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.

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.

Influencers create user generated content that can help brands increase engagement, gain new customers, and establish trust among their target audience. Using brand influencers can have a huge impact on your overall marketing strategy. However, there are a few things to consider when using brand influencers.

Understand the types of influencers

There are many types of influencers: Mega influencers, Macro influencers, Micro and nano influencers.

• Mega influencers have at least a million followers. This influencer can be a celebrity, an athlete, an actor, or a social media star. They tend to drive the least amount of engagement, only 2 to 5 percent, but they can cast the widest net for your brand.
• Macro influencers have between 10,000 and one million followers. They drive anywhere from 5 to 25 percent of engagement. This influencer can be a socialite, a blogger, or a journalist and they can help drive traffic and awareness to your brand.
• Micro influencers – An accepted definition for microinfluencer is that they have less than 100,000 followers, a count that is significantly higher than the average active social media user.
• Nano influencers – This type of influencer usually has less than 10,000 followers and they tend to be employees and customers, friends. They may also be family members, friends or coworkers who have a small but mighty social media presence. They can help establish trust and create dialogue about your brand.

How to choose the right type of influencer for your brand

Understanding your marketing goals is critical when choosing an influencer type for your brand. For example, if you are wanting to increase engagement then nano – micro influencers might be the best fit. On the other hand if generating awareness one time is your main goal then a mega influencer or macro influencer could do the trick. This is especially true for niche markets, as Macro influencers can serve as your “tribe leaders” helping generate traffic and solidifying your brand’s reputation. If you have budget for influencers, a blended approach is usually most effective.

Other points to consider is the size of your organization and available resources. A well known brand such as Nike has a huge budget and may choose a Mega Influencer as consumers likely to emulate public figures. Not sure where to start? Your existing audience holds many clues. Here’s a great guide to conducting an Instagram audit to analyze your content, followers, and branding, and suggestions that will help you along the way.

Verify the legitimacy of the influencer

Since accounts that represent celebrities, public figures, or top brands, have a high chance of being impersonated, it’s a good idea to check for a verification badge. Verification badges can be used to determine the legitimacy of accounts and help when selecting brand influencers.

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A verified badge is a blue check mark next to the account holder’s name on Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook. This means the account is confirmed to be authentic and belongs to the person or brand shown. When verifying the legitimacy of a brand influencer another thing to remember is anyone can buy followers. This means some accounts may show a large amount of followers but many of those followers are ghost accounts or fake followers.

There are tools that can be used to help you further verify the legitimacy of an influencer. For instance, Twitter Audit can determine how many followers are fake on a Twitter account, while Social Audit Pro helps verify followers on an Instagram accounts.

Check the amount of engagement the influencer has from its followers

Since people are able to buy followers look through post and see how many likes and comments the account gets. If an account has 100k followers but only 100 likes or little to no comments, that is usually a good indication that they bought followers and won’t make a good brand influencer. A good rule of thumb here is to make sure accounts are getting 10% of engagement based on the amount of followers. For example, if an account has a 1000 followers the content posted should get 100 likes or more.

Check for Brand loyalty

Brand loyalty is important for building trust. The person you want to choose as an influencer should already be generating content about your brand, without being incentivized. If the content being generated is done on a consistent basis and the content aligns with your brand message, this is a great indication that they would be a good influencer for your brand.

Control the message

Pictures are worth a thousand words and with brand influencers you want to make sure to control their message. While authenticity is key, be specific in outlining how your brand should be represented at all times. Remember any negative or unsatisfactory actions from an influencer is reflective of your brand so choose wisely.

Want to learn more about finding user generated content from your brand’s influencers?  We’re here to help. Request a demo today

The post Consider This Before Using Brand Influencers appeared first on TINT.

This is influencer marketing in action.

By utilizing the voice of well-connected people in your niche, you can reach an audience that’s relevant and already engaged to make more sales.

And, when 75% of consumers are more likely to buy something based on a reference on social media, it’s easy to see why influencer marketing is heating up.

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For buyers, it acts as a digital form of word-of-mouth marketing, which remains one of the most successful ways to get a business out there.

But it’s win-win for brands, too, with businesses generating an average of $6.50 for every $1 they invest into influencer marketing.

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While it might seem tempting to jump in at the deep end and throw all your money at the biggest influencer in your industry, that’s not always the best answer.

In fact, it’s well worth considering the different levels of influencers and which ones might be best suited to your campaign.

What Is a Micro-Influencer? 

