What does the future of Influencer Marketing look like?

When it comes to Digital Marketing, Influencer Marketing is still just a baby. With it originating somewhere around 2013, it is still evolving at all points of time. It’s older siblings such as Facebook Ads (2007), Google Ads (2002) and SEO (Late 1990’s) have all reached an age of maturity. They will change slightly each year but for the most part we know who they are and what they are up to.

Because of how young it is, the industry is changing rapidly all the time and it is important that we try to adapt with it. Only then will be able to harness its powers. Here are a few ways that influencers will trend in the future:

Everyone will be an Influencer

 Do you post social media? Do you have people that look at your posts and engage with you? Eventually you will be considered some form of influencer. Currently companies are finding success targeting Nano influencers with 1-10K following. Many companies are simply giving away their products as much as they can in order to get as many eyeballs possible. As a result, pretty much everyone at one point will be considered an influencer. If there are people that listen to what you have to say, then companies will want to work with you.

Engagement over Followers

 Followers right now are all the rage. When an influencer comes up in conversation, the first questions everyone asks is “How many followers do they have?” The truth is that the amount of followers that they have is irrelevant. Follower count is often times inflated by buying fake followers and even it isn’t, what does it really matter if people aren’t engaging? 3 thousand likes from 5000 followers is the same thing as 3 thousand likes from 1 million followers. Because of this, company will start prioritizing engagements over followers.

As a result, the platforms with higher engagement rates will also become more popular. Platforms like Facebook and Twitter where engagement rate is low will become obsolete in the Influencer Marketing world. Tik Tok will become the most dominant platform out there as they boast the highest engagement rate of all platforms.

Extreme = The new attractive

 In the past, one of the most important criteria of being an influencer was to be attractive. As social media is largely visual, people have followed others that they want to look at. The influencers that were successful were the ones who were “just like us” but only better looking and more talented.

In the future, I think that the most popular people are going to be the extreme personalities. Doing the extreme leads to events you don’t see in everyday life and that can lead to viral content. While I don’t it will hurt to be attractive, I think it will not be as important as it once was.  The most important trait that will lead to acquiring influence will be putting yourself out there by doing crazy things that most people would never dare to attempt.

Live will be more predominantly featured

Going live is a great way for influencers to let their followers see what really goes on in their lives. Since it is live, it is an authentic way for to get know the influencer and a great platform for Q & A’s. Currently, it is not very heavily utilized in the Influencer Marketing world, but I think that will change. Influencers will soon utilize Live as a way to promote products. This will be an authentic way for them to showcase the products that they want to promote and answer questions that their fans ahve.

These are a few predictions I have for the future of Influencer Marketing. I’m sure some predictions will be right, some will be wrong and some things will change so drastically that this blog post will one day look ridiculous. That’s the fun of Influencer Marketing, however. It’s anyone’s guess as to what will happen next.