BRANDS CONTINUE INVESTING IN INFLUENCER MARKETING
Influencer marketing has blown up and we predict that it will continue to do so for the next few years, however, things are changing. Brands are collaborating with influencers over a series of social media campaign posts and not for single stories or grid posts.
Bigger brands are collaborating with micro-influencers and niche bloggers to bring inclusivity and transparency in their marketing efforts and appeal to a wider audience, tapping into communities.
Now, influencers are expected to put more effort into content curation for brands and focus more on long-form content ie. how-to videos, demos, launch campaign creatives, reels and engage in ambassador programs. Overall, influencer marketing is a key marketing tool and brands are even more cautious when what influencers to associate with.
THE END OF INSTAGRAM LIKES
No brand or company is a stranger to the field of social media ‘likes’, but it seems like 2021 will finally be the year to kick this obsession from social platforms. It’s well known how the constant fixation on social media validation tends to have a negative impact. Hence, Instagram has experimented with making the ‘like counts’ private for several users. Although it hasn’t been rolled out as an official update from the social media platform just yet, the tests conducted by them seem to have shown positive results.
So 2021 may be the year where digital marketing professionals will need to shift their focus from ‘likes’ as an indication of success to the engagement and the quality of the content and other available metrics along the lines of saves, comments, reach, story engagement and link clicks.
VIDEO CONTENT CONTINUES TO BOOM
Video content is the most engaging form of content right now, and it’s here to stay. In fact, brands are rapidly shifting to video content and prioritising it over written content and images. Videos can quickly grab the attention of users and keep them hooked to the screen. After the massive success of the video-based app, Tiktok, Instagram has also introduced a similar feature on its platform very recently, called “Reels” that allow users to record and share short videos. Hopefully, more social apps will introduce additional features that’ll support the boom in video content creation.
LIVE VIDEO TRANSFORMING SOCIAL MEDIA
There was no doubt that live videos were going to gain much popularity in 2021. Brands are now exploring live videos frequently to connect with their customers for chit-chats. Surprisingly, the popularity of live videos has surpassed the demand for video content too. Presently, live videos are being broadcast on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Instagram because almost 80% of the audiences prefer live vs static. It’s all about that human connection.
STORIES AS A CONTENT FORMAT
More than 500 million users interact with Instagram Stories every day. So although Instagram Stories were already the dominant content format in the previous year. Brands will now need to take a more organised and planned approach for stories as a content format for their monthly calendars if they aren’t already doing so. More importantly, the use of video as Stories will increase since they appear to outperform photos. Tap-forward rate is the number of people who saw your Story and moved on to the next one before finishing it. Stats show that photos in Stories have a higher drop-off rate than videos, showing again, that people tend to spend more time viewing videos.
Looking for support or more information with your social media or digital presence?
Contact nicole@tishtash.com for a chat and cuppa
Xx