These are typical consumers who are active on social media but don’t necessarily have a large following. They post about products they love because they love them, not because they’re paid to do so.

Micro-influencers could be anyone, from previous customers, to advocates with humble social media followings. TINT defines them as social media users with less than 10k followers. 

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This graph shows that the more followers a social media user has, the less engagement they get on their posts. Those with more than 10 million followers get a like rate of 1.66 and a comment rate of just 0.05, compared to micro-influencers with less than 1k followers, who see an average like rate of 8.03 and a comment rate of 0.56.

Looking at it closely, employing content created by micro-influencers aligns more with the old-fashioned idea of word-of-mouth marketing.

What is a Mega-Influencer? 

These are key voices in your industry. Unlike micro-influencers, they have huge followings (usually 10k+ followers) and their livelihood revolves around their online presence or being famous in some way.

Mega-influencers are paid to post content so brands can get access to their well-aligned and already-engaged audiences. This is an example of true paid promotion in the influencer marketing world.

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Now we’ve covered the two different levels of influencers, let’s dig into  how you can leverage each kind to promote your brand.

Micro-Influencer Marketing

The main benefit of using micro-influencers to promote your brand is their relatively affordable cost in comparison to mega-influencers.

According to a report by Influence.co, micro-influencers with between 2,000 and 100,000 followers charge roughly between $137 and $258 per Instagram post. When the number of followers crawls over 100,000, that’s when the prices creep up, sometimes to $1,000 or more for a single Instagram post.

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Micro-influencers also tap into the power of true word-of-mouth marketing.

They are typical consumers like the people you’re trying to target, so they are much more relatable and, therefore, can build a more solid rapport with potential customers.

Sarah Ware, CEO and co-founder of Markerly, said that when her company engaged with the Jenner and Kardashian sisters on Instagram on behalf of a weight-loss tea company, the celebrities helped bring hundreds of conversions. Which was nice. But by activating 30 to 40 “micro-influencers,” the brand was able to convert at an even higher level.

“It’s a simple math. If a sportswear company, for example, collaborates with a social celebrity with 2 million followers, it can reach a big pool of audience, but 90 percent of them may not be sports fans. It would make more sense to activate 100 self-proclaimed athletes whose followers are actually interested in athletics.”

On the downside, their smaller followings mean you might not reach as many people as you would employing a mega-influencer, but we’re going to talk more about how you can make the most of these smaller followings later on.

First, let’s look at some brands that have jumped on the micro-influencer bandwagon and reaped excellent results.

Examples of Brands that Implement Micro-Influencer Marketing

Tom’s of Maine

Tom’s of Maine creates personal products using natural ingredients. As part of their campaign, they wanted to boost engagement on social media and reach a wider audience, so decided to launch an influencer marketing campaign.

But, rather than partnering up with household names, the brand decided to invite everyday consumers to take part, each of which had between 500 and 5,000 followers on social media.

To validate each participant, Tom’s made sure that they could each engage their audiences on certain topics, ranging from an influential mom, Allison Goins, with 4,000 followers, to a bath products enthusiast, Joe, who has just over 3,000 followers.

The influencers took part in a range of branded activities to raise awareness of Tom’s and boost engagement, and the results were great.

Consumer engagement increased by 600% and, for every 1,000 micro-influencers they engaged in the process, the brand received 6,000+ interactions in return.

Clinique

The world-famous skincare brand, Clinique, wanted to raise awareness for their new line of products for men. They decided to implement micro-influencer marketing and targeted male influencers from a range of different professions – we’re talking filmmakers, stylists, and outdoorsmen.

Each influencer chosen represented a different aspect of the brand, and the idea was for the men to seamlessly weave the new products into their daily lives.

As a result, the campaign garnered 3.8x the engagement rate of the standard Clinique Instagram account and generated more than 67,000 interactions.

The Key Lessons From These Examples

These micro-influencer marketing campaigns hit a few nails on the head.

Firstly, they settled on a collection of influencers who were laser-focused to their target audience. Rather than just choosing well-known faces in the lifestyle and fashion industries, they also worked with influencers in a range of other categories that still aligned with their audiences.

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On top of a careful selection, the brand also succeeded in getting their influencers to seamlessly integrate their products into their daily lives – it was very natural and felt very un-salesy.

This results in 74% of micro-influencers having a conversation that ends ends in a serious recommendation.  

How to Make the Most of Micro-Influencers

Don’t let the smaller reach of micro-influencers put you off. Here’s how you can integrate them into a successful campaign.

