Content Creator Trends that are bound to be a true this FY 2022-23

1. Influencer Marketing Automation 

As people become warier of digital advertising, brands and agencies increasingly turn to influencer marketing programs to connect with their target audiences in authentic and meaningful ways. Although the medium is almost the same, it’s the personalization that marketers can achieve using Influencer marketing. 

As a result, 82% of firms take their influencer marketing spending from their budget with nearly 60% planning on increasing their influencer marketing budgets in the next twelve months.

But, why have influencer marketing automation when you can just run a campaign through various agencies?

The daily routine of an advertising professional who is working on influencer marketing usually involves a variety of activities, starting from social listening and content analysis research to looking for appropriate influencers and outreaching them. 

Add here the curation of content and evaluation of the campaign’s performance and you probably would agree that some of these tasks are quite tedious. 

After sending hundreds of emails and looking through a multitude of influencers’ profiles you may be tempted to start looking for an automated solution. 

Automated tools that promise to make the life of an advertiser easier. 

The tool will turn your campaign into a seamless flow, taking care of processes such as discovering the influencers, communicating with them, managing their content and payments.

Talking about the influencer marketing automation, Eleve is in process of launching our flagship product, “Eleve Platform,” which launched in 2015, is set to relaunch this year with completely new features aimed at not only analytics but also helping brands, save time and effort when executing influencer marketing campaigns. 

The product is an all-in-one influencer marketing platform that allows you to easily create campaign boards, manage team communication, track campaign performance, discover influencers, and manage payments utilising our powerful but user-friendly influencer marketing platform. 

Eleve’s new and updated platform focuses on a delivery model in which our centrally hosted software is licensed to customers via a subscription plan. Here, our customers are brands and agencies. 

Other than that, we are also launching our Eleve App which is meant for content creators. In this free app, content creators can signup to collaborate with the brand upon getting an invite to join the campaign. 

Eleve Platform – This is where a brand can create campaign dashboards that will encompass features like, 

• Inviting content creators to join the campaign through Eleve app
• Provide content briefs, approve/disapprove content submissions by the creators
• Analyse campaign hashtags and overall campaign insights
• Discover influencers and check their insights
• Pre and post-campaign analysis
• Influencer collaboration tool
• Influencer profile analyser
• Generate custom reports

Eleve APP – is a free app that will have the following features, 

• Inbuilt content publisher tool
• Explore section that provides videos to enhance creators’ skills
• A collaboration tool that provides content briefs, commercial details and uploads content in the app for brands approval
• Creator portfolio generator

2. Long term partnerships 

When influencer marketing first started out, it’s was viewed as a type of gorilla marketing tactic. It came with a sort of anything goes “strategic’ mentality. Because it was a newer tactic in the overall marketing mix, brands that jumped on the influencer bandwagon early on had few benchmarks in place to determine success.  Here are the five main reasons long-term influencers partnerships are beneficial to both brands and content creators.

• Stronger More Authentic Relationships – Just like celebrity endorsements, you can have multiple influencers acting as the face of your brand for a period of time. Example: How lays chips made the influencers as part of their packaging. 
• More Robust Planning & Timelines – A successful Influencer campaign is executed when everything falls into place. Post timing, planning, content approvals etc. 
• Simplified budgeting and invoicing – Each influencer charges differently for the services they provide, and when working with a group of individuals on a one-off basis. But, with our 9 years of experience, I feel, the need for a tech solution is much needed. 

3.  Live streaming shopping

Global streaming increased by 21% YoY between Q3 2020 and Q3 2021. Hybrid events, which contain online and in-person elements, became standard as many people were still unable to travel to live events. Nothing proved this more than 2021’s biggest hybrid event, the Olympic Games. Although TV viewer ratings for the 2020 Olympics plunged, it was the most-streamed Olympic Games ever, with 5.5 billion minutes of events streamed across social media and other online platforms.

China is a hub for e-commerce streaming, which accounted for 4.5% of the total gross merchandise value for online shopping in 2019. It’s projected this proportion will climb to 20.3% in 2022.

The live shopping category that attracts the most streamers is apparel and fashion, at 35.6% of e-commerce streamers. Beauty and fresh food follow behind at 7.6% and 7.4%, respectively.

E-commerce streaming is making live shopping more relevant, especially on social media. Before the pandemic, 81% of shoppers were using social media to discover new brands and research products.

Social commerce will be an $80 billion industry by 2025, and with 46% of marketers using live video as a social media tactic, live shopping is sure to keep growing.

4. Metaverse for influencers

Brands are creating their own digital influencers – 

A broad range of fashion brands, including Prada, Puma and Yoox, are creating avatars to stand alongside the likes of Shudu and Lil Miquela. 

Brands are expected to spend as much as $15 billion annually on influencer marketing by 2022, up from $8 billion in 2019, according to influencer marketing firm Mediakix. A growing slice of that is on virtual influencers — more than 50 of them debuted on social media in the 18 months to June 2020. Today there are over 150, according to Virtualhumans.org, a site that tracks news on virtual humans.

