ICYMI: TikTok Wants You to Pivot to Photos

Plus a great carousel cliffhanger example

Good morning and thanks for reading! Is there anything harder than trying to get everything done in a short week?! I hope this email makes things a little bit easier for you to keep track.

⏰ 1-SECOND SUMMARY

• TikTok is promising more reach with photo posts over videos

• YouTube is crowned the top streaming service for the 12th month in a row

• Pinterest is launching its first-ever streaming and fully shoppable show, Deliciously Entertaining

• Sprout Social webinar alert: get a pep talk from Corporate Erin* 

• Data: Female creators dominate the influencer marketing industry

• Takeaways for you from this week’s trends: the Doritos Theory; Who TF Did I Marry and the LoveShackFancy multiverse

💻 ROADMAP

📲 TikTok Updates

• TikTok wants you to pivot to photos. It’s running an in-app promo encouraging people to post photo carousels versus video and promising to “help you reach even more people.”

  According to TikTok, photo posts can get 2.9x more comments, 1.9x more likes, 2.6x more shares on average than videos.

  There are a couple of theories floating around: it lowers the barrier to entry for people intimidated by video and positions the app as a 360 media solution for brands and creators. Either way, I’ve heard back from several people that their carousel posts are getting a boost in the FYP.

  My advice would be to lean into this format as long as it’s being prioritized by the platform — especially if you’ve got a story you can tell through images, such as how tos, tips, travelogues, cliffhangers and charming romcoms like this amazing example from TikTok user @MarcBast__.

  Note, the small print says photo posts can’t be ads or created by public interest accounts, which could affect performance depending on your industry or if you’re just posting product collections.

  As always, it works until it doesn’t work. Keep a close watch on your analytics since no one knows how audiences will react to being force-fed carousels on top of long-form content and TikTok Shop videos.

• TikTok is testing Sub Space, exclusive conversation threads for LIVE creators to interact with their subscribers. 

• TikTok says it’s the number one platform for discovering new mobile games for players ages 18 to 24 and put together a report on the new era of mobile gaming. 

• TikTok released an ad playbook for small to mid-sized businesses, called TikTok Creative Made Simple, offering tips and advice on everything from brainstorming and creative production to ad optimization.

📲 YouTube Updates

• YouTube is rolling out new creator channel pages on the YouTube App for TV with a more immersive layout (it’s time to upload your 16x9 full-art channel banner art) and a subscribe button that’s easier to smash.

• YouTube marked its 12th consecutive month as the top streaming service, according to Nielsen.

📲 Meta Updates

• Access to Instagram’s Creator Marketplace, which connects brands and creators will be rolling out to Canada, Australia, New Zealand, UK, Japan, India, and Brazil next week.

• In case you needed a reminder to prioritize share-ability as a content directive and a KPI to track, Adam Mosseri reiterated that people prioritize sharing photos and videos to: DMs, then Stories, and then Feed.

• Mark Zuckerberg announced two new updates for Threads:

  • Drafts: allows you to save in-progress posts for future editing and posting

  • Threads Camera: opens your phone’s camera directly in the Threads composer

📲 Pinterest Updates

• Pinterest announced the launch of its first-ever streaming show, Deliciously Entertaining, developed and produced in partnership with Tastemade, and starring cookbook author and influencer, Danni Rose.

  As you might expect, each 22-minute long episode will include on-screen QR codes linking to shoppable Pins. 

  Here’s where it gets interesting: the final episode on June 21st will debut on Amazon Live for a special "shop the show" companion episode.

  *This taps into everything we’ve been talking about: brand-on-brand collabs, recurring content series, shoppable content, live streaming commerce. Color me impressed on this rollout, Pinterest!

• Pinterest announced an annual color palette — inspired by the platform’s 2024 trends. The 2024 colors are gummy pink, desert orange, aqua blue, moss green, and mocha brown. The Pinterest Palette includes a guide for color values, shade options, and insights about all five colors.

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🗓️ SAVE THE DATE

Webinar Alert: Building Data-Powered Social Strategies: Insights from Hollister, Affirm, and Consultant, Jazmin Griffith

Social media professionals are at their max capacity. As roles and responsibilities only continue to expand, how can social data help streamline your efforts?

Tune into this Sprout Social webinar with an exciting line-up of top minds sharing how they build smarter strategies leveraging social data, plus a pep talk from special guest, Corporate Erin! 

