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Issue 002: YouTube Shopping, TikTok Studio, and more
Hello, Thank you for sticking around for the 2nd edition of Sell-ebrating Social Success!
This month (and year) has been a whirlwind for influencer marketing & social commerce – it’s definitely an industry that keeps us on our toes!
Not sure what I’m talking about? I’ve got you covered with some TLDRs to have in your back pocket for when mom asks you what’s new:
TikTok Studio: TikTok just dropped a new dedicated app, called TikTok Studio, for its content creators. Within the app, creators can make, edit, upload, manage, and analyze their content. Read more below.
YouTube Shopping 🤝 Shopify: Customers can now checkout directly on YouTube and have those orders processed within a merchant’s Shopify system. See the deeper dive below.
TikTok Shop fee increase 💸: Beginning in April – TikTok Shops will increase it’s cost per transaction to merchants from 2% to 6%. By July, it’ll be a whopping 8%.
OpenAI 🤜👊🤛 Scarlett Johansson: OpenAI released a voice assistant that sounded very similar to Johansson’s – after asking Johansson to use her voice and being subsequently denied. No doubt how this plays out will have an affect on influencer marketing’s approach to AI in content.
TikTok affiliate lowers it’s follower threshold 👸: Any account with at least 1000 followers can join the official TikTok affiliate program
Feel free to reply to this email if you have questions, comments, feedback, or simply want to engage in conversation about social commerce. Happy Tuesday and enjoy the content!
Cheers,
Al and Alexa
🗞️ Industry News by Al
YouTube Shopping 🤝 Shopify
Surprising absolutely no one at all, YouTube announced a closer partnership with Shopify to enable merchants the ability to integrate their online stores with the social platform. Like TikTok Shops, consumers can now discover products, add them to cart, and checkout directly on YouTube.
With that, YouTube more aggressively pushes into the (quickly crowding) social commerce space – now directly competing with TikTok Shops, Instagram Shopping, Amazon Influencer etc. for checkout orders.
Interestingly, unlike Amazon & TikTok Shops’ approaches to social commerce, YouTube will still allow the brand to own the consumer and transaction. Meaning, the order will still be processed within the merchant’s Shopify and the customer’s data/information available to the merchant for marketing & retention purposes.
At LoudCrowd, we welcome social commerce solutions that empower DTC brands to drive more sales while still owning their transactions and data. This doesn’t change the fact that merchants should continue investing into owned social commerce on their eComm websites – the only online place of transaction that they will always 100% own. We’re excited to see how our brands and retailers complement LoudCrowd’s Creator Storefronts with YouTube Shopping strategies.
🛍️ Brand of the Week by Alexa
Another LoudCrowd client shoutout, sorry not sorry! 😉 LoudCrowd client shout out!
Revival Rugs, who specializes in selling vintage, antique, and one-of-a-kind rugs, partnered with us to create a Creator-affiliate Storefront program for their top performing influencers. They were one of our first partners to implement multi-collections on its Storefronts, and their creators couldn’t get enough. Don’t take our word for it — check it out for yourself!
PS – Revival Rugs if you’re reading this, I love this rug and am moving soon…..
📺 Content of the Week by Alexa
Between coupon sites (RetailMeNot, Honey, etc.) scrapping codes at checkout or mal-actors intentionally leaking codes, your creator-affiliate program’s margins are at risk.
To save the day and mitigate affiliate fraud, LoudCrowd developed codeless affiliate discounts. Your creators will still receive a personal discount to offer their audiences, but the discount is automatically conferred by an affiliate’s referral link — and requires no code at all. When consumers shop using the affiliate’s link, they’ll see a special note showing that the creator hooked them up with an exclusive discount, keeping that personal touch intact.
You can learn more on how to stop coupon leaks here.
📦 Product of the Week by Al
TikTok Studio
On May 24, 2024, TikTok announced its dedicated app for content creators. I had a chance to mess around with the web app and here’s what I saw.
The first thing creators see when they land on their TikTok Studio dashboard are their analytics. Throughout the entire application, there seems to be a big emphasis on analytics. For each piece of published content, creators can see and download the videos’ views, comments, likes, and shares.
I was excited to see a dedicated page for follower analytics. The page offers creators insights into their audience’s genders, ages, countries, and cities. On top of that, creators can learn what times in the day their followers tend to be most active on TikTok.
Creators can also upload their videos directly into TikTok Studio. The upload ‘wizard’ links out to CapCut Online so that creators can seamlessly edit their content (although, my computer completely crashed when I opened the integration, RIP).
Lastly, there’s a dedicated page for creators to manage and interact with their comments. We know it’s important for creators to be engaging with their audiences directly, so I’m not surprised to see TikTok put an emphasis on comments within TikTok Studio.
Overall – as it’s a brand new tool, there’s not a ton of functionality here. However, it’s a great starting point that TikTok will undoubtedly expand rapidly with new functionality.
👑 LoudCrowd Updates
Commission Tiers are HERE!
What does this mean you ask? Your LoudCrowd powered creator-affilate programs can now have multiple different commission tiers within one program.
Here’s what you can do:
Reward Big: Offer higher commissions to certain segments of creators, like micro-influencers.
Boost: Temporarily increase commissions for a segment of creators during special events, like sales periods or product launches.
Ready to dive in? Reach out to your dedicated Client Strategist for help getting started.
