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3 tips to make sure your influencer marketing works

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influencer mktg tipsDoes influencer marketing work? Of course word of mouth marketing works. It always has and always will. The endorsement of a consumer like you (or whom you aspire to be like) has always had power.

What makes social media marketing work is the social. The connection and conversation between and among humans. Respect, trust and drive toward community (homo sapiens expression of the pack instinct.) Digital media is simply the delivery mechanism that allows our communities to discard geographical considerations and allows us to replace, when we choose, the proxies offered by mass advertising with other consumers.

In the early days of influencer marketing, when it was small dollars and called blogger relations, we were perhaps collectively sloppy about the metrics. Potential reach as an example. Which is fair enough when you’re experimenting with a new tactic, but a non-starter as the tactic matures and acquires increasingly larger budgets.

To prove influencer marketing works, we have to address expectations, objectives and investment, and we just can’t show that it works. We have to demonstrate that it works BETTER than another tactic. That’s the RETURN on investment part. We also have to design our program for success. Good results from an influencer marketing program aren’t happy accidents. They are the result of solid planning that matches the tactic to the KPI and defines a clear, measurable and realistic objective.

Recently, the business press in our little corner of the world was full of headlines about @arii, an Instagrammer who unfortunately failed to sell the minimum number of products required in her test launch, and then complained, including about folks who got press kits and didn’t post.

Her Instagram complaint spawned a social media field day. Pundits wondered if influence was dead. Others pointed out the serious flaws in her business plan. For myself, I wondered why you would fail so spectacularly and then tell everyone.

Clearly, she didn’t have the influence she imagined, with her 2.6 million followers, or a solid business plan. It’s nice to have both, but it’s the solid business plan that is absolutely necessary. With a better plan, that she personally didn’t have the audience she needed for her product, might not have mattered.

Here are three influencer marketing lessons we can take away from her unfortunate tale.

  1. Know your audience. Research your influencers. Does the audience generally engage on similar topics or like/share items similar to the one you plan to promote? Likewise, with anyone you identify as a potential influencer? Influence is that moment where endorsement sparks action. Without action, there is no influence. This action doesn’t need to be a digital action, but it is far easier (and cheaper) to quantify based on digital history. When the stakes are high, we also do consumer research that can quantify the full social impact, not just the social media impact. From her results, we can guess that she didn’t do rigorous due diligence about the audience, or the folks she identified as influencers (those who got press kits), and just assumed that her followers would buy and post about anything she presented them with. Hard no.
  2. Consult qualified experts. We don’t know if she had advisors, but it certainly sounds like she did not. Your business plan and your marketing strategy will always benefit from seeking advice. Even if you decide to stick with your original plan, the process of talking it through will expose its weaknesses, giving you the opportunity to fix before, not after, launch. Don’t fall so in love with your idea that you aren’t receptive to criticism or alternative approaches.
  3. Be honest about weaknesses and threats. We are generally great at identifying the strengths and opportunities in our idea. Not so much the weaknesses and threats. There were likely many weaknesses in this plan, but I want to focus on one: the belief that her follower number on Instagram translated into real reach. Some percentage of a following that large is bound to be bots even for influencers that have never purchased a single follower. An even larger number is lurkers. At SHE Media, we use a REACH RATE to understand the percentage of an audience that is actually viewing the content: IMPRESSIONS or VIEWS/FOLLOWERS. Likewise, ENGAGEMENT RATE looks at the engagements in the context of the views, not numbers of followers. ENGAGEMENTS/ IMPRESSIONS or VIEWS.

I’ve been doing social media marketing for 15 years and marketing for even longer, and no matter what the tactic or communication vehicle, the fundamentals always matter. Digital and the rise of social media have changed how we execute against our goals – all the stuff in the middle – but the start and the end are still and always the same.

At the start, you identify your unique value and the audience for that value, analyze your SWOT (Strengths/Weaknesses/Opportunities/Threats) and determine key objectives (awareness, purchase etc.) At the end, you evaluate your performance against the objectives. Applaud your successes, fix the things that didn’t work and do it all over again.

From a recent post on her Instagram, @arii seems to have taken the lessons of her failure on board. That is a great start for her next endeavor and I wish her the best of luck!

Two Truths and a Lie: trust, #ad and privacy

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Gregarious Narain is on vacation until the end of the month. We’ve got a couple guests lined up to join me in his absence, but this week was a little hectic so (truth) I did not have time to prep them properly, so this week it was just me, and a slightly shorter show.

