August 2023
SCREENSHOT Media
A next gen media company and social media agency. Market leaders in understanding + creating content for the social gen.
Welcome to The Anti-Gatekeeper, your monthly dose of industry insights, wit, wisdom, and authenticity, brought to you by SCREENSHOT’s team of Gen Z experts.
?? No gatekeeping allowed beyond this point ??
What to expect:
Monthly insights piece ??
It’s insights o’clock ?? Once a month, a member of the SCREENSHOT team pens a blog post bursting with expert tips on some of the hottest industry trends and chatter.
Want to reach Gen Z authentically? You’ll have to take the user-generated content (UGC) route, no shortcuts allowed. UGC guru Scott Bowley, also known as our Business Development Lead, spills the tea. Check out his key takeaways below:
Meme of the month ??
Life’s not all work and no play. Wrapping up August with a laugh, check out the meme that owned the internet this month:
Ahh celebrities, they’re just like us! Mid August, a photo of Selena Gomez wrapped in a blanket unintentionally became the internet’s latest meme. Gen Zers were quick to craft wild narratives about Gomez’s wholesome picture. “Horror movie characters sitting in the back of an ambulance after almost dying,” read one tweet. In true Gomez fashion—being the relatable queen that she is—the singer and actress joined in on the fun by sharing some of her favourite memes to her Instagram Story. Our personal favourite? The one pictured above, because you know, who can hate on a girl who’s in her ‘lazy girl job’ era?
Platform push of the month ??
Keeping up with social media often feels as hard as Keeping Up with the Kardashians (see what we did there?), but fear not, The Anti-Gatekeeper is here to do the work for you and keep you up-to-date on the juiciest platform push of the month.
In June, we saw YouTube lower the barrier to be eligible for its monetisation programme. More recently, Facebook made a similar move by reducing the threshold for monetisation eligibility from 600K total minutes viewed in the last 60 days down to 60K.
Not only does this further back up our claims that creator-led content is king on social media at the moment, but it also shows that contrary to popular belief, Facebook is not on its way out—or at least, it’s not going down without a fight.
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OMG data moment ??
If you thought Facebook is predominantly used by ‘right-wing boomers’, think again, because a survey conducted on our Early Majority (our very own test audience made of 6,000 18-24-year-olds) revealed that 34% watch content through Facebook Reels. OMG.
SCREENSHOT win of the month ??
What did we say? Zero gatekeeping here! Peek into our owned and operated channels’ top-performing post, dissected for your learning pleasure. Prepare for a WIN of your own ??
Clocking 25K likes and a whopping 2M views (and counting), this Instagram Reel proves the magic of a well-timed single clip. Mixing US politics and sports, it sparked fire debates in the comments section.
On top of being incredibly timely (it was posted right after the third time the US women’s national football team refused to sing their national anthem), this Reel saw a second wave of impressions only a few days after being posted, on the day the US team got knocked out of the Women’s World Cup 2023. This meant that our Reel ended up pushed again by the Instagram algorithm even a couple of days after it went up as the topic was heavily trending on both the platform and across the internet.
What does this win mean for your own Instagram Reels strategy? Prioritise single clips with a strong message that will inevitably resonate with your target audience and result in high engagement. Make sure you balance those out with other types of posts so as not to become a content aggregator. Last but not least, push this one step further by selecting topics that have the potential of making the rounds of the new cycle more than one time for that second (and sometimes third) boost in reach.
Overheard in the office ????
Ever wished you could be a ?? on the wall of the SCREENSHOT HQ? We’ve got you covered, here’s what we’ve been chatting about in the office this past month.
As trend cycles continue to speed up and more core aesthetics pop up on our FYPs, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to know which viral trends are here for a short time—Barbiecore, mermaidcore and quiet luxury, we’re looking at you—and which ones are here to stay.
Trends that catch fire and stay relevant are often tied to pop culture, align with larger social and economic themes, and include accessible, easy-to-style pieces. That’s where cottagecore comes in.
While most trends have a peak that lasts about 2 to 4 months, cottagecore has been thriving for close to 3 YEARS now. It first shook up our lives in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic as we all slowly discovered our TikTok dependency. Taylor Swift wasted no time and jumped on the bandwagon early on with the release of Folklore in July 2020, an album that single-handedly united the world’s cottagecore girlies.
Fast forward to August 2023, and #cottagecore is still going strong—currently sitting at 15B views on TikTok, this makes it the most viewed core aesthetics out there. Who said romanticising Western agricultural life and the English countryside was out?
Let’s chat! ??
Wanna poke your finger into our Gen Z brain goop? ?? We’d love to chat! Shoot us an email at [email protected]