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
The Rise Of The ‘Casting Era’ In The Creator Economy – May 5, 2026
For the last three years, the creator economy playbook has been getting pulled in one direction. Make talent a commodity. The amount of global platforms set up to seize the opportunity of overworked agencies, exhausted managers and clueless marketing managers is astounding. They follow a simple formula, nothing original. Creators are tracked on a platform, they’re then scored based on rudimentary metrics, easy to scrape data and no intrinsic value. Then they’re broadly ranked and sorted for the client who doesn’t know any better.
Is Influencer Campaign ROI Really That Hard to Measure? – May 5, 2026
Most brands don’t struggle with measuring influencer marketing ROI because the tools aren’t there. They struggle because the campaign was never designed to be measurable in the first place. Across the industry, we still see the same pattern. A brand briefs an agency with broad goals like “we want awareness” or “we want engagement.” Creators are selected, content goes live, reports are generated, and somewhere at the end, someone asks the question that should have been answered from day one.
For creator-led campaigns, authenticity starts before the shoot – May 2, 2026
Small business owners rarely get to do just one job. They handle marketing, finances, operations, customers, hiring, and whatever breaks before lunch. During an ADWEEK House Possible panel co-hosted by Collectively, Jenny Rooney, chief brand and community officer at ADWEEK, spoke with Jenni Buchbinder, director of performance communications at Intuit QuickBooks, and Natalie Silverstein, chief innovation officer at Collectively, about how Intuit QuickBooks is telling that story through its “Outdo It” campaign.
Nearly Half of Gen Alpha Trust Influencers as Much as Family on Purchases, Report Finds – May 1, 2026
New research from Influencer Marketing agency Digital Voices finds that 49% of Generation Alpha children trust influencer recommendations as much as those from family and friends, a figure that reflects how the youngest consumer cohort differs from prior generations in its relationship to advertising and brand discovery.
Creators aren’t influencers and marketers are still getting this wrong, says Spotter’s CRO – April 29, 2026
There’s a fundamental misunderstanding at the heart of the creator economy, and according to Jodie Kennedy, CRO at Spotter, it’s one that marketers are still failing to grasp. That confusion is perhaps understandable. Over the past five years, short-form video has become the dominant marketing format, driven by shrinking attention spans and mobile-first consumption habits. Today, the average attention window on social content sits at just a few seconds, while platforms such as TikTok and YouTube Shorts generate tens of billions of daily views.
Influencers Aren’t Optional Anymore – They Are Critical to Any Good Media Plan – April 28, 2026
Cossmedia’s Managing Director, Head of Social writes, “Creators are far more than a commerce or upper funnel-only tool. In many cases, they are the most effective way to reach, persuade, and convert audiences on social.” For years, influencer marketing has been treated as an add-on—a nice-to-have line item that paid and organic social teams see as a possible extension to brand assets. With 61% of consumers saying they trust creator recommendations over brands, that framing is officially outdated.TikTok Seeding
SOCIAL NEWS
TikTok highlights emerging creators for Asian and Pacific Islander Heritage Month – May 3, 2026
TikTok announced its latest showcase of creators for Asian and Pacific Islander Heritage Month. Each of the selected creators will be featured in themed promotions in the app throughout the month, along with other activations.
Instagram tests option to swap out text in someone else’s Reels – May 3, 2026
Within Instagram’s Help Center listings, an article popped up over the weekend that explained a new feature called “Swap,” which enables users to “replace the text on someone else’s reel with your own text.” As per the article: “Swap, replace text, put my own text on a reel.” The article also included details on how creators can switch off Swap if they choose.
Instagram updates algorithm to benefit original creators – April 30, 2026
Instagram announced a major algorithm update today that could have a significant impact on content reach in the app. Starting this week, IG is implementing a new system that will no longer recommend photos and carousel posts from aggregator accounts within Explore and other surfaces.
Instagram improves Insights UI, adds new metrics – April 26, 2026
Instagram announced an update to its content metrics, with an improved Insights UI that makes it easier to access key performance elements from the home screen. The platform also expanded engagement data notes to help measure content performance.
TikTok lets users add relevant keywords to metadata – April 26, 2026
TikTok has added a new way to help creators manage how their videos are discovered in the app. The update enables creators to add and remove keywords assigned to their clips, which can help better align their content with user searches.
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