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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October 21, 2015 11:46 am
Published by Kirsty Sharman
This blog post was originally written by Ruan Fourie.
Have you ever Googled your blog’s name? Your brand. It’s important to know what results are returned when people Google your brand. The more info people can get about you by just searching your brand, the better.
There are typically 10 search results on the first page of a Google search, and every single one of those 10 results should point directly to an online property that you manage. Brands, marketers, potential new readers or followers will likely Google your brand at some point. Brands and marketers will Google your brand if they are considering including you in an Influencer Marketing campaign.
How do you dominate the page one of Google with your brand?
It’s not as hard as you think. Most influencers already own multiple branded properties online. A blog, a Facebook page, a Twitter account, Instagram account and YouTube channel etc.
All these properties can potentially appear on the first page of search results when your brand is searched. You just have to make sure that Google (and other search engines) understand that your brand owns all those properties.
You have to tell Google where you can be found
Most of these social media profiles have a field where you can link to your website. That is the first and most important step to helping search engines understand that the social media account is part of your brand.
Google now has direct access to Twitter’s data stream. Google can only crawl certain parts of public Facebook pages, and the same applies for Instagram.
For this very reason it’s important that you use the one property that you completely own (your blog) to help Google understand your whole brand and where you can be found online.
Link to your social accounts from your website
You control how much of your website Google (and other search engines) can crawl. You control where you are linking to, and from where on your site.
You control how Google interprets your brand.
You should already be linking to all of your social media profiles for your brand from your website, so that your readers can easily find those profiles.
Your “About” page on your Website is there to give your users all they need to know about you. From here you can easily link to all your social media profiles, not only for your readers, but also to help Google understand that your brand extends to those social media profiles.
But it doesn’t have to stop at your “About” page. You can also use your “Contact” page as an opportunity to help Google understand where you can be reached. Because some of your audience will prefer Twitter as a channel for communication, it would also make sense to inform your audience of all the social channels they can use to contact you.
A Webfluential profile page is a gold mine of info for Google and your audience
Your Webfluential profile page gives a lot of information about your brand and your audience. Things like your audience demographics, links to all your brand social media profiles and also a link to your Website. Google loves pages like a Webfuential profile that provide a lot of information about a search.
By simply linking to your Webfluential Profile page from your website, you will be giving Google a great resource to return relevant information for your brand. So make sure you also link to your Webfluential profile from your “About” page, your “Contact” page and even your “Advertise” page if you have one.
It’s not just about the search results
You are doing a good job with your brand. You have an audience and that audience is still growing. You create cool content for your audience. Now brands and marketers want to start working with you so that they get access to your audience.
The first thing a marketer is going to to do before reaching out to you is Google your brand.
When your brand is searched it’s a sign of a strong brand if you dominate the first page of the Google results by not only showing your blog, but also all your social media profiles and your Webfluential profile.
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October 13, 2015 4:12 pm
Published by Kirsty Sharman
Editors note: This article originally appeared on tech.co to help answer a question we get from marketers often on how to pitch Influencer Marketing and get buy-in from the top.
You have read all the recent Influencer Marketing case studies and are a little jealous of the return other brands are achieving. You would prefer to be the ‘cool kid’ rather than the ‘new kid’ on the block and have a great idea for an Influencer Marketing campaign. There is one thing stopping you from achieving rock star status with your branded content – approval from your boss.
You recognise Influencer Marketing is a necessary addition to your marketing budget, but how do you get buy-in from the top? It is simpler than you think. Just explain the concept of Influencer Marketing to your boss, as you would to an 8-year-old child.
1. Tell a story
As humans, we are wired to be captivated by stories and easily recall information if it is relayed to us with rich meaning and visual cues. Stories engage the emotional side of our brains and drive us to take action. If you open your pitch with a story, you will be able to grab attention, make facts stick and data more retainable and understandable.
You know your boss best and what story would be relevant to them. Perhaps share a personal story of why you booked the company lunch at a restaurant that a friend recommended on Facebook. You could relate your story back to relevant stats such as: the average consumer mentions specific brands over 90 times a week in conversation with friends or family or that 68% of people feel that Facebook is the most trusted platform for product and service recommendations.
Tip: Don’t make your story long, but make it memorable.
2. Be the favourite teacher
We all had a favourite teacher at school that was an expert at explaining complex topics. Influencer Marketing is new and can appear to be overwhelming if explained poorly or if not understood correctly. It is important to provide background information, definitions, statistics etc. but don’t overcomplicate things to appear smart or knowledgeable on the topic.
Instead, keep things simple and avoid using too many technical terms that although might be relevant, make your boss feel that you need to be a rocket scientist to run a successful Influencer Marketing campaign. Don’t make them feel you are under qualified to do the job. Instead, make them feel confident that you have done enough research to take advantage of this new opportunity and are convinced of the value Influencer Marketing can add to your business and marketing plans.
Tip: When explaining complex topics, show how something works rather than resorting to just talking about a topic.
3. Gives examples of superheroes
My own childhood superheroes were the Ninja Turtles and I was absolutely convinced that nothing could ever beat their ninja moves. In the world of marketing, there are many brand superheroes that kick butt at Influencer Marketing. The internet is full of case studies and examples that you can use to showcase potential success and return on investment. Search for case studies related to your industry, business objectives or even concepts you find innovative. These case studies will provide credibility to your pitch and also give you a foundation for best practice.
Tip: Show what your competitors are doing with their own Influencer Marketing plans and explain how you will differentiate your business. If they are not using Influencer Marketing yet, this is an added opportunity to highlight.
4. Show how you can achieve a gold star
Now that you have given the background into what Influencer Marketing is and have shown the results that other brands are achieving, you need to explain why you think it is relevant for your business and how you plan on achieving your own Influencer Marketing gold star status. This is the point you need to reveal how it will add value to your business.
The most effective way to do this is to show that you have already put thought into your own Influencer Marketing plan. As an Influencer Marketing platform, we have experience in planning campaigns and have developed a 6-step model to make building a successful plan easier. In short, a solid Influencer Marketing plan will specify the target market, propose a campaign that meets the business objectives, identify relevant influencers, explain how workflow and logistics will be managed, as well as how you will track the results.
Tip: Having a plan instils more confidence that the additional investment has potential to add value. Ensure that you showcase what you foresee as being the potential return on investment for the new budget allocation. Use your Influencer Marketing plan to propose not only how you will achieve your first gold star, but also how it is sustainable to be awarded ongoing gold stars.
5. Be ready to answer “Are we there yet?”
Once you have buy-in and approval to go ahead, first give yourself a pat on the back and then be prepared to answer many eager progress questions. Trying something new and innovative is not just exciting for you, but all the stakeholders involved. You will be anxious to prove your campaign victorious and your boss will want regular updates on the status and results.
Tip: There are Influencer Marketing platforms and tools which make tracking your campaign results easy. This is important to not only showcase success, but also to justify ongoing Influencer Marketing budget. Investment in tools like, Webfluential, help you answer the question, “Are we there yet”, with confidence and provide all of the relevant data of the journey.
The tips I have shared are intended to help you put your best foot forward when explaining Influencer Marketing to your boss. Just remember that you know the audience you need to pitch to best – so tweak and personalise your content to what is most relevant to them.
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