While the right fit should still be a brand’s #1 goal in influ­encer mar­ket­ing, every­day influ­encers are ris­ing in pow­er as the mar­ket moves toward a push noti­fi­ca­tion world in which con­sumers demand imme­di­ate answers and rely more on rec­om­men­da­tions from famil­iar fig­ures. And the art of influ­encer mar­ket­ing is fur­ther com­pli­cat­ed by emerg­ing plat­forms like Periscope and Meerkat which, to date, have demand­ed addi­tion­al exper­i­men­ta­tion and strate­gies, fur­ther frag­ment­ing mar­keters’ time and bud­gets.

Dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing experts speak­ing at ad:tech San Fran­cis­co dis­cussed these issues, includ­ing how to work with influ­encers, as well as what the chang­ing media land­scape means for the influ­encer mar­ket­ing space over­all.

Here are six myths that emerged from that con­ver­sa­tion and the real­i­ty brands need to know now.

Myth #1: Only celebri­ties and social media stars are influ­encers.

Real­i­ty: Every­one is a poten­tial influ­encer. Brand advo­cates are every­where.

“Our men­tal­i­ty is that every­one is an influ­encer,” says Crys­tal Dun­can, direc­tor of client strat­e­gy and oper­a­tions at influ­encer net­work Izea.

In fact, accord­ing to Todd Som­mers, direc­tor of brand mar­ket­ing and con­tent strat­e­gy at hotel chain Best West­ern, 400,000 con­sumers stay in a Best West­ern prop­er­ty each night, writ­ing what he calls “waf­fles and Wi-Fi reviews” and, he says, “If those peo­ple are on social telling sto­ries, we don’t need A‑list and B‑list celebri­ties.”

Rather, the Best West­ern brand wants to “unleash the pow­er of [its] cus­tomers” and “unlock what they’re real­ly doing – tak­ing a jour­ney – and we want to help them share,” Som­mers adds.

Take, for exam­ple, the brand’s Dream­ing of Sum­mer cam­paign in which Best West­ern let its cus­tomers talk about plan­ning their vaca­tions.

“Instead of cre­ative that forces itself on them, we opened up the con­ver­sa­tion to the every­day influ­encer side,” Som­mers adds.

In addi­tion, he says his “lit­mus test” for new influ­encers – whether it’s YouTu­ber Stu­art Edge or an aver­age Joe – is “Show me [your] best piece of con­tent. If they don’t know how to cre­ate great con­tent for their audi­ence, they won’t influ­ence peo­ple the way we want them to. I real­ly want to be wowed out of the gate.”

For her part, Daina Mid­dle­ton, head of glob­al busi­ness devel­op­ment at Twit­ter, points to client Cabela’s, a retail­er of out­door goods, which “did a lot to pro­mote the groups that were advo­cates for the brand, which drove huge vol­ume for them.”

Fur­ther, Som­mers says the Coast Guard hands over the reins of its social chan­nels to a dif­fer­ent per­son each week to post about their jobs, which helps human­ize the brand.

And famil­iar fig­ures have the addi­tion­al poten­tial bonus of being relat­able and there­fore pos­si­bly even more influ­en­tial than actu­al celebri­ties.

“Would you go to a restau­rant because Kim Kar­dashi­an talked about it? Maybe. But you would go to restau­rant because your best friend or your mom said it was great,” Dun­can adds.

And, Ian Wolf­man, act­ing pres­i­dent at influ­encer plat­form Point­Burst, says, this is in part because we are mov­ing into a push noti­fi­ca­tion world where the trend is toward more imme­di­a­cy with less reliance on search and more on word-of-mouth rec­om­men­da­tions from famil­iar fig­ures.

Fur­ther, Kei­th Halasy, direc­tor of pro­gram mar­ket­ing at mobile mar­ket­ing firm Urban Air­ship, notes “noti­fi­ca­tions are the remote con­trol for apps” and some push noti­fi­ca­tions are even action­able now, which pro­vides even more engage­ment poten­tial.

Mid­dle­ton agrees.

“We’re becom­ing a push noti­fi­ca­tion world with mobile and wear­ables,” she says.

And as mobile becomes more and more impor­tant, expec­ta­tions are get­ting faster and faster, she says.

“We have adver­tis­ers that say the only rel­e­van­cy is right now,” Mid­dle­ton adds.

Myth #2: Brands and their influ­encers must be on every avail­able plat­form.

Real­i­ty: Fatigue is ris­ing as brands and influ­encers con­tin­ue to exper­i­ment with emerg­ing plat­forms and the mar­ket needs a solu­tion for this frag­men­ta­tion.