1. Get Them to Share Stories

People love devouring stories. It’s a nod back to the days when humans sat around campfires and shared myths and legends with each other.

Tapping into this human hunger for stories is a great way to leverage micro-influencers. Take the Paw Patrol show and influencer Lucie Herridge, who shared stories around her son and the show to drive interest and engagement.

2. Run an Ongoing Campaign

Eco-luxury shoe brand, Atelier Alienor, runs an ongoing micro-influencer marketing campaign with Natalie Kay. She regularly shares posts on her Instagram feed about the sustainable shoe brand.

3. Collect and Distribute Customer-Created Content

Instead of getting micro-influencers on board with your campaign, you can also tap into the content created by your customers. These are the people who know and love your brand and are willing to shout about it from the rooftops.

Using TINT, you can collect content published by your customers across various social media platforms and integrate it onto your website, digital signage, emails, and screens. 

Mega-Influencer Marketing

The benefits of mega-influencer marketing are self-explanatory – you get access to a huge audience that are highly-engaged and relevant.

The downsides come into play when cost is involved.

Employing the help of a celebrity or someone with a massive social following doesn’t come cheap (though the cost per engagement might be lower than a micro-influencer), and most brands don’t have the budget to accommodate it.

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You only have to look at Kim Kardashian’s Instagram feed to see that brands are willing to pay the big bucks to have a household name promote their products, but let’s take a look at a couple of brands that have implemented this tactic and the results they garnered.

Examples of Brands That Implement Mega-Influencer Marketing

Got Milk?

The Got Milk? revolution began before social media, when posters of famous athletes were plastered throughout cities promoting the benefits of drinking milk.

In recent years, the campaign has come back into full swing, with Refuel collaborating with former American footballer for the Pittsburgh Steelers, Hines Ward.

The brand actively chose to engage celebrities that consumers don’t necessarily associate with its product to create a bigger impact. The results showed the campaign helped to change the common brand perception and drove an increase in sales from a new demographic.

Lagavulin Whisky

Parks and Recreation fans saw main character Ron Swanson, played by Nick Offerman, take the lead in Lagavulin’s latest mega-influencer marketing campaign.

The brand of whisky was renowned for being Swanson’s go-to beverage, so it made sense for the company to get him on board to advertise it.

By creating a 44-minute long “Yule log” video, which showed Nick Offerman sitting by the fire sipping a glass of whisky, they tapped into a niche audience – viewers of Parks and Recreation.

Needless to say, the ad went viral and Lagavulin’s social media presence soared thanks to the familiar face in their campaign.

This might seem like celebrity sponsoring, but because Offerman was chosen to star in it, it’s clear the brand were trying to target a specific audience.

The Key Lessons From These Examples

Both campaigns used well-known faces to promote their product, but they were carefully handpicked to target a specific audience.

For the Got Milk? campaign, stars were chosen to change the face of Refuel and reach a new audience entirely, while Lagavulin tapped into the niche audience of Parks and Recreation.

The main lesson here is audience is key. Think about who you want to target and choose mega-influencers based on that.

How to Make the Most of Mega-Influencers

1. Pick an Audience to Target

The danger with choosing superstar mega-influencers is that you might be appealing to too broad a spectrum of people.

Remember, the key isn’t how many people you can reach in one go, it’s about reaching the right people who align with your brand and will want to buy from you.

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For example, Kylie Jenner has a huge social media following, but her ability to influence that following might not be worth the amount it costs you to have her promoting your product.

However, an industry blogger with a focused audience of 100,000 people might exert a more profitable influence over the people you want to target for a fraction of the cost.

2. Consider Your Messaging

It’s all well and good choosing a famous name in your industry to promote your product, but it’s not enough to just have them whack up a half-thought-out ad and hope for the best.

However popular your mega-influencer is, it’s all about the messaging.

What do you want them to share with their audience? How do you want them to present your brand?

These are all questions you want to ask yourself before you go ahead and settle on an influencer. For an epic influencer fail, we only have to look to the time Scott Disick pasted the instructions for a sponsored post in the caption of his Instagram upload. 

There’s obviously a fine balance between giving influencers instructions but not forcing a template – after all, they know their audiences best and understand how to interact with them in a way that works.

Micro-Influencer or Mega-Influencer?

The choice between the two relies solely on your brand and the audience you want to reach.

