I can’t tell you how many inbounds we have received from clients who want someone to manage their feeds, not realizing that our specialty at Sway Group is influencer marketing.
While we do consult on social media marketing and can certainly help brands who need assistance in that arena, influencer campaigns are our bread and butter. That said, we pay VERY close attention to the social media management field. They are kind of the canary in the coal mine for us. If something is working in the social media management space, it will likely work for influencer programming as well.
That’s why one of my favorite weekly newsletters is Link in Bio by Rachel Karten. Each week, Rachel covers the hottest trends and news in the social media space. I especially love her “post formats to try this week” feature.
This week’s issue was a little different than usual. It was the first of a series of issues doing a deep dive into the insights gleaned from Rachel’s first-ever survey of her readers. Some of the results really stood out to me.
Instagram is considered a priority platform by a whopping 92% of marketers, but what was even more shocking is that TikTok (50%) has fallen below LinkedIn (52%). The upheaval around TikTok in 2025 has made the platform tricky and unstable for brands, and this data just reinforces that. In the meantime, LinkedIn is surging, which brands jumping in to create original and fun content on there. From an influencer marketing perspective, I can confirm that our numbers and the general vibe we get from our clients are in line with this graph. Instagram remains the top choice for clients, and LinkedIn requests are skyrocketing.
I was also really struck by this graph:
Carousels (70.3%) are ahead of shortform video (66.9%)!! I can understand why. Carousels have been performing incredibly well this year. We have been encouraging our clients to include them in all programs. As an advocate for influencers, I am delighted by this trend. There are a large number of creators who do much better work with captions and still images than they do with video. I think that both formats have a place, but the ecosystem as a whole is much healthier when we can have both.
More next week!
Danielle