This is becoming popular for many brands and influencers on various social media platforms globally to help promote products from food and beverage to gardening products.
Social media started in the early 2000’s with websites like Friends Re-United which pre-dated Facebook which launched in 2004.
Now many social media platforms boast billions of active users, with new users signing up daily.
Why?
The reason is simple, social media is free, and on average we spend 3 hours a day on one or more social media platforms. Looking at pictures our friends or friends of friends are posting, videos on TikTok or updates on Twitter from Donald Trump.
Collaboration between brands and social media influencers has really taken off since the lockdown periods of 2020 and really set off a full time career for many content creators.
Let’s collab is really the message that many social media agencies are saying, to brands and to influencers. This gives many brands exposure to thousands or millions of their potential customers for brand awareness, and can earn influencers up to £10,000 per sponsored post.
If the influencer has a following of a million followers, they can earn that much per post.
Collaboration builds followers, as followers can connect with influencers and relate to products they know and trust.
Content collaboration really took off during the COVID lockdowns of 2020, as many people being sat at home took to TikTok and started creating posts.
Many simply filmed themselves eating dinner, preparing dinner or reviewing dinner.
Mashtag Brady went on the hunt for ‘the UK’s greatest cheeseburger’. Sevda Cataltas filmed herself preparing her daughters meals and is now pretty much a full time social media influencer and collabs with many food related brands.
We have moved into a new age of marketing since COVID with social media and the spotlight being pointed to mental health.
Social media marketing and mental health really came together in 2020 as millions of generation Z became addicted to social media. Amassing followers, likes and comments from friends. Many would text friends to tell them they have posted on Instagram and can they click ‘like’!
Some even sadly have committed suicide due to the stress of getting attention.
Today coincidentally (10th October 2024) is ‘World Mental Health Day’ and social media has exploded with posts on Linkedin, Facebook and TikTok about mental health.
The Australian unknown model Leah Halton shot to fame in February 2024 after her 12 second TikTok doing a lip sync to Praise Ja In The Moonlight amassing 37 million ‘likes’, 600 million views and still getting comments.
Did she plan this, or work with a marketing company?
Not at all, content creators globally are trying with every post and video to achieve the same level of stardom and indeed Leah herself is still posting but not getting another viral to the same level of media exposure.
Tom Cruise, Gordon Ramsey and many other well known celebrities are doing the same, jumping on the latest trends to get a video viral for media attention.
Many influencers will do almost anything to be famous, some tragically resulting in an accident from a fall after taking a ‘selfie’ or a stunt gone wrong.
Leah Halton has been analysed by millions around the world for her 12 second TikTok. Was it her makeup, her choice of song to lip sync to, the nose scrunch, or the flick of the hair?
Social media companies are trying to find the formula to going viral, done right and it could be tens of thousands in royalties.
100 years ago, the world was a different place, as Downton Abby beautifully portrays.
Many people were happy to be in service (as cooks, butlers, servants) looking after prestigious families.
After the First World War, society shifted into manufacturing, working in shops and offices.
In the late 1900’s manufacturing mostly moved overseas moving more people to civil service (government, NHS, national services) and office work.
After lockdown, people preferred to work at home rather than in offices.
Now many people do not want to do a 9-5 job, working for themselves to become the next Richard Branson or Ellon Musk, or become a content creator, filming videos when on holiday being paid for by a global brand.
The world has moved on in leaps and bounds in a very short space of time, and no-one really knows what is around the corner.
Is there going to be another chapter after content creation and collaboration videos?
Is there going to be a new social media platform after video marketing?
Social media moves very quickly and the world is still trying to catch up. Content creation and SMI’s evolved out of lockdown, and has now settled to become what it currently is.
Society has changed a lot over the last 100 years and is still evolving as more people want to work for themselves or being paid to travel by a leading brand, being paid to film themselves doing what they love.