Tag: influencer marketing

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Social Media

Instagram Announces Plan to Develop Influencer Marketplace

Instagram has seen a surge in daily use because of the pandemic, along with the rest of the social media landscape. It has also affected the dynamic and culture of Instagram influencers – and the rise of influence activism and community outreach through social media.

Many of these brand-influencer relationships were formed through platforms like Instagram, as they have for years – but never quite at the volume seen during the pandemic.

In response to this, and to address a slew of other issues surrounding the widespread use of social media to scout and create brand-influencer relationships, Facebook has announced the development of a new influencer marketplace in place of its recent Instagram Shopping feature.

Why is Instagram Announcing This Now?

Facebook has previously stated that they have refrained from implementing any tools designed to improve brand-influencer interaction to keep the app from becoming too commercial.

But it seems that the last few months have changed their mind. The fact is that many have turned to Instagram to support themselves throughout the pandemic or grow their very own brand.

The growth of the brand-influencer dynamic has exploded throughout the last year, and its purely informal presence has paved the way for some serious concerns about equity and exploitation.

This move on Facebook’s part is largely designed to bring transparency to the whole ecosystem and facilitate the exchange of gigs and money between brands and influencers in a way that would allow for a more seamless experience.

According to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, creators “should be able to get a cut of the sales of things that they’re recommending, and we should build up an affiliate recommendation marketplace to enable that to all happen.” Furthermore, Instagram wants to develop a “branded content marketplace” to match influencers with brands.

Depending on how the matchmaking feature and marketplace will be implemented, it’s plain to see that Facebook would also benefit from a potentially larger share of the pie.

Zuckerberg did note that the plan is to offer “very favorable terms” to content creators and that they’re “not building this from the perspective of us trying to make a lot of money”.

“Branded content is the economic engine behind the creator ecosystem,” said Instagram head Adam Mosseri in an Instagram Live in late April. “Matchmaking is something we can add a lot of value for.”

Other efforts Facebook has previously mentioned and is considering implementing on the app include a tipping system, video and content monetization, and other means of making money through the app.

Rather than shy away from the idea of a commercial Instagram, it seems that Facebook is interested in further exploring the app’s potential for both businesses and personal brands/entrepreneurs. Keeping things informal, Facebook has said, has led to an opaque system where the prices paid for the same kind of posts vary greatly.

What a New Marketplace Means for Businesses and Influencers

So far, all the information Facebook has been willing to divulge has been pointing towards a greater suite of tools to help content creators monetize their work while making it easier for businesses to connect with professionals who would best represent their brand through a proprietary matchmaking system.

But the details of how this affiliate system might be implemented, how matchmaking will work, or how businesses might compensate influencers (aside from an affiliate system) are up in the air.

Assuming the model will work similarly to Instagram’s shopping platform, monetization is likely to be implemented over the app itself, and new Terms of Service from Instagram might specify and disallow brands from paying incentives to creators under the table.

But with no explicit details, it’s important to note that most of this will remain speculative until Instagram makes another announcement for their new influencer marketplace.

A Widespread but Opaque Business Practice

One of the primary motivators Mosseri mentioned during the live reveal was the need to solve Instagram’s problem of having an “opaque system”, where influencers vie for a chance to represent a brand in hopes of building a long-lasting and profitable relationship, even if the first few paychecks are less than promising or take on the form of intangible “exposure”, with no context of how other influencers are being compensated for the same kind of work and effort.

While Instagram has been the cradle for many a highly publicized influencer success story, being an influencer is a risky and difficult proposition in a completely unregulated creator ecosystem, best described as a “winner-take-all economy,” as stated by Brooke Erin Duffy, associate professor of communication at Cornell University. “The lack of regulation amplifies these imbalances” between so-called “idealized influencers” and “aspiring influencers”.

A marketplace may help aspiring influencers earn enough to continue to develop their talents while encouraging more content creators to consider Instagram as a platform with similar potential to YouTube or Twitch as a means to connect with brands, develop and nurture audiences, and monetize one’s entertainment talent.

