7 Influencer Marketing Trends for 2018
The emergence of the internet and social media has totally changed our world today. It has changed the way we have access to information, how we communicate that information and how we voice out our displeasures with just about anything.
In the past, social media influencing was not a big thing. We were all just interested in exploring the limitless opportunities of social media until people felt the need to talk about things that are important to them; like how they got a huge discount on Amazon. And with these actions came the unthinkable; the window of social media marketing for brands opened up.
Over the years, with the rise of many social media influencers, it is becoming harder to determine whether users are willingly mentioning brands because they genuinely required their services or because they were paid to market it to their followers. Regardless of how and why brands are being mentioned, influencer marketing is here to stay.
The help of a social media marketing agency can be very useful to help you create an effective influencer marketing strategy. In the meantime, take a look at seven influencer marketing trends for 2018.
1. Content originality would be in high demand
Just like authenticity, originality cannot be compromised in marketing. Depending on the deals that brands have with these influencers, the requirement may be for the influencer to create the content themselves for the brand and share with their followers. Whilst other brands might prefer to create the content themselves for the influencer.
2. Multiple social media influencers being used by brands
Depending on how diverse the target audience of the brand is, they might need to work with different social media influencers to cover their entire audience for the purpose of the marketing campaign.
3. Influencers using multiple channels to promote brands
For social media influencers who already have strong deals with brands who take their marketing campaigns seriously, there is pressure for them to produce results. As we spoke about earlier, the brands are going to demand set results to determine whether they can keep using that influencer. Hence the reason why many social media influencers make use of multiple channels to promote a brand. This is something that would most likely be a trend that will go beyond the year because of the increase in the availability of influencers. The ones who have strong deals with brands would do everything that they can to keep those deals going for them so they do not lose it to others.
4. Running promoted adverts via the influencer’s accounts
Running promoted adverts on social media through the account of the influencer is one of the smartest ways to get more engagements from a new target audience. When scrolling, people can easily tell that a feed is being promoted to get their attention. Rather than get their attention, a promoted ad often does the opposite if the first few seconds of the promoted content does not draw the user’s attention immediately; users tend to skip quickly away from the ad to the next feed. However, using the handle of a social media influencer makes it a little bit difficult for users to scroll past the promoted advert because they might still have interest in looking at the content since it is coming from a source they are already familiar with and that they trust.
5. Influencers using performance reports
Influencers using performance reports to appear more professional. Gone are the days when social media influencers can just show off impressions, reach or likes and comments as a determinant to the success of a brand they are promoting. With so many social media analytics tools to help with very detailed insights as determining how well a post or marketing campaign is performing, brands are likely to demand more performance reports, especially on leads if the conversions or sales are low compared to what was projected.
Social media influencers who are confident about their personal brand can make use of this social media analytics to give a performance report to the brand they are working with. This would make them appear more professional and serious about adding value to the company even when they are paid to just market the brand.
6. Brands will stick with only a few social media influencers
Brands are more likely to stick with social media influencers who are bringing in more results for them. The cost of acquiring a new influencer is something that any brand might want to avoid if need be. Selecting the right influencer to work with requires the brand to analyze the influencer’s account to determine if, based on the analytics gotten, they are a good fit for the brand.
After this, brands also have to run a test advert on these influencers to see if insights gotten from the analytics matches the real-life test results. All these processes are time-consuming and run at a cost. So it is understandable that once brands have identified social media influencers that fit well into their marketing campaigns and yields reasonable results, they want to stick with them until otherwise.
7. Influencer’s fighting to remain authentic
Social media influencers battle to remain as authentic as possible while fighting off the ever-changing algorithms of social media platforms. Authenticity is a major factor in marketing, and social media is not exempt. Irrespective of the fact that they are marketing a product, social media influencers have to fight off the temptation to lie about a product or service just to get their followers interested in purchasing it. This is one of the things that a social media influencer can do to shoot himself or herself in the leg.
In most cases, in order to differentiate between products or services an influencer uses and those that they were paid to promote, followers would see something like “#ad” somewhere in the text area of the post. Influencers also need to devise ways to keep themselves authentic and relevant in the feeds of their followers with the ever-changing algorithms; particularly Instagram and Facebook. If an influencer is already having issues with remaining authentic to his or her followers, the engagement level could drop and this could badly affect the person’s post-performance.