Confused yet?

You’re not the only one. Our latest research shows most marketers and consumers feel like there’s a difference between influencers and creators. But, describing the difference is a bit tricky.

Influencers create content. Creators create content. Customers also create content. Yet, they create content with different results in mind.

What’s the difference between the content created by influencers, creators, customers, and UGC creators?

Here’s your cheat sheet.

What’s the Difference Between Influencers, Creators, User-Generated Content, and UGC Creators?

The main difference between these different types of creators and content is the goal behind creation. Influencers create content for a different reason than customers. Creators make content that might look similar but isn’t the same as UGC Creator content. 

Use this guide to figure out the difference between influencer content, creator content, user-generated content, and UGC creator content with one quick look.

Influencers

Influencers influence people to convert and buy – and typically require an engaged audience. They’ve built a marketing channel that’s aligned with a specific type of buyer. By creating organic lifestyle or niche content (ex. B2B content), they’ve created authority in a specific industry. Influencers share products with their audience with the goal of conversions. They get paid to create content and distribute it across their social channels.

Leah Itsines is a food blogger and influencer. She’s created authority in the food industry by sharing her recipes, selling cookbooks, and creating a program to help people align with a healthy lifestyle. Philips partnered with Leah to create content about their air fryer and distribute that content to her 600,000 Instagram followers.

Influencer marketing is best for brands looking for a specific result from content. Campaigns for promotional deals, new products, contests, and giveaways align best with influencer marketing. And remember – you don’t need to burn through your marketing budget by hiring an A-list influencer. Seventy-nine percent of a micro-influencer audience searched for more information about a product, 65% visited the brand’s website or app, and 46% made a purchase online or offline. Find influencers aligned with your buyers and create a partnership for content and distribution across their platforms if you’re looking for conversions.

Creators

Creators create high-quality content that’s meant to engage your ideal audience. Creator content is less focused on conversions in comparison to influencer content. Creator content has more self-expression because it’s less focused on conversions and prioritizes engagement. This type of content is great for helping brand awareness and building a relationship with your brand.

HubSpot is building out their creator network to grow brand awareness for their CRM platform. Unlike influencer marketing, these creators don’t focus the entirety of their content around prompting HubSpot. The HubSpot creators host podcasts focused on their expertise and HubSpot runs ads about their platform throughout the episode (they even cross-promote their other creators!). Two famous HubSpot creators are Sam Parr and Shaan Puri, the hosts of the My First Million podcast, which garners about 150,000 downloads per episode.

Creators are best utilized with brands focused on awareness. The self-expression aspect of creator content doesn’t align with a high conversion rate. But, it does align well with nurturing relationships and turning creators into authorities. Not only can brands gain more awareness by utilizing creators but they can also have the creators act as influencers to market specific campaigns and promotions in the future.

User-Generated Content

UGC is authentic content created by fans and customers (regardless of quality). The best UGC is typically created without expectation – when a customer genuinely loves your brand and wants to tell everyone about it. It is word-of-mouth in its purest form. Unlike influencer and creator content, it wasn’t created because of an editorial calendar. UGC gets created in the authentic experiences buyers have with brands.

Brands can find user-generated content everywhere. From Instagram Stories to Yelp reviews, UGC for brands lives on dozens of platforms. The key is collecting it so you can use it in your marketing campaigns. TINT does the hard work of finding UGC posted about your brand. Automate the process while organizing incoming UGC so your marketing team can easily find assets related to specific campaigns, offers, and products. Then, easily repurpose assets across your marketing channels.

Twitter ran their billboards campaign entirely focused on user-generated content. Instead of paying a marketing team to create copy about Twitter, they used funny tweets to show people what they’re missing from not using the social media platform.

User-generated content is essential for brands looking to build brand trust, engagement, and conversions. Adding user-generated content can lead to a 29% increase in web conversions – and 79% of consumers trust online reviews as much as in-person recommendations. By adding customer voices to your marketing channel brands become more trustworthy.

UGC Creators 

UGC Creators get paid to create staged UGC – or content that looks like UGC. People are now getting paid to create high-quality (but staged) UGC. Unlike organic user-generated content, UGC Creators get sent a product and are given specific points to hit in their videos or captions. Then, the brand repurposes the UGC content across their marketing channels. Unlike influencer marketing, UGC Creators aren’t necessarily required to repurpose content across their channels.

Mindy Thomas runs a UGC Creator agency that works with brands to create high-converting content. Brands come to Mindy when they need specific content. For example, new brands that don’t have a customer base utilize Mindy’s content to repurpose across their paid ads channels. Mindy explains the sentiment around UGC Creator content, “You don’t need flashy and polished, you need real and informative with a splash of entertainment.”

UGC Creator content is aligned with brands that don’t have a UGC Studio full of available content. It’s a great starting point to help show your audience what type of content you’d like them to create (50% of consumers wish brands would guide them in creating content). UGC Creator content is also ideal for paid marketing campaigns.

Influencers, Creators, UGC: Which is the Best?

The best content creator to use in your marketing strategy depends on your goals and budget. 

Ideally, using a combination of these content creators diversifies your content mix and creates a holistic marketing approach that targets buyers at all stages of the funnel.

Better yet, it creates a flexible marketing strategy that adapts to your changing goals and budget.

With an ambassador marketing program full of highly engaging and converting audience, fan, and buyer content you’ll keep your editorial calendar full while having the assets for any campaign your team can think of.

Schedule a TINT demo and start automatically bringing in the UGC your audience is already creating for your brand and products.

The post Influencers, Creators, UGC: What’s the Difference?  appeared first on TINT.

Celebrity endorsement was once the “it” thing.  Brands like Coca-Cola thrived off these partnerships, and they worked. Actors, musicians, athletes, and celebrities of all stripes fought to get those brand deals. Fans were quick to consume cereal, beverages, and content that featured their favorite star.

When social became part of our everyday lives, a new type of influencer endorsement emerged. These newfound social media influencers had 100,000+ followers and a newsfeed with perfectly placed products—and it worked.

But then, we saw the rise in another new type of influencer that doesn’t have a six-figure following. These influencers are people with hundreds or thousands of followers who likely don’t even consider themselves ‘influencers.’

Marketers used to agree, but this year, they’re no longer thinking that way. In our 2022 State of User-Generated Content Report, we surveyed boutique to enterprise businesses to see how their marketing did in 2021 and their plans for 2022.

Marketers are happy to work with mega-influencers who have the engagement to back up their following—but they’re also focusing in on the influencers that used to get passed by for brand deals.

Here are the 3 types of influencers to leverage in 2022.

3 Types of Influencers That Can Promote Your Brand

“Brands are realizing that overproduced content is always going to perform less than content that feels more organic, natural, and human-centered. That’s why you see platforms like TikTok working so well – because on TikTok, you might see an ad and not even know it’s an ad.”

 

Jayde Powell, Head of Social, Sunwink

Customers

Mega-influencers with 100,000+ followers can make a great video about your product (after signing a contract with your brand). The problem is consumers trust content created by people more than brands: 72% of consumers believe that reviews and testimonials submitted by customers are more credible than the brand talking about their products (SOUGC)

As soon as a viewer sees #ad or realizes this influencer was sponsored to talk about this product, the content becomes branded. 

When happy customers create organic content because they’re excited about their product—there’s no brand involved. When someone sits down to eat at their favorite restaurant and takes a photo of a volcanic dessert, unboxes their new king-size mattress from a deceivingly small box, or shows the backend of their new software tool, they create user-generated content. This UGC leads to higher engagement and conversions and is exactly the content marketers are seeing consumers trust over branded content.

Nano-Influencers

Nano-influencers have 1,000-10,000 followers and used to be looked over for brand deals. Brands focused on the more glamorous types of influencers: big-name celebrities or mega-influencers touting 100,000+ person followings. In 2021, we’re seeing leading brands realize the power of the nano-influencer. 

Seventy-five percent of marketers are currently working with small (less than 1,000 followers), nano- (1,000-10,000 followers), and micro-influencers (10,000 to 25,000 followers).

Not only are nano-influencers more cost-effective than celebrities and high-profile influencers, but marketers are finding they have a stronger connection with their audience. Nano-influencers can get more engagement (by percent) on a post than an influencer with 10x the following. These influencers have more pull with their audience and, because they have more of a niche following, can connect with brands they know their followers are interested in.

Employees

In recent years, we’ve seen a few brands start to place their employees as influencers for their brand. More companies began to talk about who was behind-the-scenes, even giving their employees time to shine through company-generated content. Our 2022 State of User-Generated Content Report finds that 52% of communications + HR teams regularly use employee-generated content (EGC) in communications channels.

