What Could 2022 Bring For The Influencer Market?

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In 2021, social media usage soared to an all-time high. According to the Digital 2021 October Global Statshot Report,social media users numbers have reached an impressive milestone of 4.55 billion in Oct 2021! To put this number into context, the world's population is around 8 billion as of 2022. With the rise of social media, the Influencer Marketing industry has certainly seen massive growth as well. In 2021, the industry is estimated to be in the range of $14 billion! This industry is massive, and it is not a surprise that it will continue to grow in 2022. 

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With such a huge market pie, more and more people are starting to jump onto the influencer marketing bandwagon. Influencers are feeling the heat as the competition starts to rise with more and more influencers entering the market and fighting for attention. They need to constantly come up with more new ideas and strategies that can promote their own content and their clients’ brands more effectively. This phenomenon is inevitable because the social media landscape is always evolving, and certainly at a much faster pace than ever. Thus it is of paramount importance that both influencers and businesses recognize trends in the Influencer market as early as possible, so that they can leverage on them and modify their marketing strategies accordingly early. In this article, we will discuss the Influencer Marketing Trends of 2022. So, make sure you take good notes along the way! Let’s go!

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1. Rise Of Live Streaming And Live Shopping

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Live Shopping really caught on in 2021. This is probably brought upon by the onset of the covid-19 pandemic. Frequent lock downs and travel bans have really affected the global retail market. Shoppers today face stronger inertia to visit malls and stores to shop physically, be it due to local government regulations or due to fear of personal safety. But fortunately, live shopping provides a great replacement for physical shopping. In fact, it may probably be the next closest thing any shopper can get! With live shopping, customers can directly interact with the live seller and request for product information there and then, almost how it would have been if they were physically there at the retail store. Just in the USA alone, the live shopping market size in 2021 is estimatedto be in the range of $11 billion, and it is forecastedto exceed $500 billion by 2023. Many big market players, such as Amazon, Facebook, Tiktok, have recognized this trend, and have invested millions into developing livestream shopping solutions and technologies. If there’s one trend that you do not want to miss out on, be it as an influencer or as a business, that would be live shopping!

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2. Rise Of Nano And Micro-Influencers

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One of the ways we can classify influencers is by the size of their following. They can be broadly classified as such:

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▶ Nano-influencers: 1K to 10K followers

▶ Micro-influencers: 10K to 100K followers

▶ Macro-influencers: 100K to 1M followers

▶ Mega-influencers or Celebrities: 1M+ followers

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While macro and mega influencers are constantly being sought after by big brands due to their large following size and their ability to reach large groups of people, we cannot neglect the power that the nano and micro influencers have as well. These smaller influencers have the highest engagement rates. According to a Forbes article, Social Bakers reported that micro influencers had a 60% higher engagement rate and 20% higher e-commerce sales conversion rate as compared to macro influencers. Also, in a 2019 Influencer Marketing Analysis Reportby Later and Fohr, micro-influencers had the highest engagement rates at around 7%, compared to macro-influencers, which typically averages at around 1-3%.

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And because of this phenomenon, businesses have started to pay more attention to influencers who have a small but passionate and highly engaged following. Another main benefit is because these smaller influencers are typically more budget-friendly for SMEs. Some of the nano and micro-Influencers may not even request for any monetary payments because they are still trying to build up their personal branding too.

One thing’s clear for sure; you cannot neglect the power of nano and micro-influencers anymore. For a thorough analysis and review of these nano and micro influencers, read our article here! (insert link to past Vling blog article on nano and micro influencers)

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3. Short Form Video Content Domination

We know TikTok is taking over the social media space by storm for the past 2 to 3 years. We know its appearance certainly made the big boys (Facebook, Instagram, YouTube etc.) pretty uncomfortable in their seats; so much that they have been investing millions of dollars and coming up with new features on their own platforms that directly compete with TikTok’s functionality - for example Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts etc. to name a few.

