Author Archives for Kirsty Sharman

9 Ways To Make Sponsored Posts Appealing To Readers

November 11, 2015 8:11 am Published by Kirsty Sharman

This post was originally published on Bosmol Social Media News and was written by Luana Spinetti. Sponsored posts have been the love and hate of many bloggers over the years. You can guess why— it’s very difficult to please both your advertiser and your audience alike. Who should you favor? Where does your responsibilities lie? The truth, as always, is in the middle. Both your advertiser and your audience deserve the best you can offer, both need to compromise on the fact that:

You are free to get paid to sponsor a brand on your blog
Your content should always reflect both yourself (your blog) and your readership’s needs

Storytelling is a good compromise because it appeals not just to advertisers, but to readers, too. As a sponsored blogger since 2007 (yes, done that and still doing it), here is my advice to make sure your posts will stay in your readers’ hearts and not just be skimmed over and abandoned.

How To Make Sponsored Posts Appealing To Readers?

1. Leverage Storytelling

Use anecdotes and tell your readers about your personal experience with a product, a service or an idea. Give a genuine opinion of your advertiser’s product in relation to the story you just told your readers, but focus more on the story than on the product, that should not occupy more than 50% of your post. (Readers engage with stories of human beings, not white papers on a company’s products!) Susanna Gebauer from TheSocialMs.com has 7 storytelling ideas to help you get started.

2. Use visuals

Photos and videos of yourself using the product or service are your best bet. You may also ask your advertiser for customizable visuals that will help you integrate your sponsored content with your overall blog theme and your audience’s needs better.

3. Avoid sales pitch hype

The class salesman’s hype makes prospective customers run miles away— avoid it at all costs! Your sponsored post needs to be fun, engaging, conversational and credible. Hype will get you and your advertiser nowhere and will result in a loss for both of you— your readers and the advertiser’s money.

4. Find a connection to your content

But don’t stretch it too much! If your blog is about catering and you are trying to write a sponsored post about childcare, it might be difficult to find a good angle, but if you know how to make sure stroller wheels won’t ruin your precious garden grass, then by all means go ahead and write about it. Try to take on sponsorships that match your blog niche. You can stretch your creativity only so far; after that, it becomes clear to your readers that you are trying to make that post fit at all costs— but there’s nothing for them in it that they can use (unless it’s a good laugh, but you have to be clever enough to earn that, too).

5. Make the post meaningful to your readers

What do your readers want? Your sponsored content should still reflect their needs and answer their questions, not just please your advertiser by offering your post to your readers as something curious to look at. Sure, curiosity is a factor, but unless you make it meaningful (useful, entertaining) to your readers, it’s a waste of time and money, because your readers will not be engaged.

6. Encourage readers to interact with the post

And with the brand. But your post is their first interaction window– if they comment and engage with you, they have better bets to get in touch with the brand.

7. Link to your sponsored post from other posts on your blog

Your sponsored post shouldn’t be a standalone piece of content. It should be well integrated in the structure of your blog. Internal linking works at your advantage, in this sense. If your advertiser is against internal linking, it’s your job to educate them about the benefits they will actually receive from a good internal linking strategy, and the total absence of any kind of harm.

8. Add downloadable items or subscription

Ask your advertisers about any downloadable items or free subscription lists from their company or client that you may add to your sponsored post. It would work to your advertiser’s advantage and add credibility to your post, as well as an incentive for your readers to take your sponsored post in consideration.

9. Be transparent: disclose your sponsorships

Not just to abide by the FTC rules, but also to be honest to your readers, who will trust you more and be reassured that you are not trying to manipulate them into buying lies. How do you make your sponsored posts appealing to readers?

5 Surprise brands that conquered Influencer Marketing

November 5, 2015 1:05 pm Published by Kirsty Sharman

Editor's note: This post was originally shared on Wallblog to showcase some unexpected brands that are getting Influencer Marketing right.

Word-of-mouth recommendations are the holy grail of marketing, promoting brand recognition, reputation and sales in one consumer-friendly bundle. Revamped for the digital age, personal recommendations have given way to Influencer Marketing platforms. Allowing every brand the opportunity to talk directly to thousands of receptive customers, this innovative channel uses established online influencers to drive sales, increase brand recognition and appeal to new demographics. With Influencer Marketing revolutionising the field, we thought it was high time we got to know a few of the more surprising brands emerging as champions.

