The Impact of The Emergence of Metaverse to Influencer Marketing

^{Written by Yuh Wen Foong, CEO of SushiVid} 

Metaverse will mean a lot soon even in brick and mortar businesses as it is the up and coming way to interact with your potential customers. Imagine, being able to put a ring on your future fiancé’s finger before splurging that RM50,000? For products such as diamond rings, this is quite an upgrade in experience! One such company enables that - zcova.com 

The web is ever changing. Just when we thought Tik Tok is a breath of fresh air in the social media scene seeing that it’s not from Silicon Valley and all, Facebook has re-emerged from the grave and renamed itself as Meta. This is the news that has kept me awake for a while now. What does this mean to influencer marketing/ SushiVid specifically? How should I evolve my business? Do we even have the expertise required for this change?

I may not have all the answers but so far, this is what I got. The metaverse is fast becoming mainstream, much faster that we expect. Honestly, I’m finding it hard to keep up with the times. Live streaming barely made it to mainstream in Malaysia and now we have yet another new and shiny toy called virtual reality. We knew it’s there and evolving and but I surely didn’t think the adoption would be this fast. 

There has really only been Web 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0 and it’s such exciting times to know that we are moving to Web 3.0. I am so fortunate to be able to see this transition in my lifetime while I still understand it. But what does this mean? This means EVERYTHING that we are experiencing now with what we know on the internet is about to change. 

What does this mean for influencers?  

This means you have a lot to learn and a lot to do to keep up. Influencers, it’s a huge role what you guys do, never ever EVER belittle that. You are at the forefront of change, you are the early adopters, the innovators of the market and I guess with that, you need to stay on top of what this Web 3.0 means because these “trends” are effectively the biggest competitors to your career. These are exactly what we will be coming up against. Not the other creators or the younger influencers, but technology and the power of virtual influencers and all these characters that only exist in the virtual world! 

To make this a little less confusing, I need to first get some definitions out of the way. 

What exactly is AR/VR?

Virtual reality (VR) is a computer-generated three-dimensional space where people can seemingly interact with each other and the computer in an alternative “real world” and augmented reality (AR) is an interactive experience of a real-world environment where the objects that reside in the real world are enhanced by computer-generated perceptual information, sometimes across multiple sensory modalities, including visual, auditory, haptic, somatosensory and olfactory. 

There is a big difference between the two because virtual reality creates the environment which a person can see often through goggles, headsets and/or earpieces whereas augmented reality uses real life data such as pointing a smartphone down a  street it can show you shops and cafes based on the image that it sees. 

What is influencer marketing?  

Influencer marketing is when brands and companies choose high following people to promote their brand for them. Influencers would use the influence they have over social media and a pool of followers to create awareness for brands. Analytics and data has enabled brands to get really good at targeting their audience. Companies can choose their influencers by target audience and follower size. They can even predict with certainty - the reach they will receive from their campaign. BUT! Let’s not derail from our main topic, data is another thing I LOVE to share more about. Maybe an inspiration to my next article! Drop me an email to let me know if you want to discuss more about this topic at [email protected].

The type of people that are becoming our day-to-day influencers has rapidly changed as well. This is evident from our last 7 years running our influencer marketing company. Now, an average person can easily become an influencer too. YAY for all the rest of us! If you are consistent, and you add value to people’s lives (P.S. Entertainment is a value too), you can easily get followers and start making money from paid sponsorships. Even small size influencers with 3000 followers make a decent living on social media.

What will change in influencer marketing? 

The next evolution of influencers will now be creators who are good at Procreate or Roblox or Sandbox. Companies will be nabbing people up super fast. People with knowledge of the metaverse, who can contribute in any way to the metaverse. The future creators must be willing to learn (fast) and engage with AR and VR technologies as the way forward. 

You must be wondering, why you? 

Every brand aspires to become the ground breakers for such new technologies, and be the cool early adopters and the who’s who in the space. Companies will start to look for people with millions of followers to lead their company’s into the metaverse world. [ATTENTION INFLUENCERS] This is WHY! This is where you come into play!

The big YouTubers in Malaysia became big because they had first mover advantage, and of course they worked hard and kept going. The same happened for TikTokers and Instagrammers. Now… if you said you wish you saw it coming, THIS IS YOUR CHANCE! If you want to continuously win the bids of brands then you need to make sure that you are tech savvy enough and that you keep with the times otherwise you just might miss the chance at becoming huge! 

How do I get involve? 

With Facebook changing their name to Meta they are clearly serious about this change and Microsoft and google are following in its footsteps rapidly. All companies are realising that this is the future and that they need to hop on board before the ship sails away without them. 

Is it the right time?

If you think that metaverse is just a ‘trend/fad/thing’ that will soon blow over then you are mistaken, metaverse is spreading globally and already reaching our shores, it’s not going to take years before this is fully integrated into society.

Start loading all that YouTube videos in for your long ride home this Chinese New Year because you’re gonna learn all about NFTs and the metaverse and cryptocurrency and how to get started. If you’re feeling creative, buy a course on how to design on Procreate and dabbling your feet in the water. There are plenty of communities you could join that will support you if you try. 

Whilst the upcoming prominence of metaverse can be intimidating, there’s no need to fear. Once upon a time, the technology readily used today such as Facebook, TikTok, YouTube were once intimidating to us too.

It is important to let kids play Roblox and Minecraft as these games will help them to learn about the metaverse and put them in a very good position when it comes to looking for work later on in their lives. 

Some tools to get you started

Spark AR is a tool created by Facebook that allows users to create their own augmented reality effects for their mobile phone. It is a tool which is very simple to use. It is also very interactive, you would have become an expert without even realising!

If you want a more immersive experience, time to play some games! The oculus quest is a high-quality virtual reality headset designed for gaming and experiences that you can readily purchase from most major stores. It is a great way to play games and interact with the worlds in which they are set, further enhancing your knowledge in this space. 

Whether you learn best through watching videos, practicing or gaming, there are lots of different ways that you can learn about the metaverse without overloading your brain. So… what are you waiting for? Let’s Go!