Current Issue Summary
June 2023 (Vol. 64, Issue 2)
A Comparison of Social Media Influencers’ KPI Patterns across Platforms: Exploring Differences in Followers and Engagement on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok and Twitter
How can brands ensure that the social media influencers they choose as marketing partners are effective? This analysis of specific KPIs (followers and engagement), of 180 influencers across five social media platforms, identifies patterns that marketers can use toward establishing partnerships with influencers. The findings by Naser Pourazad (Flinders University), Lara Stocchi (UniSABusiness/University of South Australia) and Shreya Narsey (University of South Australia) can help fine-tune methods in this area which have, to date, been unreliable.
Pourazad, Stocchi and Narsey used a sample of more than 35,000 posts by 180 influencers on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok and Twitter. They describe in their analysis differences in double jeopardy effects observed among mature, growing and changing social media platforms. Moreover, the results hold true across varied areas of the influencers’ expertise, such as beauty and fashion, entertainment and travel, and lifestyle. Among the findings:
- In the case of mature platforms such as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, there is a reverse double jeopardy effect. In other words, “influencers with more followers have a lower engagement rate than influencers with fewer followers.”
- For growing platforms, such as TikTok, there is a classic double jeopardy effect: “Influencers with more followers have a higher engagement rate than influencers with fewer followers.”
- For platforms experiencing changes, like Instagram, (e.g. loss of active users due to growth of competing platforms like TikTok), the researchers found “no apparent trade-off between the number of followers and engagement rate of influencers.”
Managers have tended to rely on “unfounded assumptions,” such as that partnering with popular (mega-) influencers is best, due to their “individual qualities and high number of followers,” the authors note. However, micro-influencers can “be generally more effective when the objective is to improve engagement with followers, particularly for Facebook, YouTube and Twitter.” This conclusion “can give brands confidence to work with micro-influencers on Facebook, YouTube and Twitter while being mindful of the effectiveness of influencers with larger follower bases on TikTok. Such a strategy could prove to be cost-effective and, at the same time, achieve the marketing goal.”