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Influencer marketing’s power has been touted time and time again. The engagement stats are stellar. The ROI is out of this world. Brand sentiment skyrockets. There is currently an abundance of tools and because this is our niche, our home, we have toyed with almost all the tools out there. Here is an honest assessment about what’s new and worthy...
Welcome to the next post in our series on monetising your influence type. Last time we looked at Platform-Specific Superstars – a small percentage of all influencers. This time we’re going to take a look at the other end of the spectrum. Most of us fit into the category of “micro-influencer”, and it can be an exciting place to be!Who are Micro-influencers? Call them what you will – micro-influencers, long-tail influencers, the “Power Middle” – who are they and why are they getting so much attention? There is no one defining characteristic or measurement that defines you as a micro-influencer. Generally it’s those of us with an online audience of less than 100,000 followers, be that a social or blog following. Some define it more specifically as having 500-5,000 followers, the power middle crowd have been defined as having 100,000-250,000 followers. You won’t get a straight answer from anyone, so let’s look at something other than just audience size to help figure out if you’re a micro-influencer (my term of choice, so I’ll use that from here on in). Generally, as audience size goes up, engagement comes down. As marketers get smarter and realise the power of engagement over reach, their gaze has drifted to micro-influencers. Here’s why, neatly summed up in a graph from research done by influencer marketing platform Takumi on half a million instagram accounts....
Influencer marketing is all the rage, but there’s not a clear understanding of what constitutes influence. A few years ago, I participated in an influencer event for a consumer brand. It was an expensive affair put on by the brand’s agency. There were a few dozen “influencers” there, which, it turned out, meant a collection of people with blogs and social media followings. A photographer captured it all as a glitzy brand experience. Some people blogged or shared about the event, some didn’t, and it left me wondering about the return on that investment. From the photos that were posted, it looked like a beautiful bit of marketing. From the actual impact, not so much. Influencer is a designation with an almost magical glow to it. But not all influencers are created equal. Not everyone with a social media following is an influencer and not every influencer is a good fit for every brand. Brands should also be wary of those who refer to themselves as influencers. There’s a lot of snake oil in influencer marketing....
So, where can you find these influencers and how can you get them to share your piece of content? I can understand if you’re skeptical of your own ability. You might doubt whether you can truly create an epic piece of content. Alternatively, you might not be able to understand why influencers will be interested in you and your content at all.I want to tell you a sneaky little secret… It’s possible to get industry celebrities to not just share your post, but even link to it....
The benefits of combining word of mouth and digital interactions are crystal clear to marketers at Swarovski—especially when it comes to driving in-store purchases.
“Word of mouth, we're finding, is actually more and more important every time we do an event,” says Robin McCall, marketing manager for Swarovski Crystal Society, a community that customers can join to attend the company's private events, as well as receive free gifts and exclusive rewards. “But if you're not having the people who are your fans and your advocates speak for you, it's that much harder to be successful.”...
This week I moderated another Social Media Today webinar as part of their Best Thinker webinar series, this time on the topic of The ROI of Influencer Marketing. This webinar featured Eric T. Tung (@EricTTung) Brand Ambassador for companies like Ford, Microsoft, Verizon and MasterCard, Kathleen Hessert (@KathleenHessert) CEO of Sports Media Challenge and Eric Berkowitz (@tracx) SVP of Global Services at Tracx. This webinar was sponsored by Tracx. We discussed ideas and tips from finding influencers for your brand to calculating ROI on your program.
Here are three key takeaways from the webinar: - Not all influencers are created equal – Brands should look beyond social metrics into psychographics and contextual intelligence to determine the ideal candidates - Bigger doesn’t mean better – A large following or readership does not inherently make a person influential - The ROI of Influence – True influence drives action, not just awareness...
What’s the first thing that comes to mind when you think about laptops? The tactile sensation beneath your fingertips as they gracefully jump around the keyboard from home position? The calming ohm sound that seems to emanate from the machine when you turn it on? That alluring hard drive capacity? What about included software? Number of auxiliary outputs? Ooh la la. No matter how you spin it, it’s difficult to make laptops seem…well… sexy. That is until HP had the ingenious idea to take laptops completely out of the tech vertical and see how their product floats with other viewers.
Not to be rude, but HP isn’t exactly everyone’s idea of a luxury tech device. This generation tends to live, breathe, and generally go gaga over Apple’s sleek designs. It oozes fashion, vogue, and lifestyle, honey! However, just because HP is perhaps a more affordable option doesn’t mean it isn’t chic. And to prove it, HP tapped into trendsetters in a completely unique way. Before we go deeper into the big reveal, please allow a brief intermission in which we applaud, bow down, and shower HP’s marketing team with endless pastel colored macarons. Okay, we are done....