EGC is re-shared up to 24 times more when distributed by employees instead of a brand and can get 8 times more engagement than brand shared content. We’re finding that employees can get up to 10 times more followers than a brand’s corporate account and get more organic social engagement. Employees can establish more marketing channels and touchpoints for consumers to connect with brands they love.

Check out Guide to Employee-Generated Content for more.

Guide to Employee-Generated Content: What Is It, Why You Need It, and How To Do It

These are the 3 types of influencers brands can leverage in 2021 to increase engagement and conversions. Nano-influencers can get paid to create content for your brand and you can ask your employees to create behind-the-scenes content or to share your content across their social platforms. How do you get customers to create content for your brand?

How To Get Customers To Create Content You Can Repurpose

Tell Your Customers, Fans, and Employees What To Create

More than half of consumers wish that brands would tell them what type of content to create and share. Brands that clearly define what content to create, when to create it, and how to share it can turn their customers into genuine brand advocates.

Encourage customers to create UGC by asking them to post on Instagram as they unbox their product, to share their new purchase as a Tweet, or show themselves using your product and, of course, use your custom hashtag strategy to tag it. 

Incentivize Customers To Create UGC

Another way teams can obtain more UGC is by running campaigns and contests that reward fans and customers for creating and sharing their best content.

If you’re just starting and don’t have any UGC examples to show them, create your own so your customers know exactly what you’re looking for. By featuring UGC across your marketing channels, you’ll inspire more of the user-generated content you’re looking for by modeling the exact sort of behavior you’re looking for.

Influencer marketing in 2022 is changing. Celebrities and mega-influencers are not the only influencers, and sometimes they’re not even the best fit for your products. By using customers, nano-influencers, and employees as influencers for your brand—our State of User-Generated Content Report shows that you’ll be increasing content engagement and conversions.

The State of User-Generated Content report cross references survey results from both marketers and consumers. Get the need-to-know insights on your audience to improve your marketing strategy. Download here.

If you don’t have a way to find, collect, organize, and redistribute UGC and organic influencer content across your digital and in-person marketing channels, schedule a demo with a TINT team member today.

The post Influencer Marketing in 2022: 3 Types of Influencers To Focus On appeared first on TINT.

As eCommerce and social commerce have become our go-to channels for shopping and entertainment, the role of influencers has become central to helping brands convert new customers.

For growth-driven brands, the key to success will be understanding the biggest influencer marketing trends for 2022. 

How are brands getting the most from influencer marketing in 2022?
What types of influencers and social media channels are the most important this year?
What is the future of influencer marketing?

Get the answers to these questions and more in this round-up of the top 7 influencer marketing trends for 2022.

The Top 7 Influencer Marketing Trends For 2022

1. Market growth 

Once considered the ‘Wild West’ of digital marketing, influencer marketing is now a proven and adaptable sales-boosting strategy. It’s a cost-effective marketing channel for brands big and small, so it’s no surprise that the influencer marketing industry is continuing to grow in 2022. In fact, it’s predicted to reach $16.4B this year according to Influencer Marketing Hub. 

Now more than ever before, brands are investing in influencer marketing to strengthen relationships with new audiences and turn social media into a sales generation channel thanks to creator partnerships. 

2. Brands harness the power of first-party data in influencer marketing

Marketers are facing many challenges when it comes to accessing third-party data. Google is planning to phase out third-party cookies by 2023. While 62% of iPhone users are opting-out of app usage tracking following Apple’s iOS 14.5 update. This creates an environment where leveraging first-party data for marketing is more important than ever. 

For the influencer marketing industry, first-party data helps brands identify new potential partnerships. Businesses are analyzing the consumer data they already own to pinpoint valuable customers to activate in loyalty schemes, brand ambassador campaigns, affiliate programs, and influencer marketing partnerships. By deep-diving into their customer’s demographic data, purchase history, and social reach, brands can surface new channel partners from their own customer database. 

This is improving the influencer identification and onboarding processes. Meanwhile, it’s allowing brands to save time on negotiations and briefings as your influential customers already know and love your brand.

3. TikTok influencers drive shopping trends

We know that social media plays a key role in the online shopping journey. Indeed, research from TINT highlights that 85% of consumers use social media to research companies. Yet corporate content won’t get you very far on TikTok. But there’s no need to worry. TikTok creators can help brands to build a presence on the platform that’s so popular in 2022. They are known for their highly engaging and entertaining content which doesn’t feel at all like an ad. That’s what makes these creators so effective at promoting brands authentically on TikTok. 

Influencers on TikTok are tapping into viral trends on the platform and featuring products in their posts which go on to have a massive reach and launch a new shopping trend. Brands have seen a 700% spike in sales in a single week thanks to TikTok.  That’s the magic behind the #tiktokmademebuyit hashtag which highlights the effect of TikTok creator content on influencing shopping decisions. These TikToks also make their way onto other platforms, like Instagram Reels, Youtube Shorts, and Youtube compilation videos, allowing the trend to reach those consumers that may not actually be on TikTok.

With the knowledge that 76% of people have bought something based on a recommendation from someone else, it’s clear to see why brands need to harness the effect of content creators if they want to see an uptick in sales this year!

4. Influencer-generated content converts awareness to sales 

The impact influencers can have on sales applies to all social media channels. Almost all social networks have rolled out social commerce features such as native in-app shops or product catalogs. With this in mind, brands can collaborate with influencers of all types from nano, to micro, macro, or KOL to create authentic product recommendations that can be used at key moments of the purchase journey. 

By sharing content such as unboxing videos, shopping hauls, or how-to guides, influencers can offer product information and social proof, which helps brands target customers at the ‘consideration’ stage of their shopping journey. When it comes to conversion, brands can use influencers in promo code campaigns, affiliate marketing programs, or even live social shopping events. 

Influencer marketing has officially gone beyond promoting brand awareness and boosting social engagement to becoming a scalable and attributable strategy for driving sales for your business.

5. Employee-generated content brings additional authenticity

The advantages to leveraging authentic user-generated-content aren’t limited to a brand’s customer base. Businesses can also harness content created by their employees to increase online reach and engagement for their brand. After all, people like connecting with people, not brands. This explains why posts such as @ricky.federici’s, who’s TikTok video of him creating a Baconator burger earned over 178K views, gain so much traction. 

@ricky.federici Reply to @joegoose24 drop a comment in the chat if u think u could eat one of these bad boys #wendys #bacon #fyp #foryoupage #fy #foryou #baconator ♬ original sound – iammassis

Whether you’re a B2C or a B2B company, your employees are subject-matter experts and perfectly placed to speak on behalf of your brand. Consider encouraging your employees to share thought leadership articles on Linkedin, a behind-the-scenes Instagram Story, or live video from an event. 

6. Video content reigns supreme

The soaring popularity of video content is part of a wider content marketing trend. As of last year, people were watching an average of 100 minutes of online video per day.  Influencer marketers should be tapping into this trend through influencer-generated video content as 55% of consumers are using video to guide their purchasing decisions. A well-timed video from their favorite creator could seal the deal for someone who’s considering buying from your brand. 

What’s more, there have never been so many options for leveraging video content across social media. Whether it’s live video streams on Twitch, a live shopping feed on YouTube, or a 30 second TikTok video, there are so many ways to get engaging video content in front of your audience. With so many options and so much popularity, 71% of marketers plan on increasing video efforts in 2022.

If you don’t have the budget for expensive TV ads or an in-house video-editing team, then collaborating with influencers who are experts in content creation is definitely the way to go!

Related article:

Brief #102: Visual storytelling with video

7. Social platforms are finding new ways to pay creators

We’re already seeing many new ways for content creators to earn money via social media platforms which helps to professionalize their role in marketing. Social media platforms know the value that influencers bring to their audiences. Therefore, they’re investing in new incentives to reward influencers who are posting on their platforms to help generate more engagement and attract new users. Let’s take a closer look. 

• Instagram – In 2021, Instagram announced they would trial a native affiliate tool that would allow creators to promote products available to buy directly on Instagram and earn a commission from their sales. A new initiative being tested already this year is creator subscriptions where creators can set a subscription price for their fans to be able to access exclusive content.
• TikTok – They have committed to spending £231 million over the next 3 years on the Creator Fund. This program has been set up to reward creators on the platform who have at least 10,000 followers and have achieved at least 100,000 video views during the last 30 days. Individual creators can also receive gifts and tips from their fans which translate into monetary payments for their work. 
• Twitter – The platform has already rolled out a subscription model called ‘Super Follows’ where followers can pay a monthly fee to their favorite influencers in exchange for exclusive content. The platform is continuing to invest in helping creators become more professional and manage their earnings with the launch of their ‘Creator Dashboard’ which is currently being tested. 
• YouTube – During 2021 and 2022 YouTube will spend $100M rewarding top creators through the YouTube Shorts Fund. In 2022 YouTube has also announced plans to bring in ways for fans to shop directly via Shorts and integrate fan-funded features like ‘Super Chat’. 

