The global micro-influencer economy is leading to a huge uptake in social commerce, as more brands prioritise their social media strategies to sell and market their products.
This is according to the State of Influencer Marketing 2022 report compiled by media monitoring firm Meltwater. The research shows the micro-influencer market is experiencing growth, with a 26.7% increase in sponsored posts compared to last year – leading to a boom in social commerce across the globe.
The report reveals brands are increasingly adjusting their social commerce budgets due to changing consumer habits, with influencers playing an essential role in business planning.
In particular, working with micro-influencers – smaller-scale and affordable influencers – has been identified as a critical way for brands to authentically communicate with customers, with over 91% of sponsored posts coming from this user segment.
“Micro-influencers are the most popular choice for collaborating with brands due to their medium to large following (5 000 to 30 000 followers) and reach of 5 000 to 500 000. Their smaller but focused audience ensures a high willingness to buy and increases brand awareness, often yielding the best return on investments for brands,” notes the report.
According to Meltwater, Instagram has become the number one platform for influencer campaigns. More than 1 800 campaigns were reportedly launched recently, with 94% of drives containing Instagram content, while only 10% of campaigns had content for YouTube or other platforms.
In terms of posting trends on Instagram, 42% of campaigns leveraged one to four posts on Instagram Feeds, while 20% of all campaigns leveraged one to four stories.
“The results suggest influencer campaigns primarily focus on Instagram, while platforms like TikTok are more experimental.
“TikTok is the fastest-growing social media platform for influencer marketing. TikTok is more successful in influencer campaigns than YouTube. Likewise, reports suggest brands favour TikTok over YouTube regarding sponsored collaborations, with TikTok accounting for 13% of all influencer campaigns. In comparison, the latter accounts for just 10%,” says Meltwater.
Its research is based on analysis across the most popular social media platforms – Instagram, TikTok, YouTube and Facebook. The company uses a content monitoring tool to track keywords and influencer marketing campaigns across the social media platforms, and aggregates and analyses the information accordingly.
According to the report, TikTok is still an emerging platform, and while it's not as well-known as Instagram, more and more brands are incorporating the video-based social media channel into their marketing plans.
Further evidence of this is the emergence of "FinTok", a new genre of video content where experts share financial tips in short but engaging TikTok videos that have already been viewed over 1.8 billion times on the platform, says Meltwater.
Consequently, the data showed TikTok has overtaken YouTube regarding influencer campaign popularity, even as brands continue to identify their strategy and areas for success on the platform.
Social commerce has been identified by experts as one of the key trends to shape the online shopping industry this year, as social media selling becomes an efficient alternative to shopping on a retailer’s website.
Brands are forecast to spend around $15 billion on influencer marketing in 2022, as influencers proliferate every niche and sub-niche interest across social media, according to Forbes.
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