Have you ever wondered if content authenticity is compromised when brands pay influencers for posts? Finding out how consumers engage with sponsored content isn’t something that marketers should guess on so GroupHigh surveyed thousands of influencers to find out how they prefer to be compensated for their brand recommendations and how their audience feels about sponsored content....
When it comes to winning the hearts (and dollars) of potential consumers, a positive consumer review can go a long way. A new report shows that more than two-thirds of US Internet users trust businesses more because of positive consumer reviews.
The high levels of trust represent a significant shift. Five years ago, 45 percent of consumers said they didn’t pay attention to online reviews at all or didn’t let them influence them,eMarketer reports. But in 2015—in part because of increased mobile use—reviews are a big part of users’ online shopping experience. Thirty-eight percent of Internet users read reviews on mobile via a browser, and 24 percent on mobile apps....
The term “influencer” is wiggling its way through the tangled web. And it’s a hard one to catch because no one knows for certain what it looks like. Personally, I think that’s where the biggest challenge lies, because an influencer is like a changeling. It has a different image for every brand and often for every campaign of a brand.
Here is my own take on what an influencer is and a guide for where to find ideal influence to promote your business....
I’m just going to come out and say it – no matter what the content is, if you feature influencers in it, it will do better.
I know – it’s not always what you want to hear. How come content can’t just speak for itself?
It can – sometimes.
But featuring influencers in your post is the most sure-fire way of straight up injecting content promotion into the post itself. You almost can’t fail, to be honest.
I know this from publishing over 100 posts on various blogs and consistently seeing a strong correlation between the number of influencers cited and the number of social shares and traffic the post brought in.
So, how do you go about building a post that’s built to be shared? Here’s three quick wins:...
Which is more influential, the message or the messenger? Salespeople have long understood that the likelihood of a proposal being accepted is largely dependent on factors such as the relationship between the salesperson and the buyer. This is such a universal truth that many sales executives refuse to respond to open Request for Proposals if they don’t have prior knowledge of the proposal or a pre-existing relationship with the buyer.
What’s a business to do when it knows it has the better solution or offering but lacks a solid relationship with the buyer(s)? The answer lies in becoming a trusted authority whose works and persona are followed by the target buyers over a period of time. When new business opportunities arise, these authorities are often asked to be included in the bidding process. When proposals are received by those whom buyers follow for trusted business information, they’re more likely to be given added credibility....
We’ve said it before: 90% of the world’s data has been generated in the past 2 years, and content marketing is approaching mass adoption. How can you break through the noise and get your message to the right people at the right time?
Many marketers are turning to influencers for content marketing amplification – in fact, a recent poll of 125 marketers shows 59% plan to increase their influencer marketing budget over the next 12 months. This means more marketing departments are devoting time and resources to creating authentic relationships with the people who matter most to their business – influencers who shape the industry as trusted resources....
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A new study casts some doubt on something very personal: our memories. About one in two people are highly prone to ‘remembering’ events that never happened, researchers from the University ofWarwick have found. Dr Kimberley Wade in the Department of Psychology proved that if people are told about a completely fictitious event from “their lives,” they start to imagine it, and about half of people are willing to accept it as reality. She and her colleagues recruited 400 participants, asking them to “recall” several different types of false memories – such as taking a childhood hot air balloon ride, playing a prank on a teacher, or creating havoc at a family wedding. To some extent, more than 50% of them claimed they remember it – 30% of participants appeared to fully ‘remember’ the event while 23% showed signs that they accepted the suggested event to some degree....
The power of word-of-mouth is amplified through social networks. These days, when you’re considering any purchase, you have an entire focus group to call upon via your smartphone any time, and that focus group isn't some random sample. These are people you care about, people you listen to and trust. These people are influencers, and through social connection, those influential voices can be virtually anyone. And now brands are looking to tap into that potential.To get a better handle on the opportunities of influencer marketing, Tapinfluence recently commissioned Altimeter to conduct a study of more than 1,700 influencers and 100 marketers to get their insights into thecurrent state of influence and how brands can, and are, using it to advantage. The full report contains some great insights into the growth of influencer marketing, particularly from the perspective of the influencers themselves, and they’ve incorporated the key findings into this new infographic....
For supporters of Britain staying in the EU, a simple question remains this morning: How did we fail to persuade voters of our position? Steve Martin, director at Influence at Work in London and best-selling author of several books on persuasion, spoke with HBR about the ways in which the Remain advocates’ message failed to get through, or even backfired. Martin was joined by Joseph Marks, a behavioral scientist on his team.
