Top 5 trends in Social Media and Influencer Marketing

It’s that time of the month, where we share a round-up of all the most exciting topics we saw, heard or experienced. October has been heavy in social trends, lots of UGC and DM’s have been shared to our great joy. Halloween is always a great period to understand what yearly trends people favored the most. Here are this month’s top 5 trends in social media and influencer marketing:

Hot & trending

by Axelle Lelièvre

1. Spooky content are out there

Halloween is always a great opportunity for influencers and their followers to share their creativity, DIY or makeup skills on social media channels. Hence, on Instagram, the hashtags #halloween and #halloweenmakeup generated 83.7 and 5.5 million posts respectively while on Tik Tok, the hashtags #halloweekend and #halloweendiy gathered 1.4 and 1.2 billion views respectively.

On brand’s side, Lunar Beauty launched its Moon Spell Collection, inspired by some of your favorite witches in '90s pop culture, working with the famous makeup influencer Manny Gutierrez (4.4M followers) as the brand ambassador and make up artist and model influencers Lushious Massacr (61.8K), Sarah Cabrera (23.5K), and Nisanga (3.2K).

2. Kylie Jenner “Rise & Shine” could be worth a lot

On October 10, the youngest sister of the Kardashian-Jenner family released a 16-min Youtube video on her own channel where she wakes up her daughter melodiously while giving a tour of her office. The song has quickly gone viral, leading to a huge amount of memes and UGC on Instagram and Tik Tok. Within twenty days, the Youtube video generated 12.4M views, the hashtag #riseandshine has been shared 2.6M times on Instagram and, most impressively, 1.9B times on TikTok. Some celebrities, such as Miley Cyrus, Ariana Grande, and Lizzo, also picked up the trend and shared their own version of the melody on their social channels.

Jumping on/ Forecasting the commercial opportunity, Kylie Jenner released branded sweatshirts on her merchandising website that have been sold out within a few days. She also filed a trademark application for the phrase “rise and shine”. It could be applied to “belts, bottoms as clothing, coats, dresses, footwear, gloves, headbands, headwear, jackets, loungewear, scarves, sleepwear, socks, swimwear, tops as clothing and undergarments.” Let’s see if a collection is launched out of these two powerful verbs.

3. Barbie and Airbnb team up to open the dreamy life-size Barbie Malibu Dreamhouse

Global icon Barbie became an official “host” on Airbnb in the end of October. To celebrate the Barbie brand’s 60th anniversary, Barbie handed over the keys to her Malibu villa for a highly affordable two-night stay ( $60/night + taxes and fees). Besides enjoying their stay with a view on the Pacific Ocean, the lucky guests had the visit of some inspiring and entrepreneurial locals to bring the experience to the next level. Hence, Ibtihaj Muhammad, world-class fencing champion and inspirational role model, offered to guests one-on-one fencing lessons, and Jill Meyers, pilot and aerospace engineer took them on a behind-the-scenes tour of Columbia Memorial Space Center to encourage them to aim for the stars. Also, Jen Atkin, celebrity hairstylist, and girl boss, stopped by for hair makeovers with her Mane Addicts Creator Collective, and Gina Clarke-Helm, renowned local chef, provided a cooking lesson in Barbie’s spacious kitchen. 

To celebrate this unique offering, Airbnb will make a donation to The Barbie Dream Gap Project GoFundMe initiative, which aims to help level the playing field for young women so they can follow their dreams.

4. Snapchat is coming back

2019 has been an exciting year for Snapchat. The social media channels succeeded in considerably raising its daily average users from 185 million at the beginning of the year to 210 million at the end of Q3 2019. This growth has been pushed through a strong strategy focusing on both consumers and brands. Snapchat’s strategy has been built around four key pillars:

• The brand tapped into gaming with the launch of the Snap Games platform, which offers users the opportunity to play with friends within the app

• Snapchat invested a lot in the augmented reality lens, and many of them went viral as the gender swap filter, released last May. Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel even attributed 7 to 9 million of the 13 million additional users of Q3 to these new augmented reality lenses.

• The social media channel developed its Discover platform, with a particular focus on building a sustainable premium content ecosystem. Replying to the high demand for video content for mobile-first, it launched Snapchat Originals to offer original shows from comedy to reality docu-series exclusively available on the app.

• Snapchat multiplied new features for publishers to help them to advertise and be more present on the channel with Instant Create and  Dynamic Ads. Snapchat also directly collaborates with brands to offer an exclusive experience. It launched with Adidas a shoppable game where users can play baseball and smoothly buy the Adidas shoes that their player is using.

5. The American Music Awards announce nominees on TikTok

On October 24th, the American Music Awards became the first award show to announce nominees on TikTok with the help of influencers. The AMAs collaborated with three TikTok creators, Joshua Cureton, Nick Tangorra, and Brittany Tomlinson, to create videos reflecting their creative, melodic and light-hearted talents to announce the nominees for favorite music video, collaboration of the year, and favorite social artist.

Starting now, the American Music Awards will continue to share original content on TikTok to raise interest for the show on November 24.