Strippoli points out that virtual avatars like Daisy cost “much less” than regular influencers, is 100 per cent controllable, can appear in many places at once and is an ideal spokesperson for Yoox when it wants to communicate its views on topics such as diversity and inclusion or sustainability.

Implications of existing influencers are many and permissible – 

The limitlessness of the online world is well illustrated by the fact that Travis Scott held a nine-minute concert at Fortnite with his avatar, which was attended by 12 million people and made $20 million. It’s hard for anyone to make that much money with a single gig, and it’s even harder to run a 12-million-people event. Most likely, the parents also preferred to let their children attend a concert from their own room.

But, Brands will have to create their digital twins and follow or dictate the new trends in the Metaverse. Some of them have already started it and influencers will need to think about creating their avatars and working with brands in the Metaverse.

5. NFTs will transform the influencer marketing landscape

One key aspect that draws influencers and content creators towards NFTs is their potential to create a new world of intellectual property with copyright royalties for the content creator and influencer-generated content. Over the past decade, we have seen that viral moments can create a potential financial income for their creators. This can go from memes to short videos and products. It can be used as a potential revenue stream that a lot of individuals and corporations are moving into, from professional sports leagues to artists and more who could now sell the NFT behind their brands rather than having to negotiate a three or five-year usage of their image.

How can NFTs transform the influencer marketing landscape?

Furthermore, content creators and brands can join forces to create NFTs experiences for both of their audiences, as a new form of technology that will allow them to drive innovation and new customer journeys. With the inclusion of NFTs, both partners can create unique content that can be monetized and allow followers to own a collectable piece. These pieces will not only be made available to the creator’s audience, but also to brands who would like to leverage this content and to be a part of an iconic moment.

Brands can work with influencers to create exclusive video content to show the “behind the scenes”, or perhaps a video brand experience that can only be accessible to those who purchase NFTs.

6.  Social Commerce

Whether it is Facebook, Instagram, or TikTok, everyone’s favourite social media platforms have become lucrative sales channels for all brands venturing into social commerce

Social commerce is not just the latest e-commerce buzzword. It has been around for a few years, gaining traction as early as 2015, but accelerated to the forefront when the Covid-19 pandemic hit almost two years ago. Last year, social commerce generated approximately $474.8 billion in revenue, representing an almost 40 percent surge in sales. Since then, more brands have adopted social commerce as a core asset in their e-commerce toolkit supporting their omnichannel commerce strategies.

A whopping 97 percent of Gen-Z consumers say social media is their top source of shopping inspiration, while 62 percent of 13 to 39-year-old consumers are interested in purchasing items directly from their social media feeds. Almost two-thirds of shoppers surveyed by Google have said that mobile-friendly modes of shopping are essential in deciding which brand or retailer to buy from.

Looking to the future, the global social commerce market is set to reach $2.9 trillion by the year 2026. It’s clear that younger consumers are shaping social media and shopping trends, with hashtags like #tiktokmademebuyit popular online. Likewise, influencers will be important players in social commerce’s future, with 35 percent of surveyed individuals stating that they trust what their favourite influencers have to say or recommend, and Gen-Z is particularly likely to make their purchase on social media for this reason.

7. Influencer Brands

The rise of the social media influencer was one of the most impactful trends that grew out of the social media boom from the past decade and could likely become the dominant model driving social commerce in the 2020s. Influencers are even now becoming their own brands, using their established name to develop their own lines of products from cosmetics to cookware to clothing. 

Even Netflix is making a step forward in the merchandise industry

Influencers don’t only succeed by meeting customers where they are increasingly spending more of their time, they are also adept at creating viral content, which can help drive increased traffic for existing brands. The role of influencers will continue to be a sizable element of social commerce, with the trend expanding to small and mid-size businesses with a new focus on niche and micro-influencers (fewer than 1,000 followers), who can drive more targeted business at a reduced cost.

8. Data is king 

Data Is King During Times Of Uncertainty. 

If you work in the influencer marketing industry, as either a brand or a content creator, you can appreciate the importance data holds in the influencer marketing decision-making process. Understanding the data behind influencer marketing campaigns is the first step towards making better decisions and creating campaigns that speak directly to your audience. However, many people still debate whether you need an influencer marketing data platform to get the most out of your data.

Clearer data: As a brand, it may be simple enough to get your hands on the data you need to inform decisions, but how easy is it for you to digest that data? By using an influencer marketing data platform, the data is broken down for you to make it easily understandable, ensuring that your campaigns are based on a data-based strategy.

Unique insights: Influencer marketing data platforms offer unique insights, which are based on historical data from creator partnerships built up over hundreds or even thousands of campaigns. Instead of having to ask a creator to get the data you need, an influencer marketing data platform pulls the data for you – the dream, right?

Time-efficient: One of the main reasons many brands opt for an influencer marketing data platform is that they save time. Rather than have someone going through comparing all of the data and trying to make decisions off the back of it, you can cut out the research element and have data presented to you in an easy-to-understand format.

How important is data to influencer marketing?

If you’re only running small campaigns with little or no budget, then you will find that influencer data is probably not on the top of your agenda. However, if you’re running larger influencer marketing campaigns with a budget behind them, then it makes sense to use data to inform your spending decisions.