HBR: From a persuasion science point of view, how do you explain the vote for Britain’s exit from the EU? Steve Martin: There seems to have been a focusing effect. The Leave side made sure that immigration became a focus. Not only a focus but the focus. And once that’s a focus it’s hard to get other messages through. What we see is all there is. Danny Kahneman said that clearly. We can only pay attention to a limited number of things and if we see that immigration story every day, that’s what affects us more than a rational argument that predicts what would happen if we left.
But they saw the economic arguments every day, too. Why couldn’t the Remain side focus the voters on that? Joseph Marks: I think both campaigns were built around fear of loss. One was what we’re losing in terms of immigration coming in. And one was loss to the economy and your pocket. Normally that wins. That’s number one. But right now, you can see that immigration issue as happening now, in the present, whilst the economy is doing well. In the optimism literature, we’ve seen that people are generally optimistic about their own futures when the economy is good, so that’s maybe how the economic argument lost to something that feels more pressing to people. So ironically the very people who helped get our economy on track created an environment that makes it harder to communicate their message of potential negative impacts of leaving the EU. The health of the economy created a good economic environment that had a disproportionate influence over decision making at that moment....
Learn How To Use Visual Storytelling For Your Brand or Content Marketing Strategy, by Following These 10 Simple Rules
This timeless quote is the foundation upon which influencer marketing is built. While a business may enjoy a countless number of brand advocates, influencer marketing focuses on cherry-picking few ones who have measurable influence over significant segments of potential customers.
Once influencers are identified and targeted, the business reaches out to them to build win-win relationships and co-create successful marketing campaigns. Simply put; influencer marketing is one of the most intelligent tactics that harnesses the power of word-of-mouth marketing....
Influencer marketing was huge in 2015. Just take a look – it’s been on a pretty fast trajectory recently:That presents a challenge to marketers who have been doing it for awhile. Sure, you might have a network that’s engaged with your content and a few VIPs you can rely on to help promote, but they’re getting busier as more companies try to work with them.
With more companies start sending outreach emails, it’s getting harder to get the attention of your targets. The key is following the right steps in planning, research, and nurturing relationships consistently.
To demonstrate the entire process from start to finish, Paul May, co-founder of BuzzStream, joined us for a webinar last week walked us through the real, complete influencer strategy involved in the launch of a previous BuzzStream ebook....
As our influencer marketing columnist Raymond Morin blogged sometimes ago, there are 3 main types of influencers: - celebrities - opinion leaders (traditional media, online media, social media) - ambassadors (satisfied customers, happy employees).
With the democratization of social media influence, there are simply more people that yield influence in social media. Perhaps this is one reason why Influencer Marketing continues to soar in 2015. It really shouldn’t come as a surprise, because numerous stats have already documented the power of online recommendations...
Getting backlinks from your readers doesn’t depend on how many of them you have—it depends on who they are.
The good news is that all influencers read a lot. You just need to get them to want to read your stuff.I link to the marketers and business owners that I follow and like on a regular basis. They essentially get automatic, high-quality links just by producing great content on a consistent basis.
Here’s the formula for getting great backlinks: Great content + Read by linkers = Great backlinks
It’s simple, but it works.In this post, I’m going to show you six main ways that can help you get your content in front of the people who matter....
The Evolution of Influencer Marketing and The 5 Influencer Insights That Matter Most provides an overview of how consumer influence has changed in recent years due to the increased use of social media, as well as a breakdown of the five influencer attributes that matter most to today's audiences. It's time to leverage your influencers for the greater good. Let Tracx show you how.
So how do you go about finding such people or influencers? How do you build relationships with such people?
In this article, we will learn the following from 58 experts in the industry:The tools they use. Their tips for building relationships with influencers....
In a recent study, nearly 60% of marketers stated that they are planning to increase their influencer marketing budgets in 2015.
Variety magazine found that six out of ten teens are more likely to believe and buy from YouTube stars than movie stars.
And, earlier this year, a survey from digital agency Burst Media found that influencer campaigns are a good deal for brands, earning $6.85 in earned media value for every $1.00 of paid media.Influencer marketing is now a vital brand strategy for building credibility and boosting sales.
But what is an influencer, anyway?...
In the past week, I’ve felt the power of the influence shifting in the social business marketplace. It seems that most brands have figured out that it’s more authentic, genuine, and real to partner with an influencer than to run more social media advertising. I’ve literally had 4 different brands reach out to partner on Twitter & Instagram with content, and they want me to feel rewarded for sharing their awesome content.
It’s a new strategy to really deliver to the social media audiences based on the niche of the influencer. Also a term you might start to hear more is “micro-celebrity”, these are folks that have a following that is smaller than 100K on any platform. We all want to partner with Taylor Swift but to keep it real, not many brands can afford the endorsement with such a superstar. So the alternative is to work with 5-10 micro-celebrities that are all focused in a niche that serve your CUSTOMERS!..
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These three influencer tools maybe new to you. Check them out.