Tag: influencers

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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
Social Media

Are the Days of the Plandid Over?

Oops! Close up portrait of sexy, beautiful, impressed, amazed blonde girl holding her hand near mouth, looking to the side on pink background

In the early days of Instagram, one quick look through your feed revealed a ton of seemingly meticulous photos – of people who looked “natural.” This concept is known as the plandid – or the planned candid. Planning the shots ahead of time ensures influencers get the type of image they’re looking for – one that satisfies sponsors – but one that also appeals to their audience.

The platform has reached more than 1 billion monthly users – and there’s a common theme among most of the photos on the network. You’ll notice things are almost always staged against a bright wall, with carefully arranged lattes and fancy food, Millennial pink, and color-corrected aesthetic. Images that capitalize on these trends do so well on Instagram the look became associated with the platform itself – and gradually made its way into the world beyond. Even those who don’t use Instagram have become familiar with the Instagram Wall – a place in your home with an Instagram worthy backdrop, created for the sole purpose of photography.

The Early Influencers

Influencers are the ones who capitalize on this plandid look more than anyone else – with some of them even creating photo presets in Adobe Lightroom that edit anyone’s photos to fit the aesthetic. But all trends have a shelf life – and as quickly as Instagram welcomed beach photos and Millennial pink, it’s being ushered out in favor of something different. The buzz now is that it’s no longer cool to have the manufactured look – and Instagram is now shifting to authenticity.

The New Generation of Influencers

Young influencers such as Joanna Ceddia and Jazzy Anne, along with many others,  are rejecting the curated feed concept, in favor of an unfiltered, messier, and ultimately more authentic vibe. While the early generation of influencers carried DSLR cameras and learned photo editing to master the “perfect” photo, those rules don’t apply to the rising generation of influencers, who prefer to use their smartphones to take photos.

Many teens are going out of the way to make photos look worse. Huji Cam, a filter that makes your images appear to be taken with an old disposable camera, has been downloaded more than 16 million times – and younger influencers say adding grain to your photos is a big thing right now.

Reese Bluestein is a 22-year-old influencer who has gained more than 238,000 followers in a little over a year by posted unfiltered low quality photos of herself in strange outfits. She doesn’t stress about getting the perfect look for each image, or posting similar looking photos back to back. If she likes an image, she posts it, without caring about the effect it has on her overall feed.

Over the past year, we’ve seen the concept of “Instagram vs. Reality” photos growing in popularity because influencers want to make themselves more accessible. As people become more aware of how prevalent sponsored posts are, beauty influencers have started to abandon the branded shots for the ones that feature empty bottles of the products they actually use. The number of accounts dedicated to calling out celebrities and influencers for the cosmetic procedures they’ve had is rising. Influencers are speaking out about the burnout and stress that comes with trying to maintain perfection, which is fostering the growth in authenticity.

James Nord, the CEO of Fohr, an influencer-management platform, says he sees this shift play out in his clients’ numbers every day. “What worked for people before doesn’t work anymore,” he says. “For the first time, influencers are coming up against this problem of, How do I continue to grow as tastes change?”

He says 60% of the influencers in his network with more than 100,000 followers are losing followers month over month. Just a year ago, you could post a photo of well manicured hands around a coffee cup and get lots of engagement. Now, doing something like that will make people unfollow. Influencers who are still standing in front of those Instagram walls are struggling – and will need to change their approach if they want to maintain their influencer status.

Instagram itself could be in part responsible for the evolution. Instagram began as a purely visual feed of filtered photos, but has morphed itself into something different. Now, it has grown into a true social network where photos and videos are competing against stories, GIFs, and IGTV for attention.

Why the Change?

Instagram walls and museums were built so that normal people could easily take influencer-quality photos. However, the photos worked so well they became commonplace. As a result, they no longer resonate with people like they used to, and now we’re living in “influencer overload.”

The stress of aiming for perfection is just too much. One influencer, LA-based Sarah Peretz, known for her curated, hyper-saturated feed, says she spend months looking for a wall of a certain color – and she interrupted a vacation to take a photo against a roadside casino’s orange wall, she’d had enough. She started shifting her feed away from the traditional aesthetic and experimented with more creative photography. She knew her audience was bored with it, and more interested in Instagram Stories.

As what is “ideal” on Instagram is shifting, brands are on the lookout for ways they can catch (or create) the next wave. People are just looking for stuff they can relate to, so being real is a trend that’s catching on and will stick around a while.

How do you feel about meticulously planned feeds? Are you looking forward to the authenticity movement? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Categories
Social Media

Why The Best Influencers Aren’t Only on Instagram

How many sponsored ads did you see the last time you scrolled your Facebook or Instagram feed? Quite a few, I’m sure. Now, more than ever, I’m seeing brands partner with celebrity “influencers” as they work to create a new sense of brand awareness.

But here’s the thing: influencers come in all shapes and sizes. They’re definitely not all celebrities – in fact, very few qualify for this classification. I’ll explain in today’s post.

What are Influencers?

An influencer is, by definition, someone who has the ability to influence another person’s decisions. In the marketing world, this translates into strong brand awareness and increased sales.

