The Little House Living Show – Episode 020 – Overcoming The Influencer Influence

The Little House Living Show – Episode 020 – Overcoming the Influencer Influence

Thanks for joining me for the Little House Living Show podcast! My hope for this podcast is that it will be a new way for me to connect with you, my readers, and for you to be able to listen to my words even if you are driving or having a busy workday.

Today, I’ve got something a little different for you. I’m diving into the world of influencers to try and understand just how they influence our purchasing decisions. I hope you enjoy the episode!

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What’s In This Episode?

• Why we look for influence.
• Stats on how influencers are making purchasing decisions.
• Why is this an issue?
• How to combat this issue.

Links Mentioned in This Show

• • Submit a Question for the Show

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Podcast Transcription

Merissa [00:00:10]:

Hello and welcome to the little house living show. This channel is for those trying to live a simpler, slower, and more cost effective life. My name is Marissa, and I will be your host and your friend as we journey along together, other to find new tips and advice as well as lots of encouragement you. Hey guys. Welcome back to the podcast. I’m so excited that you’ve decided to join me today. I think today’s topic is going to be really interesting, and it’s just something that’s been on my heart for a while to talk about. And so we’re going to get into it today.

Merissa [00:00:52]:

We’re going to talk about influencers, we’re going to talk about ads, we’re going to talk about shopping. So, yeah, let’s just dive right in. So I want to preface this episode by saying that I don’t think there’s anything wrong with influencers making money or people making money off of ads. Obviously, on Little House Living, that is our main source of income from the blog is ads. We’re not really going to talk about ads today. We’re going to specifically talk about videos and influencers. But I just wanted to say that I don’t think there’s anything wrong with it. I think that it’s just wise for us to be aware of what’s going on when we watch those videos and how we’re really being influenced in our day to day and shopping decisions.

Merissa [00:01:40]:

So I guess I also wanted to say I don’t consider myself an influencer. I feel like that is a more modern term and there’s people that use it in different ways. I would consider myself a content creator, someone that has been writing and making content for the purpose of educating or informing. I don’t really do this stuff that’s just entertaining. And definitely my main thing is not to talk about brands and products unless it’s something that I really love. So one thing that I’ve always done on the blog is that I really have not talked about a lot of brands. I haven’t worked with very many brands, and that has just been a personal decision. I want to make sure that anything that I talk about on the blog is something that we have already used, we’ve already tested.

Merissa [00:02:30]:

It’s something we actually enjoy using. I would never recommend a product that is just something I’m just getting paid to recommend and not something that we actually have a lot of experience with. Okay, so with that out of the way, first, I wanted to start by just why we look for influence and why we’re kind of pulled into those videos that the influencers make. And I think one of the reasons is because we’re kind of unsure about our own decisions. Like, is this what I really want my living room to look like, or is this how it should look? Am I missing something? I’m just really not sure of my decision. And so I feel like I’m going to go online and I’m going to search living room inspiration and try to figure out what other people are doing because I’m just not sure which furniture I need to buy or where my decor needs to go. So I’m going to go ahead and look that up and that kind of goes into the next thing is just wanting inspiration. So there’s nothing wrong with wanting inspiration.

Merissa [00:03:35]:

I think that’s kind of how some of our really good ideas can come about is just seeing someone, seeing their picture, seeing their video and being inspired and wanting to do a version of that yourself. But that is something that we look for when we’re searching. An influencer is the inspiration because we’re just not sure of what decision that we should make. And also we’re just kind of nosy we want to know what other people are doing, what their houses look like and the products that they’re using and see if we’re missing out on something. It kind of all comes back to that. Like, are we missing out there’s so much out there? Is there something that we’re missing out on that could simplify our life or change it for the better or that everybody else is doing that we’re just not aware of? What is that that we’re missing out on and where can we find that? So those are kind of, I think some of the main reasons why we turn to influencers and also the influencers are just in front of us all the time. I mean, you can’t go online anymore without being bombarded by TikTok videos and YouTube videos and they’re all influencers or somebody that’s trying to get their message out in front of you, whether that be a message about a product or brand or something educational. So I wanted to give a couple of stats.

