Blog | SamyRoad

Influencers who become life influences

Date: September 16, 2022

Category: Influencer Marketing

During the last years, we have experienced different adversities that have made us depend even more on the media to be able to inform our knowledge and learn how to face these challenges.

This is nothing new. Since the first newspaper appeared in England in 1702, the media have served, apart from communicating news, as a tool for disseminating information to society.

Today, however, younger generations, like Alpha, have exchanged traditional media for social media platforms. These new media platforms must also be understood as a change in how the message is spread and received. An influencer no longer only influences the public in certain aspects of their day; they can become a reference for each of the public’s decisions throughout their lives.

Influencers that influence

Until now, our influencers have always been there to recommend different lifestyles. What to wear, what to eat, what to visit, what to do. These were the questions they answered, but recently, influencers have begun to answer the question of how to be and behave in society.

We can see a clear evolution from influencer to influential, a personality that influences the behaviour of their followers. In other words, an influencer who affects the final purchase of a product can also directly affect the consumer’s way of life.

The younger generation, the Alpha generation, looks up to influencers for a more humane and realistic lifestyle. They are looking for a guide, someone to follow, with solid values. They look for a personality that empathises with them and tries to guide them to a more compassionate way of life.

Influencers being influential

Now that it’s time for all of us to go back to school, but above all, for the children to return to their classrooms, we are more aware of what happens inside these enclosures.

The concern for the smallest among us is palpable. To guarantee the children of our society better day-to-days, to protect them from possible unnecessary and irreversible traumas.

Empathy is one of our most essential tools, which is why the pain and injustice of others hurt us so much.

A few weeks ago in Spain, we were able to experience the effect that our most influential influencers had on a case of bullying.

The viral effect that the most famous personalities in the world of influencers had to share their outrage over a case of bullying significantly impacted the young generations, much more than if it had been just an anti-bullying campaign.

“The school bathroom reminds me of my sister Maria’s first day of school when a girl pushed her for being the new one. Thank God the situation did not escalate, and we could stop it. Still, I think of all those people who today continue to suffer this bullying and harassment and take refuge in the bathroom to be able to be calm and that nobody bothers them. My heart breaks.” Shares Marta Pombo, a Spanish influencer with more than 800,000 followers.

The famous streamer Ibai Llanos declared through his channel his anger towards a case of bullying; he even decided to point out the kid that was suffering from it and celebrated his birthday on stream. He condemned the act of bullying and the people who were acting on it.

The power of influencers

Influencers today have much more power over the public than we can imagine. The responsibility that comes with this power to be a reference and support to their followers.

They are not only people who help brands position themselves and transmit their new products, ideas and values, but they are also helpful channels to transmit essential values to the public.

We have long seen large organisations work and fight to transmit these values. But we must be realistic when it comes to targeting the younger generations.

The Alpha generation and those yet to come follow their favourite personalities for guidance. What they do and represent will have much more weight on their followers than what large corporations have.

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Virtual Influencers, a new horizon in Advocate Marketing

Date: July 4, 2022

Category: Influencer Marketing

Virtual Influencers are the new avatars that live on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, Twitter, and different brands’ advertising campaigns. Over the last few years, virtual influencers have been a growing reality of internet interaction, and their influence is such that some of them have managed to collaborate with some of the world’s biggest brands.

Although they are not real people, virtual influencers (an avatar created digitally) seek to create a community on social networks and show a lifestyle like anyone else.

Brands collaborate with them to create advertising campaigns because of their continued growth and high engagement.

NOT THE FIRST VIRTUAL INFLUENCER

We tend to think that virtual influencers can separate us too much from reality when the truth is that we’ve been exposed to this fiction forever.

We must remember that all the characters we’ve created through literature or the movies industry are virtual influencers.

Imagine if Harry Potter was an influencer? How would his IG be? Which brands would he work with?

