On today's episode, we discuss why viral commerce will be the "it" trend this year and why micro- and nano-influencers are making a comeback. We then talk about what to expect from TikTok in 2022 and livestream shopping expectations. Tune in to the discussion with eMarketer principal analyst at Insider Intelligence Debra Aho Williamson.

On today's episode, we discuss the opportunities and challenges within social advertising and how automation will play its part. We then talk about what to expect from micro- and nano-influencers in 2022 and what the most interesting social media video statistics are. Tune in to the discussion with global director of marketing at Smartly.io Riikka Söderlund and eMarketer principal analyst at Insider Intelligence Debra Aho Williamson.

Small influencers poised to gain more brand followers: As social commerce capabilities expand and new tools power the creator economy, the demand for micro-influencers will take off.

Trend: 2022 Will Be the Year of the Micro- and Nano-Influencer. Move over, celebrities and mega-influencers. Creators with smaller followings will be the strategic play in the influencer marketing world in 2022. Consumers view nano- and micro-influencers as “people like me,” which makes them more likely to trust and take action based on their recommendations.

To name a few examples, Coca-Cola, Sephora, Sperry, and Glossier have actively courted micro- and nano-influencers, and more brands are sure to follow in 2022.

Consider macro-influencers: Activate’s DiSanto said that influencers with larger followings are sometimes chosen over micro-influencers for livestreams. “You have to do a lot of prep work to make sure that the influencer understands the brand safety guidelines and to invest that one-on-one time for a single piece of content,” he said.

Micro- or nano-influencers, who cultivate niche audiences, have proven particularly effective for brands since they can offer precision targeting without hefty price tags. Don’t Sleep on Twitter. Twitter’s potential for brands remains strong. As the third most used social media platform in Canada, it still outranks Snapchat and TikTok.

Partnerships with micro- and nano-influencers will help brands and retailers target niche pockets of social media, which—thanks to algorithms—now have the potential to reach a wider audience. Marketers will harness the power of shoppable posts in hopes of streamlining viral posts from discovery to purchase. Trend: A Sustainability Strategy Will Be a Need-to-Have for Retailers.

However, rates for nano-influencers (500 to 5,000 followers) were significantly below average, while those for celebrities were in the thousands for each content type. Even so, brand sponsorships are still likely to be how creators of all sizes bring in most of their income.

We realized that a lot of our micro-influencers have their own followers and people that count on them for direction on their wellness journey. By engaging with those influencers, we're really focused on making Blink central to that community.

Nearly two-thirds (64.7%) of the microinfluencers surveyed by SocialPubli used reach to measure the success of their work with a brand, but one-quarter (25.1%) said they preferred conversion rate.

“We're starting as marketers to learn that influencers are content,” said Brooke Robinson, managing partner at Peersway Nano Influencer Marketing. “We know now when they post something organically less than 10% are seeing the content organically, the rest are the result of paid media support.

In a February 2019 survey by influencer marketplace Activate, for example, 64.2% of US influencer marketers said they worked very often with microinfluencers (defined as having 5,000 to 100,000 followers) and 25.7% said the same for nano-influencers (less than 5,000 followers).

Most of the influencers were micro-influencers with an average of roughly 35,000 Instagram followers. Nearly six in 10 participants were US-based women. Direct Messaging. In late September, Facebook announced that it was integrating Instagram’s direct messaging service with Messenger for users who opt in to the new feature.

This may convince more brands to embrace micro-influencers, who often generate a better ROI than do macro-influencers, whose audiences are more diffused.

Microinfluencers, who have between 100,000 and 500,000 followers, solicited the highest degree of approach. Participants’ emotional intensity and memory encoding registered at 62% and 55%, respectively, above ads within general content. ("General content" being that found on TV, Facebook and YouTube.).

Goodbye Celebrity Influencers, Hello ‘Nano-Influencers’. There’s definitely a shift going on in influencer marketing, as young and unvarnished TikTok creators gain marketers’ attention and as issues of credibility, authenticity and fraud continue to crop up in the mega-influencer ranks. But did marketers make a wholesale shift from celebrities toward influencers with smaller followings? Not quite.

Influencers also see strong potential for brand collaborations on Instagram Stories; it was the top choice for the microinfluencers in North America, South America and Europe who were surveyed by SocialPubli in September 2019. Few marketers want to use influencers for branded Facebook Stories, Schotland said.