In-depth analysis and market report on overseas influencer marketing

This report is produced by SocialBook, an American influencer marketing delivery and analysis platform. The official version is based on the English original.

Why do you need to conduct overseas influencer marketing?

• 80% of overseas companies have successfully conducted influencer marketing using YouTube and Instagram platforms;
• For game companies, the Twitch game live streaming platform is a very important channel;
• If niche brands want to reach the main consumer group of the post-90s and post-00s in the United States, Tumblr may bring unexpected benefits;
• Young people of Generation Z in foreign countries are addicted to TikTok, the overseas version of Douyin.

1. Analysis of YouTube, the largest overseas video social media platform, user portraits and influencer marketing

Basic data and user profiles you need to know about YouTube

According to the 2019 YouTube Data Analytics Report:

1. 1.3 billion people worldwide use YouTube, and more than 300 hours of video are uploaded every minute.

2. YouTube has more than 30 million daily active users, and nearly 5 billion videos are viewed every day.

3. More than 3.25 billion hours of video are viewed on YouTube every month.

4. Female users account for 38% of YouTube users, while male users account for 62%.

5. The age distribution of YouTube users is:

• 11% aged 18 to 24
• 23% are aged between 25 and 34
• 35 to 44 years old accounted for 26%
• 45 to 54 years old accounted for 16%
• 50 to 64 years old account for 8%
• 3% are over 65 years old
• Others 14%

6. YouTube is available in 76 different languages, covering 95% of the world's Internet population and in 88 countries.

7. 9% of small businesses in China use YouTube for influencer marketing.

YouTube influencer marketing advantages

1) Excellent content and strong appeal

YouTube is the mainstream platform for overseas influencer marketing. Most influencers have professional video production capabilities and support adding product links in the description below the video. At the same time, the content producers themselves have strong original content capabilities and can stimulate the audience's desire to buy by displaying products vividly and meticulously.

2) It is helpful to improve the ranking of brand keywords

YouTube videos have a high Google weight, and advertisers uploading brand videos on YouTube can help improve search engine optimization (SEO).

Google, the world's largest search engine, is paying more and more attention to video search results. When searching for many keywords, a special video section will be displayed at the front row of the search results homepage.

Research shows that if advertisers want to direct off-site traffic through keywords, high-quality YouTube content and video links will greatly improve the ranking of Google search results.

3) Good promotion effect

Using the right influencer + matching the influencer’s fan audience with the right audience + appealing, high-quality original content = explosion in popularity. Most influencer marketers can receive feedback that exceeds their expectations.

Disadvantages of YouTube Influencer Marketing

1) The price is relatively high compared to other platforms, and clicks and conversions cannot be fully monitored

Influencer marketing on YouTube is relatively expensive because high-quality influencers generally spend a lot of time making videos.

Even for a 5-minute video, many influencers will spend 2 hours preparing, 3 hours shooting the product and content, and 5 hours on post-editing, lighting, sound, background music, adding materials, and even subtitles.

Therefore, the effort and time cost that a professional content producer puts into the content is enormous, but users are worth paying for high-quality content.

However, no matter how high-quality the video is, due to the limitations of today’s technology, most links in the description column only receive clicks that account for 0.1%-5% of the overall conversion rate. The main reason is that many viewers browse YouTube videos on their mobile phones. When watching in full screen, they are often more willing to search the product name on Google and then place an order directly on the official website or shopping websites such as Amazon.

2) Minimum ROI needs to be set

When advertisers need to set goals with YouTube influencers, it is best to determine the minimum number of views to ensure that the click-through rate meets the minimum ROI setting for promotion results.

2. Analysis of Instagram, the largest overseas photo social media platform, user portraits and the advantages and disadvantages of influencer marketing

Instagram is the platform where influencer marketing will explode in 2019 and 2020

What you need to know about Instagram

1. Nearly 1 billion people use Instagram every month.

2. 71% of Instagram users worldwide are under the age of 35, and 72% of American teenagers use Instagram.

3. 95% of American Instagram influencers also have YouTube channel accounts, so marketers will bundle them together for YouTube marketing while looking for American Instagram influencers.

4. 35% of adults worldwide use Instagram, and 28% of them are from the United States and have strong purchasing power. Instagram marketing needs to provide the most suitable products for the right income earners. According to a report on the habits of 2,000 American social users compiled by Flint, a British communications consulting company, the annual income of American Instagram users is as follows:

• 8Less than US$30,000: 44%
• US$830,000–60,000: 45%
• US$860,000–70,000: 36%
• USD 870,000–80,000: 55%
• USD 880,000–100,000: 46%
• Over US$8.1 million: 60%

5. 60% of Instagram users (nearly 600 million) discover and look for the latest global products through Instagram channels, which has also promoted more and more B2C companies around the world to start influencer marketing through Instagram.