Stories create characters for readers
or viewers to interact with, fall in love or follow. They create communities and a lifestyle and even dictate trends; in other words, fictional characters were the first virtual influencers.

44% of people have the same level of trust in a product when endorsed by a virtual influencer rather than a human influencer.

WHAT ARE THE PROS

The planned and implemented strategy behind each post or story of the virtual influencer encourages brands to work with virtual influencers because as well as being cheaper to work with, there is a reduced risk over working with a human influencer. The team behind each virtual influencer has full control of the narrative, deciding what brands they collaborate with, what the avatar should look like, what it publishes and its principles and values.

Virtual Influencers could be less controversial than human influencers as avatars are less likely to receive negative comments, similarly for brands that use these influencers. We live in a cancel culture; anything an influencer says or does can have huge and lasting effects on an influential figure’s public perception so working with an influencer who aligns to the brand values is incredibly important.

The virtual influencer content is highly customizable; there are endless possibilities for creative and seamless product integration. There is nowhere a virtual influencer cannot go and nothing they cannot do.

Carlos Mendiola, associate director of the Department of Media and Digital Culture at Tec de Monterrey Campus Santa Fe, states that it may be irrelevant for brands if the influencer
is an avatar. Brands are looking for someone who can engage with an audience and raise awareness about their products.

Should brands create Virtual Influencers?

Brands should be asking themselves whether they should start thinking about creating their avatar. This virtual character can represent them on social media and build a community like any other influencer.

Today we can see quite a few brands that have already created a character in their likeness, a virtual influencer who shares all their values and aesthetics and intends to create a community.

KFC’s fast-food brand transformed the iconic Colonel Sanders into a virtual avatar and used him for several campaigns as the new image. Like any other model, the new Colonel performs and acts within the brand’s values and creates a stronger bond with the KFC community.

In South Asia, the fashion brand Puma launched a new campaign for their Puma Future Rider sneaker and created a virtual influencer for the campaign named Maya.

Designed by UM Studio and Ensemble Worldwide, Maya’s personality evolves as her interests are built according to her interactions on social media, thanks to Artificial Intelligence.

Prada is another example. They created
their first virtual influencer named Candy
to represent Prada’s aesthetic and values through their campaigns, building a stronger connection with their audience.

These brands demonstrate that the future is within the virtual world; future generations, such as Gen Zs, believe in these new adaptations and feel comfortable creating a community around these virtual avatars.

Who are these new virtual influencers

Lil Miquela

Describes herself as a “19-year-old robot living in Los Angeles with 3 million followers.” Her publications reach more than 60 thousand likes. Among the brands that have decided to collaborate with her are MINI Cooper, Givenchy, Spotify, and Samsung. She has created a large community with whom she even shares parts of her life that have led her to existential crises.

Ronald F. Blawko

Known as Blawko, is a self-proclaimed low-life who identifies as a robot man. He spends his time with his other virtual friends on IG or venting on Youtube to his subscribers.

Blawko has worked with brands such as Aliexpress.

KnoxFrost

Another male virtual influencer with more than 600.000 followers on IG, has partnered with global organisations from the World Health Organization to Rock the Vote. Knox has also appeared in various media: Forbes, Business Insider, AdAge, Fortune, Adweek, Buzzfeed, Mashable, Dazed, Betches and CNN.

Mar.ia

Is the first Mexican virtual influencer. Her main focus is to raise awareness about different issues the world faces, such as climate change and other human issues such as gender equality.

Shudu

Is a digital supermodel in her mid-to-late 20s from South Africa. Shudu advocates for the virtual human race; having worked with Cosmopolitan, Vogue, Balmain, and Smart Car, Shudu spends her time posing in premier, mystical shoot locations to display eye- popping fashion pieces.

