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.

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.

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.

Micro-influencers have had trouble with (or outright been unable to) applying due to a bug that’s been present since February. That’s bad news for TikTok’s social commerce plans, since micro-influencers are poised to make up a larger share of brand marketing on social media platforms due to their more niche content focuses and loyal audiences.

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.

One of our biggest moments was when TikTok’s No. 1 skinfluencer Hyram Yarbro did a pore strip side-by-side with a nano-influencer, and we sold six months of product in 24 hours, which is roughly a little over 15,000 units. TikTok is a place where you have to be authentic, because if you aren't, you will get annihilated. Consumers are really aware and educate themselves.

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.

Another platform is Supergreat, which is helping small micro-influencers build their content strategy in line with specific brands. Once TikTok figures out how to monetize the live selling element, it is going to be a powerful way for brands to reach new consumers. I think about Madam C.J.

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.

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.

The brand is aggressively pursuing its D2C strategy: It has recently taken steps to protect its distinctive design from copycats, cut ties with retail distribution partners, and leaned into influencer marketing, using both celebrities and micro-influencers as brand ambassadors. Crocs has recently extended its casual footwear into sandals, promising its next avenue for growth.

Stories are the cheapest, easiest, and quickest content for Instagram creators to make: US food micro-influencers, for example, charged an average of $179 for an Instagram Story in 2021, versus $555 for an Instagram video and $354 for a static Instagram post, per Klear. Rates will inevitably rise as a creator’s follower count grows, but the same trend is clear across all creator tiers.

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.

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 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.

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

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.