Influencers spend a great deal of time creating their own personal brand by sharing unique personal experiences, including interests, hobbies, or even favorite products and services. By describing experiences, or sharing specific talents and skills, they create a unique bond of trust with audiences; this can be immensely compelling. Most good influencers are deeply creative, credible, authoritative, and trustworthy.

What makes influencers so useful is their transparency and close bond to a cultivated audience or fan base. Because followers trust them, they’re more likely to carefully consider their recommendations over, say, a simple commercial or social media ad.

Types of Influencers

Take a look at Facebook and Instagram and you’ll see influencers of all different sizes and status. The idea that the only true influencers are celebrities is long gone; these days, anyone can become one with the right effort.

Influencers fall into these categories:

  • Celebrity influencers – These are big names you likely recognize from television, movies, and sports. They’re usually incredibly expensive to hire and, in many cases, carry the least credibility because people do tend to associate them with their paid status.
  • High-Level Influencers – Very popular and have a large audience. They generally have a broad niche audience and can easily touch on a wide variety of different products within the same general niche. They’re popular and they’re serious about what they do, often looked upon as industry experts.
  • Mid-Range Influencers – Have slightly smaller audiences; yet, their niches are not quite as broad as the higher-level influencer. Instead of “health and wellness,” this type of influencer might be more focused on “nutrition” or another narrower subtopic. This includes crafters, and beauty enthusiasts.
  • Micro-Influencers – Tend to have smaller audiences (10k+). However, they’re often consistent and maintain excellent engagement. These influencers are hyper-focused on specific niches, like make-up products or a certain type of fashion (such as plus-size or kid’s clothing).

No matter how they’re categorized, the most effective influencers are always incredibly creative. You should work closely with your influencers, but never be afraid to give them creative license – if they’re good, they already know what they’re doing. The one caveat here is that you need to feel comfortable knowing they’re going to design great visual content that speaks to their brand and audience first. This is where research comes in.

Micro-influencers are often willing to work in trade for product, but be cautious about over-utilizing this option. The truth is that influencers are, in fact, a type of freelancer or business; it’s more ethical to pay them well for the services you request. Moreover, respecting and valuing your influencers will almost always net you better results (assuming the influencer is effective).

Where to Find Influencers

When asked about influencers, what do you think of first? If you said Instagram, you aren’t alone. This incredibly visible and visual platform is full of creative people with engaged audiences. But don’t assume this is your only option for making connections; modern influencers are starting to branch out to other platforms, too.

This is where I drop a little truth bomb.

The best influencers for your brand are already hanging out with your audience.

Is your audience a 20-something Millennial with an iPhone attached to their hip? Then yes, you probably need to take a pretty close look at Instagram. Maybe Snapchat or a similar platform, too.

Is your audience made up of 30 to 50-something adults who move at a slightly slower pace? These are the people who love to keep in touch with family and friends. You’re likely to find effective influencers in this category on Facebook.

Do your audience members love to read informative, long-form content? You may need to find major bloggers or even well-known writers working in your niche instead.

Here’s the thing, though. You don’t have to limit yourself to one audience or platform.

You do need to know which segment of your audience exists on each platform. This lets you ensure your chosen influencers cater to your campaigns in the right way.

For example, there’s no reason to waste resources advertising a senior-silver vitamin supplement on Instagram. That segment of your audience is much more likely to be found on Facebook, instead. You can still advertise health and fitness supplements from the same brand on Instagram — a known hangout for workout enthusiasts.

What to Look for In an Influencer

Ready to start partnering with influencers as you work to create a stronger brand image? Don’t settle for just anyone.

The best influencers are:

  • Likeable – Audiences enjoy their posts (no matter what the platform). Followers are constantly liking and engaging. They’re relatable.
  • Engaged – They aren’t just soaking in their fame. They’re regularly engaging with their audiences, replying to comments, or even addressing them in their posts and videos.
  • Consistent – They don’t disappear for days or weeks at a time. They maintain a regular publishing schedule.
  • Passionate – They love what they do, genuinely love the ideas they share, and are determined to give honest feedback.
  • Relevant – To their audiences, and to your audience. You need to make sure your influencers are the right fit in terms of niche and values.
  • Creative – They’re awesome at creating high-quality product photos, action shots, and even videos.
  • Authentic – They will never review things dishonestly, and likely won’t review anything they’re not truly interested in. They stay true to themselves.
  • Honest – They never take part in sponsored posts without disclosing their relationships (this is important if you don’t want to get slapped by the FTC).
  • Experienced – They didn’t just pop up out of nowhere overnight. They’re good at what they do and have a genuine following.

It doesn’t matter if you’re looking for high-end bloggers, Facebook superstars, or traditional Instagram influencers. These criteria are important for any platform and will ensure your brand’s message is shared carefully and consistently.

Remember, knowing your audience is paramount. Once you know where they are hanging out, finding influencers becomes easier. Customizing your influencer strategy to your audience’s behaviors ensures your campaign will be effective! You can always reach out to me for help, too – just hit this link.