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Social animals and the future of social media

Date: July 1, 2022

Category: Social Media

I feel very fortunate to be part of the generation that experienced the transition from the analogue to the digital world. I was neither too old nor too young. It allowed me to understand the potential of new technologies and simultaneously experience it as something almost magical: the first email, the first web page, the first search engine… A new world to be discovered, and every day was an adventure.

But the unforgettable memory that blew my mind was when I was visiting a friend, and he showed me the chat on a page called ole.com. He said, “I’m talking live with other people”. That was witchcraft! To talk to people worldwide in real-time on the computer was completely revolutionary for me.

We were living in the early days of the internet with 56k connections, ISDN, and the first ADSL… and we were already using the net to connect with others. Later new sites would call themselves ‘social media”, but these networks were already in place from the beginning of time. We talked to our school friends via messenger, met people with the same interests as us on forums, and shared our first university photos on pages like Fotolog. Social media were always there, although we didn’t call them that.

We have empowered our relationships through social media that our physical reality cannot be understood without them. I’m not saying anything new, am I? We all know it, and brands know it. Their perception depends on what they say and do through them, who their digital ambassadors are, and what users talk about. It is well known that a tweet can change your life, and this risk is multiplied infinitely in the case of brands.

We know the power of Facebook, the revolutions of Twitter, the paradigm shift of TikTok or Twitch… We interact with others, known and unknown, in the same ways. We meet new people, debate, create our own tribes, dogmas, taboos…

And now, we are at the forefront of a new community model. Platforms like Discord enable users to create smaller closed spaces only invited people can join. Users enjoy this private space since it is where they can discuss with other like-minded individuals with similar values and knowledge around specific topics. Why should I talk to everybody if I want to interact with particular individuals? This thinking is step-by-step arising, especially after Twitch became the most relevant communication platform of the future.

Today, The so-called Internet 3.0 is looming on the horizon, but there is still too much talk about it. We don’t know what’s coming up next, we can only dream about what our following networks will be.

Martín Brotons

Planning and Creative Director at Samy Alliance

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NFTs can be the tipping point of a 360 business

Date: June 23, 2022

Categories: Social Media, Tech & Entertainment

Several content creators and entertainment personalities have joined the NFT craze.

People still struggle to understand NFTs, which continues to give the feeling that the majority who bet on them are looking more for speculation on the asset than for their benefit.

World’s Famous NFTs

Some of the most famous NFTs in the world are valued at millions of dollars and their main characters are becoming the new Mona Lisa of our time.

There are world-famous NFTs artists such as Beeple, a digital artist. He created a series of digital art called Everyday, where the artist created one piece daily. Beeple created an NFT by collecting the first 5 thousand and titled it; “Every day, the first 5,000 days.” This work was auctioned at Christie’s in March 2021 and reached 70 million dollars, becoming the most expensive NFT in history.

The Invisible Friends NFT collection created by Swedish artist Marcus Magnusson is becoming the most famous moving collectables in the digital world. Five thousand funny invisible friends with different characteristics, clothes and accessories.

The Bored Ape Yacht Club collection has 10,000 NFTs with diverse characteristics, attributes and qualities, but one thing in common: they are all bored ape avatars.

And many other NFTs collections worth knowing about, are changing the blockchain scenario.

What’s going on with these NFTs

Until now, all the famous stories, books, movies, and characters that have made it in history go viral whenever you start to see all the merchandising. Disney opens a section at their park; you see T-shirts, mugs, posters, toys, and any merchandising you could imagine, and it all falls from a story.

Lately, we have spotted a slight change in how we commercialize a character or a story. We´ve seen the order of the events slightly shift, and we build our stories from an image instead of the other way around.

We´ve seen how gifs and emojis have developed their storyline; now, these new NFT characters are starting to do so.

We no longer need to write the story; our image needs to be viral and the character in it.

You can see it for yourself, how a bored ape with goofy glasses and a resting face has gone viral worldwide.

The Bored Ape Fever

Within the NFTs, the Bored Ape Yacht Club, or NFT monkeys, are possibly the best known. Many personalities have their monkey and highlight it on social media.

