When Instagram influencer Aggie Lal released her “How to grow your Instagram course,” her followers all over the world were more than happy to sign up.
For many, it’s an opportunity to learn trade secrets from a travel blogger who claims to have started out her journey a broke traveler. Aspiring social media influencers paid the pricey sign-up fee to participate in the 12-week course.
But now, Aggie Lal’s once adoring fans have put together a class suit against her after experiencing alleged technical difficulties six weeks into the program.
One participant even went as far as calling the whole thing a pyramid scheme. The course expected students to influence someone else to sign up for the course.
A course that would later anger some very vocal wannabe influencers because of Aggie’s “lack of WiFi”.
So what went
Simply put, Aggie Lal’s Master Tribe Course failed to meet expectations.
Material for the first week seemed pretty standard. The course kicked off with a compelling brand story, a couple of book recommendations, and a challenge to keep her tribe engaged.
But a red flag came up when the course assigned students affiliate links. They can use the links to promote the course to their followers and profit from it.
There’s nothing wrong with asking your followers to spread the word about your product or service. But there’s a proper and ethical way to do it.
The most important question that influencers need to answer is “what’s in it for them?” They can’t just ask people for something of value to you without offering something that is equally valuable to them in return.
In Aggie Lal’s case, she failed to prove her course’s value before asking the participants to promote it to their own tribes.
Then things took a turn for the worst.
The course’s participants realized that there were about 500 of them that Aggie set out to mentor. That’s 500 people investing a considerable amount with the hopes of one day becoming Instagram stars!
Becoming a top influencer on the photo-sharing platform is already competitive enough. So imagine how hard it is to set yourself from the competition when you’re up against 500 people who are following the same exact template as you.
According to one user, the quality of the course was also not worth its hefty price tag. Most of the videos were less than five minutes long and contained information that anyone can find on Google.
Aggie also made controversial comments that offended people like “people who work at Starbucks aren’t living up to their full potential” and “when posing for pictures, try not to look pregnant”.
When the whole thing turned into a PR nightmare, Aggie Lal posted a public apology on her Instagram. She stated that the whole mess was “Due to some hurdles with (her) health and WiFi connectivity.”
She claims that herself and her team have created almost 9 hours of video content. But because of unavoidable circumstances, they weren’t able to deliver the material on the timeline they specified.
Aggie’s intention for the course is “to inspire the community that she dearly loves.” However, the sad reality is she only let her tribe down despite her best efforts.
To this day, there are still people lambasting her IG posts with comments and criticism. This just proves that social media is indeed a double-edged sword.
One one hand, Instagram is a powerful tool to spread awareness and ignite change. On the other, it can magnify a simple mistake and make it go viral in an instant.
Lessons learned from this Instagram tragedy
In a nutshell, influencer marketing is not as glamorous as what influencers make it out to be.
And it takes more than sweet talk and good intentions to launch a valuable product.
Becoming an online influencer is more than just following tried and tested strategies used by the biggest names.
You also need to get creative and find unique ways to grow and engage your social following. Social Noor, for instance, helps you get likes and views from real users.
Tools like this allow your brand to generate traction with your target audience and build an organic following on your social media accounts.
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