Brands like Land Rover are start­ing to play with new­er plat­forms like Periscope, but, over­all, they are still exper­i­ment­ing and work­ing out spe­cif­ic val­ue.

Mid­dle­ton says Land Rover in par­tic­u­lar is “great in want­i­ng to involve cus­tomers by tak­ing [them] on unique expe­ri­ences in the car” with Periscope, but, she adds, “I don’t think they under­stand what val­ue it is bring­ing yet, but through this exper­i­men­ta­tion, they will learn what’s valu­able and what’s not.”

In addi­tion, Tim Sovay, senior vice pres­i­dent at direct-to-con­sumer pub­lish­ing com­pa­ny theAu­di­ence, says Nick­elodeon was using Periscope on the red car­pet with­in 24 hours of the plat­form launch, but he also notes that brands are gen­er­al­ly becom­ing exhaust­ed by the num­ber of avail­able plat­forms like this.

“Some­thing has to change with con­tin­ued frag­men­ta­tion,” Wolf­man adds.

In fact, Mid­dle­ton says Twit­ter pur­chased cre­ative net­work Niche, which pro­vides soft­ware, com­mu­ni­ty and mon­e­ti­za­tion ser­vices, because the social net­work was “see­ing that there’s fatigue in the mar­ket for brands strug­gling to come up with con­tent — Who do I work with? How do I find them? How do I think across mul­ti­ple plat­forms?”

Now, Niche enables Twit­ter to “pro­vide end-to-end white glove ser­vice for [adver­tis­ers] when influ­encers and brands are fatigued about how to choose what to use for what,” she adds.

Myth #3: Brands are in con­trol of their mes­sag­ing.

Real­i­ty: Mes­sag­ing is much more about par­tic­i­pa­tion now.

Brands used to be in con­trol of their mes­sages, but the real goal now is to encour­age par­tic­i­pa­tion, Mid­dle­ton says.

“Our new role is about nur­tur­ing the rela­tion­ship and the long-term approach, which is dif­fi­cult some­times,” she says. “Brands feel like they are los­ing con­trol when they lost it hon­est­ly a long time ago, but it hasn’t set­tled in. Think­ing about that helps reframe it across the board, not just with influ­encers.”

Som­mers agrees his brand lost con­trol of its mes­sag­ing long ago, which is in part why Best West­ern decid­ed to post the three most recent reviews for every hotel on its web­site.

“A lot of times, those reviews can be neg­a­tive, but we real­ized if we didn’t put them on there, cus­tomers would leave the site to see them,” he says. “And we would rather put our­selves in a posi­tion of deliv­er­ing a good expe­ri­ence.”

Myth #4: Influ­encers only appeal to young con­sumers.

Real­i­ty: There is poten­tial to tap influ­encers for a vari­ety of audi­ences, pro­vid­ed it is the right fit for a giv­en brand.

Per Sovay, his firm includes a net­work of 6000 influ­encers, includ­ing A‑list and B‑list celebri­ties who are per­haps not dig­i­tal natives, as well as Vine and Insta­gram stars. But that isn’t just Mil­len­ni­als.

“The per­cep­tion is that every­one is an 18-year-old in Oma­ha with a mas­sive fol­low­ing and no tal­ent,” he says. “But we run cam­paigns for Farmer’s Insur­ance, which is appeal­ing to mid­dle-aged males. There’s a place for every­one to par­tic­i­pate. It’s about how to build sus­tained val­ue and you have to be able to cre­ate great con­tent that pro­vides val­ue.”

Myth #5: The big­ger the fan base, the bet­ter.

Real­i­ty: The right fit is far more impor­tant.

In addi­tion, Sovay says big­ger isn’t always bet­ter in terms of fan count. In fact, some A‑list celebri­ties have dimin­ished their influ­ence by spam­ming their audi­ences and los­ing trust.

Instead, it should be about what­ev­er is right for the brand.

“Brands are des­per­ate to find some­one that fits with their brand ethos in a com­pelling and authen­tic way,” Mid­dle­ton says. “It may be a celebri­ty, but it may be some­one you’re not aware of. That’s the essence: What­ev­er is right for the brand.”

Myth #6: The influ­encer com­mu­ni­ty is naïve and inex­pe­ri­enced.

Real­i­ty: Influ­encers are becom­ing much savvi­er.

Influ­encers are “turn­ing more into a busi­ness with legit rep­re­sen­ta­tion and pro­fes­sion­al enter­tain­ment agen­cies have big depart­ments rep­re­sent­ing these influ­encers,” Sovay says. “They are look­ing for record­ing deals and want to get on TV…it’s not quite the wild, wild west it was a few years ago.”

What influ­encer mar­ket­ing myths would you add to the list?