Trends in social media: The Motherhood, one of the top influencer marketing agencies, scours the headlines so you don’t have to. Check back throughout the month for more!
Influencer Marketing Industry Resources
Mark Ritson: Brands Are All In on Creators. Meanwhile in Reality, the Economics Crash – August 10, 2026
- Marketing professor Mark Ritson argues that the creator economy’s celebrated ROI figures (like the oft-cited “$5.78 earned for every dollar spent”) come almost exclusively from influencer platforms and agencies with a financial stake in the numbers – and that a $14 billion spread between market size estimates suggests no one actually knows how big the channel is
- 55% of Americans now post less to social media than five years ago, and 51% describe maintaining a social presence as something that “feels like work” – a signal that the audience creator marketing depends on may be quietly thinning
- His conclusion isn’t to abandon creator investment, but to demand better measurement and honest accountability for what the channel actually delivers vs. what it promises
How Tinder Is Getting People Off the App and Into the Wild – August 10, 2026
- Tinder is expanding its in-person Events feature from a successful LA pilot to 26 cities globally by September, with activity-based experiences like ceramics classes and hiking trips selling out fastest among Gen Z users
- The IRL pivot is a direct response to Gen Z dating app burnout – and a broader signal that brands built on digital-only engagement are increasingly investing in physical touchpoints to deepen connection and reverse declining user numbers
- For influencer and event-based marketing, Tinder’s model is worth watching: they’re not abandoning the app, they’re making it the front door for something that happens away from it
Mars Accelerates Use of Influencer Marketing Across the Funnel – August 10, 2026
- Mars has moved beyond using influencers for awareness alone, deploying creator content across the full marketing funnel including mid-funnel consideration and conversion
- A useful case study for clients thinking about how to structure influencer investment – measuring creators not just on reach, but on their ability to move consumers from awareness to action
Disney and TikTok Announce First-of-its-Kind Global Content-Sharing Deal – August 5, 2026
A tiered Disney Creator Ambassador Program will reward top performers with boosted visibility, exclusive event access, and career development opportunities – signaling Disney is treating creators as a talent pipeline, not just a marketing tactic
Disney and TikTok are partnering to give creators licensed access to IP from Marvel, Star Wars, Pixar, and FX to produce fan content that will appear on both TikTok and Disney+’s Verts vertical feed
Fan-created content averaged 6.5 million film and TV-related posts per day on TikTok last year – this deal formalizes that fandom as a distribution channel rather than fighting it with takedowns
EGC
Colorful Natalie: How a Pink NYC Boutique Built a Brand on Founder-Led Social – August 10, 2026
- Natalie Acopian built Colorful Natalie, a 500-square-foot NYC boutique, into a viral tourist destination by documenting the daily highs and lows of running the store across Instagram and TikTok – amassing nearly 250,000 followers and millions of views
- Her personal account functions as EGC in its purest form: authentic, unfiltered, and more trusted than any brand campaign could be – a reminder that the most compelling employee-generated content often comes from the founder being genuinely themselves online.
SOCIAL NEWS
X Updates Creator Revenue Share Parameters – August 10, 2026
- X is adjusting how it calculates creator payouts, with changes that affect which engagement types count toward revenue eligibility
- For creators and brands using X as a monetization channel, worth tracking – the platform’s instability around creator economics continues to be a reason many are diversifying where they build audiences
Coca-Cola Asks Gen Z to Log Off for Quality Meal Time – August 8, 2026
- Coke’s new “World Will Wait” campaign encourages consumers to put their phones down and be present – joining a growing wave of brands leaning into anti-screen messaging as a counterintuitive way to build trust
- It’s a notable strategic move for a brand whose marketing depends heavily on social and digital reach: betting that championing presence and authenticity will build more brand loyalty than chasing impressions
LinkedIn Now Lets Users Report AI Slop – August 2, 2026
- LinkedIn is testing an in-stream option to flag posts and comments as “AI slop,” using those reports to train its content classification systems – and simultaneously removed its own AI post-writing feature, replacing it with a proofreading tool that refines without replacing a user’s voice
- LinkedIn’s CPO stated: “AI slop is a top priority for all of us” – a significant signal from a platform that spent years encouraging AI writing tools, now drawing a line between AI that supports authentic thinking and AI that replaces it entirely
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