6. Instagram has an interaction rate of 2.2%, far exceeding other platforms. Even Facebook has an interaction rate of only 0.22%. Instagram is therefore called the king of conversion rates.

Marketing Status of Instagram Brand Official Accounts

• 50% of overseas companies will publish Instagram Stories through Instagram;
• 52% of Instagram influencers follow and follow brand accounts, and their followers also follow the brand's movements;
• 71% of American companies use Instagram for marketing, and there are more than 25 million business promotion contents on the Instagram platform. 80% of Instagram users follow at least one business account;
• 75% of Instagram users visit a brand’s website after viewing a brand’s post. Instagram is a great way to showcase the physical beauty of a product;
• 70% of users will choose to buy through their mobile phones after viewing related products on Instagram.

Instagram Influencer Marketing Advantages

• Relatively high conversion rate and interaction rate, the highest average among several mainstream social media platforms;
• A large proportion of Instagram users are millennials (English: Millennials, referring to the generation who were minors when they were born in the 20th century and reached adulthood after entering the 21st century), which are commonly referred to as those born in the 80s and 90s in China. These users have strong purchasing power for most products on the market. If they become potential customers of the products, their repurchase rate and activity are very strong.
• Visual platform, serving products with visual appeal. Beautiful and exquisite products will cause extreme comfort and stimulate the desire to buy;
• As a new form of content, Instagram Story has a strong interaction rate and can directly lead to web pages outside the platform.

Disadvantages of Instagram Influencer Marketing

• You have to diversify the content of your posts and think of more different strategies so that your fans don’t get bored. Image and video content must be creative and visually appealing to attract millennial users to click and buy;.
• There are some robot accounts on Instagram, so when a person has very few followers, most of the comments or likes are not from real fans, and the probability of zombie fans will be higher;
• It is easy to produce pictures, so there will be some fake internet celebrities, and businesses need to pay special attention. However, due to the difficulty and long production cycle of videos on YouTube, there are very few fake internet celebrities.

3. Analysis of Twitch, the largest overseas game live streaming platform, user portraits and the advantages and disadvantages of influencer marketing

If you are a game manufacturer, then you need to pay attention to Twitch, the largest overseas game live streaming media platform: PC stand-alone games, online games, various console games, AR games, etc. all have special sections on Twitch and are very popular. As long as mobile games find the right game bloggers and matching player audiences, they can also receive good promotion effects and game feedback.

Needless to say, for gaming peripherals such as keyboards, mice, headphones, gaming chairs, etc., cooperation with Twitch anchors usually achieves good promotional effects.

For non-game manufacturers, if your target audience is young men, Twitch is also a suitable promotion channel to try. Many big overseas brands have begun to cooperate with Twitch anchors and sponsor live broadcast events.

It can be seen intuitively from the figure below that compared with other game live streaming platforms such as YouTube, Facebook, and Mixer, Twitch has a much higher number of simultaneous online viewers, and the number is on the rise; while the number of simultaneous online viewers of YouTube Gaming Live is on a downward trend.

What you need to know about Twitch

• Twitch was acquired by Amazon in 2014. It started with game live streaming and now includes many other live streaming content, which belongs to the IRL (In Real Life) category, but it is still mainly based on games.
• 81.5% of Twitch users are male;
• 55% of users are between 18 and 34 years old;
• More than 15 million users are active on the Twitch platform every day;
• Twitch has 2.2 million to 3.2 million streamers broadcasting every month;
• Users have a cumulative total of 355 billion views per month;
• A total of 124 million pieces of content were edited and uploaded;
• More than $30 million in profits from the Twitch platform went to charity;
• Twitch has over a million viewers for a single event;
• The number of simultaneous viewers on a single channel can reach 245,000;
• Has 220,000 Twitch Alliance members;
• 30,000 Twitch partners;
• 21.3% of Twitch viewership is for esports;
• 21.32% of Twitch views come from the United States;
• 62.87% of Twitch video content is in English;
• Twitch’s peak viewing time is 4 p.m. Eastern Time (7 p.m. Pacific Time);
• Twitch has 4 billion minutes of viewing per month.
• The average number of viewers per Twitch channel is 997,174;
• 726,792,858 hours watched per month
• The most popular game in 2018 is Fortnite.
• The peak concurrent viewership for Fortnite livestream was 1,460,297;
• There are 9 million streamer channels on Twitch and counting;
• Ninja, once the most popular anchor on Twitch, had a total of 151,096,501 hours of live streaming last year (Ninja moved from Twitch to another game live streaming platform Mixer this year).