With additional opportunities to supplement their income, we’re seeing more users working full-time as content creators, with even more means to hone their craft. This is great news, as brands are seeing even greater talent rise through the ranks while the industry continues to mature. 

These top 7 trends for influencer marketing in 2022 show how the industry is adapting to the fast acceleration of eCommerce and social commerce. 

We can see how brands are putting authenticity first when it comes to recruiting new channel partners and looking to their own network of organic advocates as the way to drive the most conversions. 

Creators have proven themselves to be valuable partners not only to brands but also to social media platforms who are now taking the lead in funding and training the next generation of influencers. 

This blog was contributed by the team at Upfluence, the leading influencer marketing platform for eCommerce.

The post Top Influencer Marketing Trends for 2022 appeared first on TINT.

Direct-to-consumer marketing initially seemed to go against the laws of buying decisions. People would always want to lay on a mattress before buying it, right? A safe assumption has turned into a completely wrong perspective. It turns out people are more than happy to buy a mattress on the internet (as long as there’s a refund policy involved) and the proof is in the profit.

Casper used social media, paid ads, and user-generated content to take their 2014 founded startup to $100 million in sales in less than two years. It’s one of the hundreds of thousands of DTC brands, like Allbirds, Warby Parker, Dollar Shave Club, and Bonobos, that have shaken up retail, taking what was once a heavily offline retailer experience into an online customer journey.

The direct-to-consumer trend wasn’t a rocket that took off in one moment. It was the hare that used consumer sentiment and current events to edge its way into a competition for retail brands and eventually became an essential part of their business model. Social commerce has further accelerated the trend.

Why Should Retail Brands Care About Direct-to-Consumer?

Direct-to-consumer eCommerce sales reached $129 billion in 2021, up from $111.5 billion in 2020.

Apparel brands like Nike are “…doubling down on our approach with Nike Digital and our owned stores, as well as a smaller number of strategic partners who share our vision to create a consistent, connected, and modern shopping experience.”

Legacy brands like Nestlé are looking at direct-to-consumer as added shelf space.” Nestle’s North America Executive VP and CMO Antonio Sciuto explained to Think Google, “We need to think about search with the same obsession that we think about our store shelving. It’s exactly the same.” Their DTC marketing strategy has shaped into subscriptions for their products like Nestea and San Pellegrino.

As established consumer brands turn to digital, it’ll continue to push customer expectations towards online retailers. Two out of every five Americans have already purchased directly from a brand or manufacturer online, and e-commerce customers will  reach a new high of 103 million by 2022.

Shopify Plus covers Molson Coors Beverage Company’s shift to direct-to-consumer (sparked by the COVID-19 2020 pandemic). Their D2C strategy ended up growing sales by 188% month of month.

Without the need for brick-and-mortar rent, in-person employees, and the necessary technology and equipment to run a store, the profit margins for D2C are higher than that of in-person shopping experiences. Add a subscription model and retail brands can see a higher customer lifetime value and potentially more frequent orders as customers lean into the convenience of at-home delivery (while getting customer insights they never had access to before).

Direct-to-consumer is becoming the obvious choice for retail brands, but the question is: are you ready to make the shift?

Checklist: Should You Go Direct-to-Consumer?

Going direct-to-consumer is more complex than setting up a website and hitting publish. Backend fulfillment and technology have to get situated before you can confidently take a brick-and-mortar retail business online.

#1: Is your goal to increase sales, customer lifetime value, and order frequency?

With DTC, you’ll be able to manufacture and ship your products directly to your buyers, increasing profit margins and customer lifetime value (thanks to marketing strategies we’ll outline later). The DTC model creates more touch points that lead to brand loyalty (and more customer data!).

Retailers are adding online stores to their mix and going direct-to-consumer faster than ever before.

#2: Do you have a supply chain and fulfillment process that can handle online orders?

Your fulfillment process will have to integrate with your brick-and-mortar store and your online store. If both stores use the same inventory, your brick-and-mortar store needs to notify your online store of quantities for different SKUs.

Figuring out this process ahead of time is crucial to ensuring your online store gets a good reputation. If the customer experience involves sending “Oops, we’re actually out of stock!” emails after they’ve purchased, you’ll lose their trust, which is a huge part of the online shopping experience.

Only go direct-to-consumer when your fulfillment process can handle both your brick-and-mortar store and your online store—or suffer the logistical and brand damaging consequences.

#3: Can you set up an online store?

Setting up an online store for D2C can be easy thanks to marketplace platforms like Shopify and BigCommerce. But, it’s still a question of whether retailers should outsource, build on a marketplace, or take on the entire project. By outsourcing, you can get your online store set up and work through the kinks faster than trying to figure it out yourself, but this is only the start of the journey and there are thousands of variables to take into consideration.

Depending on the products you sell, you also might need to bring in another fulfillment center. You can work with a local wholesaler or look on marketplace sites for the products you’re looking to sell. (Your online store can sell far more SKUs than your consumer retail brick and mortar stores could ever hold in inventory.) Walmart started doing this years ago.

Set up your online store to be secure, fast, easy to navigate, and trustworthy.

#4: Are you ready to hire expert DTC marketing help?

Your DTC marketing strategy needs to be constantly improving, there are always areas that can be optimized. To get more eyes on your store through SEO, content, and paid ads, and drive higher conversions you’ll need the help of a team of experienced digital marketers. One important element of a high impact DTC marketing strategy is UGC. Adding user-generated content across your website and product pages to make your site more trustworthy. UGC in emails such as abandoned cart notifications can turn an “almost sale” into a converted sale. And UGC in organic and paid social ads can attract new customers while rewarding and recognizing your repeat customers.

The goal of marketing your online store is to bring more awareness to your brand, traffic to your website, and conversions. It’ll also help establish customer loyalty, as your content adds more touch points to your customer experience. Unless you have a large, loyal audience—getting your online store off the ground might take some time.  One way to accelerate this is to work with a team of digital marketing experts that have experience in driving results for online consumer retail stores. Regardless, social commerce and paid social ads should be at the top of your list as you invest in marketing.

Here are a few specifics you’ll want to consider when marketing your online retail store.

How Do Direct-to-Consumer Companies Approach Marketing?

Just like Casper, Nestle, and Nike, your approach to marketing your online store is based on the successful strategies of the DTC brands that paved the path before you. Their strategies have brought in billions of dollars in consumer purchases, showing exactly what a brand needs to make an online sale.

Strategy #1: Use micro-influencers to spread awareness

DTC’s and traditional retailers alike are tapping into the power of micro-influencers to share their message. A micro-influencer has less than 100,000 followers, high engagement, and a niche audience. They have more pull with their followers than influencers with a million-person audience (even A-list celebs!) with a 7x increase in engagement compared to mega influencers. Eighty percent of social media Livestream viewers say they’re likely to buy a product as a result of the endorsement of their favorite influencers.

Glossier has been using micro-influencers for years to grow its Instagram following and to sell more products. What initially started as a beauty blog has turned into an established online beauty commerce business that is now adding brick-and-mortar stores to its portfolio. Founder and CEO Emily Weiss explained to Entrepreneur that “70% of online sales and traffic comes through peer-to-peer referrals.” Glossier continues to add micro-influencer content to their social media and product pages to increase engagement and conversions.

Strategy #2: Ask customers to make content

If you have any amount of customers, user-generated content about your brand is being created every day. Choosing to leverage it in your marketing strategy or to let it expire on social media is a marketing choice (make wise choices!). UGC can be repurposed across marketing channels to drive greater results.

• Ads based on user-generated content receive 4 times higher click-through rates and a 50% drop in cost-per-click compared to average ads.
• One-quarter of search results (25%) for the world’s biggest brands are links to user-generated content.
• Forty-eight percent of shoppers claim that user-generated content is a great method for them to discover new products.

CBInsights shows the comparison of responses on social media to BarkBox and their established competitors like PETCO, PetSmart, and Pet Supplies Plus. Their favorites and replies far surpass those of any of their competitors.

Successful DTC brands like BarkBox brilliantly repurpose this user-generated content into content for their social channels. CBInsights compares BarkBox’s content to PETCO’s below, showing how UGC can drastically improve content quality (while reducing content production costs).

Strategy #3: Measure the right DTC metrics

Direct-to-consumer metrics and retail metrics aren’t the same. DTC success isn’t quantified in the same way that retail success is (although you’re aiming for revenue in both cases). While retail metrics look more like daily sales, with DTC you can create more predictability around how many people will visit your online store each day. Based on your content marketing, search engine optimization, and paid ads, you can figure out how many site visitors you need per day to get your average order volume.

