Without a doubt, influencer marketing will continue to grow at an astounding pace in 2020 and social media remains to be one of the most effective channels for it. The smart marketer will harness the technology to reach out to consumers and promote their brands or jumpstart a stagnant or declining business.
While social media influencers have been around for quite some time, the course they are taking is shifting; hence, each year brings in new trends. For an aspiring social media influencer or a marketer who plans to work with one, here are tips for maximizing the benefits of influencer marketing. For starters, you can buy Instagram followers if only to pique people’s curiosity and influence them to follow you.

Although Facebook and YouTube have the most active users, it’s Instagram that’s the most effective social media platform for influencers. That said, here are social media influencer trends to watch out for in 2020:
1. Micro-influencers will be the preferred choice over celebrity influencers.
These are the people like you and me, but with 1k-250k followers. The benefits of using micro-influencers are:
They don’t strain your marketing budget since they don’t command the astronomical pay of celebrities.
They are seen as authentic and are more credible to the average person.
They attract a niche audience who are more likely to follow them and be interested in the brand they are promoting.
They have more time to engage with their followers.
Unlike celebrities, their minor misbehaviors are overlooked and are not likely to turn off their followers.

2. Video content will increase exponentially for influencer marketing.
When the talk is about video, YouTube automatically comes to mind. After all, it’s the most popular video sharing platform and the No. 2 top website globally, coming after Google. While there are other worthy video sharing alternatives, and you can also share videos on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, the point is, video content will dominate online marketing strategies and is the most effective medium for ROI.
- 8 out of 10 people (18-49 years old) watch YouTube
- 6 out of 10 prefer online video to TV
- 85% of businesses will use video as a marketing tool
- 88% of video marketers report a positive ROI with video use
- By 2022, 82% of online traffic will consist of video
People are visual by nature and videos are more powerful in product education, information and memory retention. They also help in SEO and have more influence in buying decisions. A marketing specialist suggests ideal video lengths are two minutes each on Facebook or YouTube, 1 minute on Instagram and 30 seconds on Twitter.
3. Government regulation and enforcement will be strengthened
Up until this recently in the internet’s short lifetime, governments have usually ignored the loose parameters and laws online. Social media influencers for that matter, have enjoyed much freedom until the feds started cracking down on them back in 2017. Most of the damage was done to Instagram influencers where rampant buying and selling of products and digital goods are happening.
The same thing is happening all over the world in different countries like Australia, Canada, or Belgium.
With the continuously rising trend and preference for social media influencers, governments and other organizations are starting to take notice. Hence, the untamed potential of influencer marketing in social media sites might soon become more strict on influencers especially those with sponsorships or marketing setups.
4. Brands will use alternative platforms (Twitch, TikTok)
In conjunction with the tightening laws and regulations around the most popular mainstream social media sites, brands will certainly look for alternatives. TikTok and Twitch come to mind as two social media sites relatively untouched by governments. In fact, you can already see some brands taking advantage of the carefree marketing aspect of TikTok.
Get ready to see more of those in the future. In fact, TikTok just outperformed Instagram last year when it hit 1.5 billion downloads. Meanwhile, big non-gaming brands like KFC and South Park are well received in Twitch where 82% of the live streaming site’s demographic thinking sponsorships are good for the gaming industry.
80% of them are also warm to the idea of brands sponsoring gaming content. All in all, Twitch and TikTok are ripe markets for brands.
5. Storytelling
Just as consumers and users have become immune or desensitized to celebrity marketing, they will also grow tired of influencer marketing– at least if it stays stagnant and unimproving. Influencers know this all too well and will definitely try to come up with more creative ways to market. A more unique kind of storytelling comes to mind regarding this.
Stories about brands or involving brands can only go so far without sounding cliche or repetitive. Newer forms of storytelling which are more persuasive because it’s a subtle art that will keep on becoming more and more intricate the more artists compete; think of these artists are the influencers.
Hence, expecting these kinds of changes as we go further down 2020 will better prepare you for social media influencers.
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