Confession: I don’t remember ever caring about numbers until I got Instagram and Twitter (sorry to Mr Weeks, my old math's teacher). Then, like everybody else in the world, I got slowly obsessed with how many likes, follows and faves I was getting. And I'm not alone; a friend once confessed that she deletes her Instagram pics if nobody likes them within the hour. But in a world where Vine stars and YouTube vloggers attract major cachet (and cash) for their social media numbers, it makes sense that ordinary people like you and me are trying to channel a little bit of that gold dust in to our own lives.
Now fashion labels want in on the action, as they have started rewarding our quest for internet fame. Back in August, Marc Jacobs awarded visitors perfume and jewellery in exchange for tweets from his pop-up store in Covent Garden. And this week OnePiece – the onesie specialists loved by Ellie Goulding and Justin Bieber – have gone one better with their new loyalty system. They’re awarding store credit based on how many followers you already have, and you don’t even have to send out a single hashtagged tweet.
You simply connect your Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr, Vine, Pinterest and YouTube profiles to their site, and you get $1 off for every 500 followers you have. You can earn up to $500 in credit, although that'd mean you’d need to have 250,000 followers across all your social media accounts (er, still working on that one). There’s even an option to connect through your LinkedIn.
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So will we soon be exchanging our digital #klout for clothes, cash and holidays in the future? After all, we’ve seen the fashion bloggers who convert their followings into free clothes, spa trips and money. Even joke Twitter accounts like @tweetlikeagirl (official bio: 'Omg, follow me betch') say they make $500 to $1000 for every branded tweet.
Of course, this is all well and good if you’ve got thousands of Twitter followers to swap for as many animal print onesies as your heart desires. But for the majority of us low-level users – with one little retweet here, another silent fave there – don’t possess the huge numbers needed to pull in big rewards. Right?
Wrong. According to Philippa, 26, an advertising planner, she's copped countless freebies through social media. Despite having only a few hundred followers on Twitter. She’s nabbed skiing holidays, Nike vouchers, wine-tasting trips to France, and more gig tickets than she could actually attend.
'I haven’t paid for a music festival in three years', she says. Instead, she channels her Twitter and Instagram activity into one thing: entering competitions.
'People always ask why I’m so lucky, but I’m not. I just enter more things than anything else'. For her, it all boils down to a little bit of Insta-savvy. Take, for instance, her winning six tickets to this year’s Wilderness festival. 'I entered two competitions because I saw that not many people had, and I made sure to tweet my entries out with a hashtag and tell my friends to like it on Instagram'.
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Her haul may seem pretty outrageous, but it’s just a drop in the ocean for brands. Most are already allocated a number of social media freebies to give away and they’re happier gifting it to regular people, most of whom prove far more grateful than your average C-list celeb.
'I think the dream in the future is to have enough influence that you get paid by brands to do things', Philippa says. 'But even an ordinary person with a few hundred followers can do it. It’s got nothing to do with luck'.
Now if you excuse me, I’ve got an Instagram competition to enter.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.