Twitch influencer marketing advantages

• Twitch's mainstream user profile (81.5% are male, 55% of users are between 18 and 34 years old) meets the target audience of most games. By analyzing the anchor's previous game types, content and viewing data, game manufacturers can directly and quickly reach their target players.
• Twitch live broadcasts have good interaction with player audiences, and comments in the live broadcast room can show real-time game feedback. Positive reviews and feedback will influence other players and attract their interest.
• For products other than games, if the target audience is also men aged 18-34, Twitch can also be used as a promotion channel. Just like domestic e-sports teams have many non-gaming sponsors, such as mobile phones, functional drinks, e-sports chairs, fast food brands, etc., many foreign big brands such as Coca-Cola, KFC, Uber Eats (food delivery APP), etc. also cooperate with Twitch celebrity game anchors to promote their own products and services.
• Game manufacturers can establish various forms of cooperation with anchors, and choose to carry out rich forms of cooperation with different categories of anchors in different states such as game preheating, first release, and update. Attract and mobilize potential and existing players most efficiently and widely with diverse content.

Disadvantages of Twitch Influencer Marketing

• Real-time comments in Twitch live broadcast rooms have both advantages and disadvantages. If there are too many negative comments, it will have a negative impact on the overall evaluation of the game. The key to avoiding this situation is to ensure the high quality of the game and choose matching anchors to cooperate with.
• The particularity of live broadcast content results in an obvious disadvantage compared to online videos: it cannot be watched repeatedly, which means that it is not as timely as online video platforms. Although Twitch provides anchors with the function of uploading online videos after live broadcast, the number of views of these videos is very low compared to the live broadcast. Therefore, it is very important to pay attention to the time period when the promotional content is broadcast during the live broadcast. First, the promotional content should be mentioned repeatedly during the entire live broadcast. Second, it is necessary to understand in advance the time period when the anchor has the highest number of views, and focus on mentioning the promotional content during that time period.

4. Analysis of Tumblr, the largest overseas microblog platform, user portraits and the advantages and disadvantages of influencer marketing

Tumblr is a combination of blogging and social media. It was acquired by Yahoo in 2013 and sold to Automattic for a very cheap price in 2019. Automattic is the parent company of the American blogging platform WordPress.

Tumblr is a very interesting platform, although not many Chinese are familiar with it. It has a strong community system, and each community has a very loyal core user group. Internet celebrities on Tumblr have a great influence on the behavior of other users, so it is a very suitable platform for the dissemination of niche content.

The platform has many teenage users aged 14-18, who pay attention to different niche communities based on their interests and hobbies, which is very similar to Douban Community. Most of these teenagers do not have sufficient spending power, and 35% of them have an annual income of less than 30,000 US dollars, so Tumblr is not a good choice for products above light luxury. But for young people and college students, this platform is indeed a great marketing platform. If you can get in through opinion leaders (Internet celebrities), they will be very willing to pay. Niche products, if the target customer group is teenagers, are likely to bring ideal conversions.

Compared with YouTube and Instagram, Tumblr bloggers pay more attention to personal privacy. They rarely show their faces, and their fans pay more attention to the content they create and forward. The content is mostly about many niche topics, such as a certain film or television drama, animation, game, and especially the various memes derived from it (which can be understood as jokes or stalks). They are trendsetters on the Internet, and many jokes and stalks that were later spread to other platforms originated from Tumblr.

What you need to know about Tumblr

1. Currently, Tumblr has more than 100 million blog contents and 44.6 billion articles have been published on Tumblr.

2. Tumblr has a younger audience, with 45% of users under the age of 35 and 33% of users being teenagers.

3. Of the Americans who use the platform, 47% are male and 65% of users are college educated.

4. Hispanics and African Americans make up 29%, and Hispanics account for twice the Internet average.

5. The number of computer users is much higher than that of mobile users, and the number of visits from home computers is higher than that from work computers.

6. Tumblr is more popular than Facebook among the 13-25 age group.

7. The average user spends 23 minutes per visit on Tumblr.

8. Currently, the top five countries with the most Tumblr users are the United States, Brazil, the United Kingdom, Canada and Russia.

9. California users have more than 8 million daily active users using the platform, ranking first in the United States.

Tumblr Influencer Marketing Advantages

• If you find the right influencer, Tumblr is very suitable for promoting niche products. In particular, products targeting geeks, novel but inexpensive gadgets, and peripherals and figurines of film and television IPs are very popular in the Tumblr community.
• Products targeting teenagers, such as psychological testing apps for new employees, can easily go viral.