That’s the beauty of a D2C model. While attaining that predictability will require the help of a marketing professional, you can turn an unpredictable offline retail store into a predictable online D2C store—while continuing to work in-store.

BigCommerce shares four metrics for eCommerce brands to focus on:

• Purchases
• Repeat purchases
• Average order value
• Lifetime value of revenue

With TINT, brands increase on-site purchases by adding user-generated content to their marketing funnels and use Attention Score to ensure that they are using the very best visual content.

What Happens if D2C marketing is Just a Trend?

Direct-to-consumer saw a huge spike thanks to COVID-19, a spike that led to 10 years of eCommerce growth in only 90 days. As Shopify Plus’ Global Director of Marketing, Hana Abaza explains, “During the pandemic, direct-to-consumer brands with thriving ecommerce experiences were able to very quickly and easily pivot their marketing and messaging, their energy. They didn’t have to fundamentally rethink their business model. They could focus on very different things because they were at a significant advantage.”

But does that mean direct-to-consumer is around to stay? Or will brands use time and resources to create online stores that will become irrelevant in a few years?

Technology will continue to shift the online shopping experience. Online shopping has yet to decrease in growth in the past five years, so it would take an opposite-of-COVID-19 Black Swan event to change consumer habits. What we may see in the future is a lack of websites in direct-to-consumer. As Facebook and TikTok create in-app shoppable experiences, retail brands might not need to pay their annual website subscription service to make sales. While this could reduce friction, it could also develop data problems in the future—as apps control the data you have over your customers.

We’ll have to wait to see how commerce plays out, but until then, we know what’s working today. And that is UGC.

Schedule a TINT demo today to learn how to drive DTC marketing results.

The post Should Your Retail Brand Go DTC? appeared first on TINT.

Your fans and customers don’t have to spend a ton of money to create a basic video filming and streaming setup. Authenticity is the most important aspect of effective social media videos and he set up for an efficient space for shooting videos can be inexpensive. This guide will serve you and for teaching your fans and customers to create the very best video content for your brand.

What You Should Consider Before Starting

There are a few things you may want to keep in mind before jumping in.

Budget. The cost of creating your own content can be expensive. How much money are you going to designate to build your filming studio at home? Considering a good quality camera, lighting and editing software, you can certainly achieve a professional outcome with around $100, consider that the quality of your equipment does have an impact on the final result. Evaluate your options, always considering the available space you have at home and your skill level.

Space. The best would be to dedicate a room, especially for your filming purposes, but if you are tight in space, you can also transform a corner of a room into your video studio area if you don’t mind sharing the space.

The outcome. What are the results you expect to get out of your video productions? What is your objective? Do you want to attract customers? Is this just a hobby? Invest in this according to your plans.

The style. Will you be speaking to the camera directly? Are you going to be demonstrating something that requires a specific point of view in camera, like gardening, cooking in the kitchen or doing yoga in a studio? Will you need any kind of props or equipment for your demonstrations? The space where you decide to set up your filming area should make sense with the expected outcome; deciding on the best scenario for your video production should be considered even before thinking about the required gear and equipment.

Filming Equipment Required for Social Media Videos

Creating social video content can be done really easy; literally, anyone can achieve a compelling social media video with a smartphone, an internet connection and an editing app. But the reality is that successful and engaging content takes some planning time. To really take content to the next level, consider investing in good quality recording equipment since it will impact the video and sound quality.

Camera

For your video studio options, you can use your smartphone since it is an easy way of recording videos, and you can achieve a basic social media type of video. But your best choice would be to have a DSLR camera as your primary shooting device and a smartphone on a tripod for a second camera view.

When it comes to the video mode of your DSLR camera, you can try different lenses. If you are looking for cinematic video quality, a 50mm lens will give you a good view for a waist up shot, but you might want to use a 35mm lens for a wide-angle shot since it can compensate for the lack of space in a room.

When considering a tripod option, go for a clamp-on design that you can mount anywhere and that offers flexibility and the capability to change the camera position easily.

Sound

Built-in microphones are usually limited in capacity and can reduce the overall outcome’s quality; therefore, external microphones are the best option if you want to achieve high-quality video production.

There are a few options to consider:

An adjustable microphone arm or a USB desktop or clamp-on can be a great option if you plan to stay still speaking directly to the camera and won’t be moving your head and shoulders much. Consider a pop filter to eliminate the POP sounds that may appear in your speech.

A wired or Bluetooth lavalier microphone is your best option if you are going to be moving around while filming.

Soundproof treatments. If you need to muffle some external sounds because your filming area has echoes, or is noisy, try to add carpeting, blankets or sound panels to the floors and walls.

Lighting

Professionals use the 3 point lighting technique for video lighting, which consists of:

1. Primary illumination or Key light
2. Filling light, which is used to fill in the shadows created by the primary light.
3. Background light, which is used to add a three-dimensional sense to the shot.

There are other elements that you can include to help improve your lighting, such as:

• Use artificial light only, by blocking natural light to enter your filming area
• The bulbs to create a dimmer or brighter light
• A lightbox that can help maximize the brightness of the scene
• Using halo lamps for filming close-ups as the primary light
• Use a natural light scenario

Editing Software

If you choose to edit your videos on your own, you can evaluate whether to use paid or free editing software, consider which type is available for your computer. There is a wide variety in the market that goes from free apps to expensive software. Choosing the right editing solution will help achieve success, depending on your skill level, needs, and budget.

The Best Places to Set Up Your Video Studio at Home

There are a few things to consider when selecting your filming area:

• Is the area accessible and adequate for setting up and storing the equipment
• Is the lighting sufficient and practical for adapting the light setup
• Does it have a good acoustic for filming?
• Is it easy to set up the filming equipment?

If you are going to be filming outdoors for a gardening show, you will need to set the space up for the shooting, same if you are planning to do a cooking show, you’ll need to set up your kitchen as your filming area. For example, if you will be doing a Yoga class in a spare room, a shed or a garage, set up your ideal Yoga space to convert it into your new filming studio. If you are tight in space, you can even arrange the corner of a room, hang some art, a backdrop or place some sound-absorbing panels to make it look like a dedicated space. Still, the most important thing to consider is to keep the area clean and organized and make sure that it’s not a very distracting spot.

Social Content Planning Tips

If you don’t have a plan, your content can lack structure and coherency. These are a few tips for planning your content:

• Always have a content calendar with a social content weighing strategy where you mark in advance which topics you want to cover and prepare accordingly.
• Create storyboards that will help planning out the structure of the video from beginning to end
• Create stories for your social media channels using short clips taken from the finished video to promote content on different platforms.
• Stay up to date with trending topics check out your favorite brands and influencers to know what’s of interest to your audience.

• Animate your viewers to like and subscribe. Ask your viewers for feedback and to opt into your newsletter or mailing list.
• Interact with subscribers. When someone writes a comment for you, always reply!
• Start collaborations with other influencers. Partner up with an expert on the topic you are covering or with another influencer that can give a different point of view.
• Create an online course or give an online class covering essential topics in your field of expertise. This will expand your audience and engage more subscribers.

As you can see, with some planning and craftiness, and investing in the right tools for your needs, anyone can create professional-looking videos.

For brands, the opportunity has never been greater to gain access to and leverage this high-quality and engaging content created by fans, customers, and users. Request a demo of TINT to learn more.

The post How to Create the Ideal Dedicated Space for Social Media Videos appeared first on TINT.

What is a micro-influencer?

Micro-influencers are social media users with follower counts between 10,000 and 100,000 users. These influencers have extended beyond “standard” reach and have cultivated a dedicated fanbase, typically around a specific niche or topic. They are often content experts and may know your product better than you do.

Micro-influencers are big enough to make waves, but still small enough that their followers can feel a deep connection to them and their content.

Micro-influencers exude trust. They have not made the leap to macro-influencer, where relationships with followers switch from social to parasocial.

What is a nano-influencer?

Nano-influencers are creators with less than 10,000 followers, a smaller variety of micro-influencers. Don’t let the size fool you. They are the tastemakers, community experts, and social butterflies of a community. Some of these creators may aspire to stardom and digital celebrity, but many are not pursuing a career as a social media star. They’re about sharing authentic interactions with their personal connections.

The expertise exhibited by nano-influencers often comes from a voice of authority. You can find academics, journalists, technical experts, and other specialists with follower accounts under or around 10,000. That does not diminish the content they produce but rather is an indicator that they may be publishing in other media like newspapers, blogs, or journals.

Even those who are not “true” experts can still lend credibility and expertise to unique perspectives. Nano-influencers can also be topic enthusiasts. They could be power users of a product or service, people who live a lifestyle that speaks to the ideal customer profile of your product or service.  Remember, it is about the quality of the creator, not the number of followers.

Where do I find micro-influencers?

