Digital marketing and social media strategies are constantly evolving, via technological, consumer or behavioural disruptions. We gave the floor to specialists to find out their vision on the major trends for the coming years.
Microinfluence: between fatigue, the quest for authenticity, the need for transparency and professionalism
For Camille Jourdain, Influence Marketing Consultant, a microinfluencer is above all a content creator. His real strength is his ability to create content that speaks to his audience.
Beyond this change in profile, he estimates that 4 major trends are emerging in microinfluence:
- A weariness phenomenon: Micro-influencers have an interest in varying content types and platforms, writing posts on a blog, publishing links on Twitter, making videos on YouTube, uploading content on Facebook, posting photos and especially creating stories on Instagram.
- A quest for authenticity: more coherent and honest partnerships:
Many French consumers consult the publications of influencers. But they are not always satisfied with the subjects covered and the advice given, they ask for more consistency in the choices of collaboration and honesty in the delivery of opinions.
- A need for transparency: commercial collaborations explicitly mentioned: Commercial collaborations with microinfluencers will be very frequent this year, which is why ARPP has addressed the subject of transparency by issuing a number of recommendations. It is important to make them known to the public by explicitly indicating them on publications with the expression “In partnership with”.
- A professionalization of the sector: supervised and contractualized deals:
Deals will always have to be better supervised and to do so, it is important to establish a charter of collaborative influencers. Its objective: to create a professional relationship between the two parties and their hearings.
Conversational design
“With the massive arrival of voice assistants, boosted by iA, voice recognition and so rich in data, a new communication territory is emerging for brands. And when you talk about a new channel, you talk about a new way of communicating,” explains Guillaume Terrien, Digital Communication Consultant.
For him, the three main advantages of this new channel of purchase, information and even simple entertainment are no longer to be presented; in addition to its instinctive linguistic aspect, which legitimizes its ease of use, its speed of use and reaction as well as its level of precision make it an almost indispensable interface.
Guillaume continues: “While the technological world already has its hands in the sludge and is juggling iA, voice recognition, blockchain or NLP (Natural Language Processing), marketers are still in the process of observing and learning about this new type of voice marketing and the new uses they could and should make of it”.
He believes that Google has paved the way by working with Pixar’s dialoguists to give credibility to its synthesized voice, but beyond the quality of the dialogue, it is also on content, tone and familiarity that specialists will have to focus on. And, for once, a new profession will undoubtedly emerge: the conversational designer.
Trust and confidence
For Jonathan Chan, Community Manager at Dentsu Aegis Network / iProspect, last year represented the end of the golden age of social networks, a disillusionment as we witnessed the end of the ideal of the web. For this year, he explains that rebuilding trust must be at the heart of brand strategy in social networks.
He believes that this trust must be built on 3 pillars:
Credibility: the brand must be perceived as competent and legitimate. In this attention economy, it is essential that brands communicate their values with authentic messages.
Relevance: the decrease in attention is undeniable, the brands that will stand out from the crowd are those that will be able to resonate with consumers with legitimate messages. This relevance is built through customer knowledge and the design of experiences related to usage.
Proximity: brands thought that social networks were their media relays but they forgot the social dimension, i.e. the ability to generate useful conversations that move society forward.
The brand will be erased for the benefit of its communities
Marie Dollé, expert in Digital Strategy, wonders: “Since 2008, when brands started investing in different social platforms, the rules of the game have changed considerably. Facebook now intends to restore “real interactions” and refocus on family and friends. As a result, brands are struggling to emerge and engage their audiences. A finding corroborated by the Opinion Way survey for Wide: 79% of French people say they do not follow the pages of the brands. What to ask ourselves: are we at the dawn of a profound change? “
Marie notes an important change: less subject to the merciless dictatorship of algorithms, groups are booming; sometimes driven by brands, they nevertheless respond to very specific themes and where the brand name tends to disappear.
She explains that another example takes the reasoning a step further: for the past seven years, every week Sweden’s official Twitter account has been entrusted to a Swedish resident; what is considered a large-scale “social takeover” should be deployed by the brands on a regular basis and not just on an occasional basis.
Marie Dollé wondered, however, whether brands were willing to delegate the reins of their accounts to their wider communities (employees, partners, ambassadors, etc.). This means moving away from the canons of corporate communication, rethinking its raison d’être and accepting a loss of control… in short, a major change to be made.
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