Disadvantages of Tumblr Influencer Marketing

• Because of their emphasis on privacy, Tumblr bloggers often don’t like to show their faces, so if businesses want content with real people appearing, Tumblr will find it difficult to meet the requirements;
• It is not suitable for promoting products with higher unit prices;
• It is not suitable for promoting products with strong regional characteristics.

5. Analysis and user portrait of the rapidly growing TikTok platform

TikTok, the overseas version of Douyin, is currently the most successful new overseas social media favorite and one of the fastest growing social media platforms. It allows users to create short videos with background music, creative ideas and special effects. TikTok influencers are active on mobile phones. The content they create is sometimes novel and interesting, and sometimes spoof, which can quickly attract everyone's attention and become addictive.

TikTok is very similar to the popular short video platform Vine, but Twitter's Vine platform has stopped allowing users to upload new content in 2017, so it can be said that TikTok is now the only one in the short video field and is developing rapidly.

What you need to know about TikTok and its user profile

1. As of last year, TikTok had over 500 million active users, speaking 75 different languages.

2. As of the end of June 2019, the average monthly download volume of Lasso, a short video software similar to Facebook, was 15,000 times, while TikTok’s download volume increased by 6.4 million times in January, a number that simply drove the world crazy.

3. 60% of TikTok’s monthly active users are between 16 and 24 years old.

4. An influencer with 2.5 million followers on the TikTok platform charges an average of $500-800 for each original content, while influencers on Instagram will charge an additional $100 for every additional 10,000 followers.

5. Advertisers can create branded AR lenses, various filters and stickers through TikTok, and support users to add them to original content to gain brand benefits.

6. Analysis and User Profile of LinkedIn, the Largest Overseas Social Media Platform

If you are a company on the B2B side (business to business sales), LinkedIn is the place to look for promotion!

As the world's largest professional social networking site, LinkedIn connects people from all walks of life to help job seekers seek more and better opportunities. It’s a powerful channel for building thought leadership and an important part of marketers’ data-driven thinking. At the same time, it can also become an inexhaustible high-quality network in the workplace. Let’s take a quick look at the importance of LinkedIn through a series of statistics.

What you need to know about LinkedIn

1. There are currently more than 610 million members using LinkedIn.

2. 303 million monthly active users, 40% of whom visit the platform every day.

3. 90 million influencers and 63 million senior executives use LinkedIn, and 92% of the top 500 companies ranked by Forbes use it.

4. 46% of B2B companies get their official website’s social media traffic from LinkedIn, and 97% of B2B marketers use Linkedin as a content distribution channel.

5. But only 3 million users are willing to share their work content every week.

6. 80% of new user traffic for B2B companies comes through the Linkedin platform.

Since LinkedIn is more like a business collaboration platform, it is difficult to actually find influencers (opinion leaders) on the platform to help your company promote its business. However, for B-side companies, establishing a good business image and actively displaying and interacting with the public is the only way to success.

7. The current status and marketing advantages and disadvantages of other overseas social media platforms

Facebook

As we all know, as long as you are an overseas marketer, you need to have a budget specifically for Facebook.

1) Marketing Advantages

• Large user base: No matter what product you offer, you can find your target audience here.
• Content diversity: You can publish text, pictures, videos and even live broadcasts. High-quality short video content will spread quickly on Facebook.
• Suitable for advertising: It is currently the best advertising channel other than Google, and can deliver advertising to targeted users based on their age/gender/location/interests/brand stickiness/income, etc.

2) Marketing Disadvantages

• Costs go up and ROI goes down: As the frequency of content updates increases, the effective user coverage rate will be greatly reduced, so you have to continue to invest money to show it to more users.
• Low differentiation: If you don’t understand your purchasing user audience at all, it will be difficult for you to accurately deliver to the right users.

Twitter

Twitter is similar to a fast news website. If you want to get information quickly, or are good at arguing with people to attract more attention, or pay attention to politics or other issues, Twitter is tailor-made for you.

1) Marketing advantages

• Short, frequent and fast: You can post as much content as you want without annoying people.
• News source: If you want to quickly learn about global current events, you can create an account.
• Easy to contact: It is easy to interact with influencers and celebrities to help you increase your exposure opportunities.

2) Marketing Disadvantages

• In most cases, high reach and low conversion.
• The content must be updated daily to maintain fan stickiness, otherwise fans will leave quickly.

Pinterest

If you are engaged in the following industries: health and fitness, food and beverages, fashion and beauty, art and drawing, and any beautiful products that can attract women, then you need to pay attention to Pinterest and use this platform to bring good conversions.