But what’s next for the Bored Ape?

The possibility of turning the bored ape into a video game is one. It will be a play-to-earn game, a standard formula in recent times within the NFT world. The launch this past March 16 of ApeCoin, their cryptocurrency, with which they intend to enhance this title further. A style of games that consists of obtaining products with a monetary value, with the aim that we also add some money.

Where are we going

NFTs are no longer one only piece; they can be 100 different things or even a whole 360 campaign. NFTs are a new channel from which we can build a brand from scratch and a unique story to sell and commercialize.

It turns out that it is a central axis on which we can franchise and generate products from there. At Dogma, our fellow agency, one of the primary purposes is to manage and store the meta communities where these NFTs and the new 360 business model will live.

That is why the management of meta communities is crucial to be able to commercialize these new NFTs.

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Instagram Avatar: Your Profile Pic for the Metaverse

Date: June 16, 2022

Categories: Influencer Marketing, Influencer World, Social Media

“Avatars are a key building block for the future of personal identity in the Metaverse,” said Adam Mosseri, Head of Instagram.

Said and done.

Instagram has announced/released a new feature that is oriented to keep getting closer to the Metaverse. We are talking about its new avatars.

The Metaverse is a big puzzle, still to be understood and defined, but these digital personas are the first part of the puzzle.

Instagram Avatars are customizable 3D personas, and they can reproduce your physical features or reflect how you want to be perceived online.

Adam Mosseri states that these avatars will be the virtual identity people will use to show up across the Metaverse – whether in an app built by Meta or any other company.

They are another forward step towards making the Metaverse a reality.

Who are these avatars?

In the Metaverse, users will be able to interact with each other in a virtual environment. However, not everyone has access to a VR/ AR headset. Therefore, Meta has found its way of bringing a glimpse of Metaverse to its users in 3D avatars.

These 3D avatars are functional, and users can customize them to be more aligned with their virtual identity.

Manish Chopra, Director and Head Partnerships at Meta, said, “Representations in the Metaverse should reflect the real world’s diversity. Avatars are just the first step toward enabling everyone to express themselves in their unique ways.”

Why create your digital avatar?

We see people comfortably talking to the camera, posing and feeling themselves, while we, on the other hand, can’t. Creating our avatar can help us confront this struggle and feel comfortable in front of the camera. Creating an avatar maximizes your creativity and freedom to be whomever you want. You can create a fictional character that does not depend on your physical barriers, just like when you are playing a video game, and you have to choose your skin. It encourages you to boost your creativity and develop new, breaking content beyond the physical world.

How can these avatars help your brand?

The possibilities that an Instagram avatar will have for brands and advertisers is something that we will be able to assess in time. This inclusion of avatars has a lot to do with Meta’s attempt to enhance the Metaverse. Therefore, we can assume that Instagram avatar applications will follow this line. And trying to draw some conclusions, the avatar of a brand may become a communication channel for the brand with its customers. Suppose the avatar is sufficiently developed and capable of creating a loyal audience. In that case, it may replace some Instagrammers when promoting x-brand products or offering content.

However, it will be difficult for the avatar to supply the impartiality that flesh and blood Instagram is supposed to have when choosing what to tell us.

Everything that we choose to offer through the avatar of our brand will have to be measured because we run the risk that the public will finally assimilate our avatar as a mere customer service channel.

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Virtual Influencers: The New Reality

Date: April 8, 2022

Categories: Influencer Marketing, Influencer World, Social Media

Virtual Influencers are the new avatars that live on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, Twitter, and different brands’ advertising campaigns. Over the last few years, virtual influencers have been a growing reality of internet interaction, and their influence is such that some of them have managed to collaborate with large companies.

Although they are not real people, virtual influencers (an avatar created digitally) seek to create a community on social networks and show a lifestyle like anyone else.

