User:Klcarver/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Influencer marketing

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
I chose this article to evaluate because it relates to a lot of the content I regularly see on social media. I want to learn more about what influencer marketing is, why it is so popular, and how the effectiveness of marketing campaigns is measured. Most of the information I have been reading about influencer marketing recently appears to be very opinion-based and I am interested to see if the content on the Wikipedia page has more in-depth information than what I've read elsewhere.

Evaluate the article
The Influencer marketing Wikipedia page appears to have several issues that need to be addressed. Although there is a fair amount of information on the page and many sources are cited, the page indicates that some of the sources may not be reliable and others have not been verified. Seeing this notification at the top of the page reduces the credibility of the page before the reader even begins looking at the content.

The lead section of the article is comprised of a single paragraph that briefly describes influencer marketing. It does not describe all of the major sections or include a great amount of detail. The article's tone seems to be neutral and does not appear to support any particular belief or position. The content is not written in a way that is intended to persuade the opinion of readers or impact their actions.

There is only one image and caption included on the page, which displays a popular fashion blogger who creates sponsored fashion-related posts. While this is a good example, it would be helpful to see more examples of areas where influencer marketing can be used other than just fashion. There are well known influencers in categories like the sports, fitness, beauty, and travel industries that all use social media to promote products related to their area of influence.

Citations on the page are working and listed properly, but do not all seem to be from credible or unbiased sources. The sources listed are somewhat diverse and a few of them do appear to be from properly-researched scholarly articles. Many of the sources listed are from news sites that are not well known and others are from news sites that are very popular, but historically known for containing viewpoints that are not neutral.

One way to improve the page could be to first clarify what an influencer is. The influencer marketing page states that "there is a lack of consensus about what an influencer is," which immediately does not give readers confidence in the term influencer marketing since it contains the unclearly defined word influencer. The Wikipedia page for influencer redirects readers to the Internet celebrity page, which also contains a section of information about influencers and marketing networks.

A section titled Fake Influencers is listed on the page, which I do not believe is relevant to the specific topic as it is used on the page. This is a section I might expect to see on a page that discusses what an influencer is and be referenced here to explain how fake influencers can create confusion when brands attempt to use influencer marketing on social media. It would make more sense to remove this section and place it on a page about influencers instead.

Feedback on the Talk Page for this article supports my findings that the information listed is unreliable. Much more research and fact-based content is needed to make this page a quality resource for information-finding.