Merissa [00:04:55]:

I don’t know about you guys, I am a stats person and I love stats. So I found a couple that I thought were really interesting. The first one is put out by the Digital Marketing Institute and they did a study that shows that 49% of consumers depend on influencer recommendations. So for me, when I read that stat, the keyword was depend on influencer recommendations. Now we’re going into a little bit scary territory there. It’s okay to be inspired and it’s okay to see what’s out there, but to depend on an influencer recommendation to decide what you’re going to buy, that a little bit to me is crossing the line into me not making my own decision on something when we’re dependent on that recommendation. All right, the second stat is it comes from Matter Communications and they also did a study about influencer marketing and they found that 82% of people trust their social networks to guide their purchasing decisions. That is a huge percentage of people that are looking to social media.

Merissa [00:06:05]:

So that is Facebook or Instagram, probably. YouTube is considered a social network in this, but that’s more than 75% of the population. I am assuming these studies are US population. I couldn’t find any stats that said, but I would just guess that they’re probably US population. But 82% of people trust their social networks to guide their purchasing decisions. So that’s a large amount of people that are being influenced. And I would say that didn’t specify if it’s just from influencers or if that was just kind of your social the people that you have on your social network as well that are influencing that decision. But anyway, that’s something to take into consideration.

Merissa [00:06:52]:

I think that’s a huge statistic, a huge percentage. And then finally they also had that. 60% of consumers have been influenced by social media while shopping at a store. So the reason that this one stood out to me was that they’re talking about you being in a store and you’re deciding what to buy. You’re looking all the shelves. 60% of people that are in that position in the store have been influenced by social media to buy what they’re going to buy at the store that day. That’s pretty huge. We’re kind of putting our decisions into someone else’s hands.

Merissa [00:07:30]:

And that’s fine if it’s something that you really want and something you feel like you really need to buy. But buying it just because you’ve been influenced by your social media or by influencers to buy it just because you recognize it when you’re at the store and you’re like, oh, hey, so and so just showed that in their video last week and they were talking about how this is the best brand ever and I just have to have it. I’m not really sure where I’m going to put it when I get home, but I have to have this because I saw somebody using it. That’s a large percentage of consumers that have been influenced while they’re in the store and seeing those products. So let’s move into just why just talking about these ads and about these products that we’re seeing in videos. So why don’t we realize that these are ads so we can see like the ads that I have on Little House Loving, you know that those are ads. They’re obnoxious, they’re on the side, they’re flashing a picture of some shoe that’s on sale or whatever. We all know that that’s an ad.

Merissa [00:08:33]:

We’ve been conditioned to know what ads look like and to kind of block them out in our minds. If we see an ad on TV, we know that it’s an ad because it’s in a commercial break from the show that we were watching. Those are really clear that those are ads. The problem with ads from influencers is that you don’t always know that it’s an ad because they’re not always clear that they’re being paid to talk about that product. So let’s say you’re watching some influencer that you watch. They come out with a new video every week and you always watch that video and they’re talking about this particular kind of scarf, and the scarf is amazing and they just found it and they’re so excited and on and on and on. But what isn’t always clear is that that was probably, unless they’re disclosing that it’s not that it was probably a paid ad and they received that scarf, they received compensation to talk about that scarf, which, as I mentioned in the beginning, nothing wrong with that. That’s totally fine.

Merissa [00:09:37]:

The company is paying someone to advertise their product for them. That’s totally fine. What’s not fine is when it’s not clear that that was an advertisement. And they’ll go through this whole video where they’re talking about, here’s how I’m going to use this scarf, and here’s the different ways you can do it. And all of these things until you’re so influenced by that video and just thinking, I don’t even know how I could ever possibly live without this scarf. Like, I have to have it. Well, you can use this scarf as a purse when you go to the store. And I’ve always needed a scarf that was a purse.