1. Downy work with influencers to create engaging content

A household name in fabric softeners from P&G, with more than a few competitors, Downy’s marketing strategies are constantly evolving. Taking a chance with Influencer Marketing, this home-based brand used influencer content to “Bring out the SoftSide” of hard situations and icons encountered in everyday life – such as alarm clocks, high heels and even politics. Downy created fabric sculptures accompanied by the tag #softside and witty lines promoting its signature fabric softener. The brands newly enlisted influencers were set to work posting images of these sculptures across social media. One of the best examples was from the Vine influencer, Meagan Cignoli, of how Downy can help solve the Rubik’s cube. It became one of the most popular pieces of the campaign with close to 500 shares and more than 8,000 likes on Facebook. [video width="480" height="480" mp4="http://blog.webfluential.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/D5C038586B994998507096117248_1900fb688f7.3.1_ctDm_qJck2AOObm4Un6MCGPsCAfYPwtqp1XZOKJP78E0UBtP.VyHGPWkxfwjLqSa.mp4" loop="true" autoplay="true"][/video]

Meagan Cignoli's interpretation of the Downy brief

Designed to initiate conversations between influencers and their followers, the #SoftSide campaign helped consumers to define what the soft side means to them, increasing brand recognition for Downy and marking it out as an influencer marketing champion to keep an eye on.

2. Cooper Tire target a new market working with Mom bloggers

They’re not going to feature highly in any wedding gift registry, Christmas hints or birthday list, but for the average family, tires are a must-have. They’re just not sexy, or something many consumers shop around for, and they’re definitely not a product most women covet. Until now. Having identified a demographic its competitors had left untouched, Cooper Tire decided it was high time they utilised the untapped purchasing power of the female population. And to do that, it needed ‘Mom bloggers’ — women who had successfully built up reputable blogs with dedicated followings. CooperTires 1

Macaroni Mum putting Cooper Tires through their paces

Inviting these bloggers out to its test track in Texas gave Cooper Tire the opportunity to demonstrate the performance of its tires on multiple tracks and conditions. A few adrenaline fuelled laps later and the brand had provided each of its guest influencers with a fun-filled day that no one was likely to forget in a hurry — and more than a few would blog about later.

3. Vodacom Deezer achieve brand awareness with nearly 4 million music lovers

When Africa’s biggest mobile communications company met the music streaming service Deezer, it was a match made in heaven. They wanted the whole world to know about it -so they turned to Webfluential for advice on relevant influencers. Our team recommended ten key influencers with the likes of Live Magazine, Texx and the City and StephanieBe helping get the word out. These music-centric bloggers were charged with getting the conversation started, creating original content that introduced Vodacom Deezer and recommended its streaming services to their musically minded followers. To sweeten the deal, Vodacom worked with the influencer Da L.E.S, timing its campaign to coincide with the launch of the rapper’s new single, available exclusively on Deezer.

Da LES shares the availability of his new single on Deezer

This two-pronged attack certainly did the job. Influencers’ posts on social media helped Vodacom reach nearly 4 million music lovers and engaged with over 11,200 people, substantially increasing brand awareness and online talkability with one influencer campaign.

4. Boxed Water’s ‘Retree Project’ highlight charity campaign

It bills itself as ‘part water company, part sustainable water project, part philanthropic project and part completely curious’, so it was no surprise that Boxed Water chose to think outside the box when it came to creating a buzz around its latest charity campaign, the Retree Project. A partnership with the National Forest Foundation, the Retree Project aims to plant one million trees within the next five years. Loathed to plant them quietly, Boxed Water turned to influencer marketing to spread awareness, ensuring its latest venture went off with a (digital) bang. The campaign was launched by social media influencing gurus Jaime King and Aiden Alexander. Each posted their own pictures of Boxed Water products to get the ball rolling, tagging them #Retree and informing their followers that, for every tagged product picture posted, Boxed Water would plant two trees.

Jaime King shares her thoughts on why she likes the Boxed Tree project

It was certainly a creative way to put a digital spin on a real-world project. It also worked wonders for promoting both Boxed Water’s partnership with the National Forest Foundation and its products, successfully highlighting the brand’s philanthropic activities at the same time.

