“I always say, try to avoid the FOMO,” said Joey Maestas, head of creators and consumer marketing at Microsoft. “Just because it’s a trend doesn’t mean you need to use it.”

Resisting the urge to chase every viral moment was a key theme at last week's Creator Economy Live in New York City, where panelists discussed posting more intentionally, building lasting creator relationships, and protecting brand integrity. Here are four key takeaways.

Rethinking old rules

Success once meant posting constantly and tapping influencers with the most followers, but marketers are challenging that narrative.

• Decreasing post volume can increase quality while supporting sales and engagement, said Greg Roskisky, senior social media strategist at Sprout Social.

Basing influencer partnerships on follower counts doesn’t make much sense when marketers leverage paid media—an effective tactic for every brand, said Nikki Bock, senior manager of influencer marketing and social engagement at Newell Brands.

“If you can put some paid spend behind your content, you can control where it's living and how it’s showing up to a degree,” she said. “It just gives you more of that safe bet that it's going to do well for the most part.”

Marketers found the most success with micro creators in 2024, according to a January HubSpot report. Considering granular metrics, like when app downloads turn into active use, can help brands justify these partnerships, said Maestas.

“Even with nano creators, they didn’t drive thousands of downloads, but their chat sends are at like 90%,” he said, referring to Microsoft Copilot. “So you have all of these people that are downloading the app and using it, it’s just not sitting on their phone.”

Looking beyond sales

While paid media can help brands control the social media narrative, other uncertainties exist. When Sharpie went viral as a lip liner earlier this year, the brand collaborated with e.l.f. Cosmetics on an organic content moment that instead encouraged them to buy actual lip liner.

“Maybe it [doesn’t have] the biggest ROI, but it's more of an effort for our brands to get to the cultural conversation and turn something that could have been an issue or a crisis into an opportunity,” Bock said.

As an alcohol brand with legal guidelines, Jim Beam Kentucky Bourbon must focus on creator marketing for reach and engagement rather than sales.

“What are your business objectives and the jobs to be done against those objectives?” said global brand vice president KK Hall. “Figuring out where it fits in before throwing a big chunk of budget because everyone is talking about it. Don’t overtilt because everyone is talking, it may just be a much smaller piece of the pie.”

Risks raise awareness

Tapping into new consumers often requires less obvious partnerships, said Bock.

“With kitchen brands, you gravitate towards the chef for building credibility, but what about the lifestyle girl in New York City who loves to cook but doesn’t exactly have the right tools?” she said. “We want to resonate with that consumer, too.”

Embracing risk could mean swapping a content plan for a last-minute creator idea, said Maestas, who practiced this when replacing the standard “Get Ready With Me” format for a recent campaign with Alix Earle.

“She had another video in her car talking to Copilot about trolls in her comments, and she said, ‘I think this will hit with my audience,’’’ he said. “It’s about pivoting and not getting too caught up in a piece of content that was supposed to go out.”

The creator space is defined by uncertainty and relinquished control, which Hall’s team has learned to embrace.

“We're working on evolving our mentality that it's okay to make a mistake or miss the mark because this environment is moving so quickly,” said Hall. “We’ve to spend time getting mentally more resilient.”

Building more than product launches

MAC Cosmetics launches 30 new products a year, which can overshadow brand building, said Rachel Lockett, vice president of marketing. MAC used influencers to elevate its Viva Glam campaign, a makeup line co-signed by artist Kim Petras where 100% of the selling price goes to organizations serving people impacted by HIV/AIDS.

“We sometimes struggle in beauty to find the space and time in between,” she said. “We have pillars where we try to activate with influencers to build that equity outside of the launches.”

Beyond reaching new audiences through creator marketing, Jim Beam also sees this channel as a window into consumer behavior.

“In an economic squeeze where a lot of companies are cutting back, we are leaning in to spending more money on understanding the consumer,” said Hall.