Social media posts by influencers are continuing to rise rapidly

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.”