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

Activity is slowly but surely ramping up in Europe, creating new opportunities, social challenges and diversified content on social media to celebrate. Here is this month’s hottest news we selected in social media and influencer marketing.

1. Facebook and Instagram roll out Shops

Photo Credits: Facebook

Users can now browse and buy products directly from a business’ Facebook Page or Instagram profile. Even if Facebook and Instagram already supported e-commerce features, the new tool goes a few steps further.

Brands are now able to create a full-fledged Facebook Shop, where they can upload catalogs, choose the products to be featured, and customize their page with a cover image and accent colors.

The new feature is getting a lot of businesses excited as nearly 1 million businesses already signed up for the big, global test of the feature. As Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated the adoption of online eCommerce technologies, the tool is a new solution of Facebook to support businesses to recover and boost their sales.

Facebook is already working to enhance and improve its solution with the integration of Facebook Shop for Messenger and Whatsapp. Also, the company plans to launch Instagram Shop this summer. Instagram Shop will enable users to browse products directly from Instagram Explore, jump into a shopping experience from the app’s main navigation tab. It will offer new ways for merchants to feature and link in their live videos products from their Facebook Stores, and to connect loyalty programs to Facebook accounts. In a more distant future, Facebook plans to leverage AI to recognize products on posts without the necessity for the brands to tag its products, and AR for consumers to try out products within the app.

2. Peta protest goes online to defend digital animals’ treatment

Photo Credits: TikTok

With most of the citizens inside and public protests discouraged, Peta has adjusted its strategy to continue protesting against animals mistreatments. The world-famous association has led its latest protest online, on the popular video game ‘Animal Crossing’.

As a result of Covid-19, Nintendo’s video game Animal Crossing has gathered millions of players to entertain themselves at home while maintaining social interactions. On Tiktok, #acnh and #animalcrossing already generated 6.6 billion and 2.5 billion views respectively. This success has encouraged many brands to get on board Animal Crossings to tap into the game’s engaged audience, from luxury brands like Valentino, Marc Jacobs and GCDS to media company like Getty Images.

Peta seized the opportunity to keep its conversation going and posted a ‘Vegan Guide’ to the game that advises players against fishing, catching bugs, collecting clams or capturing hermit crabs, alongside an in-depth list of what vegans are allowed to eat on the game. The association even went further by staging a virtual protest against the game’s museum, which encourages players to capture animals to fill the museum themselves, and shared it on TikTok where the video already received thousands of engagements.

3. TikTok is turning more to eCommerce with its new ‘shop now’ button for influencer content

Photo Credits: Levi’s

The short-form video platform is experimenting with a new call-to-action beta test for its creators, which is separate from the current “Shop Now” button available to advertisers to drive traffic to their websites.

The new ad format enables selected influencers to display a prominent “Shop Now” button in their videos. At this stage, the creator call-to-action ads are only available to a limited group of advertisers and agencies. Last month, Levi’s leveraged this new “Shop Now” button partnering with TikTok influencers Everett Williams, Cosette Rinab, Gabby Morrison, and Callen Schaub to promote its “Future Finish” customizable denim technology on the platform. Levi’s reported that watch time for the campaign videos was twice as long as the TikTok platform average and that product views to Levi.com’s “Future Finish” page more than doubled for every product included in influencers’ content.

Additionally, TikTok has been allowing some of its top creators to add eCommerce links to their bios since last November and launched the “Donation Stickers,” made available for creators and all users to embed within their videos and live streams to raise money for good causes. The new test demonstrates how TikTok is building both branding content and direct-response ad products while harnessing the power of influencers.

4. Instagram effects are now moving to music

Instagram announced this week that creators can now build effects that react to music through Spark AR, the company’s AR-creation tool. Creators can leverage their own music or pick a song from Instagram’s music library to sync with the effect. The singer Ellie Goulding launched her own effect for a new song to promote the new feature.

The new feature follows the launch of AR stickers, which offers a new way to show off effects in creators’ profiles; an updated effects gallery for people to search through; and “gallery picker” effects that allow viewers to take videos and photos from their library and include them in their content, and the latest updates and guidelines for including music in video content. The platform aims to multiply the opportunities for creators to be creative with their effects and strengthen their audience. 

5. Freshly graduated students are celebrated on TikTok #TikTokGraduation celebrates the Class of 2020

Covid-19 has led students to go away from schools and universities canceling in-person graduations and commencement ceremonies to ensure the safety of everyone. Graduation ceremonies are the ultimate celebration of past successes, achievements, and precious moments. To offer the opportunity for students to reflect back on their past accomplishments, TikTok committed to bringing the ceremonies online.

The platform has launch #TikTokGraduation earlier this month to give the class of 2020 a celebration to commemorate their hard work and accomplishments over the course of their academic careers leveraging live streams and a custom Creative Effect. The channel collaborated with many influencers to make this moment unique, such as Brittany Xavier that gave users a crash course in adulting, and Alex Ojeda that helped students to get ready for graduation night with a DIY style guide. Special guests also joined the social event including the Obamas, Loren Gray, LeBron James, Malala Yousafzai, the Jonas Brothers, and Lena Waithe to accompany students to enter the next phase of their life. After the graduation ceremony, TikTok also hosted "Graduation Parties" on the @GraduateTogether handle that gathered 1.1M likes.

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