1) Marketing Advantages

• If your target audience is middle-aged American women, this platform is for you.
• Similar to Instagram, a platform that attracts traffic visually, but not limited to posting pictures (PowerPoint, charts are both acceptable)
• Unless your audience is children or teenagers, in general, Pinterest + Instagram conversion rates are much higher than Tumblr.

2) Marketing Disadvantages

• Unless your content is in a popular tag, it’s hard to go viral.
• New content needs to continue to appear to consolidate loyal fans.

Reddit

For any content that you want to expose, this platform can bring you huge traffic, but if you just want to post advertisements, it is recommended not to register. Reddit will delete all your content and quickly block you.

1) Marketing Advantages

• If one of your posts appears at the top of the front page, you will get huge traffic within a few days.
• As long as you use the right method and know how to do it, the platform can be of great value to your business.

2) Marketing Disadvantages

Never post advertisements with the hope of getting away with it. Even if you try hard to express your opinion and attach a link, it will be identified.

8. Dig Deeper into YouTube Influencer Marketing

The Importance of Launching Influencer Marketing on YouTube

YouTube is one of the most cost-effective platforms for influencer marketing because it can do a good job in all stages of the marketing process, from product awareness to purchase conversion. The platform has a huge user base, ranging from 18 to 24 years old, and even over 65 years old. 81.2% of U.S. users of all ages have a YouTube account.

The diversity of the platform’s content provides companies of all sizes, needs and budgets with opportunities to promote their products to real vertical users by choosing the right influencers, who regularly interact with their favorite influencers. It provides both visual branding and drives traffic to your website.

The latest trend in YouTube influencer marketing

1) The rise of virtual influencers (VTubers)

Virtual influencers saw a huge surge in popularity in 2018. Virtual influencers can communicate with fans directly into the camera, just like real human content, and chat with fans about a variety of interesting topics ranging from makeup to pop culture. By the end of 2018, views of virtual influencer videos were four times what they were in 2017.

Currently, there are about 2,000 virtual influencers with YouTube accounts. Among them, the number of fans of Kizuna Ai, a very popular virtual internet celebrity, increased by 240,000 in one year. Miquel, a 19-year-old Brazilian-American model with 1.5 million Instagram followers, became a hot topic after she had an argument with a Bermuda virtual influencer.

It can be seen that virtual influencers are a trend that will develop rapidly in the next few years. More and more brands are taking notice, and even the Japan National Tourism Organization has used Kizuna Ai to promote tourism in Japan.

2) Online shopping videos by influencers

Various shopping videos on YouTube are a great way to showcase products. According to a Nielsen survey, "83% of online respondents in 60 countries said they trust recommendations from friends and family." In the context of shopping videos, influencers have become a trusted stand-in for old friends, and influencer shopping videos have become popular through various forms.

Several popular forms of online celebrity shopping video promotion:

• The Haul Video: Influencers share and discuss the products they bought during their shopping spree, which is especially suitable for the upcoming Black Friday. Influencers attract fans by telling why they chose these products, how and where to buy them, the price and other benefits of the products, etc.
• The Unboxing Video: Influencers unbox products, test their features, and give their recommendations and feedback. .
• The Gift Guide Video: Influencers teach you how to choose the right gifts for holidays and anniversaries! Like making candy for working moms? You can never go wrong by choosing a gift like this for your boyfriend during his birthday season!
• The Shopping Trip Video: The influencer invites fans to go shopping with her, or lead her to discover new shopping stores!

Shoppable videos themselves are not new, but for brands, they can choose to work with multiple micro-influencers (those with 1,000 to 10,000 followers are called micro-influencers). Micro-influencers are used because they are low-priced and have strong interactions with fans and high contact rates, so micro-influencers mean a more authentic relationship and greater trust from fans when receiving potential purchase recommendations. Using a large number of micro-influencers can quickly promote your products.

3) New promotional form: inserting videos in the morning and evening

YouTube influencers often share with their fans what they do after waking up or before going to bed. This is an excellent opportunity for advertisers to launch products. Users during this time period are usually focused on beauty, skin care, hair care, snacks, games, or other activities you can think of. From breakfast bars to clothing to makeup… and makeup removal, there are endless products that can be embedded in this time period.

Some influencers will even invite fans to visit their bathroom or bedroom, which not only fosters a sense of friendship and intimacy with the influencer’s real world, but also effectively encourages fans to accept purchasing advice from the influencer because they can actually see which products the influencer actually uses.

Google data shows that in 2018, the time spent watching daily videos in the morning more than tripled, while the time spent watching daily videos in the evening increased by 80%.

