Influencer Marketing on Social Media Platforms: Why It Matters and Strategic Insight

In this blog post we will offer information about the difficulties of getting your marketing message to a young audience and about the rise of influencer marketing. We will emphasise how young people's media consumption habits have changed and why keeping up with that change matters. We will also explain the role of platforms such as Instagram and TikTok and why influencer marketing matters for firms, and thereby offer you strategic information.

Getting your marketing message to your audience is always a demanding task — to Generation Z in particular. Media consumption shows that this new generation has developed in a completely different way from previous generations. Turning to streaming services such as Netflix rather than television, young people prefer digital platforms such as Spotify rather than radio. Traditional magazines have been replaced by Reddit and similar digital platforms. These changes have steered marketers towards mobile advertising on social media platforms such as Instagram and TikTok rather than traditional channels. 60% of Instagram users in the United States are under 34, for example, while on TikTok nearly 40% are aged between 10 and 19.

In recent years, interest in platforms such as Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat and Twitch has given rise to a completely new industry of social media influencers and influencer marketing agencies. Celebrities such as Cristiano Ronaldo, Selena Gomez, Kylie Jenner and Kim Kardashian West have more than 100 million followers on Instagram, for example. These influencers' contribution to the marketing industry exceeded 9.7 billion dollars in 2020, making up roughly 5% of the online advertising market.

What is in this article?

• Social Media Platforms for Influencer Marketing
• 4 Recommendations for Companies Interested in Influencer Marketing:
• Avoid Over-Managing Influencers: Here Is Why
• 4 Questions for Choosing the Right Influencers

Social Media Platforms for Influencer Marketing

There is a strong connection between influencer marketing and social media platforms. Influencers need the visibility social media platforms provide in order to be recognised, and those platforms in turn gain their appeal from the content influencers share. Social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram and TikTok are among the most important players in influencer marketing. These platforms' users' age groups vary. Facebook and Twitter users are generally in their 40s, while Instagram draws consumers in their 30s and TikTok consumers in their 20s. The point to note is that precisely this younger population has different media consumption habits, approaches traditional advertising more sceptically and therefore makes influencer marketing especially important. Overall, it is important for firms wanting to use influencer marketing to take these platforms into account.

Although Facebook has the largest user base among the social media platforms, it has recently entered a declining trend. With 2.4 billion active users, Facebook stands out with an average of five visits a day and roughly 13 hours of monthly usage. But the platform's satisfaction score is low (63) and 29% of users are thinking of leaving it. There was also a big drop in engagement rate between 2017 and 2019. Facebook's role in influencer marketing strategy is therefore diminishing.

Because Twitter is a text-based platform, the content format plays an important role for influencer marketing. But in terms of active user numbers, monthly usage time and satisfaction index it is lower than the other platforms. In terms of influencer marketing, Twitter posts are assessed as less effective than those on other platforms. That said, because it has a more homogeneous user base in particular content areas, the price per post on Twitter is still slightly higher than on Facebook.

Facebook and Twitter may have limited appeal for influencer marketing. Facebook is used for communicating with your social circle, while Twitter is preferred as a news source. YouTube and Instagram, meanwhile, are entertainment-focused platforms. Instagram and TikTok have significant potential for influencer marketing by targeting young users. TikTok and Instagram's total user base is roughly 2 billion, and with their visual and video content they offer a suitable environment for influencer marketing. Focusing on entertainment on these platforms makes it easier for influencers to build a following they have never met in real life.

For these reasons we use Instagram and TikTok as examples in the rest of this blog post. We do not explicitly include YouTube because many people see YouTube more as an entertainment site like Netflix rather than a social media platform. The cost of influencer marketing on YouTube is also quite high (roughly four times Instagram's), which can put it out of reach for many companies. That said, although we do not explicitly mention other platforms below, most of the advice we give can be applied similarly to influencer marketing on other sites.

4 Recommendations for Companies Interested in Influencer Marketing:

1. Understand that every platform has its own user culture and language. For your content to be effective on every platform it is important to understand your audience's preferences and communication style.
2. Be careful when choosing the right influencers. Choosing influencers who fit your brand by assessing factors such as influencers' following, their niches and their engagement levels matters for a successful collaboration.
3. Pay attention to the content format. Visual and video-focused platforms such as Instagram and TikTok offer a more suitable environment for influencer marketing. It is important to optimise your content for those platforms.
4. Communicate regularly and interactively. Staying in constant communication with influencers gets your brand's message conveyed correctly. Building a healthy relationship with influencers is also useful for long-term collaboration.

In summary, when doing influencer marketing it is important to understand that every platform has different characteristics, to choose the right influencers, to pay attention to the content format and to stay in constant communication.