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But the main point of discussion is not about TikTok. It’s about this: Short Form Video Content is the dominating video content trend right now! Social media content consumers nowadays have much shorter attention spans and crave for content which are more bite-sized, yet still remaining highly entertaining, delivering the most amount of visual and audio stimuli and emotional satisfaction to the audience in the shortest amount of time possible. Short Form Video Contents are typically only 10 - 60 seconds long, which means a very low level of commitment is required from the audience, thus making it an attractive form of media content amongst the social media users nowadays. Some brands are even creating ads which only last as short as 2 seconds! As opposed to traditional longer forms of ads and videos, such as YouTube videos, which can range from a few minutes to even a few hours long. YouTube certainly recognized this shift in trend, and that is why they have launched YouTube Shorts in 2020. (Insert link to past Vling blog article on Youtube Shorts)

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It doesn’t matter whether you are an influencer or a business brand, you have to recognize that Short Form Video Content is dominating right now and it should be taken into consideration when designing your marketing strategies and ideas today!

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4. Mainstreaming Of The Digital Realities

Facebook Founder Mark Zuckerberg’s announcement of the change of his company’s name from “Facebook” to “Meta'' in October 2021 is probably one of the key highlights of 2021. It will go down in history as one of the defining moments in the timeline of the metaverse development. The change in the name reflects the company’s growing ambitions beyond social media, and their commitment in making the metaverse a reality. If you are not informed of the concept of metaverse, it is a network of 3D digital realities where people can interact socially and professionally using their digital avatars. 

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The metaverse is still a reality in the making, but looking at the speed of progress, it wouldn’t be a surprise to see how influencer marketing and social commerce will be a big part of it. In the metaverse, merchants will be able to sell both digital and physical products. Customers will not need to head down to the physical retail stores to test or try the product, because they can do so virtually from the comfort of their seat. In our opinion, this would be the next thing that would surpass live shopping as the closest thing you can get from shopping physically. According to this articleby Influencer Marketing Hub, Post For Rent, a digital marketing agency, is already building a Digital Influencer HQ in Decentraland, with the vision of being the connecting “bridge” for influencers and brands between the physical world and the metaverse.

As you can see, many have taken their first step into the virtual world. Keep an eye out for this trend, you wouldn’t want to be amongst the last to ride on it!

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5. Authentic Authenticity

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The seemingly oxymoronic header of this paragraph is a true reflection of the situation in the influencer marketing industry today. Influencers are expected to be authentic in their content, but it is hardly the case today. When you see an influencer doing a promotion for the product, you would naturally expect that the influencer had personally tested and approved of the product and the brand before they recommend it to their followers. But with the saturation of brands courting influencers for shoutouts and mentions, the authenticity value of these promotional posts has certainly dropped over the years. Many influencers would take up the collaboration with whoever pays the most, even though they have not used the product / service themselves. 

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Influencer marketing is no longer just about doing a shoutout and prompting the product, it’s about showcasing real, sincere authenticity in wanting to share benefits of the product / service with followers. Fans no longer get “sold” so easily with just product shoutouts and mentions. Authentic influencers need to be able to keep, maintain and showcase authenticity even after becoming extremely popular. Consumers have become savvier and they can sniff bulls*** easily. So, if you are an influencer promoting a product, you’d better make sure that you are sincerely passionate and enthusiastic because you have benefited from it. Do not betray the trust of your followers. And for brands, make sure to consider this factor when crafting the marketing angle with your brand ambassadors; make sure whoever you are working with are honest and authentic in front of their followers!

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Conclusion

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Influencer marketing is increasingly gaining popularity as more and more brands seek to engage with influencers to promote their products and services on social media. This form of marketing will be fueled by the increase in worldwide social commerce consumption. Advancements in social media technology, such as live streaming and digital realities have further broken-down traditional obstacles that both influencers and brands were fahttps://vling.net/en/trend-keywordcing just a few years ago. The projections of the growth in this industry are looking incredibly optimistic, even with the covid-19 pandemic situation hardly slowing down. 2022 is indeed a very exciting year for the influencer market. Regardless of whether you are an influencer or a brand, make sure you don’t fall behind on the trends mentioned in this article!

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