Survey: Over 63% of Americans Have Followed a Brand Featured in an Influencer’s Post (And More Interesting Findings)

No longer dabblers in niches and industries, these internet stars are the future of marketing. They have become masters of the trade – whatever that may be. 

Business. Politics. Entertainment. Name it, and there’s a YouTube sensation, TikTok dancer, LinkedIn thought leader or Instagram celebrity who has conquered that space.

Whether world domination is part of their agenda or not, there’s a place where almost all types of influencers rule: social media. They’re so ubiquitous that we, the users of social networking apps and sites, have no choice but to be a captive audience to their content.

And as their audience, we’ve seen them do all sorts of stuff, from makeup reviews and pulling pranks on their siblings to – get this – showing their followers how to sleep.

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An Influencer for Every Industry

No matter your hobbies or interests, you’ll find an army of influencers owning the space. Just tell us one thing: What is an influencer doing on your Facebook timeline? And we’ll tell you who you are (kidding, we are not as advanced as Facebook’s algorithm yet).

We’ve also heard about brand and business influencers amassing hordes of followers, closing massive endorsement deals and living a lavish lifestyle. But does influencer marketing work so successfully all the time?

We had a hunch that the answer was no, so we set out to make a better sense of the role of influencers in our ordinary lives. 

Our team at Thrive, an influencer marketing agency, surveyed 514 Americans about their feelings toward social media influencers. We defined influencers as a social media user/profile with 2,000 or more followers who has been doing some kind of, well, influencing in their chosen space.

What we found out is distilled in these influencer marketing statistics 2021:

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A Virtual Rendezvous

Social media is the meeting place for consumers, influencers and brands. But without the very first group of users (that’s us), there wouldn’t be the burgeoning influencer marketing industry we know today. 

It’s our love for the candid, relatable, funny or touching that has lent a powerful platform to strangers who, over time, become like our friends.

That said, we tried to gauge people’s social media habits and learned that about a third spend an average of 30 minutes to an hour on social platforms each day. The percentage of users that devote 1-2 hours and over two hours is remarkably similar, at 27.82 and 24.12 percent respectively. Meanwhile, very few users – only 14.4 percent – spend less than 30 minutes on social media every day.