Social media influencers play big role when it comes to trust

My daughter loves to watch YouTube videos of young women talking about their “hauls” or in the language of us older folk – the things they recently bought at their favorite store(s). From the hottest shade of lipstick and nail polish to the newest fashion craze to what’s hot in music – she’s on top of it.

In fact, these videos even inspired her to launch her own YouTube channel, which surprisingly has nearly 500 followers with one of her videos reaching 8,500 views! Not too bad for a 14-year-old.

Back in the “old days” our purchases were influenced by friends, classmates, TV commercials, magazine ads, and even who was on our cereal boxes. But today social media influencers are pushing those traditional forms aside, at least that’s the conclusion of a new study conducted by Twitter and analytics firm Annalect.
 
The study found that 40 percent of those people asked said they purchased an item online after having seen it used by a social media influencer on YouTube, Vine, Twitter or Instagram. It went on to find that 20 percent of respondents shared what influencers were promoting -- nothing like word-of-mouth to boost sales.
 
Among other findings:

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