Those users of social media networks classed as influencers use the popularity of their profiles on social media networks to attract advertisers and promote their products in exchange for economic remuneration. Their relevance in marketing has increased significantly in recent years. In Spain, advertising-sector investment in the area of activity of influencers grew by 185% in 2019.

The boom experienced by this new role played by influencers in the digital sphere, closely linked to recommendations to consume certain products, has encouraged many young people to attempt this activity. They do this mainly on Instagram, the social media network that concentrates almost half of the daily digital consumption of young people aged between 15 and 26 years. Based on the size of the community of followers itself, the term micro-influencer has emerged, to designate influencers with a community anywhere between 5,000 and 100,000 followers.

Micro-influencers have a major impact on companies’ sales strategies, since their community of reference views them as experts in the subjects, themes, or products that they recommend and they also establish a close relationship with their followers. For brands, this generates a greater return on the investment allocated to advertising than they could obtain otherwise, for example, based on investing in advertising on traditional media such as radio or television.

The following table shows an average for the activity carried out and income earned by the 34 micro-influencers who took part in the study underlying this article.

Some 62.16% of micro-influencers who participated in the study made clear that they are not satisfied with their earnings from their work on social media networks. Although some see potential in their work as influencers (32.5%), the majority consider that the hours devoted to their Instagram profiles are poorly paid. There are various reasons that lead them to think this, which are explained below.

The first factor of dissatisfaction that is revealed by the micro-influencers surveyed is the large amount of time that they devote to creating and maintaining their profiles. Firstly, an influencer needs a certain degree of social notoriety – even if only virtual – constructed on the basis of a lot of work. According to the parameters shown in table 1, those micro-influencers analysed needed around eight years to construct a community that enables them to earn money for some of their publications. The work invested by influencers in the construction of their community can be considered as non-remunerated.

Secondly, each of their publications requires a significant amount of time to be devoted by its author. In order to create a post on his or her profile, an influencer must carry out adequate pre-production work on the contents. Since this is a professional audiovisual production, the influencer decides, among other aspects, on costumes, locations and recording or photographic production materials. Furthermore, once the post’s contents are published, the influencer must undertake its monitoring and management. An influencer’s community is constructed in this phase, through interaction with his or her followers. According to the study conducted, micro-influencers invest an average of three hours on these tasks for each publication of content posted.

The second factor of dissatisfaction expressed by the influencers interviewed is that not all the entries that they publish can be considered as generators of income. Many of them do not have commercial aims, even though they are determining factors in maintaining or strengthening the added value that they offer: the generation and building of loyalty among a community of users. According to analysis of the posts of the 34 micro-influencers who participated in this study, they receive zero remuneration for, at least, 42.5% of their posts. The generation of income from a publication depends on brands being alert to a micro-influencer’s potential for making an impact on a niche community. If a brand believes it to be strategically advantageous for its advertising campaign, it will reach an agreement with a micro-influencer for a specific payment for the use of his or her profile – and image – to promote its products.

Thirdly, micro-influencers express dissatisfaction because, in relation to the size of their community and to the bond that they build with their followers, their incomes should be higher. This relationship between community size and interactions generated can be evaluated based on two relevant parameters for the analysis of the success of a marketing campaign on Instagram: engagement and earned media value.

The engagement, bond or commitment established between an influencer and his or her community of followers, is an index used to calculate the impact of a profile on the social media networks. For its measurement, three values are used: the number of interactions with the post (likes and comments), the number of posts published in a determined period and the number of followers of the account analysed. Thus, its calculation is determined by the percentage of interactions that the post has in relationship with the number of followers of the related profile.

