Influencer marketing has become a popular way for companies to promote their brands. According to Influencer Marketing Hub, brands are expected to spend $13.8 billion on influencer marketing programs in 2021.
As their chart below shows (click to enlarge), influencer marketing spend has been rapidly increasing.
Of course, you can't have influencer marketing programs without influencers.
These are people who have an online audience that they monetize by getting paid to promote products and services.
And, according to a recent study by the influencer platform ShopStyle Collective, the pandemic created a new group of influencers they're calling gigfluencers.
Key quote from a Rakutan's Meet the “Gigfluencer,” a new generation of influencer for the work-from-anywhere era:
According to ShopStyle, a Gigfluencer is a U.S.-based influencer — often focused on the retail category (apparel, footwear, beauty and sportswear) — who began monetizing their content for the first time (or re-attempted to monetize their content) around the start of the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown. True to their name, Gigfluencers are more likely to be monetizing their content as a side gig or “side hustle” during the pandemic, viewing their content creation work as a source of supplemental, non-primary income.
We've long covered the growth of side gigs and the growth of low friction, highly flexible supplemental work options - and the rise of gigfluencers is another example.
