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Back in July, Amazon released Amazon Spark, an Instagram/Pinterest inspired social media platform for users to view and shop. While posting and engagement is only reserved for Prime members, anyone can access, view, and shop with the photographs with shopping carts inserted on the corner of photos. Even though Amazon is stepping into social media late in the game, it has created a space meant for Influencers. While it’s worth keeping an eye on, it has some setbacks.
With influencer marketing constantly on the rise and here to stay, Amazon Spark is something that companies and brands can take advantage of as the platform gains traction. While brands cannot post directly yet, it makes it all the more important to really tighten their content marketing strategy to best represent them. Spark could be another influencer marketing channel and it’s worth investing some strategy into it. Since brands can’t post directly, it forces them to look more closely at their content and make sure that it represents their brand in the best way possible. However, keeping posting and engagement exclusive to Prime members may be a set back.
Amazon may have anywhere between 65-80 million Prime subscribers currently. While this is great, let’s put it in perspective: Facebook has 2.072 billion monthly users, YouTube has 1.5 billion, 800 million for Instagram, and Twitter has 330 million. These numbers are growing every day and suddenly, 65-80 million subscribers doesn’t seem like much. For the sake of time and efficiency, it’s only worth focusing on specific social media channels that target audiences engage with the most. If Amazon wants to give influencers a platform to sell, they need to allow non-prime members to engage. An influencer’s impact isn’t just based on their follower count, but also how their followers interact with their content whether it’s sharing, commenting, and/or favoriting.
With over 74% of influencers unsure if they’ll participate in Spark this holiday season, Amazon’s busiest time of year, there seems to be a lot of uncertainty in Spark’s place within influencer marketing. While it’s only been 4 months since the initial U.S. launch, maybe the international launch will allow this platform to gain traction with users and influencers.
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