That earlier point – about mirroring YouTube’s business model for creators – is yet another motivator behind Facebook’s embrace of a more commercial Instagram. With TikTok and YouTube vying for supremacy on video content, Instagram is seeking ways to edge out its competitors – or at least keep up with them.

Watch Out for New Developments

We’re sure to hear more from Facebook and Instagram as development on their marketplace continues. More information will be needed to gauge how this change might affect businesses that rely on influencers to build their audience.

In general, this change will help smaller influencers get noticed and matched to respective local as well as global brands and make money through Instagram. It will also incentivize spending as much time on the app as possible – as influencers will no longer have to link to outgoing shops and platforms and can instead both promote and sell products through the app itself.

Categories
Outreach

Top Influencer Marketing Platforms to Tap Into

There are several top influencer marketing platforms to tap into this year. Leading influencer marketing platforms include AspireIQ, Upfluence, and CreatorIQ, offering tools to connect brands with relevant influencers. These platforms provide analytics for campaign tracking, influencer discovery tools, and ROI measurement capabilities. They cater to businesses of all sizes, facilitating effective influencer partnerships that align with brand values and marketing goals.

With the rise of the internet, new marketing practices are developing at a more rapid speed than ever before. Keeping up with the latest digital marketing trends is important to any business that wants to remain relevant and competitive. One trend that has been used consistently to deliver positive results is influencer marketing. In this practice, companies collaborate with individuals known as influencers to promote their brands in creative ways that resonate with potential customers.

Influencers can help your business to create a buzz, reach a wider audience and increase engagement. All of these things have the potential to help you reach your marketing and sales goals. In order to connect with relevant influencers, your best bet is to connect with an influencer marketing platform. These platforms can provide a number of resources to assist you in getting the most from your work with influencers. Along with matching you with the right influencers, a quality platform can also provide campaign monitoring and measure return on your investment. Keep reading below to some of the top influencer marketing platforms to tap into in order to make your collaborative efforts run more smoothly and  become more successful.

IZEA

IZEA is one of the originators in the influencer marketing sphere. They’ve been around since 2006 when they began paying bloggers to create content on behalf of brands. Because of this long history, IZEA is a platform you can trust. They have perfected the art of creating and managing influencer marketing campaigns. They can also help you to analyze and amplify your campaigns. IZEA’s platform allows you to connect with influencers within your preferred demographics. They also give you a convenient dashboard to manage every aspect of your campaign, from influencers to payments. You’ll love that you can measure influencer performance in real time across various social media platforms.

AspireIQ

AspireIQ seeks to help businesses identify influencers relevant to their niche. They ease this process with their recommendation engine that helps you connect with influencers similar to ones you’ve already engaged in campaigns with. In addition, they offer a unique feature that lets you see which influencers have been successful in other campaigns. Through the AspireIQ platform, you can also manage your communities and track how your campaigns are performing. Task automation for things like making payments, content reviews and product tracking is also possible.

Upfluence

Upfluence is powered by AI, artificial intelligence. It has the unique benefit of allowing you to search for influencers based on social media platform. You’re able to check out the accounts of individuals on the channels that are most relevant to your audience and customers. In addition, Upfluence pre-screens their influencers in order to determine the quality of their engagement and reach. Those wishing to work with global influencers are in luck, as Upfluence’s database contains professionals from 150 countries around the world. They have an extensive filter system that lets you search by various demographics and performance indicators, including engagement rates and geolocation. You can measure your ROI, obtain real-time updates and send bulk emails with their software.

Tapinfluence

Tapinfluence was founded in 2003 working specifically with brands and bloggers. They now connect with various types of creators and tout themselves as the world’s first Influencer-Generated Content Engine. This platform provides you with in-depth information on potential influencers of interest. You can check out such stats as their audience reach and the real-time cost per engagement (CPE). Their system can assist you in such aspects of influencer marketing as campaign briefing, content creation, communication, promotion and review.

