August 5, 2016 2:00 pm
Published by Kirsty Sharman
With the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and other authorities constantly updating the rules around sponsored content, it’s important that bloggers, vloggers and social media influencers disclose their relationships with the brands that they feature.
This isn’t really a problem for creative influencers – if your content is amazing, people aren’t going to care whether or not it was sponsored.
To prove this point, here are four Instagram posts that were definitely sponsored and marked with a #ad and/or #sponsored as per the FTC rules, but we didn’t feel bombarded by a brand message.
(According to the FTC’s new rules, these influencers will have to mark this content upfront as #sponsored and/or with #ad.)
Click here to read more about the rules and regulations around sponsored content.
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July 26, 2016 9:24 am
Published by Kirsty Sharman
Many marketers are still trying to grasp the ‘what’ and the ‘why’ of influencer marketing, never mind the ‘when’.
The ‘what’ is simple to explain: it’s a form of marketing where brands use key individuals – called influencers – to deliver their messaging to a specific audience that the influencer has built up a relationship with.
The ‘why’ is equally simple: we trust product reviews and recommendations coming from our friends more than advertisements.
The ‘when’ is a little more strategic. It’s tempting to try out influencer marketing because it seems like a novelty (it’s not), but you’ll get the best results if you time your influencer campaign to when you’re trying to achieve very specific marketing goals.
Webfluential’s Kirsty Sharman wrote an article on Social Media Today, where she explained 6 perfect times for marketers to use influencer marketing. There’s even an infographic! Click here to read the full article.
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July 21, 2016 8:53 am
Published by Kirsty Sharman
There’s no deny traditional marketing has evolved, shifting away from broadcasting brand messages through mass media, towards two-way communication.
But even back when there was no Internet to connect brands more closely with their target markets, there was an element of influencer marketing floating around in the marketing mix: peer-to-peer communication. Or simply put: word of mouth.
A housewife may have recommended the washing detergent she saw on TV to her friends – but there was no way for brands to track, measure or even prove that this communication took place.
Fast-forward to today, the rise of the digital media means that consumers can reject the uninvited, one-way brand messages they were once bombarded with. The opinions of their friends count for more. Word of mouth has become king.
That housewife? Now she has a parenting blog and is able to reach more of her friends than she ever did at bridge club. And thanks to technology like Webfluential, brands are able to track and measure online conversations around their products and services.
Take a look at this infographic, taken from an article written by Webfluential’s Kirsty Sharman, where she explains the evolution of brand storytelling. It clearly shows how influencer marketing has come full circle. Click here to see it.
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