Merissa [00:10:11]:

I’m being a little bit silly here and just kind of coming up with an example. But you know what I’m talking about. You’ve seen the videos where people are doing that and they just kind of go to the extreme to talk about this product and it’s this new thing on the market. But they’re not being clear in disclosing that they’re being paid to talk about that product, which, like I said, totally nothing wrong with that. It is against FTC guidelines to not disclose that you are being paid for a product. You need to talk about that you’re being paid for a product even if it’s just an affiliate link. So that just means not necessarily getting paid just to talk about that product, but if someone clicks on your link and then they go shopping through your link, then you’re going to earn a percentage of the sale. All of that stuff should be disclosed just so that the consumer knows.

Merissa [00:11:04]:

You guys know that when you’re looking at it, the influencer, the content creator, whoever it is, is getting paid for this link. Nothing wrong with them getting paid for the link or for the ad or anything, but it just needs to be very clear. And the reason is that can help you make the best decision. Okay? If you see a video that is talking about promoting a product and it’s not clear that they have been paid to do that, then you’re just thinking, wow, they just found this product and it’s so amazing and I should go out and check it out. But if you can see that they were being paid to promote that product, then it helps for you to know that you probably need to do a little bit more due diligence, look into the product and decide if it’s a good fit for you. That could be checking out other reviews on the product, checking about different consumer reports on the product to see if it’s actually something that’s good, doing a little bit of history into the company that’s selling it. How long have they been around? Do they have other reviews? Are there other reviews on their website all paid? Or can you just check Amazon to see if they’ve got some reviews out there that actually aren’t from paid resources? Because that’s another thing. Completely separate.

Merissa [00:12:19]:

Side note, but if you are on someone’s website, if you’re on a brand’s website and you see some product and all of the reviews are five stars, be very wary of that product because those are probably paid reviews or the company is just deleting the negative reviews. So all you see is the good reviews. But especially if you’re making a big decision on a product that is more expensive, definitely do more research rather than just watching one influencer’s video on why this product is amazing before you make that decision to buy and I’ve talked about this, I’m just on to my next point is why is this an issue? Is just because that creates an inauthenticity with the video you’re watching because you don’t really know unless you feel that you can really trust that person. And sometimes it’s hard to know if you can trust an influencer or not, but unless you really know that you can trust that person, how do you know that their review of whatever product it was, was legit? Or if they’re just saying good things because they got paid by the company to say good things about the product. So here’s what I found as a content creator, as someone that has worked with some brands in the past, is that if you try a product and you’re truly honest and you go back to the company and say, I didn’t like this, do you still want me to put up my review on it? Or how would you like me to do this if it’s a paid review? That’s what I’m talking about. If you’re just reviewing a product because you want to, that’s something completely different. But I have had that happen where a company has sent me a product and I didn’t like it. I just was like, I am completely honest with my readers.

Merissa [00:14:06]:

I didn’t like this product. So if I’m going to put up a review like I agreed to do, it is going to be my honest opinion on why I did not like this product. And the company usually comes back and says, no, please don’t do that. We don’t want your review anymore. And they will no longer pay you, obviously, because you’re not going to promote their product for them. But the problem is that we’ve gotten into such a place where people are just like they consider being an influencer, their job. And so to do their job. They have to make money and they’re going to just try these products and they want the company to pay them.

Merissa [00:14:47]:

Like I said, I found if you’re being honest and you truly didn’t like the product, the company isn’t going to pay you to talk about that product. Which is fine, that’s their decision. But if you’re seeing a positive review on every single product that some influencer is trying I would be a little bit more wary about watching their videos. Because to me, that just says somebody that’s just trying to get paid for product reviews and isn’t really trying them for an honest, genuine opinion. And they’re just I hate to say that they’re just in it for the money, because I’m sure that is not the case every time, but it kind of certainly may feel that way if you’re seeing a positive review after positive review. The other thing that can be happening with this is that the influencer could be making misleading claims to boost clicks to the product. So when you work with a brand as a content creator and as an influencer, they generally are much more happy obviously to see that you are getting clicks to their website, that your readers, that your followers are clicking over to their website, clicking to buy their product. There is a sale going on, there’s a sale happening after they’re watching the video from the influencer.