Tidal Labs

Tidal Labs is a platform that automates workflow related to your influencer marketing campaigns. They have a robust AI-powered database that gives you the power to filter results in order to find the perfect influencer for your campaign. Automation is the name of the game. You can get so much more done in less time such as information gathering, product distribution, amplification of influencer content and payment release. Also, it’s easy to edit  and rate influencer content quickly through the use of this system.

Grapevine

Grapevine is a marketing platform that lets you tailor your campaigns in ways that best reach and engage your targeted demographic. You can find popular and well-performing influencers in your niche, scale your influencer programs as needed and measure your most relevant analytics. Grapevine staff have already vetted the influencers they promote, so you can feel secure in the quality of your relationships. In addition, Grapevine gives you a direct line to influencers to ease the negotiation process.

Captiv8

Captiv8 claims to be “revolutionizing how brands connect with the world.” And they give you the tools to do just that. First, they help you connect with the influencers who can best promote your business in the most relevant ways. A particular advantage of this platform is the ways in which it helps you track advanced metrics like sentiment analysis, EMV and deep engagement data to give you a broader picture of your ROI.

Trackr

As with other influencer marketing platforms, Trackr offers solutions to help you with a multitude of tasks. They stand out from the pack in a couple ways, though. You can get a look at the audience insights of individual influencers in order to determine which ones fit your most important campaign requirements. In addition, Trackr lets you track online conversations so you can validate the ways in which influencers engage with their followers.

Ambassador

Ambassador considers themselves to be a referral software platform. Their system can help you with referral marketing, affiliate marketing, influencer marketing and partner marketing. So, this platform is a fabulous choice when you’re looking for a comprehensive all-in-one solution for your marketing needs. Ambassador allows you to conveniently track all the advocates you partner with in one simple dashboard.

You have a lot of choices when it comes to services to help with your influencer marketing campaigns. These are simply some of the best influencer marketing platforms around. Check them out to see which one might be a good fit for your needs.

Categories
Outreach

9 Obsolete Influencer Marketing Practices to Avoid in 2019

Influencers spend a lot of time building an authentic voice that followers can connect with and relate to. The public views them as trustworthy sources of information. These influencers have built reputations for honesty and accuracy in reviewing products and services. It’s very “you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours” – so to speak.

Partnering with people who are considered influencers is a sure-fire way to generate interest in your own brand. That said, it’s time to review your own influencer outreach strategy and make some changes that will propel it to the next level in 2019.

Having Loose Guidelines

Gone are the days where you should choose an influencer simply because they work in your niche (or even a closely-related niche). You need to take some time to find influencers who have values and voices that closely match your brand. A good influencer isn’t going to do a one-and-done review of your product or service, they’re going to get involved with your brand because they like it.

If you have a strong plan, your influencers will become brand ambassadors that people recognize as related to your brand. Those influencers can’t be just anybody; you need to build relationships with them, as you would with any other business partner or customer.

Caring About Follower Counts

The influencer’s follower count isn’t the end-all-be-all test of their marketing power. In some cases, it’s not even the right measuring tool. What matters is how much engagement your potential influencer gets on their posts, especially in terms of likes and comments, because that’s what drives conversion.

When you take that number and compare it to the total number of followers they have, what percentage of people are engaging? That percentage is the number you should be looking for. Anywhere around five to 10 percent is usually decent.

As for larger followings – sure, they’re awesome. But those smaller micro-influencers are worth investing in, too.

That said, make sure you are taking a close look at the type of engagement. If you see a bunch of responses that are just emojis, or a lot of accounts posting very similar comments, you may be looking at an account that has purchased followers.

Not Researching Your Influencer’s Followers

Yes, you do need to spend a little bit of time analyzing your potential influencer’s followers. It doesn’t matter if they identify with your brand if they’re not old enough to buy your products. Worse yet, imagine setting up an entire influencer campaign only to find that most of their audience is in foreign market- and you don’t even ship there.

