Influencer marketing exploded over the last ten years and transformed the way marketers and bloggers approach their daily activities. These days, working with influencers is a fantastic way to promote your blog and generate loads of clicks. Getting recommendations from people with a dedicated audience helps you piggyback on all the work they did to build their brand!
It’s like celebrity endorsements, but better.
We must also realise that bloggers can be influencers. If you’ve got a decent following, there’s no reason you can’t involve yourself in affiliate marketing programs while using your online influence to encourage readers to buy products. It’s one of the simplest and most profitable ways of monetising a blog.
As a consequence, we’re seeing plenty of trends in the influencer marketing realm heading into 2024 and beyond. If you’re smart, you can jump on these trends early to help shape the upcoming year and make your blog an even bigger success. We selected the biggest trends you need to look for this year:
Affiliate Marketing Becomes A Key Way For Brands To Use Influencers
As noted above, if you’re blogging to a niche audience with lots of readers every time you post, affiliate marketing is an easy way to make money from your content. Consequently, it’s helpful to know that most brands are looking to use influencers through affiliate marketing programs.
Why? Because it’s the simplest way for them to take advantage of someone’s influence. They don’t have to pay massive influencer marketing fees and the influencer also has no limits on what they can gain. If you want to grow your blogging income by being an influencer, affiliate marketing is the way to go.
It’s All About Long-Term Influencer Connections
During its infancy, influencer marketing was more about short-term connections between brands and influencers. A company may pay a popular content creator to promote a new product and that’s it.
However, 2023 has proven the value of long-term connections and partnerships.
Brands recognise that having a long-term deal with an influencer is the best way to generate results. They call upon that person’s influence for weeks, months or years. It boosts the chances of gaining loyal and repeat business from the influencer’s following.
As a blogger, you could consider long-term partnerships with influencers to promote your website, content or any products you might sell. A simple idea is to strike a deal with someone and have them make one guest post per week. You’re constantly drawing clicks from their audience over a long period, rather than a quick “one and done” deal.
You can also see how long-term partnerships will help you as an influencer! If you want to work with others to grow your blog, you need to lock in long-term contracts. It ensures you have a stable income for a longer period, allowing you to plan accordingly. Yes, you can still do a few quick promotional posts and collaborations with brands as a one-off. But in the grand scheme of things, securing one or two long-term partnerships will help you earn more money and draw in consistent web traffic.
Nano-Influencers Will Be Highly Sought After
Last year was all about micro-influencers. In short, this refers to influencers with a niche audience. They don’t have the most followers in the world, but they do have a small audience of dedicated supporters. Therefore, their influence is arguably more powerful as a larger portion of their audience is more likely to listen to them.
Now, it’s the dawn of the nano-influencer!
As you can maybe tell, this refers to influencers with an even smaller niche audience. Brands are looking for influencers like this because they want to target a very particular demographic. This paves the way for huge opportunities in the blogging world! If you don’t already, be sure to select a blogging niche. Appealing to a specific audience is better than trying to capture everyone’s attention and it makes it easier to create content.
At the same time, you’re in a prime position to become a nano-influencer. Think about your niche and contact brands that also frequent the same audience. Your blog could be exactly what they’re looking for to promote their brand, services or products. Combine this with the previous trend and strike long-term deals with these brands as their nano-influencer.
Suddenly, your small blog with a dedicated audience becomes a powerful tool for brands. They’ll pay well – especially if you create content that encourages your audience to check out these brands and buy their products. The more successful you are, the more influencer marketing opportunities will come your way.
AI Will Throw Influencer Marketing Into Disarray
Artificial intelligence is a tricky topic for bloggers. We know there are so many AI tools out there making our lives more difficult. At the same time, it’s tempting to call upon a few of these tools to help create content or come up with ideas.
In 2024, expect to see AI merge with influencer marketing more and more – but not in a good way.
We believe there’ll be a higher prevalence of AI content created by influencers in a bid to secure more contracts and deals. After all, if you can get paid by multiple brands to create lots of content – but use AI to make it all – then you’re basically earning free money.
However, we expect brands will catch on to this. Nobody will pay for AI content – it’s pointless; they could just make it themselves and save money. For bloggers, this opens up a rare window of opportunity. You need to focus on making content that’s 100% AI-free and unique.
It’s the perfect way to stand out from the crowd. Present yourself as the dream influencer partner for brands by showcasing stunning content and proving that your stuff is way better than anything AI-generated. We predict that companies will look to spend more money on influencers who don’t use AI specifically because they wish to avoid this type of content.
Audiences Prioritise Authenticity
One of the key reasons influencer marketing and affiliate marketing became so successful was down to audience behaviour. When this boom first began, audiences were willing to listen to everything their favourite influencer or blogger recommended. After all, why would they recommend something terrible?
The increased popularity of influencer marketing led to a decrease in authenticity. Many influencers realised their audience would buy or do anything, so they took advantage of it. It proved successful – but times are changing.
2024 will see a rise in audiences prioritising authenticity above anything else. They will no longer click on any link promoted by a blogger or buy a product that’s been recommended. Instead, they’re keen to know if an influencer is authentic or not.
For you, this means you should only promote brands or work with companies that you believe in. Try any products/services yourself before promoting them to your audience. Better yet, create blog content that engages your readers and shows how a certain brand or product can benefit them. Honesty is the best policy; if you don’t think something is worth promoting, then don’t promote it.
Your readers will quickly establish that you’re authentic, meaning they’re more likely to trust your future recommendations. This is perfect as everyone wins – brands get more from partnering with you as your audience follows your word, your audience gets great products or services and you make more money!
There Will Be More Collaboration
Gone are the days of brands contacting an influencer and asking them to make a couple of posts about a product. In 2024, we’ll start seeing a deeper level of collaboration between marketers and content creators.
They’ll work closer to create content that works for both parties. The brand gets something that puts a positive shine on them while the influencer can craft content that aligns with their personal brand.
This means that bloggers no longer have to try and force brands into their content or make pieces that stick out like a sore thumb in their content library. Before accepting deals with brands – or working with influencers yourself – ask questions and collaborate. Make sure everyone is happy with what’s about to be produced or walk away if your needs aren’t met.
By all means, there will be some new influencer marketing trends emerging throughout 2024 that we haven’t predicted. Such is the nature of influencer and affiliate marketing that things can change on a whim. Still, based on what we noticed in 2023, these six trends will be at the forefront of everything over the next twelve months.
We strongly recommend that you read over these concepts and get to grips with them if you want a successful year of blogging. Remember, working with brands and being an influencer can help you make serious money from your blog. Similarly, it’s equally powerful to work with influencers to promote your content!
