The Challenges and Opportunities Faced by Egyptian Female Social Media Influencers While Owning and Advertising their Brand

نوع المستند : المقالة الأصلية

المؤلف

Lecturer, Faculty of Communication and Mass Media, The British University in Egypt (BUE)

المستخلص

 
 
With the advent of the Covid-19 pandemic, social media became a vital retail platform and a novel marketing tool. In recent years, businesses opted to collaborate with social media influencers (SMIs), who became a crucial component of their marketing mix and endorsed their brands. There has been an increase in female SMIs who launched their brands to generate a new stream of income. Coupled with the challenges in owning a brand, comes opportunities. Hence, for this study eighteen structured in-depth interviews conducted with Egyptian SMIs gained insight into the challenges, and opportunities of owning and advertising brands. According to the interviewees, the challenges that female SMIs faced are judgment, intrusion, criticism, receiving abusive comments, not taken seriously, fear of failure, self-presentation concerns, content creation and time management challenges as well as, financial worries. On the other hand, there are an array of opportunities namely exposure, visibility, income, benefits, independence, gaining confidence, and professional advancement. Furthermore, the study revealed ways SMIs overcame the challenges and the challenges that turned into opportunities.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

الكلمات الرئيسية