Don’t assume a female beauty blogger has a primarily female audience. Don’t assume that all of an influencer’s followers are real (hence, checking engagement rates). Go deeper and tuck in to create a firm persona of who’s following.

Using Cold Outreach Strategies

Cold outreach is like cold calling or cold emailing. It’s likely to get your inquiry tossed in the trash. And can you blame them? Good influencers get several emails per day and they can’t deal with them all. You need to warm your potential influencers up by following their pages, engaging with them, and showing interest in what they do. By getting involved, you become less of a “stranger” when you ultimately do try to pitch your company strategy.

Giving Influencers Exact Instructions

Ok, yeah — you should still give your influencer instructions, but they need to be needs-based in a way that addresses both your preferences and how your influencer gets results. You can’t just send out an influencer kit, give them strict instructions for what they have to do, and hope for results. Even if they agree, the attempt will come off fake and make it seem like they’re reading from a script.

What to do instead? Build better relationships and create marketing plans tailored to each influencer. We guarantee you’ll see a better ROI if your influencer is given some flexibility in choosing how they showcase your product into their own brand’s voice.

Winging It

It’s time to stop flying by the seat of your pants with influencer marketing. Yes, it’s cool to have influencers promote your products, but what’s your actual plan? Are you having them promote your product and run a contest to give a few away for free? Are you giving samples in phase two and then a coupon code in phase three? How are you going to roll out your product in a way that generates interest and creates a trackable end goal for sales and marketing?

Focusing on Instagram Only

Zzzzzz. Instagram is great, but you’re limiting your audience by only focusing on a single platform. It’s time to branch out. You don’t necessarily need to work with influencers who are popular on multiple platforms. You can focus some on Instagram and find others who are strong on Facebook, Twitter, or wherever else you feel is appropriate. 

Lacking a Solid Compensation Model

How are you paying your influencers? Are you giving away free product or are you paying them for each post they create? Maybe you’re paying for each click your links receive or commission per sale. You have options!

Paying per post may mean you have a lot of upfront costs but little ROI. Paying per click, on the other hand, may land you with a lot of leads, but few real sales (and a big bill due to the influencer). Each of these payment methods can be effective depending on the situation. Experiment to figure out what type of compensation is fair for both of you.

Hiding Your Relationship

Knock it off. Knock it off right now. Not only is it shady, it’s straight-up illegal to not disclose that an influencer has received your product for free or has been paid to review your product. We care about you and don’t want to see anyone go down this path (plus, we know there’s a better way).

FTC endorsement rules (or failing to comply, in this case) could get both you and your influencer into trouble. Your influencers have worked hard to maintain decent relationships with their audiences, which includes not reviewing products they don’t appreciate or want to support. An influencer is more likely to refuse a relationship with you than s/he is to lie to his/her audience or break the law.

Influencer outreach is here to stay for the long haul. Focus your 2019 outreach efforts on building stronger relationships and creating tailored plans for each influencer you partner with. You’ll be surprised at how well these relationships work when it comes to strengthening your brand’s awareness and sales.

Categories
Outreach

Influencer Marketing 101

 

When you’re just starting out with your business, it can be hard to get eyes in front of your content. That’s where influencer marketing (connecting with influencers in your niche) can be highly beneficial. These influencers already have an established expertise and following, so building relationships with them can be just what you need to get that ball rolling.

Why should you focus on influencer marketing? The majority of consumers (92%) would rather make decisions based on trusted referrals and recommendations than rely on other sources. Word-of-mouth marketing generates 2x the sales compared to paid advertising. And, businesses make an average of $6.50 for every $1 spent on influencer marketing.

 

Identifying and Tracking Influencers

Not just any influencer will do. It’s important to take the time to find out who key influencers are in your industry, of course, but the issue many people overlook is the fact that who the issue many people overlook is the fact that who you find influential isn’t necessarily the same person or group of people your audience finds influential. This means going a bit further to find the people your audience follows online – but there are tools to help you get the job done. There’s no more guessing about who they may be; you can find and connect with them right away.