Three important points for companies wanting to gain engagement on Instagram and TikTok are:

1. Platform choice should be made carefully, because every platform requires different skills and resources. Rather than being everywhere, companies should define their audience and their goals and choose the most suitable platform.
2. Working with influencers matters for understanding the user and communicating in the right language. Influencers know the platform well and can be an instructive resource for companies.
3. Companies should offer a reason to catch users' interest. Simply being a famous brand is not enough. Companies can gain higher engagement by using humour.

Influencer marketing involves more than simply making a post.

It is important that the communication is integrated across different channels. On platforms such as Instagram and TikTok a single influencer post can sometimes be effective, but isolated posts generally do not turn into sales. For a successful campaign, being exposed to the same content more than once matters. Influencer marketing should therefore be folded into a wider marketing plan. Research shows there are strong interactions between influencer marketing, advertising and sales promotions. That integration affects influencer marketing in three ways.

First, content needs to be integrated across different channels. Making a single Instagram post with an influencer can be effective in some cases, but isolated posts are unlikely to turn into sales. In most cases, being exposed to the same content more than once (at least 15 times) is necessary, so frequency matters for campaign success. Influencer marketing should therefore be folded into a wider marketing plan.

Second, the importance of exclusive associations emerges. It is a frequently discussed subject in the relevant literature. Brands in direct competition with each other should not be promoted by the same influencer within a short period. But depending on the product category, exclusive association may not be compulsory or convincing. When there is long-term collaboration, exclusive associations generally emerge naturally.

Third, choosing the right influencer matters. Deciding by looking only at follower numbers or engagement rates can be misleading. Companies should identify influencers who can reach the relevant community and who genuinely use and promote the products. Before working with influencers it is therefore important to take the time to inform them and make them familiar with your brand.

A question marketing managers frequently ask is whether they should work with one influencer with 8 million followers, or with 16 influencers with 500,000 followers, or 160 influencers with 50,000 followers. Academic research generally suggests focusing on the most connected users (hubs). But although smaller influencers have lower engagement in absolute terms, they generally have higher engagement rates relative to their overall following and a more homogeneous audience. The influencer marketing industry has therefore created various terms such as mega, macro, micro and nano influencer, though there is no widely accepted, consistent definition for them. What matters is that niche influencers are critical at times when having a relevant community and authentic content matters — but unfortunately there is no simple answer to this question. The following factors should be considered when making this decision.

• In influencer marketing campaigns, influencer choice should be made according to the campaign's aim.
• Where national or international brands want to create awareness for new products, large influencers should be preferred.
• If the aim is reaching an audience in a particular geographic area or creating relatable content, smaller influencers may be more suitable.
• The management costs of working with more than one influencer should be considered.
• Smaller influencers can often be inexperienced and can create disadvantages in terms of management.
• Choosing the right niche influencers can be hard, because there can be overlap between the audiences of influencers in the same field.
• Smaller influencers can have limitations in terms of content quality and creativity.
• It is important to steer and diversify influencers so customers are not exposed to very similar content at the same time.

Influencer marketing campaigns should be planned carefully, taking goals and costs into account. There is no definitive answer on whether large or small influencers should be preferred, because it depends on the situation. Generally, a combination of both is recommended. Lindt & Sprüngli, a Swiss chocolate brand, worked successfully with 280 influencers of different sizes in its #MyLindorMoment campaign, for example. The campaign delivered significant engagement within ten days and reached roughly 13.6 million people. In short, the decision should rest on the campaign's goals and the practicalities of influencer management.

Avoid Over-Managing Influencers: Here Is Why

There are three reasons why over-control can be harmful on platforms such as Instagram and TikTok.

First, over-control restricts influencers' creative freedom and can lead to more than one influencer sharing the same content. Because different platforms require different communication styles, using the same briefing documents can also cause problems. That can leave followers encountering boring, repetitive content and risk influencers losing their following.

Second, over-control can drive influencers away from campaigns. Influencers may avoid taking part in campaigns involving over-control for fear of losing their followers. That in turn can reduce brands' potential to reach their audiences.

Finally, over-control may not fit the platforms' nature. Social media platforms such as Instagram and TikTok are built on authenticity and spontaneity. Over-control can therefore reduce brands' organic engagement and follower loyalty on the platforms.

Approving content before it is published is a more effective method in influencer marketing. That reduces risks such as misinformation and brand mismatches. When working with contentious products, the approval process is especially important. An influencer might put laundry detergent in a dishwasher, for example. In other cases the brand might mistakenly be shown alongside other brands. Approval before publication is the best way of balancing the creativity influencer marketing requires against the risk of misinformation. Approving content matters especially when dealing with contentious products.

Creative briefs, meanwhile, get influencers focusing on the right elements. Using guiding rules rather than controls supports getting better content. Rather than tight controls, though, briefs should consist of rules guiding influencers on what they should and should not do, because more flexible briefs lead to better content. Influencers generally put serious effort into promotion and try to be creative, but some may not be quite suitable enough for the client.

