While 2022 was a busy year for the Social Media & B2B Influencer Marketing space, there has been a lot of uncertainty moving into the next year as a global recession is looming and social media platforms continue to rapidly change. It can be daunting to think about the future and how the industry will evolve. However, us Marketers always have the ability to conquer any challenge, adapt to change & remain optimistic – so worry not!
We reached out to some of the top experts in the B2B Influencer Marketing space to learn what they predict 2023 has in store for us! Spoiler alert: the predictions are all positive…
The rise of the internal employee influencer
“In the transition to doing more with less, businesses will begin to lean more and more on Employee Advocacy as a business growth strategy. Employees will be empowered and incentivised to participate in conversations with key thought leaders, leading to authentic dialogues that validate the organization’s point of view with these influencers.” – Stacy Miros, Senior Marketing Communications Manager at Microsoft
“2023 is going to shine a spotlight on internal influencers as brand advocates, and the importance that the internal workforce’s expertise actually plays in a B2B organizations’ credibility. In the tech space we’re going to see more brand evangelists or advocate roles being hired on directly by big brands to work collaboratively with industry & analyst influencers.” – Justine Velcich, VOX Community & Advocacy Programs Manager at Veritas Technologies
“People trust people. Smart brands will focus on the long-term relationship that they’ve started to build with the creators, Subject Matter Experts, Thought Leaders, influencer community and co-creating content pieces with their own experts & executives. This really allows them to create content that is relatable, valuable, for less money and at a quicker speed while also allowing them to work on their long-term strategies and being flexible on the short-term.” – Anita Veszeli, Director, Social Media & Advocacy at Ericsson
Shift in the way brands and influencers collaborate
“One of the biggest trends that we’re going to see is the shift from perfection to just truly being authentic. What that means for brands is having to not only just partner with an influencer, but letting go and allowing the imperfections of both the brand and the influencer come forward in the content that they create. More and more brands are now being more transparent with their communities, and influencers are being paid to share some of their content. For the influencer not to lose trust and to maintain the integrity of their relationships, it is going to be even more critical that they have trusted true shared purpose and value, and that they’re not deviating from who they are, in order to just make a dollar.” – Danielle Guzman, Global Head of Social Media at Mercer
“We know from research that the content marketers that are the most collaborative, and use collaborative formats such as round ups and interviews, are the ones who are getting the best results. I predict that we will see more influencers and more collaboration in Content Marketing across all industries, on both organic and paid side. It’s one of the very few shortcuts in Marketing and brands are figuring it out.” – Andy Crestodina, Co-Founder & CMO at Orbit Media Studios
“Moving into 2023 Marketing & Communication budgets are being affected by the recession. We also see some uncertainty around the social media platforms and we also see the trends that people are looking for less polished content, but authentic, value added and from trusted sources.” – Anita Veszeli, Director, Social Media & Advocacy at Ericsson
“Finding those pathways to offline influence, not social media influencers, but thought leaders, industry leaders, academicians – finding better ways to identify and prioritize those, is going surface from the companies that are working on those problems.” – Jason Falls, Influence Strategist & Host of Winfluence – The Influence Marketing Podcast
“Content creation budgets will be redirected. What I mean by that is there are traditional budgets for content creation such as whitepapers, eBooks – and part of that budget, and the paid media promotion budget, can be redirected to facilitating employees generating content and external influencers generating content. This will create much more personalized storytelling on behalf of your brand.” – Tim Williams, CEO at Onalytica
The boom of video content
“In the most recent survey by Content Marketing Institute and Marketing Profs on the state of B2B Marketing, they found that 78% of budget in 2023 will go towards video. That is a 9% increase over 2022, which was at 69%. When you look at the landscape of B2B Influencer Marketing, both brands and influencers have to consider video and the way that they will integrate it into their projects, their campaigns and their offerings as they look into 2023.” – Justin Levy, Director, Social & Influencer Marketing at Demandbase
“LinkedIn’s shift to prioritizing video is going to dominate what we interact with and see every day. Video content is the big thing that’s going to shift a little bit, not necessarily change, but get bigger.” – Jason Falls, Influence Strategist & Host of Winfluence – The Influence Marketing Podcast
“What we’ve seen is that short-form videos are very popular and will be all the rage in 2023. So be on the lookout for more YouTube shorts, TikToks and Instagram reels.” – Ryan Bares, Global Social Influencer Marketing Lead at IBM
B2B will integrate traditionally B2C platforms for content creation & distribution
“My prediction for B2B Influencer Marketing in 2023 is the expansion of social media platforms that might be traditionally B2C. With the uncertainty around Twitter, brands and influencers are going to expand to platforms like Instagram, TikTok and YouTube.” – Ryan Bares, Global Social Influencer Marketing Lead at IBM
Marketers will explore different content formats
“I saw an interesting stat the other day that 60% of B2B decision makers are now millennials. And this means there’s real impetus to make sure your content has sight, sound and motion. There’s different expectations around content now. I think while in the past, B2B Influencer Marketing has been focused very much on pure thought leadership, I really see 2023 being a year where the focus is on content formats. More video, more interesting formats, more interesting visuals that go with your content. This will involve using creators from TikTok & Instagram rather than just LinkedIn influencers.” – Luke Brynley-Jones, Managing Director at OST Marketing
“Test and learn new formats, new platforms, what is working, what is not, and I think this is going to create the biggest impact.” – Anita Veszeli, Director, Social Media & Advocacy at Ericsson
“The rise of the B2B Creator economy. At Onalytica we estimate that there are 10K professional content creators creating thought leadership content on behalf of brands, and we see this trend only continuing.”- Tim Williams, CEO at Onalytica
Increase of subscription-based influencer content
In Ogilvy’s recent webinar focused on trends they see emerging in the Influencer Marketing space, they’ve highlighted that influencers are starting to use platforms with a subscription-based model to host their content. Not only does this add an element of exclusivity to their content, but also creates consistent and guaranteed revenue for them. Subscription models for creator content has surged over recent years, and is bound to do the same in the B2B space.
Diversity & Inclusion will be front of mind
“Diversity & Inclusion can no longer be a nice-to-have, and we have a lot of work to do, especially in the tech industry, to represent the broad, diverse customer base that we have. Brands need to demand more diversity from Influencer Marketing agencies. That means looking at the scoring and the sourcing algorithms and make appropriate changes. It means to be more intentional about sourcing diverse influencers in the first place and truly trailblaze more inclusion across all sectors, front and back-end. We can do better and we must do better. And the time is now.”- Janine Wegner, Global Integrated Thought Leadership Strategist at Dell Technologies
Growing demand for a community
“What is playing out in social media this year (i.e uncertainty about long-term platform stability, increased noise, spam, bots etc) is heralding a trend that has been happening for a couple of years towards influencers, advocates, SMEs etc, needing to find and participate in (or create themselves) more focused communities. One big trend I’d bank on is Influencer Marketing and Employee Advocacy aligning much closer to community strategy in 2023, not just social media strategy.” – Michelle Goodall, CMO at Guild
The industry will reach a new stage of maturity
“The whole category will just mature a bit more and brands will become much more comfortable with paying influencers to create more engaging content. Rather than brands feeling like if you pay influencers, you’re paying them to say something nice about your brand, this is a thought leadership play. It’s looking at the quality of the content production from the influencers and realizing that that’s an opportunity not to be missed.” – Tim Williams, CEO at Onalytica