Because of their continued growth and high engagement, large companies choose them to create advertising collaborations.

Not the first virtual influencer

We tend to think that virtual influencers can separate us too much from reality when the truth is that we’ve been exposed to this fiction forever.

We must remember that all the characters we’ve created through literature or the movies industry are virtual influencers.

Imagine if Harry Potter was an influencer? How would his IG be? Which brands would he work with?

Stories create characters for readers or viewers to interact with, fall in love or follow. They create communities and a lifestyle and even dictate trends; in other words, fictional characters were the first virtual influencers.

Who are these new virtual influencers

Lil Miquela describes herself as a “19-year-old robot living in Los Angeles with 3 million followers.” Her publications reach more than 60 thousand likes. Among the brands that have decided to collaborate with her are MINI Cooper, Givenchy, Spotify, and Samsung. She has created a large community with whom she even shares parts of her life that have led her to existential crises.

Ronald F. Blawko, known as Blawko, is a self-proclaimed low-life who ident

ifies as a robot man. He spends his time with his other virtual friends on IG or venting on Youtube to his subscribers.

Blawko has worked with brands such as Aliexpress.

KnoxFrost, another male virtual influencer with more than 600.000 followers on IG, has partnered with global organizations from the World Health Organization to Rock the Vote. Knox has also appeared in various media: Forbes, Business Insider, AdAge, Fortune, Adweek, Buzzfeed, Mashable, Dazed, Betches and CNN.

Mar.ia is the first Mexican virtual influencer. Her main focus is to raise awareness about different issues the world faces, such as climate change and other human issues such as gender equality.

Shudu is a digital supermodel in her mid-to-late 20s from South Africa. Shudu advocates for the virtual human race; having worked with Cosmopolitan, Vogue, Balmain, and Smart Car, Shudu spends her time posing in premier, mystical shoot locations to display eye-popping fashion pieces.

What are the pros

The planned and implemented strategy behind each post or story of the virtual influencer encourages brands to work with virtual influencers as alongside being cheaper to work with, they also reduce the risks of working with a human influencer. The team behind each virtual influencer decides what the avatar should look like, what it publishes, its principles and values, and what brands they work with.

Virtual Influencers could be less controversial than human influencers; these avatars are less likely to receive negative comments, similarly for brands that use these influencers. We live in a cancel culture; anything an influencer says or does can have huge and lasting effects on an influential figure’s public perception. Working with an influencer who aligns to the brand values is monumental.

The virtual influencer content is highly customizable; there are endless possibilities for creative and seamless product integration. There is nowhere a virtual influencer cannot go and nothing they cannot do.

Carlos Mendiola, associate director of the Department of Media and Digital Culture at Tec de Monterrey Campus Santa Fe, states that it may be irrelevant for brands if the influencer is an avatar. Brands are looking for someone who can engage with an audience and raise awareness about their products.

Should brands create their virtual influencers?

Brands should be asking themselves whether they should start thinking about creating their avatar. This virtual character can represent them on social media and build a community like any other influencer.

Today we can see quite a few brands that have already created a character in their likeness, a virtual influencer who shares all their values and aesthetics and intends to create a community.

KFC’s fast-food brand transformed the iconic Colonel Sanders into a virtual avatar and used him for several campaigns as the new image. Like any other model, the new Coronel performs and acts within the brand’s values and creates a stronger bond with the KFC community.

In South Asia, the fashion brand Puma launched a new campaign for their Puma Future Rider sneaker and created a virtual influencer for the campaign named Maya. Designed by UM Studio and Ensemble Worldwide, Maya’s personality evolves as her interests are built according to her interactions on social media, thanks to Artificial Intelligence.

Prada is another perfect example of how creating your brand virtual influencer can help you control what they say, how they say it and where. Prada created their first virtual influencer named Candy to represent Prada’s aesthetic and values through their campaigns, building a stronger connection with their audience.