Would you like to join us on the show? It’s pretty easy. We broadcast live on Fridays at noon eastern for about 20 minutes. I send you a link to connect to the broadcast platform in the morning along with any show notes we’ve prepared and you log in by 11:50 am for an AV check. Sometimes you’ll be joining Greg and me, other times it is just me.

What will we talk about? We are open to discussing any topic related to marketing writ rather large — digital and social media, advertising, influencer marketing, technology , but also Internet culture, consumer behavior, digital fraud, privacy, artificial intelligence. If YOU have a topic you’d like to bring to the table within that rather large brief, we’d love to build a conversation around it with you. Email me at sgetgood@getgood.com or message me on Facebook.

Now to this week’s topic — consumer attitudes and trust. Joining me are my two guests this week, Mr. Rogers and Captain Rogers, two icons of honest integrity.

I only have 2 topics this week, because both are both truth and lie. The first is that consumers don’t like or engage with sponsored content the same way that they do so-called organic content. I wanted to discuss this (again) this week after reading a great op ed in Ad Age, In Defense of the Lowly Hashtags #ad and #sponsored by Natalie Zfat. Written in response to the statement “nobody likes the hashtag #ad” at an industry panel (filled with marketers), she shared her pride in using #ad because it meant she was able to successfully monetize her content while creating valuable content for readers.

This strikes a chord with me because I think treating sponsored content as a second class citizen is lazy thinking. Fact: transparency and best practice would dictate that we disclose relationships that might impact an endorsement even if the FTC Guidelines did not. But also Fact: the FTC guidelines in the US and similar guidelines in other countries DO dictate that we disclose when the content we create is sponsored or influenced by payment, business relationship or free product. And finally FACT: people are not as black and white in their consumption of content as the conceit organic:good, sponsored:less good makes it seem. I have seen more than a little organic content that is AWFUL and quite a lot of amazing sponsored content.

It is not that we don’t like advertising. It’s that we don’t like bad advertising. Whether an ad or a sponsored Instagram image. It is incumbent upon us as content creators to create quality content, full stop. When it is sponsored, we disclose, because it is the right thing to do. Cap agrees!

On social media, there is no situation where you do not have to disclose that the content is sponsored. Not even for celebrities. The reason for this is that on social, we have none of the cues that inform us that the endorsement is an advertisement that we have in other media. When we see a celebrity on Ellen, we know she is pitching her new movie because that is inherent in the talk show format. When we see an athlete in logo gear, we assume that he or she is sponsored by the brand, because that is how sponsorship works at that level. When we see the same celebrity promote something on Twitter or Instagram, her post looks just like all her other posts, and just like all the other posts of all the other people using the platform. There are no cues to clue us in that this post is sponsored. When an advertisement doesn’t look like an advertisement, it must be disclosed. Just this week I ran across another article about celebrities failing to disclose, this time in the UK. This is one time where wishing won’t make it so. Wishing you didn’t have to disclose or inventing all sorts of reasons why it doesn’t apply to you won’t change the facts. Because it is all about trust. Right, Mr. Rogers?

So, while it is true that people do treat sponsored content differently, the difference, in my opinion, is largely in the minds of the creators. If we stop assuming that people view sponsored content differently, create amazing quality content and honor the trust of our readers by being honest about our business relationships, we can be proud of #ad.

This week’s other part truth part myth is also related to trust. In this case, our trust in the social platforms and websites. Axios Media Trends reported this week on Census Bureau Data that indicates Americans are less worried about online privacy, largely, the report surmised because we have become accustomed to trading it for access and services.

Photo: Protest Stencil
Photo: Protest Stencil

But we are still concerned about data privacy, security and integrity. Witness the Twitter storm caused by the fake billboards in London last week.

They struck a chord because there is an underlying cognitive dissonance between the value consumers perceive they get from Facebook and the value they are increasingly aware Facebook gets from them. GenZ is already replacing it, including on college campuses, with new “facebooks” coming online, also reported in Media Trends this week.

I have been following the digital privacy conversation for more than 20 years, sometimes closely, sometimes less so but I am convinced we are finally at the inflection point where it matters as much to consumers as it does to advocates and geeks, and it is an increasingly informed consumer who understands that there are 3 issues: privacy security and integrity. Being willing to give up a little personal data in exchange for access is a fair trade but we are no less concerned about the protection of that data.

So. The truth is Americans may be less worried about privacy in general, but it is because they have become more informed. And we are very likely still very worried about how our information is used, whether information is true and whether bad actors can breach the walls. We just are more willing to accept the risk.

Two Truths and a Lie: the “if it seems too good to be true” edition

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This week we opened the show with a brief rundown of the BlogHer Creators Summit, and then moved to the main event, our discussion of fraud, the responsibility of the social platforms to remove hate speech and meme accounts.

