Matters of Influence: Week of 11/29/20

Influencer marketing news moves at the speed of social media. Every platform update, algorithm tweak, and current event makes a huge difference to the influencer marketer. We’ll help you keep up.

Featured headlines

TikTok’s Epic Rise and Stumble (Tech Crunch)

The deadline for TikTok to divest has been extended again, for the… How many times has it been? If you’ve forgotten too, this timeline will help you remember every major event in the recent history of the platform. Tech Crunch has filled the guide with summaries of each update with context and sources, and intends to continue updating it as developments occur—so bookmark this page for later. Be sure to come back this Friday, December 4th, to see what happens when the latest extended deadline occurs. Will TikTok see its shadow, and get two more weeks of extension? Stay tuned to find out.

A Teen Influencer Who’s Deaf Says Social Media Has A Ways To Go When It Comes To Accessibility (Buzzfeed News)

TikTok is known for its characteristic sounds, music, and voice clips—so a completely silent video stands out the most. Scarlet Waters, a TikTok influencer with over 3.6 million followers, recently posted a video describing her everyday experience as a deaf teenager. The video follows her as she struggles to communicate with friends, teachers, strangers, and even cashiers, and concludes at the end of her day when she opens TikTok only to scroll through numerous videos without captions. The video exploded in popularity, earning over 8 million likes (and even a comment from rapper Lil Yachty). Waters encourages others to speak up about accessibility on social media to raise awareness for the ways that platforms can change to promote inclusivity for everyone.

[INFOGRAPHIC] 4 Steps to Creating a Winning Paid Social Campaign (Social Media Today)

One of the best ways to extend the mileage of great influencer content is to transform it into a paid social media strategic approach. Using high-quality content you’ve already seen perform well takes much of the guesswork out of planning your paid social strategy, but no matter what you’re working with, this step-by-step guide will walk you through the process from start to finish. It begins with pointed questions to help you determine your specific goals, and offers smart ideas to extend the use of your work to prevent creative fatigue (such as writing multiple different captions for the same post). Finishing with tips to evaluate the success of your strategy, the guide encourages you to “experiment, learn, repeat!”

Featured blog

A great story is the first step to an engaging conversation. Showing your audience the personal side of your brand and encouraging them to join in on the discussion naturally drives engagement, and sets the stage for more. Interactive content like comment-inspiring questions, personal stories from your team, and user-generated posts invites your audience to be a part of the story as you’re telling it. Not sure where to start? Check out our guide with eight ways to create interesting and engaging content, and see the power of storytelling in action.

Julius product spotlight

Having a complete understanding of an influencer’s brand partnership experience can help you gauge how they will perform in your campaign. But if you want to dive deeper and get a 360 look at how an influencer partnered with a brand—maybe even a competitor of yours—be sure to look at the Brands Tab and you’ll find how many posts the influencer posted on behalf of the brand and engagement data. For more about the Brands Tab, check out this Help Center article.