Though going with a mega-influencer might seem like the tempting option, micro-influencers often exert more power over a more engaged and focused audience.

The term micro-influencer doesn’t just refer to people with a small following, it also includes your customers – a.k.a. your biggest advocates.

Marketers were expected to spend $1.07 billion on influencer marketing in 2017, which was double the amount they spent in 2016 – and it doesn’t seem to be slowing down anytime soon.

With marketers set to spend more than ever on influencer marketing this year, it’s time to catch up.

But whichever option you choose to go for, keep your message in mind and know exactly what you want to achieve with your campaign. If you’ve got that covered, your influencer marketing campaign should be a roaring success.

The post Influencer Marketing: Understanding The Difference Between Micro-Influencers and Mega-Influencers appeared first on TINT.

That’s because more and more “everyday” people are growing serious social followings, giving brands a larger pool of influencers to choose from – it’s no longer a case of picking the most popular celebrity of the moment.

So, what exactly is influencer marketing?

It’s a type of marketing that uses key leaders, like famous people and those with large social followings, to promote your brand message, product, or service. So, rather than marketing to your own following which, if you’re early on in the game, might not be so big, you are hiring influencers (who already have a pre-built following) to get the word out there for you.

Like I said before, influencer marketing is definitely not a new phenomenon, despite its boost in recent years. In fact, around 35% of social media professionals surveyed in the second quarter of 2015 considered their use of influencer marketing to be at a mature stage.

Let’s take a look at why influencer marketing is so popular now.

The emergence of “real-time” platforms

The rise of “instant” social media platforms, like Instagram, Snapchat, and Periscope, that share in-the-moment stories means users can build up their followings simply by posting about their day-to-day lives.

As humans we create connections with other humans, and these platforms allow us to build relationships with people who resonate with us. When people build up their followings in places like Instagram (especially using the new Instagram “stories” feature) and Snapchat, they’re also building trust and authenticity with their audiences, which means their followers are more likely to believe and listen to what they have to say than a slick piece of marketing from a brand.

Instagram’s new “stories” feature allows users to post in real-time. Via Instagram Blog

Working with influencers is much easier

Back in the day, before the emergence of these real-time social platforms – or even before the days of the internet – brands had to use celebrities to promote their products. This was fairly difficult for a number of reasons, particularly for small, newly-formed companies.

Firstly, celebrities don’t come cheap and, secondly, getting in touch with a celebrity to invite them to become an influencer was no walk in the park.

These days, however, there are agencies and matchmaking networks popping up all over the shop that focus solely on influencer marketing. They have a roster of public figures and people with large social followings and they essentially help them create connections with relevant brands.

Just a few of the thousands of influencer marketing agencies out there

Authenticity is key

We’re living in the internet age of authenticity. Consumers are no longer passive receptacles. Instead, they want to be in charge of their own decisions, and they’re on the hunt for brand stories that they can connect with; that they can get behind, and that they can believe in.

To do this, authenticity is key, as is building trust. And, as I mentioned before, people trust people more than they trust brands – particularly those who have the same beliefs as them.

In a way, influencer marketing is an upmarket version of word-of-mouth advertising, which is still one of the most powerful advertising tools around (yes, even in this day and age where we spend more time with our laptops than our friends).

The Psychology Behind Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing isn’t a hit-and-hope technique. Brands don’t grab the biggest celebrity they can find just to show off.

In fact, there has been a lot of research carried out on influencer marketing to determine why it’s so successful. Hundreds and hundreds of studies have taken place around the concept of celebrity endorsement and influencers to see why we’re more likely to listen to David Beckham than David Smith, CEO of a tiny company no-one’s ever heard of.

Classic Conditioning

Image via Wikimedia Commons

Influencer marketing can kind of be likened to the classical conditioning experiment Pavlov carried out on his dogs in the early 1900s. If you don’t know the experiment, the findings basically showed that the dogs created an association between the ringing of a bell and food (a.k.a. When a bell was rung, they anticipated a yummy dinner).

Now, obviously consumers aren’t dogs, but this process of associative learning can be easily applied to influencer marketing.

Researchers Brian Till and Co took this idea further and realized three major psychological concepts that are present when creating an influencer marketing campaign.

1. An unconditioned stimulus (or a stimulus that naturally produces a response)
2. A conditioned stimulus (or a stimulus that doesn’t naturally produce a response)
3. A conditioned response (or a response that happens when the unconditioned and conditioned stimuli are paired up)

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So, when a celebrity (or the unconditioned stimulus) promotes a brand (which is usually a conditioned stimulus), it creates a generally positive response about that brand (or conditioned response).

