The Status Of Influencer Marketing Post COVID-19

Influencer marketing is a rapidly growing sector with several actors coming into play. Brands, agencies, social media content creators, sector professionals, and more are involved in the process of creating an online project. As the sector’s growth is rapid, so are the changing trends and strategies involved.

CHANGE IN THE CONTENT WITH THE OCCURRENCE OF THE PANDEMIC

The novel coronavirus (COVID-19) brought out inevitable and possibly irreversible changes to the sector. With lockdowns being implemented in almost every country, the content on social media started to differ from what it used to be. Influencers and brands collaborating in the travel, leisure, hotel, and service industries were affected the most by the pandemic. Influencers who gained an audience through their wanderlust content were not able to share another part of the world for months, and airline companies, tourism boards, airports, restaurants did not have the chance to create a project to boost sales or raise brand awareness, which resulted in the loss of revenue for all parties. The content changes were not specific to certain industries, though. Even the lifestyle and fashion content creators started to put out more realistic content to stay connected with their audiences. The authenticity, living in the moment, and being vulnerable themes took over social media since the start of the pandemic, and it still keeps going to this day, more than a year after the beginning.

 TIKTOK SWEPT OVER ALL OTHER PLATFORMS

One of the areas on social media that benefited from the pandemic was the live-streaming features of platforms. IG Live and YouTube Live saw a huge rise in their usage, while TikTok swept over all other platforms to become the most successful platform thanks to lockdowns. The app stayed on top of the most downloaded app for months, and it is still going strong. Live streams had been dominated by the gaming industry up until the pandemic, but as mentioned before, COVID brought out some irreversible changes, one of them being all influencers trying the live stream at least once, if not on a regular basis during the lockdown.

BRANDS TURNED TO VIRTUAL EVENTS

On the brand side, even though the project continued during the lockdown, they were either delayed or reduced in frequency. One of the reasons for seeing a smaller amount of branded content on social media is that neither influences nor brands want to bore their audience with a lot of #ADs on their accounts. Especially in a time where everyone is using social media a lot more to get rid of boredom or just to distract themselves, it would be a wrong strategy to just lay out sponsored content as before, considering people probably will not even buy the product due to long shipping dates due to high demand or closed borders, not being interested in new stuff, or simply because they lost their job to provide the money. However, just like the content changed on the influencer side, it did the same on the brand side. Many brands have turned to virtual events rather than flying in some influencers to the Bahamas. The virtual events also offer the audience of the influencers to have a chance to be with them on the same platform as well. Brands have also kept in touch with the influencers via Zoom links to promote their products. They even go as far as to bake a cookie or make a cocktail with them on video call by providing all the ingredients to influencers’ doors.

THE FUTURE OF NFT IN THE INDUSTRY IS UNCERTAIN

With the pandemic, there are a lot of new things that have entered people’s lives. One of them being the crypto currency, and the virtual ownership of pretty much anything. Even though most people know what crypto currency is now, it is still a fairly new segment of influencer marketing. There are influencers who only focus on the types of crypto currencies, and they give advice to people who want to invest in the currency just like a stock broker. Recently, some artists have also started selling their digital products like a certain sound, colour, or pixel of an image online, these pieces are called NFTs. However, it is still uncertain if this new idea of owning publicly available digital assets will make its way into the Influencer Marketing world, as it seems quite odd to be promoting a product to sell to one person but make it available to the whole world.

MARKET VALUE OF THE INDUSTRY HAS GROWN BY 30 PER CENT

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the influencer marketing sector drastically, and it is not over yet. Despite all the damage the pandemic caused on the sector, the market value has gone up to $9 Billion, showing up a 30% growth. With countries loosening their lockdown restrictions, influencers will soon be where they used to be, and with this wave of content creation, and marketing projects, the value is expected to rise up to $13 Billion by the end of 2021.

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