BuzzSumo is an influencer marketing tool that lets you find the most popular content about a topic, while also providing information on the author and publisher. You can look more into the types of content that author creates, or the publisher accepts, to get a better idea of how to approach the influencer with a story for the target publication. It’s also possible to see a list of the people who shared it. You can also use it to see the most popular content on a particular publisher, to ensure your story provides a unique angle.

Keyhole allows you to track hashtags so you can find relevant content and influencers. You can see conversations and top content, as well as who the influencers around the hashtag are.

Traackr is a premium influencer marketing and analytics platform that helps you find influencers, see social insights, and determine how to best connect with them. You can search for influencers, see trending content, and more.

 

Connecting with Influencers

Reach out to the influencers on Twitter, Facebook, or other social platform and start a conversation with them before you need them to do something for you. Keep in mind that top influencers get inundated with requests for help all the time – many reaching hundreds of requests a day, if not more. Without having an established relationship with them, it can be hard to get them to pay attention to you – let alone honor your request. Once you’re connected on social media, it’s time to move on to the next step – developing a strategy for engaging with influencers so you can get on their radar and cultivate that relationship.

 

Engaging with Influencers

Start sharing and commenting on their content. But, take the time to go beyond something like, “Great post!” and add real thoughts and insight. Find a balance, because sending out a single tweet isn’t going to be enough. It will get lost in a sea of posts. But, retweeting/sharing too much too often, comes on a little strong and spammy. Choose the pieces that you genuinely see value for your own audience.

When you take the time to comment on their content – make it stand out. Ask questions to start a dialogue. Provide additional information or examples. It’s even okay to disagree with what the author says, if you have a different point of view and can keep the debate effective.

 

What Do You Have to Offer?

Once you’ve established the relationship, it’s time to make the connection and ask for help. But – you shouldn’t just email them a sentence or two. First, take the time to think about what you want to get from the cooperation. Then, consider what you have to offer the influencer in return.

Do you want them to share your content? Do you want them to participate in an expert roundup? Be interviewed for a podcast? Whatever the case may be – you’re thinking about a long-term relationship here, so make sure it’s an easy single request. Once that goes well and you decide you want to continue working together, you can bring the influencer into bigger projects.

Can you offer them an exclusive trial of your service? A new version of your product? A blog post completely dedicated to them? Offer real value to the influencer and know what the offer will be before you contact them.

 

Making the Connection

There’s only one shot to connect with your influencer, so make the most of it. Skip the use of automated software on the first contact to avoid potential errors that will turn the influencer off. Make sure your subject line is compelling – influencers are busy people who won’t read everything. It has to be catchy to get their attention, but shouldn’t look spammy – that’s a signal of automated software. Tell the influencer what the email is about. Make the email itself easy to read. Keep it short and clear.

Break the ice with things you have in common – showing you’ve done your research on who they are and what they’ve done in the past. Be sure to use their name – research shows people love to see/hear their name. It also makes the experience more personal. Show a little flattery. Compliment their work and let them know what you like about them. If possible, show them what you’ve done to provide value beforehand, so they’re more likely to want to return the favor for you.

If you want, you can also invite the influencer to collaborate with you on content. It’s almost a surefire way to guarantee they’ll share it with their audience, since they had a hand in its creation.

 

Repeat Again and Again

After you’ve had a successful small project with the influencer, you can repeat the process again and again with larger projects or however you and the influencer see fit. Once you have a successful relationship with one influencer, it will be easier to build more with others.

Don’t be afraid to ask the influencer what you can do for them. Any influencer relationship should be both give and take – mutually beneficial. It’s the key to building a strong long-term partnership.

Photo credit: Adobe Stock

How are some of the ways you’ve been able to add value to your brand by using influencers?  Please share by using the comments section below.  Thanks!

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