5. Better Sleep Council target a niche demographic of diabetes patients

Proving that every brand stands to benefit from influencer marketing, non-profit Better Sleep Council used this innovative channel to promote their annual campaign, ‘May is Better Sleep Month’. Entering into a partnership with the Diabetes Influencers Network, Better Sleep Council found the perfect platform from which to launch its campaign. This community of health, wellness and fitness professionals (and the odd celebrity) all suffer from diabetes and have a diverse array of followers motivated to live healthier lifestyles. By hosting a Twitter Chat Party with Dr. Amy Peterson Campbell, a diabetes educator, Better Sleep Council succeeded in generating more than 11 million Twitter impressions. Its success demonstrates just how useful influencer marketing can be when targeting a niche demographic.

Some Tweets shared around the Better Sleep Council campaign

With the ability to take campaigns in any creative direction, make relevant and engaging content, successfully target niche demographics or new markets and increase brand awareness, this multifunctional channel is increasing in popularity as more and more ‘surprise’ brands continue to achieve impressive results.

Sign up as a marketer to run your own Influencer Marketing campaigns.

Trusting online influencers to share your brand’s message

October 28, 2015 1:58 pm Published by Kirsty Sharman

Just admit it. You love the idea of being an Influencer Marketing rockstar and creating content that has unstoppable sharability. You even dream about showcasing your results as a best practice case study for your brand. However, you are nervous about co-creating content with influencers which aligns to your brand's messaging. How do you trust someone else to interpret your brand's messaging and make it relevant for their audience? How will they understand what is best for your brand? What happens if they get it wrong? But the more important question to ask yourself is rather, what happens if they get it right?

Getting it right

We recently approached the team from How Far From Home to work with us on our very own Influencer Marketing campaign. With the objective of creating awareness of Webfluential with influencers all over the world, we needed to work with influencers who have a global audience. HFFH have a cult-like following of people who have been inspired by their story of travelling the world and seeing 'how far from home they can get.' But they also have a following of eager online influencers wanting to learn from them and how they built such a large audience in a very short space of time. This is where we found relevance to partner with them for our own brand. Even with part of their audience being relevant to our brand's messaging, we wanted to ensure we did not alienate the inspired wannabe travellers with content that was of no interest. How could we make our content relevant to both? It was time to handover to the HFFH team. We trusted HFFH to conceptualise content ideas for their travel blog and Instagram followers. They know their audience best and we gave them enough guidance to understand our brand and objectives. I suspect a sigh of disbelief or a little nervous laughter from most marketers at this point - but it worked. HFFH responded with an idea that we not only loved, but would also resonate with their audience. They would show how many items they could tick off their 'Wanderlist' with the money they made from a Webfluential job whilst in Sydney, through sharing a blog and Instagram post. This would appeal to the inspired travellers who want to know what they are up to next, as well as, the influencers who like to learn more about how they make money. The post they shared on Instagram received 3 801 organic likes within the first few hours.

The blog post they wrote was accompanied by some fantastic illustrations to showcase the items they could tick off their Wanderlist. Not only was the blog post great for building awareness with their audience, but the illustrations provided us with great content we could share with our own Facebook and Twitter communities.

What we learnt from co-creating content with influencers

Select relevant influencers for your campaign. This might be obvious, but it is a common mistake. Marketers often prioritise reach over relevance, which can result in content not resonating with an influencer's audience. Our search tool assists with sourcing influencers with interests related to your brand or campaign.
Explain your objectives in a clear and concise brief. Unpacking your messaging and what you want to achieve from the Influencer Marketing campaign is key. We have a great group of campaign managers that help facilitate this process.
Trust the influencers you work with to know their audience best and how to position your brand's messaging. Influencers understand how to position content to their audience and should guide the process on how to share your brand's messaging with their audience.
Be open minded. You know your brand best - but not the audience that will be targeted with your messaging. Whilst you need to ensure that you adhere to brand guidelines, be open to new ideas you might never have considered in the past.

As an Influencer Marketing tool, we are advocates of the co-creation of content with influencers - not only for the marketers that use our platform - but for ourselves too. We ensure that we 'practice what we preach' in order to share learnings and give guidance to the industry from experience with our own brand. Sign up as a marketer to start running your own Influencer Marketing campaigns.

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