It was my 14th BlogHer (not counting food, business etc., the offshoot shows of which I missed a few) but just the “main” summer event. The format was a bit different than past, with most of the action on the main stage throughout the day. Some of the highlights were: Christy Turlington Burns and Kirsten Gillebrand discussing maternal health and the need to VOTE, P&G exec Shelly McNamara on her experiences as an out gay executive in corporate America, Mattel’s new career Barbies and meeting Voice of the Year honoree Dr. Alaa Murabit.

Fraud is still very much in the digital media news. Instagram fraud had the headlines a few weeks ago, and likely will again (!) but last week saw an expose in the New York Times about YouTube fraud and concerns from advertisers about GDPR fraud in the form of false consent strings.

Truth number 1 this week is that if it seems too good to be true, it probably isn’t. True. 

Impressions, views, page views are all important starting points to understand DELIVERY but we need to focus on the engaged audience, and our results in that context. Looking at engagements instead of reach starts to counteract the fraudsters. Not completely, but a start. Artificial Intelligence cuts both ways. It is easier for the bad guys to create fake accounts and fake comments, but it is also getting easier to spot them. When we remove the suspicious activity from the results, we can look at the legit activity and engagements, for a better answer.

At long last, this month the platforms began (finally) to take action against hate monger Alex Jones. Apple removed it from podcasts, Spotify, Facebook and YouTube took action, removing content and deactivating accounts but there is still a great deal of inconsistency within the platforms. And Twitter did nothing.

Truth #2 is that while we should be grateful for less Alex Jones on the Internet, we need to hold the platforms accountable to do more.

Any action by the social platforms to reduce the volume of hate speech and lies by bigots like Alex Jones is a GOOD thing, no matter how excessively long it took them to get there or how incomplete the response. There is LESS Alex Jones on the Internet today and for that we should be grateful. But…. it did take far too long and we must hold them accountable. They do not get a pass on resolving the inconsistencies among their different services.

In the SNCR fake news survey last fall, marketers said that platforms had a responsibility to resolve the problem of unsafe, untrue content. Part of the response must include clear consistent policies across all services and enforcement thereof.

The myth or lie —
Bots and Meme accounts can replace authentic influencer content, and since they are much easier to control, are a good alternative to customer activation. No, no, a thousand times no.

If you want to make a SOCIAL BOT or use chat BOTs in your strategy, that is a legitimate choice, and can be very successful, but be honest about it. If you are mimicking actual human SOCIAL engagement, the consumer deserves to know she or he is chatting with a bot. It won’t matter to many, especially Gen Z that is already so accustomed to engaging with digital avatars. But they should be informed.

As far as memes go, by all means use them. They are a crucial tool for earned social shares. But don’t think  meme accounts can replace the voice of your customer as an influencer, not just a re-share. Use them alongside influencers but not instead.

Two Truths & a Lie about Brand Safety

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This summer is flying by. We skipped Two Truths last week, largely because I was at the BlogHer Creators Summit for 2 days and the atmosphere was bustling! Way too noisy to record a Facebook Live show with my minimal equipment. I’d probably forget to plug in the mic again 😉

When I started pulling together the posts for tomorrow’s episode, I realized I never posted the August 2d one. So, here it is, very late, but oddly the content is still timely.

The Truths
1. Both YT and FB blocked Alex Jones this week, but it seems like a drop in the bucket for the fake news problem and advertisers concerned about the context in which their ads might appear. Brand Safety is cited by advertisers as a top concern; consumers care about fake news / want to trust social platforms. but FB and Twitter both took a hit in their stock price because user growth dropped and resources were applied (however grudgingly) to these areas. This implies that taking an action / stance on privacy/data integrity has a cost beyond simply the expense of doing the “thing.”

2. Influencer platforms are rushing to release their “fraudometers” to show the integrity/quality of their networks. We discussed some of the models, but there is no standard for this. Everyone’s just applying their own opinion, whether human or machine derived, to define “fake” follower. In the end, it is also the wrong question. Understanding the fraudulent followers is an exercise to tick off a box. What we really want to understand is what percentage of an audience engages with the content, and then if we are a brand, what percentage of THAT engages with us.

Myth
Brand Safety is a myth. You cannot control all aspects on digital and social. You can get closer with advertising with ad tech tools and things like ads.text, private marketplaces, and guaranteed programmatic, but on social media? People are messy. You can’t control the comments or reshares and sometimes even your influencers go off script and do wacky stuff. Think PewdiePie and Logan Paul. On social, relationships are the keys to brand safety.