Always start close to home. Your social listening tools, or even native social platform functions, can identify those creators who are tagging or mentioning you. You should always start with your existing customer base.

From there, an easy way to cultivate relationships with creators is to launch a hashtag campaign. As people submit content, you’ll quickly discover individuals who want to be involved with your brand.

Often, with micro-influencers, it is a game of numbers. You should use tools that let you find and engage with the best brand influencers while analyzing and sorting through content at scale.  TINT helps you build real connections that deliver quality content and ROI. 

Why micro-influencers instead of macro-influencers?

Micro-influencers are a voice of authenticity and transparency.  These folks represent the everyday users of your product or service. They’re real people that look, act, and live like your customers. The connection to them is social, not parasocial.

With larger influencers, they are essentially digital celebrities. Their reach is greater, but they also come with more baggage. You’ll likely pay per post, pay per click, or some other ala cart pricing scheme. More so, we’re seeing the Federal Trade Commission taking an increasing interest in influencer marketing and advertising practice. 

Macro-influencers are great to activate for a flash-in-the-pan conversion driving campaign. The sort of campaign where you just need to eke out a handful more clicks or sales.  Micro-influencers are all about content cultivation and creating a reciprocal relationship between the brand and your audience. It can take a minute to get started, but once you overcome the inertia you’ll have an endless stream of real content by real people.

What is an internal influencer?

An internal influencer is a content creator directly employed by a company or organization. Social content creation and distribution may be all, or part, of their job function.

Internal influencers may serve a variety of functions throughout a company. Perhaps the best use of these individuals is to support social-driven employee advocacy programs, particularly those focused on recruitment and retention.

Learn more about the different types of internal influencers. 

How do I identify internal micro-influencers?

Start with the low-hanging fruit. 33% of employees are already posting messages, pictures, or videos about their employer without any additional encouragement. Start building programs with these people as your champions.

Then, start looking for staff who are generating content about your brand. Many times, these folks exist outside of the marketing department. It could be the intern who is making TikToks, or the manager who shares relevant perspectives on LinkedIn.

Previously, marketing and communications often maintained a stranglehold on public communication channels. Now, everyone with a social media account has a voice. The best brands start from within. It is time to imagine how an entire organization’s workforce can contribute to marketing.

What is employee-generated content?

Content created by employees, usually outside of their standard job function, is a unique type of user-generated content called employee-generated content. This includes status updates, images, videos, audio, and more.

Employee-generated content has become instrumental to recruitment and retention initiatives.

Do internal influencers and other employee creators require additional compensation?

The quick answer is “it depends”. Much of this relies on organizational culture. If your team is the type to leap at every opportunity to collaborate, then you may be able to start making asks without too much structural change. Likewise, if your teams are driven by competition, you can turn that energy into a content engine. If your teams are heavily siloed or unengaged, then there will likely need to be some sort of incentivization to get the wheels turning.

This may be a good time to review organizational social media policy including staff social media policy in the employee handbook. Perspectives on employee social media use have evolved. 42% of marketers say that employees do not share content because they’re afraid of saying something they shouldn’t on social. Seek to enable your team to be contributors without having them worry about being reprimanded. Try to reduce any obstacles to your employee social media advocacy program’s success.

Do I need to compensate micro-influencers?

There is no singular strategy or practice that dictates micro-influencer compensation. The simple, non-answer, is always “it depends”.

As the follower counts reach the upper limits of micro-influencer status (approaching 100,000), odds are that those individuals have had conversations with brands. They may have a more professional understanding of the content creation process and the relationship with brands. These influencers tend to prefer to keep the content on their own channels since many aspire to macro-influencer status.

Smaller micro-influencers, and nano-influencers, may require a little more hand-holding by staff or software enablement. The benefit of these smaller creators is that they generally have sincere connections with your product, service, or industry. Many of these smaller creators may collaborate for their 15 seconds of fame or product trade-out.

Gamification, like contests and sweepstakes, is a phenomenal way to cultivate content from smaller creators. A single prize or incentive can generate thousands of contributions. Once the content is captured, you can use brand channels to amplify its reach.

What should I know before launching a micro-influencer campaign?

Before launching, you should align on the metrics for success. Usage of hashtags and engagement rate of common KPIs for this type of influencer marketing campaign. It is about getting content, engagement, and reach, not just activating a single influential endorser.

You should also consider the platforms you’re activating. Micro-influencers are especially partial to specific networks like Facebook or Twitter. The type of content and clicks you’re likely to garner will greatly vary based on your target audience.

You’ll find higher engagement rates and higher conversion rates when you temper expectations, remember that micro-influencers are everyday people and that their content will often need some degree of amplification via company-owned marketing channels.

What is the best tool to discover micro-influencers, internal influencers, and employee creators and engage with their content?

The future of marketing will be built with authentic content, created by the people who know your brand best: your customers and employees. TINT works with companies across the globe to activate these authentic voices. From user-generated content to micro-influencers to employee advocacy to social commerce, TINT has the tools necessary for enterprise organizations to accelerate the customer journey and drive sales. Discover how TINT can move your marketing into the future.

The post Questions Answered about Micro-Influencers appeared first on TINT.

The Creator Economy does have its mega-stars, but it’s mostly made up of people who have friends, family, colleagues, and acquaintances who care about their opinion. Even the smallest streamers and independent content creators can drive connection on old and new networks alike.

As tempting as the shiny objects at the top of the Creator Economy sound for marketers, those mega-influencers are not the only creators that brands should be leveraging in their content strategy.

To understand how to leverage all creators, we have to first understand what the Creator Economy is.

What is the Creator Economy?

The Creator Economy is the term given to creatives garnering audiences on social media platforms—think YouTubers, Instagram influencers, Snapchat creators, and Twitter thought leaders. These creators are leveraging the reach of social platforms to grow an audience they can promote or sell their own products to. That’s where the economy comes in.

With 50 million creators in the Creator Economy, money is being moved. Two million of those creators are making six figures per year, and major influencers have a valuation of 8 billion dollars in advertising revenue and sponsorships.

The Creator Economy was built by high-profile influencers who had hundreds of thousands to millions of followers on social media. Casey Neistat was a first-mover, one of the few YouTubers who chose to create vlogs that followed him around his days living in New York City. As the Creator Economy has matured, we’re now seeing content that surpasses behind-the-scenes of people’s lives—we’re seeing creators making their own shows. Dixie D’Amelio recently launched her show, The Early Late Night Show, in competition with the established and TV-backed late-night shows like Jimmy Fallon and Jimmy Kimmel.

Creators are promoting products, selling their own, and turning themselves into the product. The Creator Economy shows just how much people connect to online personalities—and why brands need to be paying attention.

Everyone is a Creator Now

Being an influencer used to be reserved for people with high-followers counts who could use their social platform as a marketing channel for brands. We’re seeing people still use their platforms as marketing outlets, but now influencers don’t require a six-figure following. As the Creator Economy matured, people have become more comfortable sharing user-generated content of products…even if the post isn’t sponsored.

More than half of consumers wish that brands would tell them what type of content to create and share. These consumers aren’t the influencers you’re used to seeing online. They’re your friends, family, colleagues, and acquaintances. They’re the average person who is now leaning into their online voice as true fans of the brands.

While influencers sparked the Creator Economy, the average consumer is the rocket fuel behind its success. They’re using their social platforms to take photos of their coffee and tagging the cafe they bought it from. They’re complaining to brands that have questionable customer service. They’re bringing their phones on vacation and showing what their experience is.

Platforms like YouTube, Twitch, Instagram, and TikTok are the engine pushing the Creator Economy forward. This economy can’t work without them, but it also requires a driver to take the wheel. Venture Capitalist Clara Lindh Bergendorff has observed that these platforms need their creators now, more than ever before.

“In the early days of social media and the Attention Economy, the creators needed the platforms’ audience. As (1) the creators and their leverage increased, (2) the barriers to micro-entrepreneurship decreased, and (3) people with niche interests around the globe were able to discover like-minded people to convene against the so-called mainstream, there was a subtle but acute power shift, and the platforms now need the creators’ loyal communities.”

How Does The Creator Economy Work (And How Brands Can Leverage the It)?

As a marketer, you have two ways of using the Creator Economy. The first is to leverage full-time creators, like a YouTube star or Facebook digerati,  who have built big audiences. This strategy involves mega-influencers who generally have four revenue streams. These revenue streams are highlighted in Colin and Samir’s YouTube video about how much money YouTube pays them.

Adsense

Creators make money based on the advertisements shown before, during, and after their videos. YouTube has been the prime example of this in the past, but creators can now leverage Instagram for the same revenue with their latest IGTV ad update. We should note that Adsense isn’t the end-all to all monetization tools, there are others that exist on different creator platforms.

