Co Authors: Giuliana Morelli and Federico Llano
An audience refers to the group of people who consume or engage with a particular piece of content. Whether this content is a TV show, a Youtube video, a podcast episode or a social media post, audiences are fundamentally important when it comes to creating engaging content.
The more curated and targeted the content seems to be, the more likely it is to have good results. Which is often translated into reach and engagement, and sales.
Tiktok, Meta and Google understands this and uses it to make billions of dollars every year by allowing boosting targeted content via ads. The main idea is to show niche content to a niche audience likely to enjoy it. Automatically learning what works and what doesn’t.
Shift from Social Media to Algorithmic Media
The term “audience” is usually confused with “followers” since the first can be included in the latter. However, it differs in some ways. Followers have made the active decision to subscribe or click the “follow” button, opting to receive content in their feed and show interest in it.
This was the way social media platforms distributed content in the social media era, until Tiktok disrupted the industry by shifting distribution from followers to everyone who might be interested, algorithmically. The Tiktok algorithm is brilliant, it highlights the I in AI. It chooses to automatically show a creator’s content to an audience who shows interest in it.
Every platform followed Tiktok, and now Youtube and IG also give less relevance to who the follower is, and more to their algorithmic distribution. Welcome to the Algorithmic Media era.
As Influencer Marketing professionals, a few years ago the smart thing to do was focus on understanding the influencers followers. But things changed.
The non-followers
In an era where interest changes quickly and platforms switch algorithms every day, focusing on followers can be a strategic misstep. Instagram and Youtube are transparent when it comes to letting a creator know where their views come from. More often than not, it comes from non-followers.
Focusing on Instagram, this would mean short-form content (reels). It gives a creator the possibility to increase their following by showing their content to a fresh audience. Despite liking said content, some users choose not to follow while still consuming the curated feed that the algorithm made specially for them (and thousands of other people with similar interests).
The audience insight has something followers usually don’t: novelty. Nowadays, this is a valuable asset. Being able to understand what group of people is interested in a creator's content at the very moment, is valuable. It allows a campaign to target more accurately the audience it seeks. Which is the main idea of influencer marketing that focuses on performance.
Implications for the Influencer Marketing Industry
As IM marketers, we audit influencers followers and audience demographics to understand if they reach the right audience for our campaigns.
A few years ago, it made sense to ask influencers to share their followers' demographics which was only available to them and we did not rely entirely on industry SAAS because there was always a mismatch and influencers were the source of truth.
The difference lies in the difference between followers and audience. Industry SAAS demographic analytics is based on who the audience is, not followers, which is currently the most important.
Stop Asking Follower Demographics
In conclusion, followers are an important part of an influencer’s community. However, to target campaigns more effectively, audience is certainly the way to go. Since it gives a clearer picture, more immediate snapshot, of an influencer’s viewers today.
From an influencer marketer perspective, the takeaway is clear: using SAAS to focus on the influencer audience demographic is key given the current algorithmic distribution.
Leaving behind the idea that asking influencers for their followers' demographics was the most important metric today, TATAM recommends to stop asking influencers for their followers demographics, and use SAAS platforms instead, to rapidly access influencer’s audience.
