September 30, 2014 9:35 am
Published by Murray Legg
The reality of a digital path to purchase is covered in three steps, illustrated in the image below. Create Awareness > Encourage Consideration > Acquire Customer. It is evident that a brand can influence a consumer on this purchasing journey, and so influencer marketing was born.
Research by Google and SocialTimes is indicating a significant trend towards online research and peer endorsement of a brand or product before purchase. Brands can ensure that they have their products and offerings discussed not just on their own websites, but on influential blogs and social channels by making use of influencer marketing campaigns.
For a recent study on how Smirnoff got this right, read our recent blog post here.
Webfluential scores influencers across three metrics – reach, resonance and relevance. The reach, or audience size, only makes sense if the impact of an influencer’s content is engaging (relevance) and is shared with additional audiences (resonance). Algorithms calculate scores hourly, so when influencers are used for a campaign, their scores are highly reflective of their influence at that time.
We ran an internal report last week on South Africa’s top 15 bloggers – influencers currently offering best value across these metrics:
- Offering an engaged audience (high resonance and relevance)
- Localised, niche audience across age groups and interests
- Best value for money from a cost/post point of view
- Ability to reach across various channels, including their blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube pages
In alphabetical order, these influencers are listed below. Influencers have given consent that their names be shared publicly.
Between 10 and 5 (Arts; Creative; Lifestyle)
Don’t Party (Entertainment; Sports)
Geeks Doing Stuff (Gaming; Technology; Pets)
Getaway Blog (Travel)
Gevaaalik.com (Entertainment; Music; Lifestyle)
JHB Live (Entertainment; Music; Lifestyle)
Just Curious (Celebrity; Lifestyle; Entertainment)
Lazygamer (Gaming; Technology)
Life Is Savage (Entertainment; Celebrities)
Memeburn (Technology; News)
One Large Prawn (Creative; Entertainment; Photography)
The Pretty Blog (Creative; Fashion; Lifestyle)
The Wheel Deal (Motoring)
Travelstart Blog (Travel)
Watkykjy (Entertainment; Music; Lifestyle)
Over 1500 influencers globally are registered on Webfluential, reaching a collective audience of over 25 million people. To create a campaign, simply sign up as a marketer here, and try it out.
Image credits – Kirsty Sharman; Social Times
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September 16, 2014 11:03 am
Published by Kirsty Sharman
Two of the lesser known benefits of influencer marketing—the tactic to have credible digital personalities talk about your brand—are Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and social conversation fire-starters.
Search Engine Optimization is the process of optimizing a website as a means to obtain a high ranking organic placement in search results. Higher placements in search results usually yield more visitors to the website.
There are over 200 factors which are processed by Google to determine where a website appears on its results page following a search query. One of the more important factors is the number and quality of inbound links to the website.
During the month of June, Smirnoff launched their #ExploreTheNight marketing campaign to promote the latest addition to their product offering; Smirnoff Ice Double Black with Guarana. The campaign created awareness around the launch by asking people how they explore the night and encouraging them to add their experiences to the Explore The Night platform using the hashtag #ExploreTheNight.
Webfluential was tasked with enhancing the reach and creating online talkability around the Explore The Night Campaign — using the right influencers in order to get the message to the right audience.
Besides for the obvious short term benefit of talkability, our influencer marketing campaign yielded a long-term benefit which will add value to Explore The Night throughout its duration. The Google search results for the brand initiative illustrate the benefit of SEO – the top five links from the chosen influencers rank higher than the Smirnoff owned website.
The second benefit influencer marketing highlights is the ability to start the conversation tone and sentiment and influence the volume of discussion on social platforms. By investing into the right influencers addressing your target market, and providing great content to discuss, social amplification can leverage the distance that the conversation travels.
Recently, Webfluential was briefed to run an awareness campaign for Nando’s Mass Hysteria. The volume of social discussion is given in the graph below. Note the seeding of conversation by the right influencers, driving conversation from their audience.
In the digital age anyone can create a community and cultivate an audience that trusts the value of the content provided. Consumers choose their brand ambassadors and the communities they belong to. The platforms and digital insights available to marketers has changed the notion of influence such that brands don’t have to aggregate their own audiences anymore. Influencer marketing allows brands to leverage the audiences and communities of trusted influencers.
Sign up as a marketer here to run your own influencer search. Try out your first campaign.
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July 7, 2014 10:02 am
Published by Cara Shepherd
The days of Katy Perry on a billboard, her piercing, Photoshop-enhanced blue eyes urging you to buy her fragrance, are numbered. Brands are shifting their budgets to digital, and online influencers are the new blogging, tweeting, hash-tagging billboards.
You’re clicking through to their blogs during your coffee break. You’re leaving comments on their posts. You know who we’re talking about: in your Twitter and/or Instagram feeds, you’re following someone who is your kind of cool – in a way, you’ve handpicked your brand ambassadors.
One of the biggest misconceptions about influencers, by brands and followers alike, is that they just got lucky. The reality is that there’s no such thing as an accidental influencer. Social media is a fickle friend with a short memory. Even if you unwittingly start trending, or spark a meme, if you’re not quick to capitalise on your 15 minutes of internet fame, that initial rush of follows, likes and shares will soon dwindle.
Although each of these online celebrities has acquired their fame and notoriety in their own special way there are some commonalities between their success that we can learn from.
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