Brand Deals

One scroll through your feed and you have a high chance of seeing a brand deal. These are the classic Creator Economy deals that pay an influencer to talk about a product in a set amount of posts, stories, and videos.

Paid Content

Paid content comes from memberships like Steve Aoki’s recently announced membership. In return for a monthly fee, his fans can get exclusive content and access to prizes, like winning a trip to Steve’s house.

Merch

Merchandise gives creators a chance to make their own business, not built around other brands. With this revenue stream, creators can choose what product fits their brand and audience and quickly sell direct-to-consumer with platforms like Shopify.

Your content marketing strategy fits into some or all of these creator revenue streams. For example:

• Brands can set up pre-roll ads to play in front of the videos you know your audience is watching.
• You can hire influencers in brand deals to talk about your products in sponsored posts or videos.
• Work with creators to add your brand to their paid content by offering to sponsor a giveaway or create an experience for the creator to document for their audience.
• Collaborations of brands x merch leads to impressions and revenue from that creator’s audience.

The second way marketers can leverage the Creator Economy is with nano and micro-influencers. As Harvard Business Reviews calls it, this is the middle class of the Creator Economy. In this case, we’re not talking about creators trying to make a living from their social audience. We’re talking about your friends, family, colleagues, and acquaintances. These people have their own followings that can be leveraged in marketing through user-generated content.

Consumers want brands to tell them what kind of user-generated content to create from their buying experience. Brands can send UGC instructions in their emails or their shipping boxes to inspire user-generated content from their customers. With TINT, brands can find, collect, and organize user-generated content across digital channels to repurpose it strategically. Using machine learning, TINT finds social content that has your products in it and automatically organizes it so your team can hop in and redistribute it.

Canon used TINT to create a new generation of photographers (and garner 2,000+ social contest entries from entrants under 30). Canon’s goal was to appeal to a younger generation of photographers through their #FreeYourStory contest.

“When developing the contest, we wanted to engage a younger generation of storytellers that mainly used their phones to share their stories on social platforms. It was an opportunity to introduce them to Canon’s brand and inspire them on how they can elevate their storytelling with Canon products,” said Katherine Stephens, Canon’s European Marketing Planner.

The #FreeYourStory contest urged the contestants to enter into the categories of either mirror selfie or forced perspective. Each category’s winner would receive a unique photography masterclass hosted by a Canon professional and a Canon equipment selection, including an EOS M200 and a Canon Zoemini S.

Canon has now shifted #FreeYourStory to an ongoing user-generated campaign on their website and social media channels, continuing to inspire and engage the next generation of photographers. 43% of participants opted in to future marketing from Canon, and the team is now providing information to the community regarding Canon products, photography tips, and more. This particular contest may be over, but the campaign lives on through the #FreeYourStory hashtag, which has grown to 10,000 Instagram posts and gains in popularity daily.

User-generated content also encompasses employee-generated content. Employee-generated content is created by the employees of a brand and can be re-shared up to 24 times more than branded content. EGC shows the people behind the brand, humanizing marketing and branding efforts. We see Instagram use EGC regularly with their announcements directly from their CEO’s, Adam Mosseri, Twitter account.

Once collected, marketers can use UGC and EGC as organic and paid content. Their organic feeds can be a distribution of brand-created content and UGC/EGC and their paid ads can use their customer’s stories to promote their products.

The Creator Economy has matured, digital content has quickly outpaced traditional media, but it’s hardly done growing yet. We’re going to continue to see changes as new social media platforms arise, new technology gets brought to the platforms we’re familiar with, and the potential regulations coming social’s way from governments worldwide.

The statistics are telling us that people don’t need A-list celebrities to promote a product to buy into it. They want their favorite creators to put their stamp of approval on it—and that’s where the real brand-to-creator relationship lies.

No matter if you’re working with multi-million followings or a small audience of your users or employees, the Creator Economy is asking for user-generated content that is trustworthy and authentic.

And as a marketer, there’s never been an easier time to create it.

Build your own UGC Studio using TINT to find, organize, collect, and get the rights to use customer and employee content. Schedule a demo with the TINT team to take a look inside the UGC studio here.

The post Marketer’s Guide to the Creator Economy appeared first on TINT.

Fake Famous is the brainchild of journalist Nick Bilton, known for his books Hatching Twitter and American Kingpin, focused on the founding of Twitter and the masterminds behind the Silk Road darkweb site respectively. The filmmaker put out a casting call, asking for anyone who wants to “be famous”, and quickly finds three L.A.-based twentysomethings who aspire to the influencer lifestyle.

The Pink Wall

The documentary opens on a pink wall. This is not any wall, but the “iconic” pink selfie wall at the intersection of Melrose and Harper; the western exterior of designer Paul Smith’s flagship store in Los Angeles. This is a destination for the social savvy, particularly during the Golden Hour when the long shadows and rich sunlight create the perfect ambiance for a photo. 

The voiceover dramatically talks about how the vast majority of kids would rather be an Influencer rather than a doctor or police officer. This is a twisting of statistics, many kids are interested in specifically being a vlogger on Youtube, not an influencer in the commonly understood social media sense. 

The film continues to introduce the three individuals who will be made Insta-famous over the course of this “social experiment”. 

This initial shot sets up a tone that influencers are narcissists obsessed with getting free stuff. 

It should be noted that there has been pushback against the film with some calling it misogynistic and many being turned off by the condescending tone. The filmmaker attempts to temper the disdain with the inclusion of narratives from digital content experts who have helped create influencer marketing as we know it. Though for many, me included, it still feels like sour grapes. 

Do you want to be Famous?

People have greatly varied reasons to be Insta-Famous. As a marketer, one of the most interesting parts of the film was listening to the reasons people want to be Influencers and their definition of a “real” influencer. Some of my favorites are below:

• People want a platform.
• They want to share a message.
• They want to connect. 
• An influencer is half-entrepreneur and half-celebrity.
• An influencer is someone who has a lot of followers. 
• Someone who has access to a large following and able to promote themselves and promote brands.
• It is about presenting a lifestyle that people want to mimic. 
• Removal of gatekeeping that previously kept mass media in the hands of the wealthy or corporate. 

Overall, the documentary associates being an Influencer with being famous. Influencing is an opportunity to develop the celebrity lifestyle without necessarily having to do the acting, performing, or otherwise excelling that people must do to achieve celebrity status. 

Justine Bateman, author of Fame: The Hijacking of Reality, sums it up, “The desire to be famous is the desire to be loved. As media expanded, it opened a lot more avenues for fame…” and for people to become famous. 

Bad Influencer Tactics

The pathway to fame for these three aspiring influencers is paved with the most inauthentic and unethical practices that have created ongoing mistrust towards the Influencer community. 

First, they start by buying followers. 7500 followers for $119.60, delivered slowly over three days to it won’t trigger suspicious activity alerts with Instagram.  

Marketers know that fake followers not only mess up data and ruin actionable insights, but they are also dangerous to the organization. In 2019, the FTC started enforcement cases against Influencers and those continue to this day. One defendant was fined over 2.5 million dollars and was required to maintain extensive compliance recordkeeping for the next 10 years. 

Recent studies show that only 14%  of influencers are fully compliant with the Federal Trade Commission and its U.K. equivalent, the Competition and Markets Authority. 

You can read more about FTC Influencer Guidelines and the aforementioned case here.

Then came the staged photo shoots. Marketers are used to edging around the truth with photoshoots. That’s why user-generated content is so incredibly valuable. People trust other people, not overly curated photography. But these “Influencers” go beyond ring lights and selfie sticks. Their photoshoots are elaborate productions with beauty teams, professional lighting, and staging that would make any brand jealous. 

Fake Influencer Scenes to keep an eye out for:

• Using butter and cocoa powder to fake chocolate that’ll hold up under the lights
• Renting a home to fake a vacation photo shoot, then tagging high-end hotels on social media
• Filling up a dirty kiddie pool with water and flower petals to fake a spa day
• Using a toilet seat to fake an airplane trip
• Renting a private jet movie set

Another great “Influencer Staging” case study was created by Natalia Tayor, who faked an entire vacation to Bali by having a photoshoot in an Ikea.

Then Came the PR Boxes

Not long after the photoshoots and purchased followers, the aspiring influencers started receiving brand offers. It started small, one was offered a few pairs of sunglasses in exchange for some posts.  Another was offered access to a private gym in exchange for content.  Then the bigger PR boxes started arriving. 

Things get crazy with one of the participants receiving a DM calling out his fake followers and another deciding to delete all the fake comments in order to find their own authenticity. You’ll need to watch the documentary for the rest. 

4Takeaways for Marketers

1. Caveat emptor 

Buyer Beware! As with all marketing channels, do your research before you begin. There are tools that can help detect fake followers, but -as shown in the film- they can be tricked too. If you decide that influencer marketing is for you then do your homework, ask for references,  deploying technology to help manage the tracking, and considering contracting with a reputable influencer agency.