In this way influencer marketing can be managed successfully and brand goals achieved.

4 Questions for Choosing the Right Influencers

The most important decision is identifying the right influencers in an influencer marketing campaign. That means choosing influencers who can deliver content aligned with your brand goals. Choosing the right communication channel matters in any kind of advertising, but in influencer marketing the personal relationship between influencers and their followers makes that choice especially critical. In this section we want to focus on four important questions that can help you identify the right influencers.

What does being an influencer on social media mean?

For 17% of British young people and 14% of those aged 11–16, being a social media influencer or YouTuber is a career aspiration. These options are among the three most popular, behind only wanting to be a doctor (18%).

But it would not be wrong to say the term social media influencer is quite hard to define. Simple quantitative measures such as follower numbers alone, or measures such as the ratio of likes, comments and shares to total followers used as a measure of engagement, cannot reliably be used on their own. Measures of this kind can easily be made misleading through methods such as buying fake followers or automated likes. A rule accepted in the industry is that only influencers who deliver more benefit than their cost (20% to 25%) are effective.

We define a social media influencer as a person with a large, engaged following on social media platforms. Unless you follow these people you will not be aware of their existence. Many people may know Cristiano Ronaldo, for example, but generally know him as a footballer. His having more than 200 million Instagram followers (@cristiano) is most likely a result of his fame outside. Sophie Hinchliffe (@mrshinchhome), on the other hand, may be unknown to most people, but her advice on household cleaning products and her more than three million followers make her a social media influencer. What makes influencers effective is their ability to connect with their following and move them to act on their recommendations. Influencers can be people, brands (Nike, @nikesportswear, for example) or even robots (Miquela, @lilmiquela).

Identifying effective influencers is both a science and an art, at the early stages in particular. Agencies generally research to find valuable people on social media who have not been discovered yet. In that research, quantitative measures such as follower numbers and engagement rates are used as a starting point. But deciding based on that data alone is not enough. Genuine engagement and the influencer's relationship with their community matter more. The engagement between the influencer and their following, and whether the influencer's recommendations lead to behaviour change, should therefore be considered.

Using tags correctly also matters. Appropriate hashtags should be used to make influencers' content engaging, and appropriate keywords chosen to categorise the content correctly. That will help the content be understood better by search engines and rank higher.

It is also important to pay attention to the content's quality and originality. Google cares about distinctive, original content and gives content of that kind a higher ranking position. Influencers should therefore be encouraged to produce original, valuable content.

In short, careful research and analysis should be carried out in order to identify influencers and optimise content.

Who is ready for long-term collaboration?

According to a recent report, 21.5% of Instagram users have more than 10,000 followers while 5.6% have more than 50,000. That means millions of potential influencers. These figures may make choosing the right person (or becoming an influencer) look like a hopeless task.

Influencers are people who can earn between 200,000 and 300,000 dollars a year, which some regard as inflated and exaggerated. These figures may be met with scepticism among marketing managers, but they create a great source of motivation for users and encourage them to put great effort into building a social media presence. But a frequently overlooked reality is that being an influencer is not only about taking beautiful photographs and requires demanding work.

A point those who want to be influencers frequently forget is that succeeding can take a long time. It can take 5 to 10 years for an influencer to reach the point where they catch firms' interest. Although gaining fame quickly is sometimes possible (in smaller niches, like Sophie Hinchliffe, @mrshinchhome), it is generally not a realistic expectation.

At a certain point, influencers cannot do everything on their own. Influencers with more than a million followers generally work with an agency, and a team helps them find deals and negotiate. That service costs roughly 20% of income. Helpers such as assistants, support staff and professional photographers may also be hired. But even with a team there are many tasks the influencer has to do. The influencer has to do most of the important tasks themselves — engaging with followers, responding to comments and messages, taking part in content.
Influencers have to be willing to share a significant part of themselves with the outside world. They have to decide whether they want to leave out part of their personal life and how their pets, children, partners and families will be included. The willingness to get up in the dark to take a selfie at sunrise on the beach can feel far more like work than a free holiday. Even if they have built a following, many aspiring influencers may give up because of the significant dedication and time needed to grow and sustain a follower community.

From the firm's perspective, identifying influencers willing to put in the effort a long-term strategy requires is extremely important. Working with an influencer who lacks the necessary professionalism, or starting a long-term collaboration and noticing the influencer leave a short time later, can be extremely disappointing.

Where do you find influencers genuinely passionate about your business's sector?