Merissa [00:16:06]:

So a lot of times there can be a lot of misleading claims in a video that are made by an influencer or by a creator because they want to boost those clicks to the sponsor’s website. So they might just say this is the most amazing thing, you have to check it out and you have to click through this link for more information. And the reason that they do that is because it’s going to look better on their end when they go back to the brand and say, look it, we generated all these clicks and now you can pay us for another campaign. Because our campaign was so successful and we got all these people to click over to look at this product or to buy this product or whatever. So on their end it looks a lot better when they’re getting a lot more clicks and of course they can get a lot more clicks and a lot more traffic to the brand’s website if they’re really talking up this product and maybe making some misleading claims because they want people to go over to that. It’s just something to be aware of when you’re watching the videos and seeing products advertised. That’s just something that like I said in the beginning, it’s not a bad thing that they’re trying to make money doing what they’re doing, which is soliciting an advertisement. But when it’s misleading, when it’s inauthentic or when it’s just positive review just to make a positive review just to make money, those are just some things to be aware of.

Merissa [00:17:34]:

Okay, so I just want to touch a little bit on why we’re so influenced by these videos and why we’re making decisions based off of what we’re seeing. And I’m sure that there could be a bunch of studies done on this and it would be really interesting to see the results. But here’s what I think. I think that we’re seeing other people’s lives because we can see them on video, but they don’t see ours. So we’re forming this relationship with someone, but it’s very one sided. So when you have a relationship like that, there’s not going to be a truly balanced scale in your friendship because all you’re seeing is all of their stuff and your friend or not your friend, the influencer, they’re not seeing you. They’re not seeing where you’re at. They can’t relate to the life that you’re living.

Merissa [00:18:25]:

They can’t relate to your budget, they can’t know what your home looks like. And so first of all, we have this unbalanced scale and we feel the need to keep up with them because that’s what we’re seeing all the time. Like we’re constantly watching videos and consuming that kind of media and so that’s what we’re seeing. So the scales aren’t balanced. They’re not seeing your life. They may not know how you live, they may not know your situation. And so those scales are not balanced. And then the next thing is, if we live in that online world, when we live in that online world, we feel the need to keep up with our peers.

Merissa [00:19:05]:

Because in our mind, we’re just thinking, okay, this influencer that I’m watching, this is my peer. Because this is whose life I’m in all the time, because I’m watching their videos. And we’re always going to feel the need to keep up with the Joneses, right? Like it’s always a constant battle that we’re going to have in our lives, whether that be the people next door or your friends at church or anything, we’re always going to feel that. But typically when we make friends in real life, they’re friends that we have on the same level as us. Like we’re just kind of in many different lifestyles. Socioeconomic, we’re on the same level as our friends are. But when we see an influencer, I’m not saying that they’re on a petter level, this isn’t coming out quite right, but anyway, we see their world and their world is completely different than the world that we have in our own homes, in our own bubbles. And so it’s really hard to not look at that and feel like we need to keep up with it.

Merissa [00:20:03]:

So I’m going to give you an example here, and I will admit this is a little bit painful of an example for me to give, but it does show how all of us are influenced by influencers and YouTubers and people that we see online. Okay, so three years ago, we moved to our house, we bought a piece of land, there was nothing on it we were going to have to build. There’s a lot of YouTubers out there that have done the same thing. They’ve bought a piece of land, they’ve built their homestead and I will admit that I am a YouTube watcher and so I frequently watch these kinds of videos and as we started working on our house and building it and I’ve talked about this before, but it was just me and my husband that built our house. We did not have outside help besides a few friends here and there that would help with like a big day when we were raising a wall or something like that. We didn’t have help, it was just the two of us and we were trying to build our house with just the cash that we had. So we were pretty committed to not getting a construction loan on the house. We did get a loan for the land and then we just wanted to build our house with the cash that we had.

