Monday’s Marketing Minute: Telegram Surging, LinkedIn Joins Social Audio Bandwagon, Micro Influencers Get Engagement

Happy Monday, y’all! I hope you had a glorious Easter weekend and are ready for a productive week.  Here’s some marketing and social stories that caught my eye:

The focus of this story is how Tik Tok continues to do well, but I think Telegram’s surge is more timely. Notice how high Telegram is on both the Downloads and Active Monthly Users lists. I mean, Telegram now has more Monthly Active Users than Twitter does. Which is ironic, since a decent amount of the new users going to Telegram are coming from Twitter. It’s also an interesting commentary on how social media is mirroring mainstream media when it comes to how people get their news and information. Up until the 1980s or so, most people got their news from the Big Three; NBC, ABC and CBS. Then cable television came along, with more shows and more options for news. And that trend has only intensified in the time since. I think we are seeing the same thing with social media. It used to be that most people when to Facebook and Twitter for breaking news. But since Facebook and Twitter have begun censoring accounts that share some information, people are following those banned users to other sites like Telegram. It will be interesting to see how this plays out.  Do I think Telegram will be here 5 years from now? I’d say probably not, but then again there’s no guarantee that Twitter and Facebook will be either.

TikTok continues to lead the download rankings https://t.co/eJwjKa3P0e

— Social Media Today (@socialmedia2day) April 3, 2021

From the ‘We all saw this coming” department, LinkedIn is planning to incorporate social audio functionality into its platform. I think this may work better for LinkedIn than other platforms, as LinkedIn’s users are more geared toward professionals, which in this case simply means they are more likely to come from a similar background with similar interests. Contrast that to Twitter and Facebook, which is sort of a catch-all for users. I think social audio rooms work better for more tightly defined topics that attracts perhaps fewer people, but people who are more invested in the topic being discussed.

We have seen it coming; «Social Audio» being launched as a feature in all Social Media Platforms: LinkedIn confirms it’s working on a Clubhouse rival, too – TechCrunch https://t.co/NO9TEdHcVb

— Morten Myrstad (@myrstad) March 31, 2021

Micro influencers or T-Shaped Inflencers drive more engagement. This works because one to one engagement doesn’t scale and neither does your attention. As a person’s following increases, it becomes increasingly difficult to engage with everyone in that group. Having said that, Twitch streamers seem to have cracked the code on how to drive engagement at scale.

Micro-Influencers’ Engagement Rates Remain Higher Than Others https://t.co/dR5pYgfUEf @marketingcharts @Upfluence @influencerMH

— marketingcharts (@marketingcharts) March 31, 2021

So that’s all I have for this week! I hope you have a wonderful week, and please subscribe to my Backstage Pass newsletter if you haven’t yet, by clicking the image below.

PS: I have a massive post coming tomorrow. Check back here then!