Now Trending in Influencer Marketing: Facebook launches Creator Studio mobile app

February 25, 2020: Creators form creator-only groups to cope with platform changes; Facebook releases Creator Studio mobile app and introduces policy changes to attribution measurement; ClassPass’ Chief Commercial Officer provides insight into influencer fueled marketing strategy; TikTok tests ‘link in bio’ option; eMarketer releases report on Twitch’s growth

Here’s what’s worth knowing this week:

Table of Contents

Facebook Makes Creators’ Lives Easier to Manage, Harder to Measure

The Story

Last week, Facebook released two updates impacting creators on the platform: a mobile app for Creator Studio and a major policy change to attribution measurement.

Start with Creator Studio, please.

Facebook’s Creator Studio has made its mobile app debut. Similar to the desktop hub, the Creator Studio app allows users to track how their content is performing across Facebook Pages, as well as publish, schedule and make adjustments to posts and respond to fan messages. While, currently, this mobile app is exclusive to managing Facebook Pages, it’s likely this functionality will be expanded to include Instagram at some point in the future.

STC POV

We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: the platform that makes it easiest for creators to both create new content and manage the experience of being a creator will win creators’ preference.

With the launch of Facebook’s Creator Studio mobile app, the biggest benefit to creators is that they can now manage the bulk of the experience (i.e., messaging, editing, notifications, community management) on-the-go. The biggest limitation, evidently, is the fact that creators cannot upload content to the app and create new posts via the tool — that still needs to be done in the Facebook app or via desktop.

And what’s this talk about a policy change?

Facebook is shutting down a source of data that shared “device-level” information about people’s phones to advertisers for purposes of targeting and measuring ad campaigns. Specifically, while these partners will still receive device-level data from Facebook, they will no longer be able to share that data with advertisers. There will also be new restrictions on how the technology partners can use the data, prohibiting them from taking raw data from Facebook to create better models for advertising that could be applied to properties outside of Facebook.

STC POV

By restricting third-party measurement partners’ access to device-level data used for measurement modeling and attribution, attribution on the personal level is going to be significantly more difficult. For marketers measuring your influencer marketing efforts using these technologies, that means this particular type of attribution data will no longer be available. This is already where the industry is headed – that is, moving away from methods that rely on personal information to approaches using aggregated data sets that are considered “less identifiable.”

Now Trending: Creator-Only Groups

The Story

As social media platforms continuously tweak and make updates to their platforms that impact creators (i.e., unexplained algorithm changes, new monetization policies), creators have started forming creator-centric, exclusive groups with one another to stay informed.

Tell me more

While these types of groups have been around for the past few years, their importance within the past year has skyrocketed, as both Facebook and YouTube have made updates to their platforms’ algorithms. Within these groups, creators will often share any information they’ve heard about the upcoming change(s) (i.e., algorithm updates) to see if others have heard the same or if they’ve already seen them take effect.

Don’t platforms educate creators on these changes?

While most of the major social media platforms employ partner managers that are meant to provide this type of support to creators, many creators have grown frustrated with partner managers not providing advanced notice or appropriate insight into platforms’ changes. In addition, many creators have felt like their partner managers have been unable to fully grasp how platform changes actually impact creators.

What are creators saying?

“It’s easier as creators to share information with other creators because we personally experience these [changes] on the daily compared to partner managers. They are just given information.” – Roi Fabito, @GuavaJuice

STC POV

Groups continue to serve as the building blocks in the creation of niche communities. The formation and rise of creator groups on social media platforms highlights the need to consider creators as a differentiated target audience and community with distinct needs and experiences from your general consumer audiences, especially because creators are forming these communities themselves, anyways.

While the organic formation of these groups validate the need and support for designated creator communities, platform support is still crucial to creators’ experiences on these platforms. Creators and marketing are not synonymous, and most still benefit from platform marketing partner go-between to understand how changes to a platform impact them, or else misinformation can easily spread.

Knowing that creators value small groups and communities to share information, brands and platforms have the opportunity to proactively create these types of experiences for creators within their larger communities, membership programs, research panels and target audiences. Specifically, brands and platforms can create Influencer Advisory Boards to not only cultivate a sense of community among creators, but also to create a group that can support and be advocates for brands and platforms on behalf of creators, acting as go-betweens but also support the Partner roles at platforms and the community needs for creators.

