SPECIAL REPORT | Social media has risen to be an important platform for youths to present their creativity, and some go to the top and turn into social media influencers or Key Opinion Leaders (KOL) as their numbers of followers boom.

The definition of social media influencers varies. According to San Francisco-based public relations agency Pixlee, social media influencers are users of social media who have established credibility in a specific industry, have access to a wide audience and are able to influence others by virtue of their authenticity and reach.

Alexis Sue Ann, 22, started as a radio announcer in Malaysian English language station, Hitz.fm, before she turned into a full-time social influencer on Instagram and YouTube.

Today, she’s known as a social media influencer, a fashion blogger, a fitness model and an emcee.

For Alexis, her sponsored posts on Instagram generate 40 percent of her total monthly income.

Ninety percent of her posting gigs are obtained from Instagram. Various brands come to her on a daily basis and ask her to post their products on her page. Each post can cost thousands of ringgit.

Currently Alexis (photo) has 30,000 followers on Instagram, and she is one of the most prominent social media influencers in the country. At various events, she is often in the limelight, walking with other social media stars.

Some of the high-end brands like Guess, Coach, and Zalora have approached her to showcase their products on her Instagram account.

Instagram is a social networking app made for sharing photos and videos via smartphones. It provides each user with a profile, which can either be public or private, and a news feed to interact with others.

Since it started in 2010, it has become a platform for the Generation Y (Gen Y) to share their lives in filtered squares.

On Instagram, people pay attention more to the image itself than to the caption. When some hashtags come along, these will be able to attract more people from all around the world to connect through a related hashtag.

Recently, Instagram has started to follow in Facebook’s footsteps. Both have begun competing with another social networking app called Snapchat by replicating its exact features, which Instagram calls “Stories”. The latest “Live” function also enables Instagram users to interact more with their followers.

Instagram is currently a prominent site of commerce used by more than a million advertisers, which itself derives value from the content created by its users for free.

Alexis is also one of the female cast members of JinnyboyTV, which has 763,000 subscribers on its YouTube channel. Her first video, “When You Date Someone Hotter Than You”, which was uploaded in August 2016, has hit a million views to date.

“That’s the time when an influx of followers came in,” she said. “My number of followers increased drastically. YouTube does help a lot.”

She usually limits herself to posting once a day on Instagram, but will make exceptions if there are too many jobs coming in.

For Instagrammers, posting time is rather important, for it will affect a person’s engagement with his or her followers.

At least 70 percent of the Instagram posts by Alexis are endorsed with sponsorships and product reviews.

According to a 2015 report by Deloitte, 47 percent of the millennials’ shopping decisions are influenced by social media, while only 19 percent of other age groups use social media to make purchasing decisions...