These brands are an example of how the future is within the virtual world; future generations, such as Gen Zs, believe in these new adaptations and feel comfortable creating a community around these virtual avatars.

Virtual reality is the new reality.

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Exploring Metaverse Fashion Week: What’s the opportunity for influencers?

Date: March 30, 2022

Categories: Influencer Marketing, Influencer World, Social Media

Source: @mahaha0

The first-ever Metaverse Fashion Week took place in Decentraland from March 24th to the 27th.

Over 60 different fashion brands showcased more than 500 looks throughout the event.

From virtual runways, meets with designers to opening stores and afterparty events, the MVFW was one of the biggest game-changers for the fashion industry we have ever experienced.

The MVFW opened their audience from a small niche to a vast audience; anybody on Decentraland could assist since it was free.

Visitors could buy NFTs of the fashion brands using cryptocurrency MANA’s platform through their digital wallets. They could either buy the look digitally or later transform it into physical.

The highlights

The MVFW started with London-based retailer Selfridges opening its flagship store with an immersive experience from Paco Rabanne + Victor Vasarely’s collection.

Estee Lauder launched NFT wearable, inspired by their famous serum Advanced Night Repair that users could claim and give their avatar a unique glowing by stepping in the virtual Advanced Night Repair “Little Brown Bottle”.

Tommy Hilfiger showcased its spring collection and opened a virtual store during the MVFW.

The items for visitors to buy NFTs were the madras shirt for women and a unisex hoodie bearing the Hilfiger logo. Visitors could obtain physical versions of the items by redeeming the NFTs.

But, the biggest highlight at the Metaverse Fashion week was the presence of Sophia, the world’s famous humanoid robot created by Hanson Robotic from Hong Kong. Inside Decentreland, visitors were encouraged to spot Sophia take a selfie with her and then share them on Twitter by #findingsophiatherobot.

The new fashion influencers of the Metaverse

One of the new world’s most exciting fields is what kind of marketing and content creation can brands offer in the Metaverse—knowing that more data will be available for advertisers and that targeting will be new.

Brands will have to create their digital twins and follow or dictate new trends in the Metaverse.

Influencers have already started thinking about creating their avatars to work with brands in the Metaverse. Post for Rent has built a centre for digital influencers in Decentraland to become the “bridge” between the physical and virtual world.

Brands like Prada, Puma and Yoox have already created their influencer avatars like Shudu and Lil Miquela. Prada’s new muse and influencer named Candy is an avatar dressed as Prada from head to toe, even adorned, and looks exactly like any other influencer.

The Metaverse gives influencers a whole new playing field, not only with their fans but also with other influencers. They can share brand experiences more efficiently, be connected and interact in the same space simultaneously.

However, this new virtual horizon for brands raises a big question for the world of influencer marketing.

Should influencers build their avatar replica for the Metaverse? Or should brands create a new separate and distinguished influencer world inside the Metaverse?

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“Just setting up my twittr”

Date: March 22, 2022

Category: Social Media
Fifteen years ago, Twitter was born. However, this is not viral on Twitter. What’s viral today is the Korean singer Seulgi, the Boeing 737 crash in China and the Barcelona Club victory. The trending topics on Twitter are sometimes trivial, and others are not. It’s been part of Twitter’s identity from the first day it started and from the first-ever tweet, “Just setting up my twitrr,” Dorsey posted.

At first, Twitter was nothing more than an internal communication tool for Odeo, a small San Francisco podcast company. Above all, its first users dealt with the blandest everyday topics until August 3, 2006, when a small earthquake hit San Francisco. Soon the tweets began to talk about whether anyone had noticed it. One of the four Twitter founders, Biz Stone, recognized these “first” earthquake tweets as historical. They were a clear example of how informative and extensive Twitter was and how good of a tool it could be.