4) Celebrity official channels

More and more celebrities are launching their own channels on YouTube, and celebrities such as supermodel Kelly Close, actor Will Smith, chef Gordon Ramsay and fashion designer Victoria Beckham will also participate.

Celebrity-driven YouTube marketing campaigns are huge for advertisers because of their large and loyal following. Gordon Ramsey's YouTube channel has over 11 million followers and, by the end of June 2019, had surpassed 1 billion views.

If your budget allows you to work with a celebrity, their image and fan profile need to be highly compatible with your brand’s audience. If you want to increase brand exposure through celebrities, you also need to be careful to choose celebrities who match your brand image.

YouTube influencer marketing solutions

• Partner with influencers, they will help you build a large customer base and boost sales.
• Produce good content, but good content should not be seen as blatant promotion. If you are a home furnishing manufacturer and teach people how to make home furnishings, you could provide a list of the materials and tools needed to complete the project. In this way, you are letting fans quickly understand the quality and performance of your product in a soft advertising form.
• Create a branded video. Companies can promote a product by releasing a crazy or funny video, which can go viral not only on YouTube but also on other platforms. However, building brand awareness does not guarantee sales. But it can make people think of you when they are shopping, and if the video makes a lasting impression, huge sales and profits can follow.

Deep understanding of the data behind YouTube

Businesses need to master and analyze the data of YouTube influencers in order to identify fake and low-quality influencers and choose the ones that suit them.

Professional influencer marketing tools provide very complete and in-depth influencer channel data. Merchants can easily identify suspicious fake influencers from the abnormal data of certain influencer channels. For example, in the following fan growth trend chart, there is a sudden increase, but it is very stable before and after. Merchants should pay special attention when contacting this influencer:

The number of fans does not fully represent the influence of an internet celebrity. The interaction rate of the internet celebrity’s channel is the data that businesses should pay more attention to. SocialBook specifically calculates the interaction rate of influencer posts for businesses, especially the interaction in the last 60 days, to help businesses grasp the latest data of influencers.

Another very important set of data is the fan portrait data of Internet celebrities, including gender, age, country or region, interests, etc. Fan portrait data is the ultimate reference for businesses to choose suitable Internet celebrities. When choosing internet celebrities, businesses need to select a group of internet celebrities whose fan portraits best match their target audience, so as to achieve the best promotion effect. We calculated the fan portrait data of all YouTube influencers (and Instagram influencers) with more than 2,000 followers to help businesses find the most suitable influencers.

Different channels for recruiting YouTube influencers and their pros and cons

1) MCN & Agency

MCN finds suitable influencers through YouTube and signs contracts with them, helps brands contact and supervise influencers, and recommends suitable influencers to work with you. Most internet celebrities who have MCNs will hand over their contact information, so when you contact them through various channels, their agents will reply to your messages. Bigger internet celebrities will hire agents to help them negotiate business cooperation and manage their business.

But not every agent can understand the needs of advertisers, and the quote for MCN’s internet celebrities will be higher than the normal quote. MCN is suitable for companies with larger budgets. If merchants can communicate well with the brokerage company, set expected goals in advance, and follow up on the promotion progress every week, they usually won’t go wrong.

The biggest disadvantage of contacting influencers through an agency, besides the high price, is that businesses cannot contact the influencers directly. Often after the cooperation, merchants are not able to communicate directly with the Internet celebrities, let alone subsequent cooperation. If businesses want to further cooperate with Internet celebrities, they still have to go through an agency and receive a commission.

Another thing that businesses need to pay attention to is that there are many internet celebrity brokerage companies now, and the quality varies, so cooperation requires caution. Some internet celebrities and MCNs do not have exclusive agreements. It is very likely that the quotes offered by several MCNs for the same internet celebrity may vary greatly. Merchants need to cooperate with qualified and experienced MCNs.

2) Influencer Marketing Platform

There are many influencer marketing platforms around the world, which can be divided into two main types: data + group email + CRM management platforms represented by SocialBook , and influencer online marketplaces such as FameBit.

The influencer marketing platform provides merchants with the necessary data for selecting influencers, such as the number of fans, country (region), fan portrait analysis, estimated cooperation price, etc., so that merchants can choose influencers who match their products and can cover the target audience.

The influencer marketing platform provides influencer email and group email services to help businesses quickly contact a large number of influencers who meet the requirements, and uniformly manage replies to improve communication efficiency. One thing that makes SocialBook better than other platforms is that it offers email polishing services specifically for domestic businesses to increase the response rate of influencers.

The CRM management system of the influencer marketing platform helps merchants manage the entire influencer promotion and marketing more systematically, track the data of each influencer, record clicks, conversions, etc.