Basically, when Brad Pitt endorses an aftershave, people associate the qualities of Brad Pitt with the aftershave.

In other studies, Lazarsfeld and Katz found that the majority of people are influenced by secondhand information and opinion leaders, while Malcolm Gladwell shows a major idea can be started and shared by just one person if the push is targeted.

“There are exceptional people out there who are capable of starting epidemics. All you have to do is find them.” – Malcolm Gladwell, The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference.

A Brief Timeline of Influencer Marketing

So now you know why influencer marketing is such a hit today, let’s take things back and see how it’s evolved into the successful technique it is right now.

The Late 1800s

Just before the turn of the 20th century, influencer marketing became a “thing” as companies started recruiting celebrities to promote consumer products like cigarettes and home goods. The queen and the Pope endorsed patented medicines, heightening the appeal and adding an element of “pop culture” to a fairly dull industry.

But it wasn’t just celebrities, religious leaders, and royalty that were brought on board. Characters were created to strengthen connections with buyers and to build personable brands around products.

The 1920s

You didn’t think I’d get through this post without mentioning Coca Cola and their much-loved Santa character, did you?

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It was the 1920s when this concept first came to fruition. To begin with, Santa was a strict-looking fellow, but this changed in the 1930s when the brand realized that people connected more with characters they could relate to. So, in light of this, Santa was re-imagined as a department store, wholesome version of himself – not as a man dressed up as Santa.

He became a “real” person to look up to, a friend, almost, with fans questioning his lack of wedding ring one year and commenting on his backward belt in another. In other words, they seemed to care about this fictional character (sorry kids) that Coca Cola had dreamt up.

The 1950s

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In the 1950s, we saw Marlboro Man make an appearance. He was probably the biggest influence marketer of the decade, and endorsed the popular brand of cigarette right up until 1999.

So who was Marlboro Man? He was a figure portrayed by different actors in the States in an attempt to make smoking more “macho”. The use of a macho man showed consumers that, if they bought Marlboro cigarettes, they would take on the attributes of Marlboro Man – an idea that concretizes Brian Till’s study about classic conditioning.

The 2000s

The 2000s saw the start of a new Millennium and a new take on influencer marketing.

One of the key campaigns and most successful influencer marketing stories was the Old Spice viral campaign in 2010. Throughout the campaign, Old Spice sent personalized videos to celebrities and people with large social media followings over a three-day period. In total, they shot 180 videos and complemented these by responding in real-time to fans.

On the first day, the campaign drew in 6 million views and, after seven days, that shot up to 40 million. Sales also shot up, too, with a 27% increase in the following six months, and a whopping 107% increase in the final month.

Influencer Marketing Now

This set the stage for a new world of influencer marketing that is played out online, rather than on the pages of a magazine, a billboard, or on commercial breaks. This makes influencer marketing more accessible to even the smallest brands, because every blogger or social media account with a large following is an influencer, giving companies increased access to people who can really give their business a boost.

What’s more, the rise of User Generated Content (UGC), means that everyone is a marketing influencer. Brands can pull in and curate content created by their fans and followers to produce user-generated campaigns, giving them access to a wider audience and a chance to show off their community.

YouTube and Social Media Stars

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But this new level of influencer marketing has seen a rise in something else. As well as giving businesses the chance to reach a wider audience, it is also giving normal people the chance to become online celebrities. We just have to look at the new wave of YouTube and social media stars who are dominating the web with millions and millions of adoring fans.

Today, anyone and everyone can be a marketing influencer within their social network. It’s no longer reserved for celebrities, controversial voices, and hand-drawn illustrations like it was in the past.

The Future of Influencer Marketing

The future of influencer marketing is looking bright. 84% of marketers are planning on taking up an influencer marketing campaign in the next year, which shows that the trend is still providing a solid ROI for brands.

So what can we expect to see? Well, there will probably be a call for more authentic influencers as consumers become more and more concerned with making connections rather than being sold to. Influencer marketing will be less about celebrities and more about real people who consumers can relate to.

It’s a time of change for the internet and online marketing, but one thing’s for certain – as humans, we’ll never lose our need to connect with other humans. And, despite the soar of the digital age, word-of-mouth advertising is still the best in the business. Influencer marketing is the new take on this, where endorsers are becoming like friends and family who we trust, admire, and, most of all, listen to.

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