Merissa [00:21:13]:

So about six months into the build that cash ran out. We had some cash saved from a business sale that we had previously done. Cash ran out and so it was fine. We were just stuck on we’d make money each month and then whatever extra that we had, we could continue working on our house. So flash forward to three years later and my house is really just getting finished up now because it takes time and it takes money. But I would watch those people on YouTube and I would see them building their homesteads and I’d watch them build these big barns and these beautiful greenhouses and beautiful gardens and raised beds and all of this infrastructure and stuff. And I felt so bad about myself and about the position that we were in. And I just kept thinking, if we just had more money, then we’d be able to do all of this stuff, too, and have it built right away and really get into this and have this big barn and all of this livestock and all that.

Merissa [00:22:17]:

And I felt myself getting really sucked into these videos and it got to the point where I had to stop. I had to stop watching the videos because I was disheartened by what I would see because I just couldn’t keep up with that. And then to go along these lines on the other side is like I’m a content creator too, but I’m not able to put out the kind of content that they are because we don’t have the money to be able to do those kinds of things. And so it was both like a hit on my personal level and then a hit on my professional level too. But it was just really frustrating because that’s what I would see every week, this YouTuber that was homesteading, they would build a new greenhouse or they’d finish this garden section or whatever it was. And here it’s taken us three years just to finish up our house because we were limited by the budget and by time. We don’t have a bunch of people working for us. And so we were just limited.

Merissa [00:23:22]:

And I would forget that I should have kept those things in mind. Like, for one, probably a bunch of those people were getting sponsored by a lot of these places that they were talking about these building companies or these products that they were putting in their homes that were more beautiful or more expensive than what I could afford in mine. And I failed to remember that when I was watching these videos. I would just get frustrated that I just wasn’t on that level. And how could we get up to that level? Like, how should we plan our days where we can be doing those things too? And I finally had to realize that those people are not my peers. I’m not on their level. I’m not getting paid to do any of those things. We are doing the best we can with what we have, and this is our life and not their life.

Merissa [00:24:14]:

And anyway, I just wanted to give you that example so that you can see how easy it is just to be sucked into that. Even on I don’t feel like homesteaders should be on an influencer level, but they absolutely are. And so I would feel left behind in our homesteading journey because I wasn’t able to do the same things as other people were doing. And long story short, I went on to realize that there was things that they were doing that I wouldn’t want to do anyway. They just weren’t part of our journey, didn’t need to be part of our story. But it does go to show that everybody is influenced by these influencers, because that’s what we see. We don’t go over to our friend’s house and be like, hey, what did you build this week? What did you spend your money on this week? What did you buy at the grocery store this week? We don’t do that. I mean, I guess you could maybe with some of your friends, but we typically don’t do that.

Merissa [00:25:12]:

But we’re seeing these people and they’re sharing all these videos of their hauls and their unboxing and all that kind of stuff, and we forget to realize that they’re just getting paid to talk about that kind of thing. And they didn’t go out and spend their meager clothing budget on that beautiful haul box that they brought in this week that they ordered online. They got that from the company. And so I shouldn’t feel like I’m behind or that I need to go spend money on it because that’s just I’m not getting a bunch of stuff from that company. I have to go out and spend my hard earned money on that product. Okay, so let’s kind of wrap this up. We’re getting a little bit long. Hopefully you’ve enjoyed some of my rambling or some of it has been helpful for you, or maybe your eyes are being opened a little bit today.

Merissa [00:26:03]:

Either way, hopefully this podcast has been interesting. So I want to close out by talking about how we can combat this way of thinking. Because all of us that are consuming some kind of online media are going to be influenced by this at some point or another. And it’s not something that’s going to end influencer marketing and online advertising. That’s not something that’s going to change. But we can change the way that we view it and the way that we think about it. So one of the biggest things is just that we have to spend more time offline than online. And that doesn’t always mean that we have to go out in the world and do things, but pick up a paper book instead of reading one online or listening to somebody talk about a book online.