Inside ClassPass’ Influencer-Powered Marketing Strategy

The Story

As the first billion-dollar “unicorn” of the decade, fitness startup ClassPass continues to rely on influencers and reviews to drive business value.

Let’s start with its influencer strategy.

In a recent interview with Adweek, Zach Apter, ClassPass’ Chief Commercial Officer shared how the brand leverages its “naturally shareable” experience to collaborate with influencers as part of an organic, always-on marketing strategy. ClassPass partners with several fans of the brand and offers complementary classes in exchange for posts about their wellness journey. By using its actual product to compensate influencers (vs. cash), the brand is able to attract only those who are actually interested in its service, resulting in authentic and genuine content.

And you mentioned reviews?

While ratings and reviews are critical for brands in any industry, for apps, in particular, reviews are crucial for customer acquisition. For ClassPass, ratings and reviews are also used to gather massive amounts of data on the millions of studio and wellness experiences offered, which in itself serves as a natural feedback loop. As well, reviews are used for surfacing recommendations in-app and are used for driving SEO online, which is a key acquisition channel for the brand.

STC POV

There are more ways to collaborate with influencers, customers, and employees that support strategic brand objectives than just activating influencers for content creation alone. ClassPass is a great example of a brand that truly leverages its own customer base and product — from celebrities all the way through to advocates and referrers — to generate authentic, genuine content that fuels real follower engagement. It’s also strategic in leveraging reviews to surface new trends and experiences that keep longtime users engaged, which many apps and DTC brands struggle to maintain. This approach allows the brand to stand out in a crowded fitness space.

TikTok’s Business Focus & the Future Social Commerce

The Story

TikTok is reportedly looking to add a new URL field into its profile bios.

I’m listening…

As seen in the example below, the new option would add a custom link to the lower section of users’ TikTok bios, which would provide brands the ability to drive traffic back to their websites directly from the app. Where TikTok is already testing shoppable links in videos, it makes sense that it would also look to provide a URL option in bios to further fuel its business value to brands and publishers.

STC POV

TikTok is certainly looking to attract brands (and their ad budgets) to its platform. The ability for brands to drive referral traffic positions TikTok more competitively with established social platforms and gives marketers another opportunity to measure its effectiveness. TikTok is reportedly spending around $3 million per day on ads in the U.S. for customer acquisition, as it looks to continue to maximize brand awareness adoption (which is also why we saw the platform and its creators have such big presences at recent events like the Super Bowl and NBA All-Star weekend). Engaging more brands on the platform (and their customers) could ease the pressure of that user growth.

For brands looking to get started activating influencers on TikTok, request a demo with our team of strategists to discuss how Mavrck can help.

Twitch’s Recent Growth to 37.5M Viewers

The Story

A forecast by eMarketer suggests that Twitch will reach 37.5 million viewers in the U.S. by the end of this year, boosting its regular viewership by 14 percent and reaching 16 percent of the digital video audience in the U.S.

Anything else?

Twitch’s growth rate will steadily fall from about 24 percent last year to 6.3 percent by 2023 as the livestreaming industry matures and as the platform loses market share to rivals like Google’s YouTube Gaming, Microsoft’s Mixer and Facebook Gaming.

Despite this falling growth rate, the platform is still growing and non-gaming content is predicted to continue to be a major contributor to its growth. This content, which includes music streams and streams in the “Just Chatting” topic, began driving significant traffic in 2019.

STC POV

As Twitch continues to become a more general live-streaming hub, brands who have historically passed on Twitch due to its heavy gaming focus now have an opportunity to revisit the platform.

Streamers on Twitch rarely see creative brand integrations and most brands who do “partner” with streamers just have a logo on-screen during a stream (think: a brand sponsoring a Nascar driver). Brands on Twitch should not be afraid of having a low view count compared to other platforms.hat makes Twitch unique is how much more engaged viewers are than users on other platforms who may passively scroll past a post.

Brands have the opportunity to partner with Twitch streamers to really understand what resonates with their audience and how they can become involved in a stream in a creative, non-intrusive way. There’s minimal brand adoption right now which makes Twitch a perfect platform on which to activate creators.