it doesn't do much for the brands. Mostly because the brands are stupid and don't hit up the right influencers
It's a cesspool. Almost everything you read in the travel industry is bought, in some sense. There's an incredible dilution and everyone who enjoys travel is suddenly pitching themselves as an influencer. We get pitched all the time by bloggers working on stories. One recently had a million questions and a lot of "asks" and when I asked where her article would appear as the domain in her email had no live website, she said it hadn't launched yet. I said once she launched, I would be happy to help provide info for her article and she started to get belligerent.
Most of these people pitch themselves as having X pageviews, X followers, etc. But when I look, they have no engagement. I'll look at their 10 most recent blog or SoMe posts and they will not have a single comment. Not one.
Okay, so all of that to say that brands are getting pitched constantly. We have gone out and pitched events to influencers and gotten some good coverage in the press, but for us "influencer marketing" is just a piece of old-fashioned PR. Basically, we're looking for actual journalists. The big difference now is we don't discriminate against bloggers ipso facto.
The best successes are when an "influencer" becomes a "fan" - we have a handful of journalists who regularly cover our press releases because they had a good experience during a "fam trip" (aka "familiarization trip" aka "media junket") and they became fans and now welcome our press releases because on any givne day they might be starved for a post topic.