In 2008, after the Bombay attacks, we confirmed Twitter’s informative effectiveness; images and tweets informed traditional media of the last-minute news. In 2008, two years after that well-known first tweet (“Just Setting up my twttr”) by Jack Dorsey, Barack Obama won the elections, and Twitter was one of the key platforms of his campaign.

The future of Twitter

The “fastest-growing conversation topic”, cryptocurrency, is at the top of the finance category.

“We’re witnessing an upswell of passionate crypto-enthusiasts with people on Twitter 3.2x more likely to consider investing in crypto than those not on Twitter,” wrote Jeff Melei, Twitter’s Director of Financial Services

Twitter is taking a stand on cryptocurrency and NFTs, with the Bitcoin Lightning Network tipping feature and the NFT profile picture integration.

Currently, the social media platform is also testing a new way to maximize your Spaces content by giving an option to create audio clips of up to 30 seconds directly from your audio broadcasts in the app.

The new clipping tool helps you create audio clips from a recorded Space, which can be shared via tweet, linking it to the entire recording.

In the US, the platform is continuously evolving and improving the experience for its users. Twitter is working to offer a better experience to brands and consumers by opening the Twitter Shop shortly. Brands will be able to present up to 50 products to their followers in this space by just adding the “View shop” button to their profile.

This way, brands and users will be able to link their tweets to potential products and create a stronger bond through the platform.

Brands & Twitter

Twitter has been in our lives for 15 years; we all know its essence and power, but we still need to remind ourselves why our brand should be on Twitter and how it should perform.

Perhaps what distinguishes Twitter from the rest of the social networks is its spontaneity.

Unlike networks like Instagram or Facebook, where messages seem to be much more measured, users have the feeling that on Twitter, celebrities, politicians or companies express themselves as they like.

This may be due to the social network’s briefness on messages and the simplicity of other users interacting with it. In any case, this main feature is what brands must consider when communicating through it.

We might all know the main helpful marketing tips we need to succeed on Twitter, but we should always keep them in our minds.

Develop your voice:

You need to develop an authentic voice to help your brand stand out from the noise. Show your personality, be human, be original and always spell correctly; there is no edit button. A well-known brand that has managed to define its brand voice is Wendy’s; they are capable of joking around trends and life news without ever leaving their spirit.

“We like our tweets the way we like our fries: hot, crispy, and better than anyone expects from a fast-food restaurant.” @Wendys.

Be a hashtag pro:

Most social media platforms have the hashtag feature, but Twitter was the first to use it. So be a pro of it. Tweets with appropriate hashtags get double the engagement than without hashtags, but that doesn’t mean you can use all the possible ones you can imagine. It would help if you created branded hashtags and always used industry-related hashtags.

Listen to your audience:

Twitter is one of the best platforms to spot your audience. Conversations are fluid and free; you can learn what Twitter users think about your brand and products and learn from other discussions. Use Twitter’s advanced search tool to find these conversations. Twitter is mainly about talking, but you need to listen too as a brand.
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Pinterest jumps into the social e-commerce race

Date: March 17, 2022

Category: Social Media

Pinterest, with 459 million monthly active users (MAUs) worldwide, is fifth in the list of the preferred social media platforms for purchasing, chosen by only 3% of the consumers. Meanwhile, with 1 billion MAUs and 500 million users every day, Instagram is positioned as the second most preferred social eCommerce platform, chosen by 23% of surveyed consumers, and only behind Facebook. (Source: Statista).

Pinterest is determined to transform its site into a 360 shopping destination. Pinterest’s latest ambition is to grow online shopping and advertising by offering checkout functionality to customers.

Brands and advertisers will promote their products to users on its site. And users will have the chance to buy directly from Pinterest. The aim is to encourage customers to find inspiration and buy more items at once.

As we already mentioned in our latest report, ‘Consumer Trends 2022’ by 2026, 60% of millennial and Gen Z consumers will prefer making purchases on social platforms over traditional digital commerce platforms, meaning that probably the next customers’ favorite store will be a social platform.