Firms have to offer a reason to get users engaging, and the same holds for influencers. On platforms such as Instagram and TikTok, some users wanting to increase their follower numbers open accounts out of a desire to be famous rather than to share a subject they care about. But simply wanting to be an influencer is not enough. The influencers who achieve genuine growth are the ones who find a subject they are genuinely passionate about and express it sincerely. Successful influencers generally have compelling personalities even before entering social media. These influencers have been the people whose friends asked them for advice on make-up, restaurants or exercise, and one day started sharing those subjects with a wider audience online. Identifying influencers who are interested in your business and influential in your sector is the first and most important step.

But even influencers who start out passionate can sometimes overlook important things. After becoming famous in particular, some influencers may tend to work with too many or unsuitable brands. That sometimes simply stems from a desire for attention. Some influencers can also make the mistake of placing brands into their content in a way that does not fit. As a firm it is important to spot and prevent problems of this kind, because they can damage the brand. If you sponsor an influencer to promote hair conditioner, for example, taking a photograph of the product in a café may not be suitable, because hair care is not generally done in a café. But excessive perfectionism can be harmful too. Some influencers can make it hard to connect with their community by making their content too flawless. What matters is working with honest, authentic influencers rather than perfect ones.

Which platforms should you use to reach your audience?

Even if you focus on working with genuinely authentic, real and distinctive content, achieving high levels of engagement and exposure is getting harder. Instagram and TikTok are platforms fed by artificial intelligence algorithms that decide which content the user sees in their feed. Good content alone is therefore generally not enough to reach a wide audience. Companies should therefore identify influencers present on more than one platform in order to reduce their dependence on a single platform, use the possibilities of different formats and widen their reach.

Instagram may be suitable for sharing short stories showing how products fit into daily life, while longer videos sit better on YouTube and more detailed explanations and product reviews should be published on a blog. Blogs, which have been around since 1997, are experiencing a revival in that context. Of course, the drawback is the increased effort needed to create content, because it is generally hard to use the same content twice on two different platforms. Most influencers therefore have a central platform they put their effort into and a few side platforms for feeding followers to their main channel or providing extra information.

This multi-platform strategy should not stop in the online world. As mentioned above, followers care about honesty and authenticity, which leads them to want to connect with their favourite influencers in real life. Most companies therefore encourage influencers to run various events, from simple coffee shop meet-ups to live performances that can fill concert halls or live podcast recordings. Live appearances of this kind matter greatly for firms too. Appropriate integration across different environments also helps solve measurement, an important difficulty the influencer marketing industry still struggles with. Companies today know that engagement is a helpful intermediate step, but what matters most in the end is the increased sales the influencer delivers.

Conclusion: what will the future bring us?

The influencer marketing world is constantly in motion. Strategies that worked for companies a year ago may no longer be effective today. We believe the advice given above will matter for a longer period. But the question of what the future will bring still hangs in the air.

The platform owners Instagram and TikTok (Facebook and ByteDance) are for-profit companies, which means they can make strategic decisions affecting firms and influencers.

In TikTok's case, it bases its content on an artificial intelligence algorithm, and how that algorithm works is unclear. Creating a successful video often looks like a matter of luck for content creators. Although ByteDance prefers not to share information about that algorithm, how long that information stays secret is uncertain. Firms making significant investments in the platform and influencers producing videos may not want to accept that success can be unpredictable.

In Instagram's case, a significant change has been made in hiding likes. Likes are still shown to content creators, but other users cannot see them. While Instagram does not provide financial compensation to content creators, likes are used like a virtual currency on the platform. Removing likes can reduce the motivation to produce content, for small influencers in particular. But Instagram depends on the content that makes the platform appealing being produced. Removing likes may therefore mean that compensating content creators could be a route taken in future.

Changes such as TikTok's algorithm and Instagram's like-hiding policy can affect influencer marketing strategy. Adapting to these changes and evaluating new opportunities matters for succeeding in influencer marketing.

Influencer marketing is significantly affected by authenticity and reality. The widespread use of advanced photo editing tools plays a big role in making content suitable for Instagram. But that also brings with it a tendency to create a virtual impression that does not match reality. More unfiltered content is expected in future. On Instagram, Fake Instagram or Finsta accounts have emerged in response to that trend. On TikTok, authenticity has become a core feature of the platform in the form of videos showing users either naturally or openly staged and stylised.

Conclusion

In this blog post we have tried to offer information on getting your marketing message to a young audience and to emphasise why influencer marketing matters. Today, as media consumption habits change rapidly, digital channels are replacing traditional marketing methods. Social media platforms such as Instagram and TikTok draw great interest from young people, and influencer marketing on those platforms is becoming an important strategy for firms.

We recommend becoming part of this digital transformation with content creation and marketing strategy. You can use social media platforms to engage with your business's or your brand's young audience. Influencer marketing lets you promote your products or services using influencers' large followings. This method is an effective tool for winning young consumers' trust and making your brand more visible.