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
Social Media

Is Facebook the Next Best Zone for Influencers to Make Money?

 

We spent the last year telling you that Instagram is the biggest up-and-coming platform, both for regular businesses and for influencer marketers. Now, we’re about to turn that advice on its head and suggest that Facebook may be a serious contender for second place by the end of the year.

Facebook officially launched a new marketing tool called “Brand Collabs Manager” just last week. This interactive plugin gives businesses the power to identify, explore, and connect with influencers who can seriously boost their brand.

Supply and Demand

After glancing over the details surrounding the new tool, it’s pretty obvious that Facebook wants a shift – and that shift is to make their platform more friendly to influencer marketing efforts. It’s a change many of us saw coming after Facebook bought Instagram for a record-breaking $1 billion back in 2012. Granted, the change did take a little bit longer to arrive than we expected.

Influencer marketing is on the rise. Nearly 90 percent of all users trust word of mouth, including influencer content, over advertising alone. Around 30 percent are compelled not by celebrities, but by small-time bloggers and non-celebrity bloggers they feel are “more like them.” Around 19 percent find Facebook to be the most compelling and engaging platform for influencing users.

That’s a significant amount of demand for a platform that stereotypically made it more cumbersome to collaborate instead.

Additionally, we know that Facebook saw a dramatic slump in stocks after Cambridge Analytica. More than just a few businesses jumped ship out of fears about insecure user data, often heading off to more reliable platforms. While the user base hasn’t dropped (in fact, it’s grown), businesses are still feeling nervous about the social media giant’s intentions.

Facebook clearly saw a massive opportunity to serve a relatively untapped demand while also ironing out negative opinions and fears. In tandem with their efforts to fix privacy concerns, it could be exactly what they need to bounce back.

Brand Collabs Manager

“Brand Collabs Manager makes it easier for brands and influential content creators to find each other.”

Sounds simple, right? That’s Facebook’s tagline on the new tool, and honestly, I can’t say it much simpler than that. What I can do is go beyond the tagline to tell you about the features I’m seeing and how they work.

The tool, which is currently operating on limited list access as they ramp up, has two distinct sections – one for creators, and one for businesses. Both must apply and indicate their Facebook profile, website, and information, after which a review takes place to determine whether they’re suitable. It isn’t yet clear whether this application process is a product of the beta testing or whether it will remain in place long-term.

What’s Under the Hood: Businesses

On the business side of the platform is an aesthetically-pleasing, clean dashboard with an easy-to-scan grid of influencers. A set of filters at the top lets you add promotional requirements and drill down through the presented influencers to find someone who really matches your business.

Facebook gives the example of filtering for “Creators who really like my brand;” useful, given that pages can’t see the names of likes anymore.

Even more helpfully, every influencer has a percentage profile listed on their account beside their information. That number tells you how closely the influencer matches up with your niche, business, product, or service based on a number of in-depth factors ranging from interests to age and other standard demographics.

Once you find someone you think is a good fit, just click their picture. The tool will take you to a short profile listing information like age, gender, preferred post types, content categories or niches, location,  language, and sometimes, links to their website or Instagram. You can also review all of their past collaborations, making it easier to judge the quality of the content and their interactions at the same time.

All of these features shorten the length of time it takes to link up with influencers. It’s much easier to find who you’re looking for quickly, rather than hashtag surfing or relying on your own analytics. It’s also far more straightforward to get into contact or make a connection.

What’s Under the Hood: Creators

So, what about creators and influencers? Whether you’re an industry influencer or a true online celebrity, Brand Collabs Manager has features you’ll love, too. Moreover, they go far beyond the simple recognition and visibility improvements mentioned in the previous section.

When creators are approved for the platform and log in, they’re presented with their own brand collaborator profile. Like a traditional Facebook profile, this section has room for basic information, contact info, a cover photo, a profile photo, gender, and more. It also provides room for intro videos, case studies, pitch decks, and original content explicitly created for review by brands.

As a creator, you can also use your influencer profile to “like” specific companies on Facebook you want to work with. They’ll get a message letting them know you like them, and that you may make a good partner for future content.

Will it Work?

Whether or not Brand Collabs Manager will turn out the way Facebook hopes it will remains to be seen. Until they officially launch the platform and open it up to all creators and businesses, you should consider it more like a growing experiment or case study. Don’t jump in feet-first just yet expecting perfection – but don’t be afraid to apply and get those feet wet, either.

Something else to consider is that Facebook isn’t charging anything for the tool, nor are they taking a cut of the profits creators and businesses make when they work together. That’s encouraging because it means the platform really cares more about the connection than any potential profits. That said, Facebook will still benefit from ad campaigns created as a result of those partnerships.

It makes sense for Facebook to move in this direction on multiple levels. The open willingness to find solutions, the desire to make it easier for creators to get noticed, and even the desire to provide the tool free of charge are all a sign of positive growth and rebounding.

Another influence (pun intended) is whether Facebook might move forward in the future toward monetization like YouTube, Vimeo, and other content platforms. A monetized Brand Collabs Manager could become very lucrative for businesses and influencers alike, especially if they can maintain quality of options.

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