3) Contact influencers directly

Merchants can view the emails of influencers directly on YouTube and contact them through email, and they can also obtain contact information by finding his other media platforms.

However, collecting these email addresses is very time-consuming and labor-intensive, and contacting multiple influencers requires a lot of energy and time to communicate with them. YouTube influencers receive hundreds of emails every day, so there’s a good chance yours will be missed or end up in a spam folder.

Contacting influencers and actual operational promotions both require a lot of time management. Once you contact multiple influencers, it can easily cause confusion if it is not managed systematically.

9. Dig Deeper into Instagram Influencer Marketing

Instagram Stories Highlights is the latest trend

The Instagram Stories Highlights tool is very effective for both business operations and influencer promotion.

Instagram Stories Highlights was officially launched by Instagram in 2017, allowing users to archive short videos uploaded to Instagram so that they will not disappear after 24 hours. Therefore, influencers and businesses can upload content through this tool and pin it on their Instagram homepage.

On the homepages of various Instagram channels, the content in the red box is Instagram Stories Highlights, which is similar to Weibo Stories. Likened to movie trailers, these small circles support curated story content to form different themes, helping potential customers provide a quick and engaging product introduction that puts your product center stage, drives traffic, and converts viewers into buyers.

How to effectively use Instagram Stories Highlights to increase conversions

Grouping Instagram Stories Highlights by topic is a great way to make specific content easily visible to your target audience. To attract them to further participate, you need to provide products that they are particularly interested in. If you are a clothing brand, you can divide it into themes such as work suits, daily wear, long skirts, etc. You can also include groupings of items promoted for holidays, different seasons, and specific brands.

When businesses collaborate with Instagram influencers, they can use Instagram Stories Highlights to publish a series of stories on specific topics for the business and pin them to the top of their homepage, making the brand a striking highlight.

Especially for clothing brands, it would make more sense to collaborate with designers and fashion bloggers like this. At the same time, on the brand’s official Instagram account, you can also design themes and link to the content of influencers with whom the brand has worked, thereby increasing fans’ favorability and trust. Such cross-promotion is mutually beneficial for both brands and influencers.

10. Digging Deeper into Twitch Influencer Marketing

As a well-known live streaming platform, Twitch is now not only suitable for game companies and the gaming industry. Major brands have cooperated with anchors on Twitch to promote their products. Big brands such as Procter & Gamble, ExxonMobil, and Yum! Brands all have successful Twitch influencer marketing cases for reference.

Advantages of Twitch Influencer Marketing

• Twitch has the most loyal fan base of all platforms, with the average user spending 95 minutes per day watching their favorite streamers. That's more than the average Facebook user, who spends 41 minutes on the site, and nearly 90 minutes more than the average Twitter user. Although Twitch has always been mainly live game broadcasts, the platform's "in real life" area has also poured in a large number of programmers, animators, designers, cosplayers, etc.
• For fans who hate hard marketing, Twitch has eased this better. The anchor’s loyal fans are usually disgusted with hard broadcasts, and the natural content promotion (game trials, game reviews, game update videos, etc.) in the live broadcast are more likely to be accepted by them.
• Many Twitch celebrities also have accounts on YouTube. Twitch internet celebrity marketing is updated compared to other platforms, but don’t worry, you can also use SocialBook to quickly find the brand owners and advertising effects they have worked with on YouTube to better understand the marketing capabilities of internet celebrities. And letting them promote on Twitch has no more cooperation history, it is easier to help your brand build loyal fans.
• Live interaction is very important. Internet celebrities will provide fans with an immersive experience during live broadcasts, and can directly ask questions about the product on the spot. This real connection between Internet celebrities and fans makes up for the shortcomings of other platforms. Increase fans' trust is that consumers can better accept the purchasing suggestions of Internet celebrities and achieve the purpose of final sales conversion.
• If you simply want to increase brand exposure, and your audience is mostly male, mainly between 18 and 34 years old, you can choose to promote it on Twitch. According to a report by Gartner L2, 25% of the topical campaigns launched on Twitch in the past year were marketing campaigns initiated by advertisers. If your product is related to games or technology, the large number of otaku users on Twitch are your target users.
• There are much less fake internet celebrities and fakes on Twitch than other platforms. Users spend several hours watching live broadcasts here, and it is difficult to fake the interactions that can be watched in real time. SocialBook has worked with Internet celebrities with 10 million fans on YouTube. When we asked her to live Twitch, the number of live live broadcasts was 1,000, which is enough to show the authenticity of Twitch data.

