
Demand for sportswear is sprinting ahead of the wider apparel market
Consumers are prioritising their wellness despite tighter wallets, meaning sportswear remains one of the most resilient areas of fashion.
INFLUENCER MARKETING
By our News Team | 2022
Micro-influencers are particularly in demand due to their ability to authentically communicate with a brand’s customers.
Meltwater, one of the world’s leading media monitoring and social media analytics providers, has reported a significant growth in influencer marketing, noting an increase in sponsored posts of almost 27 percent.
The company’s recently released State of Influencer Marketing 2022 report says there was also a 33 percent increase in sponsored stories, with an average of 16 stories per week. All the latest findings point to the rise of micro-influencers, as well as the overall growth of the social media industry.
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
Meltwater’s data shows that changing consumer habits have forced brands to prioritise digital strategies and adjust budgets, with influencers playing a significant role in business planning.
Micro-influencers, in particular, have been identified as a key channel for brands to authentically communicate with customers, with around 91 percent of sponsored-post engagement driven by the segment.
Micro-influencers have become the most popular choice for brands due to their high following (5-30k) and reach (5-500k). Their smaller, yet focused, audience makes for high engagement, often driving the best ROI for brands.
The primary focus is on Instagram
“The results suggest influencer campaigns primarily focus on Instagram, while platforms like TikTok are more experimental,” the report states.
“TikTok is the fastest-growing social media platform for influencer marketing. TikTok is more successful in influencer campaigns than YouTube. Likewise, reports suggest brands favour TikTok over YouTube regarding sponsored collaborations, with TikTok accounting for 13% of all influencer campaigns. In comparison, the latter accounts for just 10%.”
The research is based on analysis across the most popular social media platforms – Instagram, TikTok, YouTube and Facebook. The company uses a content-monitoring tool to track keywords and influencer marketing campaigns across the social media platforms, and aggregates and analyses the information accordingly.
“Over the last few years we have been observing continuous maturing of the influencer marketing segment,” said Milda Nair, Regional Customer Experience Director for India, Middle East & Africa at Meltwater.
“Having initially started with ‘experimental’, often manually monitored (screen-shotted) campaigns, influencer marketing now holds a very important position at the digital marketing table.”

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Gideon Khobane brings more than 20 years of leadership experience across media, entertainment and digital platforms in Africa.