Date & Time: March. 5 at 1 p.m. CT (11 a.m. PT/2 p.m. ET)

*sponsored

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👆🏻 CLICK THRU

Female creators and UGC content dominate the influencer marketing industry

There are two interesting insights out of a recent influencer marketing report:

1. Female creators dominate the influencer marketing industry, making up 70 percent of 80,000 influencer profiles analyzed by Collabstr.

   (Is anyone else nodding along, like, tell me something I didn’t know?!)

2. The demand for creator generated content has remained strong: the number of UGC creators is up 93% year over year but that increase is also driving down prices since there are so many available content creators.

3 reasons why I’m “quitting” being a full time influencer

A TikTok influencer announced she was quitting and gave 3 key reasons: 

1. She’s tired of making everything about herself

2. She doesn’t feel intellectually challenged

3. Being an influencer has made her more superficial

This comes on the heels of several YouTubers announcing their retirement recently. It’ll be interesting to see if this signals a wider trend, shifting influence to a side hustle or in-house job instead of seeing it as someone’s primary role. 

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💼 STUFF YOU MIGHT NEED TO EXPLAIN AT WORK

🤤 The Doritos Theory: TikToker Celeste Aria compared the addictive nature of eating Doritos to doom scrolling social media. “You’re never satisfied after you engage in the behavior.” 

Your Opportunity: Social media addiction aside, this caught on because the concept was easy for people to grasp and relate to. Don’t overcomplicate your message. If you’re going to compare your product or service to something else people love, keep it simple.  

📺 Who TF Did I Marry: TikToker Reesa Teesa took advantage of TikTok’s 10-minute limit to upload a 52-part, 7-hour miniseries detailing the breakdown of her marriage to an alleged pathological liar. 

Your Opportunity: There are several reasons the content format captured everyone’s attention:

• Reesa is a gifted storyteller;

• Everyone loves a juicy story, especially when it’s teased out in installments like a Lifetime miniseries and it’s easily accessible through an extended playlist;

• With the UMG music ban, pivoting to original audio is a smart move; 

• TikTok is prioritizing long-form content so it’s no surprise this made everyone’s FYP 

So, what happens next? Reesa Teesa is likely to get offers to incorporate brands into her extended story. And everyone else should find and lock down talented creators to come up with their own multi-episode story arc. Or jump on the multi-part story joke (without actually releasing 52 installments) like the TSA account did.

🎀 The LoveShackFancy Multiverse: A couple of weeks ago, a private chef named @HandMetheFork, Maddy DeVita, seemed to show up on everyone’s FYP feed. This is unofficially based on my experience, anecdotal evidence from friends and an analysis video which suggested this was indeed a thing. Maddy’s client with the gorgeous kitchen turned out to be the founder of the fashion brand LoveShackFancy.

Your Opportunity: HandMetheFork’s content was like a well-timed prequel to LoveShackFancy’s show at New York Fashion Week, which also got another boost from guest Campbell “Pookie” Puckett.

It’s not enough to post to the brand account these days. You need to start that drumbeat early and from multiple trusted sources so it seems like you’re everywhere, all at once. An influencer marketing campaign can help you achieve this but I also predict we’ll see brands hiring creator-influencers to embed in their in-house teams to generate authentic buzz long before a product launch or event date. (See: Marques Brownlee’s new corporate gig)

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👀 IN CASE YOU MISSED IT

• TikTok’s "Star Creator" team focuses on finding and developing influencers who can drive sales in on its e-commerce tool, TikTok Shop -Business Insider (paywall)

• The most active 25% of U.S. adult TikTok users produce 98% of public content -Pew Research Center

• Mariah Carey’s social team came up with a creative way for getting around the UMG TikTok music ban -Mariah Carey TikTok

• YouTuber Marques Brownlee is adding a new corporate gig to his resume: Executive Board Member and Chief Creative Partner -Yahoo Finance

• Lady Gaga will headline the Fortnite Festival Season 2 -Variety

• Fake sexually explicit video of podcast host Bobbi Althoff trends on X despite violating platform’s rules -NBC News

• New career on the rise: Pizza influencer -Axios

• In this year’s presidential election, more people are turning to Instagram for news, even as the platform tries de-emphasizing “political content” -The New York Times (paywall)

• And this is why you don’t use an influencer’s likeness without their permission in an ad campaign -Attorney Robert Freund

• Will TikTokers get banned from red carpet interviews? -Marketing Brew

• Did you see my comments in the Google doc? Bet you can’t read this without smiling -McSweeneys

Got theories, opinions or questions about this week’s news? I’ll be tackling the top headlines with Danielle Wiley on the Art of Sway podcast out on Monday!