In the #VoxPopuli survey for June, we were interested in whether our respondents were familiar with deinfluencers and how much they trusted their content. Deinfluencing is a reaction to the culture of consumerism, which aims to fight against the constant creation of the need to buy new products and services by influencers.
Deinfluencers, therefore, instead of promoting brands through positive reviews or paid ads, do the opposite – inform about products or services with a ‘label’ – DON’T buy.
The goal of the survey was to find out how familiar our followers on our social networks are with this term, whether disinfluencers can influence their opinion, and how much a negative review implies a change in their opinion when purchasing a product or service.
In the survey we conducted on Instagram, more than half of the respondents (65%) are familiar with deinfluencing, and the same number of respondents support deinfluencers. On LinkedIn, on the other hand, the percentage of respondents who have heard of the term de influencing is slightly lower (59%). Only 33% of respondents on Instagram believe that deinfluencing is sincere communication, while 67% claim it is just another way to attract attention. Our respondents predict that the deinfluencing trend will still grow, which is what 56% voted for.
All of our respondents have encountered a negative review at least once, and most of them claim to have seen it on Facebook, while slightly fewer mention TikTok and Instagram. Most of our respondents believe that influencers approach negative reviews spontaneously on Instagram (as many as 73%) and on LinkedIn (57%). Only 30% of respondents on Instagram include their comments in negative reviews.
Although most of them consider deinfluencing to be insincere, for most of our respondents, both on Instagram (84%) and LinkedIn (78%), a negative review changed their opinion about a product or service. So even though more than half of respondents on Instagram (68%) bought something at least once on the recommendation of an influencer, it is interesting to note that the majority of respondents, even 89%, accept more often the advice of other, ‘ordinary’ users, than on the recommendation of an influencer.