The study carried out calculated the engagement of the 34 users in the sample during April and May 2020. The results were compared with those of another 21 relevant influencers (Spanish and international). It was confirmed that the engagement generated by those micro-influencers participating in the study (an average of 4%) is higher than that achieved by celebrities such as Kylie Jenner, Paula Echevarría, Cristiano Ronaldo, Alexandra Pereira, Lionel Messi and Kim Kardashian, who achieved an average engagement of 2.38% over the same period of time. Moreover, it is worth highlighting that one of the micro-influencers in the sample has the profile that achieved the greatest engagement of all those users compared, at 13.9%. Based on the data obtained, it is possible to speak of significant differences in the average impact of advertising campaigns conducted on Instagram via major celebrities, on the one hand, and via micro-influencers, on the other. However, the amount paid is usually established in relation to the number of followers rather than based on the impact generated by the posts published. Thus, although many micro-influencers have a loyal community that follows their consumer recommendations, the incomes that they earn are low and do not reflect the potential impact that their actions can have on the Instagram community. This difference is even more evident when the second indicator mentioned is used, i.e. the earned media value.

The value produced by a commercial action on social media networks is known as the earned media value (EMV). In this case, the indicator depends on each influencer’s sway and reach over their community of followers, as their role in recommending the product and their implication in producing the message is fundamental. Through the EMV it is possible to calculate the most appropriate price for each publication, in relation to each of the 34 micro-influencers analysed.

The EMV is calculated based on three indicators: interactions (likes and comments), number of followers and the cost of generating one thousand impressions on a post in a determined advertising format (cost per thousand or CPT). The CPT values of each medium are usually established based on the advertising market itself. Thus, to calculate the EMV of a micro-influencer’s publications, the CPT is considered to be equal to 20 euros. Based on the data collected, an estimate of the EMV of the participating micro-influencers has been calculated and compared with the income declared per post. The data obtained enable the difference between the two values to be presented (in euros) and the percentage difference between them to be calculated.

The results show, in general, a significant difference between what micro-influencers could earn and what they actually do earn for each publication posted. Micro-influencers, on average, earn some 95% less than the expected EMV. Some of them, in fact, earn a much lower amount than their potential earnings (up to −1,173%, in the most extreme case).

Of the 34 micro-influencers that took part in the sample, 13 earn more than the EMV calculation and their positive percentage difference with regard to potential EMV is 49%. In contrast, another 17 users earn less than the EMV potential. For them, the distance from the EMV calculation is highly significant, since they were fell average of −205% below the projected EMV. There is an obvious difference between the EMV average determined for the entire sample (128 euros per publication) and the average earnings declared by the participants in the study (102 euros per publication).

The disparity between the calculated potential and the real income of these micro-influencers shows that they offer a profile that is used by brands to add greater value to their products at a low cost. In economic terms, advertising campaigns do not recognise the capacity of micro-influencers to generate this added value to a brand. The gap of over 25 euros between what should be earned and what is declared as being earned for each post published shows that the majority of micro-influencers are right: they are earning less than should be expected for their activity.

Micro-influencers produce added value and returns on investment for commercial agents and, above all, for social media networks. Therefore, their activities should be considered as work: what they do requires them to perform a creative activity that involves an investment of resources (time and money) and their activity is, at the current time, vital for the development of advertising campaigns on social media networks. However, on many occasions, this work does not generate any economic remuneration for the creators of the contents.

The activity of the micro-influencer, according to the characteristics described in the study carried out, is in line with the principal characteristics of any employment considered as precarious. Micro-influencers work many hours without payment and receive a wage lower than should correspond to them for their activity. Furthermore, many find it difficult to make ends meet with their earnings, while their actions – including unpaid actions – are taken advantage of both by brands and by major technological platforms in order to obtain significant economic benefits.

The research study “Influencers and employment precarity”, which monitored the activity on Instagram of 34 micro-influencers over a period of two months, presents basic indicators related with economic income and with time invested in the preparation, feeding and management of their profiles. Within the context of the study, a total of 700 publications posted by these influencers were analysed.

Despite the depth of the analysis, the results of the study cannot be extrapolated to all micro-influencers on Instagram. The study is simply an initial approach to measuring and effecting research projections.

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