Must-read for brand marketers!

What should be focused on after Instagram hides like counts?
With the aim of depressurizing user’s mental health, Instagram ran a like-hiding test on part of the users all over the world in the second half of 2019. Instagram hasn’t officially launch the idea, but based on the tests on social platform, the disappearance of like counts will soon become real. However, it’s hard for brand marketers to analyze product performance as well as comparing with competing products only relying on number of followers. This time, AsiaKOL will use our experiences and case studies to show brand marketers: What data should be focused on to analyze product performance!

Instagram launched the “like-hiding strategy”: Value of influencers only relying on number of followers?

After Facebook changed its algorithm to boost social privacy, on November of 2019, Instagram announced to hide like counts on its network. It first ran tests on seven countries including Japan, Brazil, New Zealand and so on. From November, Instagram started running test on the United States, hiding like counts to followers, with the aim of bringing users back to the joy of sharing instead of comparing the likes.

However, the number of likes and comments has been a standard of assessing influencers, celebrities and general user’s popularity and success. If only the users themselves see the like counts, how can brands, advertisers and marketing companies evaluate KOL’s cooperation potentials?

*Instagram photos from TechCrunch

The three elements for marketers to “hunt” influencers after like counts are hidden

After Instagram hides like counts, here is the biggest challenge that advertisers have to face: How to evaluate an influencer’s hidden marketing power. Besides the number of followers, what figures should the advertisers look at? To solve the problem, AsiaKOL launchs a KOL Evaluation Database (AIE). Based on AIE’s analyzer, we sum up three elements for brands to accurately seek out the perfect KOL: breadth of influences, key contents and interactions.

1. Breadth of influences: by summarizing KOL’s number of followers at every social networks. The more followers they have, the higher the scores are. Moreover, type of followers and active fields would be more diverse if an influencer uses more social platforms. For example, Taiwan YouTuber Anjou (安啾咪) is mainly active on YouTube, but she still uses Instagram and Facebook. In this case, her score will be 5, which is higher than the 2.8 scores of Xiaoling Toy, who is only active on YouTube.

2. Key contents: the relevant level of keywords in a certain field of KOL’s content. If a KOL includes more keywords of the target field in his/her’s post, the score would be higher, and the target viewers would be more accurate as well. For example, Taiwan beauty blogger Peri Chang (百變沛莉Peri) mainly shares makeup and skincare products. As her contents mostly include keywords relavant to the beauty field, her score in the evaluating system is higher. Hence, comparing to other influencers in the same field, Peri Chang’s key contents is more predominant.

3. Interactions: the average number of likes, comments and shares of a KOL on social platforms. The higher the average number is, the higher the score on evaluating system is. The high score means KOL leaves positive impression on followers, which is the primary criterion for advertisers. The following photo indicates the case of Taiwan food blogger Chien-Chien Khshu (千千進食中). Chien Chien’s not just active on various social platforms and focuses on food key contents, she also interacts with followers frequently. So Chien Chien scores 5 in the evaluating system, which means her marketing power has positive potential.

Is the brand cooperation effective in the follow-up? Observe these growth figures!

The KOL Evaluation Database (AIE) of AsiaKOL makes use of three mentioned elements to seek out the suitable influencers for brands. Without the appearance of like counts, our system still can analyze the potential of influencers through their number of posts, average of interactions, comments and shares on over the social networks. Moreover, in the follow-up, brands can easily access to figures to evaluate the effect of cooperating posts.

AIE - KOL Evaluation Database

The AIE – Asian KOL Evaluation Database can search for KOLs in specific fields with various categories, and analyze the important reference scores of KOLs such as interactions and breadth of influences, helping brands locate the “dream type” of KOLs, enhancing the accuracy of marketing campaign. If you want to know about community performance of Taiwan or international influencers, contact us for more details!
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