Top 5 trends in Social Media and Influencer Marketing | April 2020

With more than half of the world stuck at home to slow down the spread of COVID-19, social media became the ultimate place to meet, (be) inspire(d) and share at-home content. Here are the top heart-warming topics we saw on social media this month.

1. World Health Organization partners with CGI influencer to help fight COVID-19

Photo Credits: Knox Frost

Knox Frost is a digital 20-year-old male influencer from Atlanta, with over 1M followers on Instagram. He mentioned the Coronavirus for the first time at the beginning of February in an Instagram post and, since then, had promoted self-isolation and given advice. Two months later, on April 4th, he announced a partnership with the World Health Organisation to spread Coronavirus best practices. He is now helping WHO by asking for donations and sharing awareness on social distancing, hand washing and other best practices to fight the crisis. The Instagram post was part of the WHO’s COVID-19 Solidarity Response Fund and the campaign is pro bono. The post included a link to a donation page that’s working to track the spread of the virus, provide workers with medical equipment, and help patients get the care they need. His participation helped amplify WHO’s important messages, specifically for the Gen Z and Millennials demographic.

2. Instagram adds gift cards, ordering in and fundraising tools to help businesses impacted by COVID-19

Photo Credits: Instagram

With brands forced to close their physical stores, and sometimes even their e-commerce too, Instagram thought about solutions to help them to generate revenue during the Coronavirus crisis. After quickly testing in for a few weeks, the channel has officially announced the addition of its new gift card, food order, and fundraiser tools for Stories and profiles.  As restaurants, retail stores, and businesses lose their foot traffic, Instagram new tools offer a new way for brands to generate income and for customers to support their favorite brands.

3. Finland enlists social influencers in the fight against COVID-19

Photo Credits: Roni Back

In order to reach those not reachable by traditional media, the government of Finland has enlisted social influencers to create and share content to provide better access to Coronavirus-related information. Finland claimed that influencers are just as useful as mainstream media in a crisis when it needs to inform the population fast, clearly, and accurately.

1,500 Finnish influencers received government announcements easily adaptable into a social media format. This initiative proves once again the credibility of influencers and their capacity to spread reliable information in crisis situations.

The Finnish YouTuber, Roni Back, even interviewed a government minister and a number of health experts to produce a factual and educational video. The video, which gathered over 120,000 views within a few days and was relayed by traditional media, shows the strong involvement of influencers during the ongoing crisis.

4. It’s not because people are at home that they stop enjoying makeup

Photo Credits: MAC

If for many of us quarantine means no makeup... after several weeks enjoying our natural skin, some creativity is more than welcome. Some influencers leveraged their time at home to create and participate in some new trends like the #PassTheBrushChallenge on TikTok, which has already generated 131.9M views on the channel. The challenge consists in moving from a makeup-free look to glamorous one by passing on the brush on the camera at first and then to friends. Many influencers already joined the trend by teams. James Charles has shared his “Beauty Guru Edition”  included himself with Manny Mua, Patrick Star, Nikita Dragun, Bretman Rock and others are showing off their beauty skills.

From the brands’ side, many beauty and cosmetics companies are gladly trying to entertain makeup lovers by organizing live streams on Instagram and Facebook. Leveraging authentic voices, brands such as MAC and YSL Beauty, are inviting their official makeup artist (MUA) and famous influencers to share makeup tutorials. Some other brands, like Chanel Beauty and Aimeskincare, alternate their beauty content and live streams with other topics’ content to complete their offerings in this quarantine time and become a day-to-day inspiring channel.

5. Facebook targets couples with its new app 

Photo Credits: Facebook

Months after the launch of its dating feature, Facebook is now interested in couples: it designed an app exclusively for them, called Tuned. The free app is described as a private space to express its true selves with the beloved one. This new intimate social network, accessible on iOS only for now, enables users to share their mood, photo snapshots, notes, cards, and voice memos. Couples can also exchange music via Spotify, create a digital scrapbook, and use custom stickers and reactions. 

Tuned doesn’t require a Facebook account, although users are subject to Facebook’s data rules - meaning the data people provide can be used for ad targeting. Available only in the US and in Canada for now, the app will hopefully have a brighter future than Whale, a meme-making app, and Hobbi, which has been widely compared to Pinterest.

Interested in how you can leverage these trends into your social campaigns? Get in touch!