Resources mentioned in the show: Five Charts Explaining the State of Brand Safety

Two Truths and a Lie: Instagram!!

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In episode 2 of Two Truths and a Lie, we talked about Instagram.

Instagram is the most popular platform in many, but not all, markets. EMarketer reported this week that its “rising popularity for influencer campaigns goes hand in hand with the platform’s strong user growth, as marketers tend to go where their customers are,” but in some countries/areas, other platforms are as or more popular.

Instagram’s popularity has also lead to some crazy and unsavory behaviors — from people getting killed or injured for the sake of a photograph (just recently a woman was bit by a shark just to get a photo) and more than a few people have fallen to their deaths from buildings, mountains and waterfalls for the sake of a selfie, to fraud — bought followers, fake followers, buying engagement to boost the numbers.

We tried to get some perspective in our conversation.

Truth — Platform should always follow purpose. Just because Instagram is growing in popularity, doesn’t mean it is the ONLY platform for influencer engagement. In some countries, it lags behind other platforms and tools, and even in the US, it may not be the best place for your program, depending on your goals and content.

When making platform decisions, understand where YOUR customers are, where they are actually engaging with content. This also means:

  • doing your due diligence about the influencers you are working with, and evaluating whether they truly have influence on the topic, whether they have the right audience for your offer or product.
  • developing tasks and storytelling opportunities optimized for the platform. Don’t just use Instagram Stories — think about how to use them effectively, natively. And honestly, don’t use things like Stories (that disappear) without some other more permanent social storytelling to supplement it.

Truth —  Reach is a delivery metric, NOT a performance metric. In order to understand the performance of Instagram influencers, we need to look at engagement with content, not just reach. Our metrics tools of choice — whether platforms like Hootsuite, Sprinklr et al, influencer platforms or simply spreadsheets into which we record data from our influencers — can’t be satisfied with just reporting and rewarding reach. We need to look at impressions and at a minimum engagement rates — what percentage of the followers engaged with the content.

Metrics are complicated by the way Facebook and Instagram are set up — personal profiles have relatively little in the way of metrics, whereas business ones are relatively rich. This is less of an issue for businesses’ owned social accounts, since they were likely set up as business accounts, but influencers — especially ones that have been around for a while or who don’t want to use Facebook Pages (for whatever reason) run into complications with this.

As an example, if you want to convert your Instagram to a business profile, you need to link to a Facebook business page. If you don’t have one, you need to make one. This is a personal bête noire since I have a personal profile on Facebook, and never really bothered with a page, even for the business, because I largely use LinkedIn for professional posting. I’ve now got a “stub” page for my business, solely for the purpose of converting my Instagram to a business profile to take advantage of the richer native metrics.

Your takeaway from all this? Make sure your Instagram influencers are using business profiles so you can get the rich data available on the platform. You should already have limited your Facebook programs to influencers with verified pages using Facebook’s branded content tools to post. Expect that whither goest Facebook so too shall Instagram.

Also – do not compensate based on reach. Start moving toward results oriented compensation models.

Myth: “Organic” social content is better than influencer marketing because the person sharing it wasn’t compensated for his/her work. It truly comes from the heart. We wouldn’t have all this fraud and problems in Instagram if it we weren’t paying people to post.

Um no.

That is a load of organic material. Because advertisers WOULD — in the pursuit of scale — pay people to post. They just wouldn’t disclose it. Which is why we have the FTC Guidelines for Advertisers in the first place. Think about the Lord & Taylor dress debacle of a few years ago.

The truth is, there are very few brands that can incite excitement at scale without priming the pump in some fashion. Apple. Harley Davidson. Star Wars. Marvel. And THOSE brands invested deeply in the development of their communities from GO in order to have the natural fanbases that they do.

The rest of us have to kick things off if we want any sort of scale, versus just the occasional naturally occurring spontaneous mentions (that hopefully are positive!)

You should:

  • Pay your influencers for the work they do;
  • Mine your social feeds for organic mentions to find new content, new influencers;
  • Boost the best performing content.

We ended with some personal advice: You don’t want to be the Darwin Award winner in the Instagram category. Always exercise caution when creating your masterpieces. You matter more than a like or share.

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POSTSCRIPT: IMO a well-rounded strategy uses at least 2 types of content or platforms to reach the intended audience. Don’t JUST do Instagram, no matter how hot it is. Diversify into at least one other avenue to reach your consumer on social. I also think it’s critical to set a baseline, especially for awareness oriented programs, using a pre-campaign / post-campaign survey or brand lift study.