ICYMI: TikTok Versus the Creators
Here's what happened on social media this week, May 27
This a recap of news and trends for and about creators. This newsletter is meant to be a light-hearted recap of social news, but writing this week was a struggle while trying to reckon with the recent shootings in Buffalo, New York, and Laguna Woods, California, followed by this week’s tragedy in Uvalde, Texas. To help end gun violence, please support nonprofits such as Everytown for Gun Safety and Students Demand Action and donate to these verified GoFundMe fundraisers for Buffalo and Uvalde and the fund for the SoCal church shooting.
💻 ROADMAP
🌟 Instagram’s Visual Refresh: Instagram's got a tweaked logo, new gradient and a new font: Instagram Sans.
💰 TikTok Live Subscriptions Launch: This week, TikTok is launching LIVE subscriptions, a new program that will allow creators to generate recurring revenue via payments from their top fans similar to YouTube and Twitch.
🗓 New TikTok Scheduling Options: Third-party content marketing platforms (and marketers) are celebrating their new TikTok integrations. The move will allow people to manage their TikTok accounts through partners including Sprout Social, Hootsuite, Sprinklr, Later and more.
🔵 Twitter’s New Creator Hub: Twitter launched a new 'Twitter Create' hub to help creators understand their monetization opportunities.
🎙 A New Way to Launches Spaces: Twitter is working on a new prompt that would allow users to launch an audio Space around a specific tweet. “Start a Space about this Tweet” has potential for big announcements or breaking news.
🗂 YouTube’s New Creator Analytics: YouTube is rolling out new, content-specific analytics for creators broken out by content types, such as Shorts and Live.
👆🏻 CLICK THRU
How TikTok Creators Redefined Influence
TikTok is throwing shade at Instagram and YouTube and creators are stuck in the middle. Earlier this week, the company put out a strongly worded marketing document: How TikTok Creators Redefined Influence. The deck positions TikTok creators as more authentic than those on other platforms. It’s a claim that was echoed in a webinar TikTok held Thursday titled: The New Age of Influence: Brands, TikTok creators and the future of digital marketing.
“Influencers on competitor platforms are now more likely to be seen as “show-offs” or disingenuous compared to Creators on TikTok…
Compared to influencers on competitor platforms, TikTok Creators are more likely to be seen as:
Witty
Friendly
Happy
Kind
The shiny, glossy influencer aesthetic was fun to aspire to for a while. But now, it just feels fake compared to the relatable approach of the typical TikTok Creator.”
Understandably, TikTok is trying to distinguish itself. The company’s now competing with Twitch for live streaming eyeballs, they have to contend with Instagram and YouTube trying to duplicate their success through the promotion of Reels and Shorts and they’re facing off against every other platform out there in the race to be the destination for creators.
But their recent creator claims make a corporate conflict feel very personal. What if, instead of insinuating creators on other platforms are fake, TikTok did a campaign welcoming these influencers to their platform, asked marketer Sara McCord. “In reality you have all these influencers who need a home, who are so frustrated… scoop them up and bring them to TikTok. That’s how you bring people in.”
Because, right now, it’s giving very “you can’t sit with us” vibes.
🎁 Is paying influencers in free products ever okay?
Gifting, seeding, in-kind… there are as many terms for paying creators with free product as there are opinions about the practice:
“People are often exploited in these gifting contracts, because they’re spending X [amount] of time, X number of hours producing content for something that, at the end of the day, they could have just been working those hours and then went on and bought the product, and they’d save money,” Kayley Reed, Hermana Agency founder, told Marketing Brew.
On the flip side, Ali Fazal, VP of marketing at Grin, countered: “If those terms are advantageous to the creator, and they’re advantageous to the brand, then there’s no problem with that being the transaction that they embark upon.”
The decision to swap social posts for product is individual to each creator. Some considerations that go into this include: Do you like the product? Is it worth aligning yourself with this brand? Is the monetary value of the product worth your time?
But marketers should approach this method with caution — and reasonable expectations of what they’re asking in exchange . Lindsey Gamble, associate director of influencer innovation at Mavrck, shared his experience hearing stories about creators posting screenshots of DMs from brands only offering free product. “Think about brand safety and just protecting your brand.”
📣 QUOTES OF THE WEEK
“There was no quid pro quo. There was no like, ‘Hey, if I blow you, will you put it on review for me?’... I socially engineered a situation that was beneficial for me.”
- Kitty Lixo, via Rolling Stone’s article, Meet the OnlyFans Creator Who Said She Slept With Instagram Employees to Get Her Account Back
“Instagram became a generation’s go-to social app on the strength of its filtered, aspirational lifestyle photography. Now the company is actively killing that identity in the name of beating TikTok, and it might not even work.”
-Bloomberg, Mark Zuckerberg Is Blowing Up Instagram to Try and Catch TikTok
🧮 DATA OF THE WEEK
“According to Launchmetrics, which collects data on brand performance, the [Kourtney Kardashian and Travis Barker] wedding weekend has already earned ‘$25.4 million in Media Impact Value’ for Dolce [& Gabbana], thanks in large part to Instagram posts from the Kardashian-Jenners.”
-The New York Times, The Branded Marriage of Kourtney Kardashian and Travis Barker
💡 TIP OF THE WEEK
If your Instagram Feed has been overrun by randoms, you can (temporarily) hide Suggested Posts.
Click the x at the top right of the next Suggested Post you see
Tap “Not Interested” as your reason
Instagram will then offer the option to snooze all Suggested Posts for 30 days
Enjoy your Feed with people and brands you actually opted to follow
📖 ALSO ON MY READING LIST…
Kim Kardashian Joins Beyond Meat as First “Chief Taste Consultant” -TechCrunch
Artists Complaining About Having To Make Viral TikToks Are Now Going Viral On TikTok -BuzzFeed
DeuxMoi Was Allegedly Co-Founded by Socialite Nan Kempner's Granddaughter -Town & Country
What Happens When You Only Share Reels on Instagram? -Later
Creativity on TikTok: A marketer’s guide to creating successful TikTok ad creative -TikTok
2 Influencers Share the Benefits of Taking a Social Media Break - Healthline
Playboy to pursue an influencer-led business model with its new Centerfold platform -Insider
How Chipotle is experimenting with BeReal, Gen Z’s new favorite social platform -Retail Brew
People are getting tired of the 'TikTok music formula' -NBC News
Why Twitch has become the go-to platform for early YouTube stars like Tyler Oakley and Hannah Hart to find their second acts -Insider
Thank you for reading and I hope you have a peaceful Memorial Day weekend.