2. Clearly understand the difference between Influencers and Content Creators

Content creators are influencers, and Influencers create content, but they are not the same things, except when they are. Confused yet? 

eMarketer does a great job explaining that the circles of “Influencer” and “Creator” are a Venn Diagram where some things overlap and there are still nuances of difference. Creators of different types drive different engagement on different platforms. Influencers often aspire to celebrity but many are also creators to some degree. This nebulous concept can be distilled into two bullets:

• Creators are people who develop content for digital properties and who consider that content to be the core of their career or livelihood.
  
• Influencers sway brand preference and loyalty of a population because of their notoriety, lifestyle, or fame.

A small creator, with devoted followers who are interested in their niche content, will drive more action than a similarly sized lifestyle influencer. These micro-influencers see 7x the engagement (by ratio) over mega-influencers and that number is even higher on TikTok. 

Focus on building authentic influencer relationships with digital contributors and seek out newer social media personalities that have an affinity with your brand and your audience. The connection will be much more sincere and authentic.

Digital natives have a sixth sense to find inauthentic content, don’t trigger it. 

3. People are still stuck on vanity metrics.

The film’s director and his team continually focus on likes and comments as their primary metrics. Marketers have known for years that vanity metrics can be greatly skewed and are detrimental to understanding the true ROI of specific channels. Engagement is more than empty likes and vapid comments. Social marketers are looking for brand mentions, clickthroughs, swipes, and more. 

As Social Commerce continues to boom, marketers are also looking at metrics that outline the buyer’s journey. Shoppable social and shoppable livestreams mean that direct conversion metrics are also now being tracked by social media teams.

With Instagram starting to hide likes maybe more nonmarketers will understand that likes and follower counts are not the end-all for social metrics.

4. Strengthens the case for micro-influencers

This film feels like a parable in support of micro-influencers. There is great possibility and also great perils associated with Influencer campaigns. Mega-influencers are expensive and even big creators are one round of Twitter drama away from being canceled. 

Micro- and nano-influencers are the tastemakers and social butterflies that cultivate a deep connection with their networks. They may not have the singular reach of a mega-influencer but activated in tandem with other similar contributors, their aggregate results are amazing. 

That’s why 75% of marketers are currently, or planning to, work with micro-influencers and there has been a 300% increase in the number of micro-influencers used by companies since 2016. More so, 47% of marketers will spend their influencer budgets on micro-influencers instead of mega-influencers this year. 

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Did you enjoy the movie? Have thoughts? Excited to start marketing with micro-influencers? Our solutions experts are ready to help. Schedule a chat today. 

The post Fake Famous: A Review for Marketers appeared first on TINT.

What is an Internal Influencer?

An Internal Influencer is a social content creator that is directly employed by a brand or organization. Social content creation can be all or part of their job function. 

The benefit of an internal influencer is the degree of control exerted on the influencer by an organization. Since they are employed by said organization, the content they create can be guided by strict rules dictated by the marketing and communications teams. These rules can outline style, messaging, distribution, and other aspects of the influencer’s content. 

The cost-benefit of an internal influencer is greatly dependent on their “type”, defined further in this piece. Having an influencer on salary, as a direct employee, can be more cost-effective than trying to maintain a menagerie of external influencers. 

What are the Types of Internal Influencers?

We have identified four main types of Internal Influencers:

1. The Evangelist
2. The Social Media Maven
3. The Incidental
4. The EGC
   

The Evangelist

The term Technology Evangelist existed for decades before social media influencers arrived on the scene. The core value of the Evangelist is their ability to build critical mass for a given technology and amplify their message across channels. Since Evangelists are focused on targeted messaging, it makes sense that modern practitioners would use social media as their megaphone. 

Guy Kawasaki, noted Apple evangelist (now Canva evangelist), wrote in a 2015 Harvard Business Review Article, “Many businesses have embraced the idea that customers are potential evangelists; the most ardent of them will spread the word about your company’s products or services without pay. But it’s important to remember that managers—even those outside the marketing department—can be evangelists too.”

Neil Patel, SEO evangelist and strategist, tells Forbes that evangelists must do 5 things. 

1. They start movements.
2. They use their personal brand as a platform.
3. They explain.
4. They inspire.
5. They use a variety of methods.

If Evangelism is the right type of Internal Influencer for your brand, start the search within. There are likely already people within your organization that love, live, and breathe your product. These are the folks who are already acting as ambassadors for your company, in an official capacity or otherwise. This could be the time to pull them up and use them as an influencer. 

The Social Media Maven

The Social Media Maven is the closest to what marketers would consider a “traditional influencer”. The term is derived from the Yiddish meaning “expert” or “connoisseur”. These people have cultivated a follower-base that engages with their content. They are recognized by their fans as subject experts and speak directly to individuals who have interest in their topic. 

These internal influencers have an intuitive sense for creating effective content. They may not be classically trained, but have consumed media to a point that they understand what will “track”. They will not necessarily have millions of followers, and that’s perfect. Micro- and Nano-influencers have proven to be more effective in many industries than Mega-influencers.

Mavens will often specialize in one or more specific channels, like TikTok, Instagram, or Reddit. Beware of trying to force their content to “cross-over”, particularly if the creator does not have experience posting on other social platforms. It will take some effort and encouragement to teach the Maven to retool their message for specific channels. 

Hootsuite has a great blog about Cross-Posting and Cross-Promoting strategies. 

It should be noted that many Mavens who have cultivated their own following may be hesitant to turn the effort towards corporate goals. Many Mavens also “influence” on topics that are completely unrelated to their professional work. Before engaging a Social Media Maven as an internal influencer you should have a serious conversation with them about the opportunities, work-life balance, and specific expectations for content creation.  

We will discuss how to cultivate Social Media Mavens, as internal influencers, from scratch in an upcoming blog post. 

The Incidental 

Internal Influencers can pop up in unexpected places. Consider Tony Piloseno, a college student working part-time as a Sherwin-Williams sales associate. He found the paint mixing and color matching process to be interesting; and thought others might too. He created a Tiktok channel called @tonesterpaints. The channel experienced explosive growth and several of his videos went viral. At the time of this writing, he has over 1.4 million followers and over 24 million likes. 

This young man was using his employee discount to pay for the paint that he mixed. Unfortunately, rather than celebrate him as a rising internal influencer, Sherwin-Williams decided to fire Tony. (Don’t worry, Tony was immediately given a number of job offers and hired by Florida Paints just a week later.)

Internal Influencers can appear in interesting places. They may be associates on your sales floor. They could be people that are part of your logistics chain. Keep an eye out for, and an open mind, for these incidental influencers. Many start without the goal of being Insta-famous, but some eventually are.

Identify these influencers by implementing a social listening strategy. Be sure that your methodology or toolkit is able to capture content across multiple channels. Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram should be the baseline at this point. Include Snapchat, TikTok, and Byte if there is any possibility that people are creating content about your business on the platforms.  

This may also be a good time to get with Human Resources and review your employee social media policy. Don’t fire any future Tonys.

The EGC

Sometimes you don’t have the time, resources, or personnel to develop an internal influencer program. This can be especially difficult to accomplish if you’re in a highly regulated industry and the idea of handing a microphone to an influencer makes your legal team cringe. There is still a powerful option available to you. Rather than empowering a single individual, you can crowdsource your social content by deploying an employee-generated content (EGC) campaign.

Who knows your company better than anyone else? Who is working in it every single day? Your employees are often your greatest advocates. Employee advocacy programs are nothing new, but utilizing them effectively to generate EGC does take retooling. 

Start by assessing your employee advocacy, or EGC, capabilities. Find common threads in what, and where, people are sharing. Think of it like a story, where each new piece of content develops the narrative. One-off pieces of content won’t contribute to the bigger picture. 

From there, you should design a process that turns employees into active contributors. Consider how the content makes it from employees to the marketing team. Some find success using a communication tool like Slack or Discord. Others prefer to formalize the campaign with hashtags and content aggregation. There are many ways to achieve the same goal.

Great EGC will do five things:

1. Boost Brand Perception
2. Cut Recruitment Costs
3. Build Community
4. Circulate Knowledge
5. Identify budding Internal Influencers of other persuasions. 

Learn more about the benefits of launching an EGC-driven employee advocacy campaign.

How do I start an Internal Influencer Program?

The process for how to start an Internal Influencer Program

1. Evaluate and Select the Influencer Type
2. Identify the type of internal influencer/s to activate
3. Incentivize Content
4. Use Content Everywhere
5. Recognize Contributors
6. Track, Analyze, Repeat

Evaluate and Select the Influencer Type

We’ve identified the four main types of internal influencers. Consider what would be the most useful for your organization and which type, or types, would be easiest to launch. You may already have a social media maven in your midst, making it the obvious choice. You may have active employee resource groups making EGC the perfect selection. 

