Influencer Marketing, an art, a science, the present and future of the marketing world. It is safe to say that, influencers, or as we prefer to call them, content creators, have gone from being the stars of social media to the modern world entrepreneur. Content creators are now their own brand, holding power to consumer purchases and beyond. Today we bring you the influencer mix and match.
Previously, we defined content creators as creators of online/offline content who have the power to affect purchasing decisions of consumers and we predicted that they would continue to hold this power through 2021 and beyond. While brands move their focus towards taking a cut of this power by identifying potential creators that have similar interests to their products; today we are here to show the other but rather better way around this.
How many times have you been frustrated for losing money on a failed campaign? Or, not hitting your benchmark KPIs? Or, even worse, not reaching the the right audience?
Today’s research revolves around matching different industries with unfamiliar faces. A food brand does not necessarily need a food influencer, it depends on the audience and we’re going to examine those in detail below.
The Mix & Match.
There’s no denying that the GCC is one of the most social, connected and peer-recommendation driven regions in the world. Influencers are here to stay, but how do we leverage the real, impactful ones from the pretenders? Our Sila tool here is here to answer this with new insights into Instagram and TikTok.
For this research we analysed a total of 2,883 creators which may or may not share the same interests. All of those are from the GCC region and range from micro-influencers to huge world-renowned superstars.
To level the playing field, we focused on Instagram only, and have used averages taken from the last 3 and 6 months to compare these categories- therefore, all of our creators are active.
Our pool of creators have an average of 250k followers and have posted an average of 76 posts in the last six months. The sample are active content creators ranging from different categories that include but are not limited to: beauty, food, comedy, fitness, fashion, education etc.
In this research we compare creators and their performances from different categories and look at creator and brand affinities to mix industries with creators that go under the radar and which are seen as “unsuitable” to some brands.
This research goes through creators of four huge categories: Beauty, Fitness, Food and Travel.
The Performance.
To begin with, we compared the performances of all four categories against each other across the last 3 and 6 months.
Food content creators posted the highest number of posts over the last 3 months and again over the last 6 months. Beauticians came in second while fitness creators came in third place. Travel content creators seem to have been running out of content with the inability to travel as much.
When looking at engagements (like + comments + video views), travel content creators have been gaining the highest number of engagements recently, which is quite the surprise. Although they have been posting less, they are gaining the highest number of engagements. Keeping in mind, food content creators gained the highest number of engagements over the last 6 months.
Moving on, we looked at interactions (likes + comments), and the results here show us the difference video views have been creating. When excluding video views, beauticians gain the highest number of interactions, whereas travel content creators fall in second. Foodies gain most of their engagements from video views and when those are excluded, their performances decrease massively.
The Comparison.
Based on the above analysis, we can identify that food content creators post the highest number of posts overall. They rely heavily on videos and their content performs the best.
Food content can appeal to a bigger audience than expected. By using food content creators we are able to reach audiences that are interested in travel, beauty and fitness too. However, audiences looking for food cannot be targeted by a creator of a different interest.
On the other hand, while food creators might reach your target audience, they would not be able to gain the highest number of interactions. That’s where beauty creators become the optimal choice.
Travel content creators have started to gain higher engagements, their content is on the rise and will continue to do so. With audiences craving some new traveling experiences, all they are left with as of now, is recycled content by travel content creators (or new content in rare cases) for a dreamy travel feeling.
Creator And Brand Affinities
To understand these categories better, we dove deeply into what makes each category different and how they have been performing recently. Then, we identify different brands and creators which are mutual to followers of these categories.
The Beauticians.
We analysed a total of 262 creators under the category of beauty. Those posted an average of 77 posts over the last 6 months and 43 post over the last 3 months. Their activity has rather increased as of recently; however their average video views had dropped although an increase in engagements can be heavily noticed.
When looking at brand and other creator affinities. Users that follow beauty content creators also follow healthy food and fitness related pages and enjoy lifestyle content.
The Fitness Freaks.
Next, we have fitness creators.
This pool has a total of 269 content creators with an average following of 57k followers. These creators are less popular than the beauty industry.
On average, 53 posts were created over the last 6 months. The performance is much lower than that of the beauty creators which is quite understandable.
When looking at affinities, fitness followers also follow food content.
Food has been seen to be a common similarity between both the fitness and beauty creators’ audiences.
The Chefs.
After looking at the previous two groups, we found a common similarity between them in terms of both creators and brands and that was food.
Food content creators are the most active in today’s comparison. An average 99 posts were published over the last 6 months. Their video views are quite high too.
When looking at this list of creators, it is quite evident that their audience does not share other interests. The biggest focus is recipe developers with cooking content ranking the highest. However, when looking at brand affinities, foodies also follow clothing and beauty brands with @leftiesofficial gathering the biggest interest.
The Backpackers.
Our last category for today is travelers. Here we analysed audiences of just over 390 content creators. With 56 pieces of content published over the last 6 months on average, these creators were able to rack up an average of over 3.7k engagements.
The travel audience is amongst the most diverse, with interests ranging from music to food to cars. Travel audience can be targeted using content produced by a wide range of creators making them the easiest to market to.
Understanding the data.
Now, that we have all of this data on deck. We next read through the data and were able to come up with the below understanding:
- Food is a mixed interest between audiences of all four categories.
- Travel audience are the most diverse with interests ranging from fashion to food to cars to music.
- Food content creators are the most active and produce the highest number of posts on average.
- Travel creators have become a lot more active recently, specifically across the last 3 months. Their views have also increased by 18% in the same period when compared to the previous 3 months.
- Fitness creators have dropped their focus on creating videos and are posting more images as of the last 3 months.
- Beauty creators gain the highest average number of interactions across all four categories.
How Sila Works.
Using models based upon Arabic dialects, we see their audience’s reactions, their other influencer affinities, and brand affinities. Those models allow us to build on previous capabilities to see the audiences’ age, gender, location, and engagements.
We then utilise this real-time reporting, combined with natural-language-processing models, to gain true sentiment. We can then better refine and learn from the audiences’ reactions in an unbiased setting. The key!
All coming together to produce:
- Audience-first campaigns in the G.C.C via a proven process,
- Topic reports and data backed selection with a G.C.C focus for approval;
- An experienced team to clearly brief and manage the influencers of the Arab World;
- Content approvals, published reports, to indicate ROI and deep dive into the campaign, followed by post-campaign collaborative review.
Additionally, we have obvious brand-lift measurements, but we can save that for another day.
Questions? Get in touch with us today.
