August 26, 2015 11:15 am
Published by Kirsty Sharman
Editors note: Our SA franchise CEO, Kirsty Sharman, recently shared her thoughts in an article for Social Media Today on her recommendations of ways to work with influencers you have probably never thought of. Experience on our own platform has taught us that there are far more advantages than you realise and brands are stepping out of their comfort zones to experiment. Read more on Kirsty’s thoughts below.
Everyday we see more and more content around Influencer Marketing. How to find top social influencers, how to connect with them, case studies on brands who rock Influencer Marketing. This tells us that Influencer Marketing is no longer a trend on the horizon, it’s a reality. What’s exciting for us as Digital Marketers is learning about the added benefits influencers can have on overall campaigns.
The more brands collaborate with influencers, the more we all learn about them as a media channel. And the more we learn, the more value we can add. I’ve always said that the key to a great online media plan is experimentation. The online world changes faster than textbooks can be written – so if you aren’t experimenting, you aren’t learning.
But if you’re reading this article you’re probably the learning type so lets continue.
With 92% of consumers saying they trust word-of-mouth recommendations above all other forms of advertising, this rise of influencer collaboration is unstoppable. The idea of brands maintaining complete control over their messaging is fading into the digital distance. And brands that want to be heard are learning to work with the people their consumers trust most – the people who already influence their target market.
What we’ve learnt building an influencer marketing platform is that working with Influencers has more benefits than you might think. Experimentation has taught us that Influencers can help brands conquer more than just the awareness and consideration part of the marketing funnel. It’s great to see brands stepping outside of their comfort zones and working with influencers to discover new ways to deliver on traditional marketing tactics.
Visit Social Media Today for the full article and Kirsty’s recommendations on innovative ways to work with influencers.
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August 19, 2015 1:51 pm
Published by Murray Legg
Whether you’re a blogger or a brand, you’ve grown and refined your tone and approach to creating and sharing content with your audience over a period of time. The topics you discuss, the articles you share and the amount you engage with people is not only an expression of yourself or your brand, but rewarding on a social, personal and economic front.
We recently wrote about the six steps to building a successful influencer marketing plan, outlining best practice to engage with influencers and achieve meaningful results with your influencer marketing campaigns. But what about the best approach to captivating your audience through the content you create and go on to maximize the shareability of your it?
In 2006, while still at the Huffington Post, Jonah Peretti started BuzzFeed with a small amount of seed funding. It’s gone on to become an internet content hub of huge significance. Peretti has experience in creating content that gets huge traction online. Remember 40 Things That Will Make You Feel Old (3.2 million views), and the 45 Most Powerful Images of 2011 (10.1 million)?
We looked into the online forums and business analyses of the BuzzFeed model and have created a list of tips to putting together great branded content.
Emotionally engaging content does best
The reason kittens and memes tend to be shared so much is their innate emotional connection. By exploring the emotional connection of your content with your audience, you’ll have a good shot at it getting traction. Think about a fitness brand doing a piece on the 15 best workout songs, for example.
Target the “Bored at Work Network”
“Bigger than the BBC, CNN or any traditional media network is the “BWN” and is made up of millions of bored office workers blog, Tweet, Facebook and IM all day.” In the new world of networked media, where links passed via social networks can send millions of pageviews to a site in a matter of minutes, Peretti says the bored-at-work network effectively “decides what content is popular today.”
Employ the mullet strategy
Business in the front, party in the back. YouTube, CNN, BuzzFeed and Huffington Post all have an incredible slick front page that’s visual and able to draw people into their content. Behind the front page, users can argue, comment and fight things out in the comments section. Remember, you wrote emotional content to start with, so give your audience an easy way to discuss it.
If your readers are on your website, make it shareable
Every BuzzFeed article has several icons at the top and bottom of its articles, for sharing on StumbleUpon, Google Plus, and Twitter, among others. Users can also pass judgment on a story using BuzzFeed’s proprietary yellow reaction button system, which include “LOL,” “omg,” “wtf,” “fail,” and “ew.”
Seed the content in fertile land
“Big seed marketing” hinges on the basis that content going viral needs to be different to how a disease goes viral. A virus epidemic starts with a single patient, “patient zero” and has a break out from there. But what if there were many patient zeros, based in different networks, giving your content an opportunity to go on to a wider audience?
Assume people aren’t reading your content on your website
“What if you assume people’s home page isn’t your site but Facebook or Twitter or StumbleUpon, or one of these social sites?” Repurpose your content and share it on your social channels to reach a wider audience.
Sign up as a marketer if you would like to find out more or start using our platform to run successful Influencer Marketing campaigns.
References:
http://www.businessweek.com/printer/articles/14770-buzzfeed-the-ad-model-for-the-facebook-era
http://www.techtimes.com/articles/38013/20150306/buzzfeed-make-money.htm
https://hbr.org/2007/05/viral-marketing-for-the-real-world
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August 18, 2015 12:14 pm
Published by Kirsty Sharman
This blog post was originally written by Ruan Fourie.
What does the league, reach, relevance and resonance scores on your Webfluential Influencer Profile mean? It’s a question that it a lot of our influencers and marketers have asked.
It’s time we explain Influencer Scores in more detail
This post will be the first in a series of posts that explain the core elements of Webfluential’s Influencers scores: league, reach, relevance and resonance.
Understanding influence is both an art and a science. As we’re in the business of suggesting the right influencers for a particular brand and campaign objective, we had to look into the maths behind each influencer’s content. Not an easy task, and certainly not something we expect you to find incredibly interesting, but we want to share our thinking nonetheless.
What is league?
League is a score that ranges from 1 – 5. Influencers with higher reach when compared to other Webfluential influencers end up in higher leagues. Influencers with lower reach potential, but an ability to be highly engaging, are generally league 4 or 5. It’s important to remember that our scores are calculated based on data we compile from all the influencers on the Webfluential platform.
Is a higher or lower league score better?
If Lady Gaga was signed up to Webfluential as a Twitter influencer she would most likely be put into league 1 because she has the potential to reach a massive audience with her almost 50 million strong Twitter following. She doesn’t have the time (or perhaps inclination) to have engaging conversations with each of her little Monsters. But an influencer in League 4 or 5 probably is interested in the conversation, and does more than raise awareness, but can actually influence an engagement or conversion to a sale.
Will I get more jobs for having a specific league score?
No. Each campaign has it’s own specific objectives and marketers will look for influencers that will help them reach those objectives.
Some campaigns are about generating traffic, so influencers that can best drive traffic will suit the campaign objective. Getting people to talk about a brand might be the objective for another campaign, then influencers that generate a lot of engagement will be included in the campaign. Typically the platform suggests a mix of influencers across all Leagues for a specific campaign.
What is the purpose of having a league score?
We want to find the right influencers to help marketers meet the objectives of their Influencer Marketing campaign and with our platform we make the process as easy as possible. League score helps us and marketers find the right influencers to meet the campaign goals. Just because you’re not in League 1 doesn’t mean you aren’t in the Premier League. What is of far more importance is your resonance and relevance, which we will discuss in two upcoming posts.
How to check your league position?
Log in to Webfluential by clicking here and looking at the scoring of your channels on the Dashboard. An important thing to check is that your channels are still authorised to link to Webfluential. Go to the “My Profile” section and click on the “Test Token” button (shown in the image below) for each of your channels.
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