Clout Chasing, the Life Line of Emergency Influencers on Social Media

By Olajumoke Okunade

The use of the internet has become more popular than it used to be decades ago. Social media platforms have been developed and upgraded to encourage and improve social interactions among users. Some might argue that the benefits of social media outweigh its disadvantages and vice versa. One of its numerous benefits include income generation for its users.

Social media influencing is without doubt, one way many people make money in the 21st century. It has become a full time job for many now. More people have a sustainable means of income and can pay bills through influencing.

Content creation and delivery is one way many influencers get their identity as “influencers”. This, coupled with providing useful information to people and, making a positive difference in the lives of people. From activists, to reality television celebrities, medical doctors, lawyers, motivational speakers and lifestyle gurus, social media influencing involves having credibility in a specific field, and an ability to persuade others through the integrity they have built over time.

Influencers make use of their large follower base to promote brands, businesses, companies, political and civil movements, knowledge-based content, social causes, etc. Often times, when a social media influencer endorses a movement or a cause, most of their followers join them in doing same. This is how important social media influencing is in our world today.

Many times, social media users, (especially those with a average following or people with a pint-size following) make up stories to ensure people talk about them, or make the trend list on social media. This is known as clout-chasing. Some times, they put up a controversial post, sparking up a lot of emotions, and debate among those who read it.

The aim is to ensure that they are the buzz of the moment – guarantee that every tweet and post on every blog is news about what they had done, claimed to have done, or even something they said about someone more popular than they are. What these set of people aim at is to have the ‘social media influencer’ status.

Clout chasing is one way by which people want to get more popular. It is usually an action that often times involves making a negative, untrue statement about a person who is more popular than they are, in order to get unnecessary attention for themselves and boost their popularity. Trying to bring others down or making meaningless controversial statement, is no way to make a difference in people’s lives. The most popular social media influencers do not get their credit through clout chasing.

Clout chasers are known to do anything it would take, for them to become very popular. Desperation is no way to create a credible reputation. Credibility and integrity are unarguably two of the most important distinctive features of a social media influencer.

Credibility is usually lost even before it is earned when clout chasing becomes an option for popularity gain.
Sadly, the reality is that clout chasing seems to be the easy way out for those who seek cheap popularity. It is in reality, an attempt to feed off other people’s hard-earned popularity. It has no long-lasting effect and, the attention gotten so fast, soon fades away.