June 10, 2016 10:30 am
Published by Kirsty Sharman
A few weeks ago we asked all our influencers to tweet us links to their Media Kits, to stand a chance to be featured in this month’s showcase. While it took time to go through all the influencers who tweeted us, as well as those we have come across over time, it was great to see such a variety in our influencer community. It’s always interesting to see what inspires people to share their thoughts and passions through their blogs or social channels. This month we aren’t narrowing it down to a single category, but rather showcasing influencers from various categories and countries.
Business and lifestyle (Nigeria)
Adesoji is a Nigerian businessman and lifestyle influencer, who has a great passion for the environment and business. Using his online influence, Adesoji raises awareness to environmental issues, ultimately turning his passion into various business ventures. With an impressive Twitter following of 58.4k, Adesoji continues to share his knowledge on both entrepreneurship and environmental development and preservation.
Parenting and lifestyle: (South Africa)
Maz, a South African-based parenting blogger is the author of Caffeine and Fairydust. Her blog aims to inspire mothers and encourage their individualism. This mother of two shares her parenting tips, recipes and product reviews with her readers and focuses on making her readers feel creatively inspired and confident in themselves. Learn more about Maz here.
Food and drink: (UK)
Kate is the author of the award winning food blog – Veggie Desserts. Apart from running a successful blog, Kate is a freelance food writer and magazine columnist. Being obsessed with vegetables, Kate’s blog naturally focuses on creating desserts using vegetables and as bizarre as it sounds her desserts look super tasty! I think moms have just found a new way to hide veggies.
Fashion (Italy)
Danilo Carnevale is an Italian fashion enthusiast who focuses on promoting top fashion brands/trends on his very popular Instagram page.Through his online influence, Danilo aims to raise awareness of fashion brands and ultimately generate sales and a public interest in the fashion brand.
Next month we will showcase some of our YouTubers. If you have a vlog, link it to your Webfluential profile, tweet us your Media Kit and stand a chance to be featured.
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June 7, 2016 12:12 pm
Published by Kirsty Sharman
The 28th May 2016 saw the much anticipated clash between Spain’s finest, the Madrid Derby, involving powerhouses Real Madrid and emerging giants, Athletico Madrid in Europe’s biggest club competition, the UEFA Champions League. Just how big is it? Well, according to Heavy.com, “when Barcelona beat Juventus to win the 2015 final, UEFA estimates that 180 million people in 200 countries witnessed them raise the trophy.”
Just to put that into perspective, Vocative.com further goes on to report that the Champions League is vastly bigger and dwarfs the American Super Bowl which on its own is a big spectacle in the US.
“In addition to an impressive 200 countries tuning in, the teams in this year’s finals made off with $108 million in prize money, dwarfing the Super Bowl’s $14.9 million collected during the playoffs in January.” – Vocative.com
The 2016 viewership stats are yet to be released but judging from the above, one can easily predict that the numbers have increased. As with all sports fans, myself included, one of the things we look forward to is all the banter pre, during and post a match. In most cases all that takes place on Twitter through online conversation. To give you a sense of this using the aforementioned final as an example, check this out from the tournament’s official website.
Being in the business of creating and tracking conversations on behalf of brands, we couldn’t pass up on the chance to track this huge sporting event. This is what we found:
Most of the conversation around the @Championsleague handle is curated not created. This tells us that fans are in the game of sharing content in the moment, being the first to spread the news. It’s amazing to see that through the power of Social Media you can reach over 1 billion people from only 355 766 accounts. Sure there will be crossover, and sure we can argue that the reach figure is more an opportunity figure – but what we can’t argue is the power of social conversation around the @Championsleague!
Another interesting insight is how the conversation pre and post the match almost equals the conversation on the day – telling us that sport content might not be as ‘in the moment’ as we think it is. As brands, we have more than the 90min match time to leverage the conversation.
To view the full report that also includes the most influential people and brands talking about @Championsleague, simply click on this link: https://webfluential.com/report/view_twitter_tracker/847
Tracking online conversation(s) has never been this easy!
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May 27, 2016 10:00 am
Published by Kirsty Sharman
As a brand, growing your presence online is becoming more and more important. With social media and technology flooding the internet with over 200 million pieces of content a minute, it’s essential that brands find a way to stand out from the crowd.
What’s interesting to watch as the marketing industry progresses is how brands find ways to hack their growth. The term ‘growth hacking’ was coined by Sean Ellis in 2010 and in my opinion is more than just a term, it’s a new way to exist – especially in an industry as fast-paced as marketing.
Top marketers have discovered more than one way to hack brand growth. They often discover them by hitting a roadblock in the digital world – and having to find a solution, or a hack. Two of the biggest roadblocks to hit marketers in the last five years are ones you’ll know well – the rise of Ad Blocking, and the change in algorithms across multiple social networks.
This is where influencers started coming into play. Firstly to combat ad blockers by allowing brands to post content in formats consumers actually want to receive it in, and not the age old display banners. Secondly to combat algorithmic changes across platforms like Facebook, Twitter and soon to be Instagram – let’s remember that social networks want popular posts to come up at the top, and the popular posts often come from the popular people – otherwise known as Social Influencers.
The important point to remember here is that ad blocking and algorithm changes are introduced to make the internet a better place. The reason they make being a marketer harder is because we have to be more creative, use smarter technology, and trial new things to get to the top.
If you’re a competitive person like I am, you should really see these roadblocks as an opportunity to get ahead of your competitors. The hack is simple. Find the quickest and most effective way to go from the bottom of the triangle to the top.
Why? Because other people talking about your brand in a positive way has more power to influence consumers than you do – even when your brand has well crafted Facebook posts or beautifully designed banner ads.
But there is something quite important to remember here – if we’re going to use Influencer Marketing to hack brand growth we need to be clear on the rules of growth hacking. If we go back to the definition you’ll see that it needs three things to exist: creativity, analytical thinking and social metrics. When it comes to influencer marketing the last two can be covered by working with smart technology platforms. The creative part still needs to come from you, or the influencer, or ideally a collaboration of both.
For that reason I’ve put together a quick checklist to guide you on through the basics:
- Use accredited influencers to ensure your content reaches the right audience (reliable social metrics)
- Encourage collaboration not dissemination – make sure you’re using a technology platform that allows you to communicate with the influencer about content, briefs and ideas (to encourage creativity)
- Use the three-check-system below to ensure that you’re running a campaign where everybody wins (analytical thinking)
A campaign where everybody wins is what you should aim for, the perfect triangle. The brand wins because the campaign meets business objectives (check 1), the influencer wins because they are proud to post the content
(check 2), and the audience wins because they enjoy the experience (check 3).
Now that you’re one step closer to hacking your brand growth, there is only one more point to mention. Social influencers did not come into existence because they wanted to be part of the Influencer Marketing trade. They came into existence because they are incredible at doing what brands try to do every day – finding a way, through all the roadblocks, to create content that consumers actually want to engage with. The time is now to learn more about these influencers and explore how you can collaborate with them to hack your way to the top.
This post originally appeared on Business 2 Community click here to read it.
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