Twitch's audience is growing

Twitch is a relatively new marketing platform for internet celebrities, but before it becomes popular, it provides new opportunities for marketers to establish friendly relationships with internet celebrities. Since 2016, Twitch’s number of users has doubled, and the number of new users on the platform is expected to continue to grow exponentially.

From the beginning of this year to now, Twitch has 4.1 million anchors and 359 billion minutes of viewing time per month. Twitch is a unique opportunity for brands that want to increase their visibility and expand their influence.

Twitch's Internet celebrity marketing

For games, the platform has obvious advantages, and many top game companies will cooperate with Twitch celebrities to let them play games for a period of time. EA once spent $1 million to let Ninja play Apex legend all day. Of course, Ninja recently abandoned Twitch and signed an exclusive deal with Mixer. Although Ninja has left, Twitch is still the largest live video platform, and more and more Internet celebrities are still emerging.

In addition to games, you can also use other products such as food and drinks to stream live. You can even promote hair care products and stylish beauty products on Twitch.

Who is using Twitch?

Twitch is more targeted at male teenagers than other social networks, which is very beneficial to young brands. Top big Vs tend to live stream on Twitch and then upload great videos to YouTube channel.

4 p.m. ET is the best Twitch peak viewing time. Because of this period, many teenagers go home directly from school and log in to their Twitch accounts to watch the live broadcast.

Non-game brands can also promote p through Twitch Although Twitch is known for its gaming channels, its non-game segment is growing gradually. The two fastest growing segments on Twitch are the live streams of “Real Life” videos (IRLs) and TV shows. Major companies such as Geely and KFC have also begun to launch Twitch.

Twitch is working hard to expand its customer base, opening up 10 new channel categories last year: Art, Hobbies & Handmade, Diet, Music & Performance, Body Art, Technology, Chat, Outdoor Travel, Sports & Fitness, Desktop, RPG, Special Events, Talk Shows & Podcasts, ASMR. This makes it easier for non-game players to find content on Twitch now, and more easily for non-game sponsors to find the right influencer.

How to find the Twitch anchor that suits you

First of all, we must be clear, what are your marketing goals? What are the reasons why you want to participate in Twitch live sponsorship?

Know your game or product type, which types of internet celebrities will attract audiences who are interested in your game/product? For example, if you sell a product that is targeted at a boy aged 11-14, and the Fortnite Fortnite mobile game is very popular among boys of all ages. Then in this case, if you cooperate with Fortnite Fortnite anchors to broadcast live on Twitch, it is very likely to attract a lot of your target audience.

If your product is related to sports, your potential customers are more likely to be players in sports video games, such as NBA 2k19.

FIFA 19 et al. Working with anchors of games like live streaming can reach your target audience more.

How to find Twitch celebrity

There are a variety of ways to find Twitch influencers, from manually searching for websites to using Twitter to finding Twitch followers. You can use data from Twitch's API to help identify influencers. On Twitch, 10% of live streams account for 95% of the audience. So you can use the Twitch API to find the top 10% of anchors through various metrics.

Things to note when promoting on Twitch

Finding anchor promotion on Twitch is the same as other platforms, your promotion goals will affect the type of internet celebrities you are looking for. Many issues need to be considered by merchants:

• You should consider popular anchor types. If they don’t broadcast the game live, will their fans still be interested?
• Understand the interests of fans. Which type of games do your target audience are interested in? For example, will your potential users be interested in a hardcore game? Or prefer simulation games? Is your target audience a young boy who is addicted to "Minecraft"?
• Will the audience be interested in your product? Most male players like fast food, but have less interest in health care products.
• Is the number of views important? The number of real-time viewers on some live broadcast platforms ranges from 50,000 to single digits. Even anchors with less than 100 viewers are worth working on. They are relatively cheap, and although their fan base is small, they are very active. Growing up with them, when they become successful, they will also make a qualitative leap in your products.
• Will the anchor use the language of the target market? There are many anchors who don’t speak English on Twitch, you need to know.
• How active are the internet celebrities you work with on the Twitch live broadcast platform? Cooperating with active internet celebrities who regularly broadcast live will help you cultivate a high-quality fan community.
• What are the fans' comments? Does his fans have negative or positive comments on live broadcast internet celebrities?

Conclusion

There are many popular social media overseas, and their respective characteristics are very different. Internet celebrities on different platforms also show different characteristics.

When merchants cooperate with overseas internet celebrities, they need to understand the characteristics of different platforms, the strengths and weaknesses of internet celebrities of different types of platforms, as well as clarify the positioning and target audience of their own products, and combine professional internet celebrity platform tools to achieve the best internet celebrity promotion results.

Author: SocialBook

Source: SocialBook