The Compelling Argument for “Calm the F**k Down, Influencers”

[00:00:00] It is Thursday March 19th. Today under pressure, Meta might be forced by Europe to slash the

[00:00:08] price of its verified subscription plans. When being enthusiastic backfires for influencer

[00:00:14] marketing, Instagram is testing longer reels again and the Facebook poke is back

[00:00:22] and Gen Z are loving it. I'm Tod Maffin, that's ahead today in Digital Marketing.

[00:00:30] In a world where social media influencers are the new celebrities, a recent study

[00:00:35] throws light on how the size of an influencer's following can influence the impact of their

[00:00:41] endorsements. Researchers discovered that the effectiveness of an influencer's message

[00:00:46] varies greatly depending on their audience size. For those with fewer than 100,000 followers,

[00:00:53] a high energy enthusiastic approach with words like obsessed and the use of emojis and

[00:01:00] exclamation marks is more effective. This strategy as long as it appears genuine can

[00:01:05] include calls to action like order it here now. But for influencers boasting more than a

[00:01:11] million followers, they will find more success with informational messaging. Their posts should

[00:01:17] educate rather than overly promote using phrases like find out more here to avoid appearing in

[00:01:23] authentic. This difference in strategy stems from the perception of influencers by their audiences.

[00:01:29] Micro influencers are seen as more relatable and genuine making their excited endorsements

[00:01:36] more persuasive. Bigger influencers viewed as professional advertisers risk losing trust

[00:01:43] with overly enthusiastic promotions. The study which analyzed more than 20,000 Instagram and TikTok

[00:01:48] sponsored posts highlights that a 10% increase in excited language boosts engagement by 5.4% for

[00:01:57] micro influencers but decreases engagement by 8.4% for larger influencers. Interestingly,

[00:02:06] the negative effects of over excitement in those larger influencers posts can actually be

[00:02:11] mitigated by using both positive and negative judgments or focusing on the informative content.

[00:02:18] The study is called How High Arousal Language Shapes Micro versus macro influencers impact

[00:02:24] was published recently in the Journal of Marketing. We have a direct link to the study

[00:02:28] in today's email newsletter which you can sign up for free by tapping the link in the show notes

[00:02:33] or going to today in digital.com slash newsletter.

[00:02:41] Reuters is reporting today that meta is considering a significant price cut for its verified

[00:02:46] subscription package on Facebook and Instagram. The proposed adjustment would see monthly fees drop

[00:02:52] from 10 euros to 6 euros for individual users with additional accounts potentially being charged

[00:02:58] for euros instead of the current 6. As you've probably guessed by now, this is because of

[00:03:03] pressure from the European Union specifically its digital market act and will likely only apply in

[00:03:09] Europe. Europe is mad at meta for even having the fees in the first place. Meta's documentation

[00:03:15] says the paid subscription quote provides consumers with the ability to receive the services without

[00:03:21] meta using their information to show the mads. Some European lawmakers liken that to charging users

[00:03:28] a coercive fee to maintain their privacy a plan sometimes called pay or okay.

[00:03:40] As Instagram continues to chase TikTok meta is letting more people upload longer reels to the app.

[00:03:46] Some Instagram users are getting notifications saying they can now upload three minute long reels.

[00:03:51] This is definitely welcome especially for those who are creating longer content for TikTok

[00:03:56] and want to repurpose it to other vertical platforms. Currently for most users the limit is 90

[00:04:02] seconds on Instagram reels. The app's been tinkering with this for a while. Some tests were even

[00:04:07] allowing 10 minute uploads. To be honest I am not sure what their hesitancy is or even why the

[00:04:13] slow rollout it's not a new format and just brings it in line with what other platforms offer.

[00:04:18] Plus Instagram itself even sometimes pops up a note saying the length of your reel may be impacting

[00:04:24] its reach reels that are more than 30 seconds usually perform better. Also strange this test appears

[00:04:31] to only work for uploading videos if you are recording a real live with your camera

[00:04:38] you'll still be stuck at the shorter length. TikTok this week launched its new creator rewards

[00:04:42] program where users get more money for longer clips of course longer videos are much easier to monetize

[00:04:48] and if they're long enough might even permit a mid-roll to be snuck in. In January meta says

[00:04:55] reels consumption is up 20% year over year.

[00:05:03] Continuing the meta copies everyone theme its Twitter clone threads today added a long requested

[00:05:08] feature a trending section unlike on X though where that section tries to summarize topics.

[00:05:15] The threads version shows you the specific post that's going viral along with the user who posted

[00:05:20] it despite meta saying they were trying to stay away from news and politics three of the five

[00:05:25] trending topics when we check this morning where about the two main US presidential candidates.

[00:05:30] For now it's only available to Americans or more accurately to people with a US IP address

[00:05:37] do with that information what you will might be a good place to check in with periodically to see if

[00:05:42] there's anything gaining traction that your brand could jump in on. Meanwhile on X the trending

[00:05:48] section appears to actually be gone now or at least bugged out in the box where it usually appears

[00:05:53] for me it just reads no items.

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[00:07:46] Facebook poke old people I'm talking to you in its early days it was a way of saying hello or I'm

[00:07:52] thinking of you but some people felt it was creepy and Facebook felt it cluttered up the UI so they

[00:07:58] dropped it but they didn't get rid of it entirely it's always been there if you were willing to do

[00:08:03] a lot of digging around business inside and today equipping that quote you'd need a pith helmet

[00:08:07] and satellite phone to reach it unquote now apparently Facebook is unearthing the poke and apparently

[00:08:15] the younger generations are loving it quoting business insider quote men have said that it made a design

[00:08:22] tweak at the start of 2024 that made the poke button slightly more visible the new design would

[00:08:27] surface the button alongside any name that a user searched that encouraged people to actually use

[00:08:32] the button men have also made it easier to find the poke page you can now get to it by typing

[00:08:38] poking or pokes in the search bar instead of just poke in 2017 there was a small attempt to bring

[00:08:45] back the poke by putting it on profile pages but the trend didn't catch back on too soon perhaps

[00:08:52] unquote made it says more than half of the poking now is being done by people aged 18 to 29 remember

[00:08:59] for them it's probably new back when poking was much more thing they weren't old enough to be on

[00:09:04] Facebook again business insider quote the poke is a perfect low effort way to connect with a

[00:09:10] Facebook friend you haven't seen in a while it's a little bit nostalgic and surprising a little

[00:09:15] cheeky but friendly and Facebook desperately needs something like that a way to be useful for connecting

[00:09:22] with people you know IRL so yesterday my wife and I picked up a quest three VR headset we had an

[00:09:31] old rift but that one you had to attach to a gaming PC I actually had to buy a gaming laptop to use

[00:09:38] to you but the quest three it's all kind of self-contained now it is not nearly as powerful as

[00:09:44] as the old ones I apparently it's running on Android which sort of surprised me I really want

[00:09:50] to play Fallout in VR but we already own Fallout on the Xbox and I'm just so cheap that it pains

[00:09:56] me to have to buy the same game again for a different platform actually we have to do it twice because

[00:10:02] like I bought Beat Saber for the rift but that's on my laptop and if I want Beat Saber on this

[00:10:07] new headset I have to buy the game again like it's kind of frustrating anyway I'll be trying

[00:10:13] it out on stream today so if you are interested in seeing what that looks like you can check out my

[00:10:17] twitch channel which is twitch.tv slash low effort dad all right talk to you tomorrow

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