Top 5 Trends in Social Media and Influencer Marketing | June 2021

Half a year has never passed so fast! As Covid-19 vaccinations increasingly spread, we slowly (but surely) start living our lives in the ‘old normal’ ways. While you enjoy the sun and the warmer temperatures, make sure you catch up on this month’s latest updates in social media and influencer marketing.

1. Pride Celebrations Take Over Social Platforms

Photo credits and source: Social Media Today

Earlier this month most social media platforms started celebrating Pride Month and encouraging users to join with new stickers, filters and much more to support the LGBTQIA+ community!

TikTok, for example, released various initiatives for the month including new colorful effects such as Rainbow Hair, Pride Time Warp and Pride 3D lashes. It also hosted celebratory events such as TikTok Pride March—a TikTok LIVE lineup fundraising event—and a donation of $500K to organizations that support the LGTBQIA+ community.

Pinterest also announced that soon a new Pronouns field will be added to users’ account settings, which will provide a range of identification options that they can assign to their profile. Next to this, content from LGBTQIA+ creators is going to be highlighted in the Today tab throughout the month.

Joining the initiatives around Pride, Snapchat provided an insights report to help brands on how to best engage with their audience during Pride and what the community expects from them.

Lastly, Facebook has added new post backgrounds, custom avatars and stickers—all of which with the distinctive rainbow colors array. The new Live Shopping Fridays will take on a Pride focus, too. On Instagram, new stickers are available for Stories and Pride-related hashtags will appear as a rainbow text display.

2. Instagram Adds Affiliate And Shop Features For Creators

Photo credits and source: Tech Crunch

When it comes to the Creator Economy, Instagram is going all-in. The platform has recently released new affiliate and shop features that will enable creators to further monetize their content in-app.

The affiliate feature will allow creators to earn a commission every time they sell a recommended product to their followers via their posts. The posts will show the text “eligible for commission” beneath the creator’s username instead of the sponsored content label. Additionally, creators will be able to link their shops to their profiles.

On top of this, Instagram announced that by the end of this year, eligible creators will have the chance to partner with one of the platform’s merchandise partners to drop exclusive product launches on the app. “Our goal is to be the best platform for creators like you to make a living. And if you have an idea that you want to share with the world, you should be able to create it and get it out there easily and simply — across Facebook and Instagram — and then earn money for your work,” Zuckerberg said during Creator Week.

These new features, and the possibility of tipping creators by sending them a Badge during Live videos, much like Facebook’s Stars, is Zuckerberg’s effort to retain creators and make the platform much more appealing for them. 

It’s worth noting, however, that other social platforms are also putting creators in the spotlight, and their efforts include big investments (e.g. YouTube’s fund for Shorts creators), which can potentially better help creators improve their craft.

3. Reels Ads Are Now Open For All Brands Around The World

Photo Credits: Adweek | Source: Tech Crunch

In news that surprises absolutely no one, Instagram Reels ads are among us, and now available in all regions, representing a new outlet for brands to reach their audiences. This is another step from Instagram towards making Reels a bigger feature on the platform with a sustainable ecosystem.

Instagram has indicated that the Reels feature is growing "both in terms of how much people are sharing and how much people are consuming." But the platform has not yet shared any performance metrics on how Reels ads are performing, or any type of tool or guide to help brands start creating Reels ads.

Instagram still has a long way to go to outperform TikTok and needs to remain promoting Reels usage if it wants to really compete with TikTok’s highly engaged video feed. Unlike other TikTok competitors (like Snapchat and YouTube), Instagram doesn’t have a fund in place to encourage Reels adoption, but our guess is that it will come sometime soon.

4. Facebook Launches Live Audio Rooms and Podcast Playback In-Stream

Photo credits and source: Facebook

Back in April, Facebook announced it would launch audio features, joining the social audio race that started with Clubhouse. Now selected public figures and Facebook Groups in the US are able to use the new live audio rooms feature. It is still unknown when this will be rolled out to other parts of the world.

Users will be able to set a reminder for an upcoming audio room, just as they would for events, but they will also be able to join an audio room directly from feed posts. In terms of the interface, you can think of a Clubhouse-like room, with the addition of a front row reserved for listeners who have shown support to the host of the live audio room by sending them Stars—Facebook’s recent monetization feature. The Stars will be displayed on-screen to get the attention of the host.

Next to the live audio rooms, Facebook also released its new podcast support options, enabling users to discover and listen to podcasts, without having to leave the app. This and the upcoming tests for additional audio products "like a central listening destination and background audio listening for videos" might give Facebook the push to win the race.

5. Poparazzi Has Entered The Chat

Photo credits and source: Poparazzi

The new social media app Poparazzi is now topping the charts in the App Store. But who is this new player exactly? 

The company has positioned the app as sort of anti-Instagram, voicing that “life is made up of many unperfect, perfect moments that are worth capturing and sharing. Like watching your friend stuff their face with a burrito, or catching your significant other looking like a snack. Unfortunately, the pressure to appear as though our lives are perfect prevents us from sharing these moments with the people we love.” And many believe this could not have come in a better time now that the younger generation is rebelling against the pressure that has been built by social media.

And how does the app work? It’s pretty straightforward and nothing we haven’t seen before. Contrary to Instagram, your profile is run by your friends through photo tagging, meaning that it is their pictures of you that appear on your profile. Still, as the person in the picture you will always have control over your profile so you can remove any picture that you don't like and make your profile private to limit the people who can post pictures of you.

Ultimately, instead of having a perfect feed that only highlights those perfect moments in life, your feed will consist of all those imperfect moments with your friends.

Do you want to leverage the latest social media and influencer marketing trends in your marketing efforts? Check out our previous work and