No one wants to hear this but followers do matter… for some companies.

With Influencer Marketing & Social Media on the rise your typical job requirements are changing and it might be really scary for some of you. If you aren’t on Social Media you’re already falling behind and if you are on social media but don’t have thousands of followers, some jobs may be out of reach no matter how skilled you are.

A few days ago I discovered a YouTube video featuring a professional photographer by the name of Yvette Roman who has shot all sorts of celebrities over the years, some of which include Nicole Richie, Matt Reeves, and more. In this video she discusses how she had arranged to shoot for a very large company and had almost everything in place, she was just waiting for the contract to be delivered to her inbox.

Unfortunately what she got wasn’t a contract but a message stating “we can’t work with you because we discovered you don’t have 50,000 Instagram followers”.

That Company is also known as Canon, yes THE Canon as in the photography company holding over 2.3 million Instagram followers and a professional reputation.

The amount of “followers” you have is becoming more relevant than your actual skill set.

Many will argue that followers isn’t what matters but the amount of influence you have. In some situations that statement is completely true but according to this post, that isn’t always the case.

This is truly frightening for some and has resulted in individuals dishing out thousands of dollars in order to see their accounts sky rocket.

I’ve even had my fair share of “follower comparison” while working as a micro influencer.

Here’s my short story: I started working as an influencer & photographer for a decent sized company in early 2018. Everything went good for the first few months… until they stopped communicating with me.

I emailed them numerous times regarding my unpaid work and reached out to them on Instagram with no answer. During this time I discovered they were working with other Instagram Influencers who had North of 50k followers.

Immediately I compared our work, mine was just as good as theirs. I knew they had chosen them over me solely for the purpose of gaining more exposure. This entire incident left me feeling irritated not only because they handled it in an unprofessional manner but because the quality of my work didn’t matter.

They eventually emailed me claiming they were “busy and just didn’t have the time to email me” which we both knew was far from the truth.

This new “job requirement” is scary & it’s affecting everyone