As social media platforms continue to emerge and evolve, each innovation drives industry trends, and advertisers must quickly adapt to create and maintain relevancy with consumers in order to keep their brands top of mind. An influencer marketing agency can help brands understand current trends and how they should be incorporating these trends into their influencer marketing strategies to drive success and accomplish goals.
Influencer Marketing Agency Breakdown of Video Content Evolution
The pivot to short-form video content has created a shift in the way audiences are engaged on various social platforms. TikTok originally launched in 2016, but the skyrocket to popularity came during the onset of the global pandemic in 2020, when people around the world found themselves with considerably more downtime. Today, the platform boasts over one billion monthly active users, placing the platform as a major competitor to hugely successful social platforms like Facebook/Instagram, Pinterest and Twitter. Most interestingly is the major impact and disruption that TikTok created in content formats and how viewers prefer to consume their content. TikTok is well-known for it’s short-form, highly authentic, and oftentimes humorous content. The app totes an algorithm so good that users have been known to watch a continuous stream of videos for so long that their in-app time competes with their television viewing time.
As any competitive platform should, Meta quickly recognized the trends being driven by TIkTok, and followed suit by heavily promoting Instagram and Facebook Reels for both advertisers and consumers. Additionally, YouTube rolled out their version of this successful content format via YouTube Shorts. Interestingly, YouTube continues to remain one of the most competitive platforms in influencer marketing by taking an approach that continuously prioritizes creator monetization, and the rollout of YouTube Shorts was no exception with a supporting $100M fund to incentivize creators. By prioritizing monetization, influencers are more motivated to create with YouTube top of mind, resulting in more organic and authentic content being generated specifically for the platform. With all major platforms now honed in on short-form video content, an influencer marketing agency can help a brand to build the most effective strategy to drive success.
Recommendations for Activating Video with an Influencer Marketing Agency
Looking ahead, short-form video content will continue to reign supreme until another major disruptor enters the scene. Audiences no longer want to see overly-curated, picture perfect content, and in order to master algorithms and reach targeted audiences, authenticity is crucial. The popularity and continuous push of this content type across social media platforms indicates that this format needs to be considered when outlining deliverables in all current influencer marketing strategies. Short-form video content has an abundance of benefits, including but not limited to:
- It is free for users to access
- It drives creator and audience interaction
- It can vastly reduce production expenses
- It holds more specific content tailored to targeted audiences
- It drives messaging more quickly
- There’s always that highly coveted chance of going viral
Brands and marketers should continue to be focused on activating influencer partnerships where the influencer is extremely authentically engaged with their audience, the partnership between the brand and influencer is genuine, and the content creation is specifically geared toward the platform. Additionally, providing creators with as much creative freedom as possible and partnering on a long-term basis will continue to drive authenticity and ultimately success.
Advertisers should also continue to test different content types and platforms to understand how each social channel can perform in terms of moving consumers through the marketing funnel. There remains question around the actual influence of creators on TikTok, because their unique algorithm increases the chances of going viral, and thus building a following, as opposed to the more traditional ways of more senior platforms where an audience is slowly built. Alternatively, there is no arguing that in order to remain relevant and tap Gen Z and Millennial audiences, brands should be prioritizing and consider TikTok when creating influencer marketing strategies. That’s why it’s important for brands to continue to test and learn through their strategies to understand what works for them and their customers in order to keep ahead of the ever changing social media curve.
Final Thoughts
In the end, influencer marketing strategies are not one size fits all, but by understanding the evolution of social media and current social trends, brands can create and implement campaigns and programs that drive actions and accomplish specific goals. At Konnect Agency, we work hard to serve as industry experts for our clients so that we can create and advise on top notch, high performing, and innovative strategies.
Looking for an influencer marketing agency? Konnect with us to learn how we’ve helped other brands to create high performing influencer marketing strategies.