Marketing is not a light switch. These campaigns, particularly developing an individual influencer from scratch, can take months to properly execute. Measure their effectiveness in Quarters, not in Weeks. 

Incentivize Content

The best way to start getting content from internal influencers is to ask. Ask employees to share content. Be as specific as possible. If you need photos, ask for photos. If you need video, ask for video. 

Simple initiatives like contests, polls, and microsites are powerful tools to drive content creation. Be creative! This is often the most fun part of this type of campaign. 

Make sure that there are multiple pathways to share content. Younger employees will often be comfortable sharing pictures and videos with a hashtag. Less tech-savvy staff may need to have options like emailing a photo or sending it as an SMS. Only providing one path will place a limiter on your content creation campaign. 

Use Content Everywhere

Great content deserves great distribution. Employees generate more content when they know it is going to be used. Think beyond the social feed. Use their content in newsletters, digital signage, email, paid social, recruitment marketing, and more. Make their contributions visible and present. 

Recognize Contributors

Recognition is an important part of any internal influencer program. It is dangerous to believe that their salary is enough. Influencers influence in order to get recognition. Give them shoutouts. Recognize them in reporting and internal slide decks. Include influencers in marketing campaigns. Ask them to consult on social media projects.  

By recognizing the contribution of your internal influencers you set-up a recursive loop. They submit content and get recognized. You use the content and do the recognizing. 

Track, Analyze, Repeat

As with all marketing campaigns, there should be key performance indicators that guide the definition of success. Social Media Examiner suggests five ways to measure influencer campaigns.

1. Campaign Reach via Followers, Impressions, and Traffic
2. Campaign Engagement via Clicks, Likes, Reactions, and Shares
3. Audience Growth via Google Analytics Audience Overview Demographics
4. Social Leads via Google Analytics Acquisition Overview Report
5. Origin of Sales via UTM Parameters

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Ready to start an Internal Influencer program and leverage the power of employee-generated content? Schedule time with our content specialists today and learn how TINT is used by marketers around the world to amplify their internal influencer and employee advocacy efforts. 

The post What is an Internal Influencer? appeared first on TINT.

We debuted a new session called “Social Reset: Leave Your Old Content in 2020.” We had a packed house, virtually that is, and had plenty of engagement. Unfortunately, we ran out of time to answer all the questions that were submitted. We’re answering all those questions below. 

If you are encouraging content from employees and customers, do you usually want to have an approval process in place before it posts live?

Your standard approval process for social content should remain in place. A good user-generated content (UGC)/employee-generated content (EGC) program will complement and supplement your existing strategy.  

UGC/EGC is a content source and driver of engagement. 

When looking at UGC, I generally do a little research on who is sharing the content before pushing it live. Then I’ll reach out to get permission to reshare if I’m not using a native reshare feature. Native resharing could be things like sharing a tagged post on Instagram, clicking share on a Facebook post, or retweeting on Twitter. Those are generally safe avenues to share content. It is when you grab content and move it around that people get into trouble. I encourage you to check out our blog Understanding the Importance of UGC User Rights as a primer to the conversation.

On the employee side, many brands and organizations have content agreements built into their employee handbooks or contracts. Even then, I think a head’s up is still a common courtesy and helps build rapport with your employees.I also let people know if we’re doing any modification to their content, i.e. watermarking, photoshopping.  Circumstances will be different from company to company and always vary depending on the goals of their EGC program. 

Here’s more reading on Employee Generated Content, particularly how it affects recruitment. 

What are some ideas for engaging customers and community members in social strategy to create user-generated content?

First, and foremost, think of yourself as an Experience Builder. There will always be incidental social shares, but to drive any sort of significant content creation you should make it into an engaging activity. We’ve found that activities like scavenger hunts, countdown timers, social walls, hashtag wars, polls, and microsites really drive action. Pull together the content from multiple sources and display it quickly so that participants get instant gratification. Set a deadline for each “experience” and launch several throughout the year. The FOMO will keep people contributing. 

For both customers and employees, recognition is an important part of the process. Even if you’re capturing content and obtaining legal rights, you should still call out the contributors. This helps create a recursive content relationship. They appreciate the love and attention, so they make more content. You share their content and give them love and appreciation. 

Learn more about becoming an Experience Builder. 

What is the best way to get employees as internal influencers for a restaurant company?

1. Design an outcome-driven program
2. Incorporate into daily processes
3. Make content submission easy
4. Deploy, Test, Analyze, Repeat

1. Design an Outcome-Driven program

Have clear outcomes before you begin. What is the content that you’re trying to capture? What will what content contribute to your existing marketing programs? What is the amount of time you and your employees are willing to spend on this? How will the content flow from employee to the marketing/communications team? What are the metrics for success?

2. Incorporate into daily processes

The best programs for internal influencers or employee-generated content are ones that can become part of the daily routine. It shouldn’t feel like a burden. It should feel like a part of the day-to-day processes. There is certainly a learning curve to this, but with the support of an experienced UGC/EGC specialist, you can swiftly overcome it. 

If you do not encourage content creation as a daily habit, it’ll quickly fall to the wayside as additional “sidework”, particularly when employees get busy during things like holidays or weekend. (Probably the best times to create content too.)

3. Make content submission easy

How will the content flow from the frontline employees to the marketing and communications team? We’ve found that people, particularly Millenials and Gen Z, do not like sending photos from a mobile device to an email address.  

Our recommendation is to deploy a social aggregation tool to make it easier. Pull in content from hashtags, set-up a phone number that employees can text content to, and create a microsite that allows direct uploading of larger content types like video. 

Learn more about TINT’s content aggregation process. 

4. Deploy, Test, Analyze, Repeat

As with any marketing or communications program, the process should be iterative. Design your program in sprints, get feedback, and repeat. There may be blind spots in the process that participants can diagnose more easily than administrators. 

Remember, marketing is not a light switch. It can take time UGC, EGC, and social campaigns to “rev-up”. 

Talk to one of our UGC specialists today and explore your options for managing internal influencers and employee-generated content.

I work in healthcare and we try to get content (EGC) from staff in multiple divisions. Rather than contribute to the main account, all the departments want their own social handles. How can I manage that?

This sounds like a power struggle in the making. You should nip this in the bud before it sprouts into a tangled mess. 

First, be upfront about the time commitment and expectations for having their own social handles. Show them a style guide and create a guide for how often things will need to be posted. Depending on the degree of control that your team has, explain the content approval process and design standards. Talk about HIPPA rules. 

This will likely scare off the less committed.

Another option is to let them have their handles. They can post content and you can aggregate it into the main feed. While this does dilute the power structure, it could be easier trying to force content out of non-compliant departments. You could use the one-two punch of TINT+ Hootsuite Amplify to ensure any secondary Twitter feeds are getting pulled into the main handles and messaging from the main is being pushed to the secondaries.

Beware if your policies are too draconian. I ran into some similar issues when I worked in Higher Education and sometimes departments simply set up their own handles and started creating. What is your action if that happens? 

This is a tricky one. Feel free to reach out to us and we can brainstorm specifics. 

How should one go about creating UGC for a B2B brand?

It always starts with planning. There needs to be a serious conversation upfront about outcomes and content needs. We’ve seen amazing campaigns from brands like Cisco and Securian that have focused on customer and employee advocacy.

Also, consider all the different types of UGC. People often go straight to photos, but reviews are also user-generated content. B2B organizations can greatly benefit from that type of social proof.

Can you talk about the need for approval to reshare content by platform?  

The rights conversation revolves around ownership. If you’re natively sharing, like we’ve mentioned above, generally you’re okay (with a few minor exceptions).  The legal liability begins when you “take possession” of content that is not yours. If you have to download it or otherwise capture it, you’ll need to deal with rights management.

We have an on-demand webinar that introduces the Rights Management process. 

You can also learn about the TINT Content Rights Management process. 

If one of our customer partners tags us and/or uses a hashtag linked to our brand, are we okay to reshare that without formal approval? 

My initial thought is… it depends. From a risk management perspective, I don’t think you’re likely to get sued by a customer partner. In a perfect world, you would build it into the customer agreement with clear terms around what the shared content would be used for. 

I still believe that common courtesy would say that you give them a heads up whenever you do it.

Continue the Conversation

We’d love to continue the conversation. If you’d like to have a member of TINT talk at your next event, podcast, or team meeting please email events@tintup.com You can also speak with one of our UGC specialists to learn how TINT can drive engagement for your marketing in 2021. Schedule a call and demo today.

The post Ask TINT: November 2020 – Digital Summit at Home appeared first on TINT.