WHAT ARE THESE NEW FEATURES?

Users will complete an entire purchase on Pinterest without leaving the app at any time.

They will have access to a personal shopping page, called Your Shop, with all the creators and brands’ products. Your Shop is still a pre-release version for U.S users but will roll out nationwide later this year. Now users can save, pin, and buy all the products they desire from their board.

The “Shop” will automatically add shoppable products that users save and remind users of their favorite products.

On the other hand, brands will significantly impact their customers thanks to new features such as the “Merchant details” that showcase brand values. Or the Verified Merchant Program that helps users find vetted brands in Australia, Brazil, Italy, Mexico, Netherlands, Spain, and Switzerland and enhances brands with a “verified” badge.

WHY IS THIS A GAME-CHANGER FOR BRANDS?

“People who use Pinterest weekly are 7x more likely to say it’s the most influential platform in their purchase journey, compared to social media platforms. That’s why, as of today, we’re dramatically expanding our suite of shopping solutions for advertisers,” said Jon Kaplan, Chief Revenue Officer at Pinterest.

Bigger carts than other platforms

Pinterest notes that shoppers have 85% bigger carts than other platforms and spend twice as much per month. Customers scroll down endless products, brands and inspiration through Pinterest. Many of their shopping decisions come directly from the inspiration they find on Pinterest. So why not allow them to buy instantly from it?

An enhanced | fully integrated consumer experience

Previously, users would be redirected outside Pinterest to a merchant’s site to finish their purchase. Many users would follow through with the purchase but drop off when a new merchant page would pop up.

Pinterest’s new features are a game-changer; brands can start an ongoing relationship with their customers, develop different brand interactions and experiences and reach a vast audience focused on strictly social e-commerce shopping.

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Instagram’s new payment model is here

Date: February 9, 2022

Category: Social Media

Facebook-owned Instagram has announced a move that could allow creators to monetize their profiles by introducing a new monthly subscription button.

Until now creators have had to rely on displaying ads and sponsored content on their accounts, but with competition from social media sites such as TikTok, the platform has been trying to develop new features to stay relevant and entice new users.

What exactly are users being paid for?

The subscription feature will allow users to subscribe to creators’ accounts on Instagram for a monthly fee that could range from $0.99 to $9.99 a month. According to The Verge, users will have the option to subscribe on a monthly basis. At the moment this feature is limited to macro influencers in the US who can create a private version of their profile that’s only accessible to paying followers.

What are Instagram subscriptions?

There will be normal, free content that every follower can see and these profiles will also contain content that can be accessed for a small monthly payment. It’s a similar model to other platforms like Twitch or YouTube.

As it’s the same subscription model as Facebook, it can be assumed that the format will be similar. This means that it may be limited to creators with more than 10,000 followers or more than 250 returning viewers on their streams. Similar to Facebook, it could also require more than 50,000 interactions with posts and 180,000 minutes of viewing.

The three different subscriptions

Instagram offers three different options for accessing this exclusive content. One is Subscriber Lives, live videos to which subscribers have exclusive access. These differ from other live content because they are highlighted by a purple circle, as Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri confirms.

Subscriber Stories, on the other hand, are stories that are only for users who have subscribed to these channels and who can interact with creators through the use of “stickers”.

Finally, Subscriber Badges allow content creators to tag their subscribers with a purple icon when they comment on their posts in the feed.

Generating revenue from posts would complement other existing content creation services, such as Instagram Collabs, a co-authoring format that allows you to share feed content and reels with another user in a single post.

Instagram isn’t the only platform looking to try out new paid subscriptions. Twitter announced last year that it was working on a content creator feature called ‘Supper Fellow’ that will allow subscribers to receive exclusive content. Other social platforms such as YouTube, TikTok, or Pinterest are also joining this trend towards monetized content.

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