and getting paid for it. Without a loyal following, an influencer doesn’t have much. To gain this audience, a personal brand and appealing content are crucial. There will always be others with similar interests, so influencers must stay up-to-date with the social media landscape. Coursera’s guide for how to become an influencer lists 11 steps:
- Adopt basic business approaches.
- Identify your niche.
- Get to know your audience.
- Create an influencer brand.
- Explore content strategy.
- Optimize your online presence.
- Select the right channels.
- Post unique content regularly.
- Engage with your audience.
- Collaborate with other brands.
- Refine skills and strategies regularly.
Pay particular attention to #2 about identifying a niche. Rather than creating broad content about a variety of topics, most successful influencers develop expertise and credibility in narrow, specific areas of audience interest. Even broccoli is a potential theme for social media influencing.
Popular Influencers
With so many influencers on social media today, you can expect each to have their own niche, whether it be through their style, brand, expertise, or passions. What’s more, there are different genres of influencers, such as health, beauty, fashion, books and travel. With that being said, social media users follow different influencers to align with their individual tastes and interests.
I tend to follow fashion and travel influencers for the sake of inspiration; I may see a cute outfit I want to wear or aesthetic living space that I want to imitate, or I may look for restaurant and shopping recommendations when visiting a city. Some influencers that I interact with regularly include Matilda Djerf, Kiel James Patrick, Paige Paul (formerly Paige Lorenze) and Rusty Featherstone.
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- Paige Paul’s IG Account
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- Rusty Featherstone’s IG Account.
Other high-trending influencers include Alix Earle and Jake Paul. Earle gained her social media personality status through TikTok, where she created “Get Ready With Me” conversational videos and was coined the “It girl.” She now has more than 6 million followers across social media platforms and is a primary investor and promoter for SipMARGS sparkling margaritas.
Paul’s influencing career dates back to Vine in 2013 and then, when the app was discontinued, YouTube in 2014. Amassing millions of followers and making it on Forbes’ highest-paid Youtube creators list numerous times, he is labeled a “social media powerhouse,” as well as someone who blurred the lines between social media and sports with his professional boxing career.
The following video from Forbes listed the top creators of 2026, which directly correlates with their popularity on social media.
As a previous previous Forbes‘ publication noted, “The borders between Creators and showbiz are blurring.”
Virtual Influencers
As with many other chapters in this OER text, artificial intelligence deserves a brief mention here. A few virtual influencers have generated loyal followings for various brands, campaigns and social causes. For example, Pete Zaroll is billed as a social media spokesperson for Totino’s pizza rolls, and even the Geico Gecko can be considered a virtual influencer on Instagram. AI fashion influencer Mia Zelu even appeared to attend Wimbledon.
Virtual influencers can help some companies control their social-media production costs. For example, a New York Times feature story chronicled how “face-tuned” virtual influencers, mostly women, are used as travel influencers.
Below is a screenshot from an Instagram account for Radhika that was cited in the article.
The article said that “travel companies, tourism boards and other businesses are turning to A.I.-created influencers like Radhika to lower costs, control messaging and create content more quickly, and human influencers fear they’re being elbowed out.”
Now for a quick history lesson. The first virtual influencer to receive abundant publicity was Miquela Sousa, popularly known as Lil Miquela. Soon after her debut, she was listed in TIME Magazine’s 25 Most Influential People on the Internet in 2018. She later introduced herself more formally to U.S. audiences on YouTube in 2021.
More recently, Lil Miquela posted that she had leukemia as part of an awareness campaign for the National Marrow Donor Program.
A representative for the tech company that created Lil Miquela said her social media posts are “very transparent about the fact that she isn’t real.”
If you’re interested in seeing a few more examples of virtual influencers, you can peruse a list from Virtual Humans.
While virtual influencers generate human followers, an opposite dynamic is emerging as well. Human influencers are trying to attract the attention of chatbots. This is similar to the business emphasis on search-engine optimization that started in the late 1990s.
Online audiences increasingly rely on AI tools as a gateway to accessing media content. As a result, a New York Times feature story surmised that “businesses can no longer simply promote themselves to potential customers — they have to win over the robots, too.”
Shopping and Impact
The influencer field has become a multi-billion-dollar industry. Here are a few statistical factoids about social media shopping to reinforce how social media influencers can impact point-of-purchase decisions.
- Research shared by Capital One showed that 30% of digital consumers have purchased an item in response to an influencer or creator’s post. Also, 40% of U.S. digital consumers follow an influencer or content creator on social media,
- In a YouGov survey of U.S. adults aged 18-44, Instagram and Facebook tied as the top shopping platforms, each capturing 15% of responses, with TikTok next at 7%.
- According to a survey from the marketing platform GRIN, 67% of U.S. consumers make at least one purchase per month through social media.
The accuracy of marketing research can be difficult to corroborate at precise levels, so the numbers above provide more of a broad overview.
A Cancerous Condition
Many of the pros and cons of high-profile social media influencing are evident in the case example of TikTok star Sydney Towle, who revealed that she had cancer in 2023. She chronicled her health travails in the following months, mostly via TikTok videos, including a trip to Jamaica and a scuba diving adventure.
According to a New York Times feature story, a group of Reddit users believed Towle was a “cancer scammer” and formed a group titled SydTowleSnark, which “pointed to her long hair and her penchant for travel and fitness as proof that she could not possibly have the illness she claimed.”
However, Towle’s doctor confirmed that she had cancer and said that even during chemotherapy, some younger patients can keep up their normal routines. Reddit eventually shut down SydTowleSnark.
In the NY Times feature story, Towle said that creating the videos gave her purpose when she did not want to get out of bed and connected her to others for mutual inspiration. In the video below, Towle shared details and fears about a scheduled surgery and treatment.
Towle died in August 2026 from complications of metastatic bile duct cancer. She was 26 years old.
One obituary noted that “for an audience that grew to more than a million followers, she challenged assumptions about how people with serious illnesses should look and live.”
True or False
The following questions highlight a few tidbits of information from the chapter. Use the forward button to advance through the questions.
Influencer Analysis
Identify a social media influencer who interests you. Answer the following questions for analysis.
- Why did you choose this influencer to analyze?
- Summarize the types of content the influencer shares and include anything else that’s important to know for someone who is not familiar with this influencer’s work.
- How would you describe the influencer’s content style? What appeals to you in the content?
- Who is the influencer’s target audience, and what are some strategies you see that might appeal to the target audience?
- How does the influencer’s use of social media connect to any concepts and information presented in this chapter?
Write approximately three sentences for each of your five responses.
