Influencer marketing is wildly popular in today’s social media world and is continuing to grow. It is the act of giving free product or payment to an Instagram user in exchange for promotion on their page. “Influencers” are typically people with large followings, high engagement and quality content that you want to represent your company. Ever since this type of marketing has become a mainstream practice, transparency has been a topic of concern for the FTC. In order to ensure that consumers are aware of influencer-brand relationships, Instagram has developed an entirely new feature that is set to release within the next few weeks.
In the past, the FTC has had problems with partnerships and sponsored posts on Instagram. They strive for transparency so that consumers can decipher when an influencer is being paid to promote a product or when they’re promoting something simply because they love it. Instagram’s new feature is here to end this problem for good. Within the next few weeks, both influencers and brands will be able to disclose their partnerships at the top of their photos where the “location” feature would normally be. Basically, they will “tag” their partnership.
Here’s how it will work: When you post, you’ll be able to go to the “advanced settings” tool, which is currently where you can turn off commenting. Once this new feature is added, this is where influencers and brands will be able to tag their partnership. After the photo is posted, there will be a banner across the top (where you can usually tag your location) that will say, “Paid partnership with *insert brand name*.”
How cool is this? We’re thinking that this new feature is going to keep brand and influencer partnership disclosures on the FTC’s good side. Once this update launches, “#ad” and “#sponsored” posts are going to be confusing hassles of the past!
Follow along on our Flint social media channels for more announcements about when this new feature goes live: Instagram | Facebook | Twitter