Merissa [00:26:51]:

Just try to spend a little bit more time every day offline in the real world, in your world bubble, like in your community, in your neighborhood, than you’re spending online with the influencers that will make a real difference. And that goes with my next point, which is spending more time with real people, real people that are your peers, that are on the same levels as you are, that share your same struggles and are not shy about sharing their struggles and where they’re at in life. A lot of times when we see influencers and people online, they look like they have this beautiful, shiny, perfect, aesthetically pleasing life and it’s not real. It’s all we see online because we just see their pictures, we just see their videos. We’re not in those homes and we’re not connecting face to face on a different level with those people. But if you spend time with real people, with your friends, with your family, then you will connect more with people that are showing you their real life and being genuine with you. All right, so then just being confident in our budget, that was something that, like I said in my last example, I struggled with. I was frustrated that I didn’t have what was a seemingly unlimited budget like a lot of these other homesteaders did.

Merissa [00:28:17]:

But I had to come to the conclusion that, you know what, we’re working really hard for what we have and that’s all that we can do. It’s not something to be depressed about. Like, we all have a different budget and we’re all on different level income wise. But if we’re doing the best that we can with what we have, then that’s all that matters. It doesn’t matter what somebody else’s budget is for their kitchen remodel or whatever. If you only have a couple of redo your kitchen, you can absolutely do the best that you have with. That. But it doesn’t help to compare ourselves to what we see online because they don’t have the same budget that we do.

Merissa [00:28:58]:

And then just to close it out, just being thankful for what we have in the United States. We are so blessed and we have so much here and we’re often just don’t take the time to stop and be thankful for the things that we do have. So, like in my example that I gave you before, I would get frustrated that I didn’t have this big, beautiful Victorian style greenhouse or whatever it was that I was jealous over that week. But I have a greenhouse. It’s not pretty, it’s not the most expensive thing that we could build, but it’s absolutely functional. It’s something that was achievable for us. It was something that we could do. And so with that, I’m so thankful for what I have because I could not have that thing.

Merissa [00:29:47]:

I could not have that greenhouse. I could not have the things that I do have. And so it helps to take time every single day just to be thankful for the things that we do have and to appreciate what we’ve been given and not think about what we haven’t been given or what we don’t have. That’s always just going to create a bad vibe. I’m not sure what the right word is, but feelings of discontent. So we don’t want to do that. But anyway, that was quite long and I apologize for that. But if you have made it all to the way to the end, congratulations.

Merissa [00:30:23]:

I really hope that this podcast was helpful for you. I hope that maybe it opened your eyes to seeing some of the things that we’re being influenced by in our day and age because sometimes it’s really hard to know. And then again, I just want to reiterate, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with earning money from advertising or earning money online. Obviously I make money from ads. They’re not the same. Like, it’s not a sponsored brand deal. But I don’t think that there is anything wrong with that. It just is how we approach it.

Merissa [00:30:57]:

And unless you know that you can really trust the person that’s putting that information out there, that you can trust that they’ve disclosed that they are getting paid or they’re not, or that they’re being completely honest about this. Product or whatever is in this picture that they’re showing or anything like that. Unless you know that you can completely trust that, then it’s good to be wise, it’s good to be wary, and it’s good to do your diligence and just learn more about that product, brand anything before you make a decision. And then whatever decision that you make has to be right for you. It has to be right for your budget and it has to be right for your family. And not just because somebody said that it was great for them. So I hope that those things are helpful. I hope that you enjoyed listening to this podcast and that you’ll be back next time.

Merissa [00:31:47]:

If you have any questions or comments, you can leave those on the blog post that goes with this podcast, or you can always email me at [email protected]. As I’ve mentioned before, in other podcasts, I do have a link in the show notes to a Q and A section and I would like to do some future podcasts that are all just Q and A’s. Doesn’t have to be on this topic, can be on anything recipes, simple living, slower living, anything like that. Go ahead and leave your question in there. I’d like to do a whole episode I’m just dedicated to those questions, so otherwise I am going to head out for the day. But I hope you enjoyed listening and that you will join me again.