Here to talk about the power of the influencer Most talked about topic in the industry First experience from a person perspective was a couple of years ago Reassurance that I was buying the right thing Looked at some online reviews Came across video review At first wasn’t sure if I could watch it Awkward a stranger, front room talking in a dodgy camera Concept alien to me Any I got through and thought that was actually really genuine And you tube then recommended a number of other videos to watch Before I knew it I had lost 3 hours of my life trying to perfect make up looks And had written down a long list of products I had to buy At no point did it cross my mind that these people were being paid to promote these products And maybe they weren’t But they could see potential of what soon became a tipping point for social media and content

THE POWER OF THE INFLUENCERNicola Barker

@nicolabarker81

We can’t attend an event with some Gladwell can we He talks about in his book The Tipping Point…The magic moment when an idea, trend or social behaviour crosses a threshold, tips or spreads like wildfire

the magic moment when an idea, trend of social behaviour crosses a threshold, tips of spreads like wildfire

MALCOLM GLADWELL

And his book he talks about the law of the few which he describes that the success of any kind of social epidemic is heavily dependent on the involvement of people with a particular set of social gift Now for those of you are familiar with his work, he wrote this book in the year 2000 and he know what was going to happen, he didn’t predict any of this stuff He didn’t even know that social media was going to happen

The success of any kind of social epidemic is heavily dependent on the involvement of people with a particular rare set of social gifts

MALCOLM GLADWELL

And if we look back over the last 5 or 7 we can see many transitions of social media predominately been driven in the way as users we use social media One example being the introduction of the like, the ability to like or comment something you could argue not created interaction but had a part to play in creating the tipping point of the concept of the influencer because it creates a measure of popularity which lead ultimately to influenceAnd who remembers the original Facebook status that set the pre cursor of is so Nicola is having a cup of coffee Nicola is off to the gym.Crikey how insightful did I used to be

And what’s worse now is that Facebook wants you to share your memories…no thanks it is cringe worthy enough without having to be reminded of it

EVOLUTION OF SOCIAL MEDIA

Now if I still wanted to tell the world that I am having a cup of coffee I would post a picture of a perfectly placed coffee cup, sat on a nice background, and I might even drop in my designer sunglasses but them at a jaunty angle because that looks pretty cool and it will get me more likesAnd I wanted to tell the world that I am going to gym because let’s face it if it isn’t on social media then it didn’t happen…Then what would I do….well I would post a selfie of course in the gym changing room I might do it before or after my workout it depends if I can do it with someone photobombing in the back ground And I might add the Mayfair fileter because it give the impression of abs that aren’t really there but that will get me more likes And I will add the #instafit because I know that there are currently 17million picture currently on instagram with this hash tag so a huge community there will definitely get me even more likes! These pictures aren’t mine or of me by the way I could only dream of getting this many likes

CHANGE IN HOW WE USE SOCIAL MEDIA

When instagram first launched it was about putting filters on your photos and basically trying to pretend that you are a better photographer than you actually are But now people are actually trying to become ‘instafamous’ yes that is a term it is on Wikipedia so it must true

Wow, you’re about to become instafamous once I upload this photo to instagram

INSTAGRAM

And what this is doing is redefining the concept of celebrity because instead of turning pages of magazines to see celebrities or watching their idols in films Generations y and z now look to instagram, snapchat and twitter in search of their idols and these are the bloggers, models, fitness trainers who are recognised names or at least recognised names online

REDFINING CELEBRITY

So as marketers we need to recognising and thinking about these tipping points in order to evolve and adapt our digital strategies. We need to think about these evolutions and look to how they can transform our businesses

WE NEED TO RECOGNISE TIPPING POINTS

Influencer marketing or outreach whichever you prefer to call it has been cited as the fastest growing on line marketing channel

FASTEST GROWING

And according to the Forbes CMO network 59% of marketers said that will be increasing their influencer marketing budgets proving that it delivers tangible ROI The concept of it goes quite simply with content and social media

59% of marketers are planning to increase their influencer marketing budgets in the next 12 months

FORBES CMO NETWORK

We know the story with content, we have been trying and hearing it for years. For your content to stand out we need to make it memorable, use emotion because people feel first, think second, use the art of story telling An I don’t know about you but it is bloody hard to memorable for two reasons normally you need to take a risk and businesses don’t like to take risks and secondly there is so much content out there how do you get your target audience to see it when they are already exposed to so many other things saying the same thing but in a different way

CONTENT IS EVERYTHING

What partnering with influencers does is it give your content a lift, it can amplify your message, increase its exposure ultimately driving leads. One of the reasons why it has become so popular is because we need to find more effective ways of reaching new online audiences

AMPLIFY CONTENT EXPOSURECREATELEADS

INFLUENCERS DELIVER VALUE

Channels like online advertising are intrusive to our user experience How many people get annoyed when you are in the middle of reading something and you just can’t close that advert? Or you are counting down the seconds till you can skip that you advert With the evolvement of technology and the introduction of ad blockers we as consumers are more in control of choosing what we don’t and don’t want to see

DISRUPTIVE ADVERTISING

Partnering with influencers is different because they offer something different They have an earned and engaged audience and the word earned is very important there Because we are not talking about the high profile celebrities or political leaders because you can argue that they have influence before they even join a social network

EARNED AND ENGAGED AUDIENCES

President Obama got to 1 million twitter followers in just 4.5 hours from one tweet Not many people can do that

ONE1 MILLION FOLLOWERS IN 4.5

HOURS

Whilst you can argue that some of the popular you tubers have celebrity status Zoella being the obvious example….they didn’t have status when they started out and what they did was produced and shared content that people were interested in kept coming back for moreOne of the best examples of influencer marketing I have seen was a video that went viral a couple of years ago It was a bit different but because it was aimed to shock and raise awareness for young to speak about domestic violence The campaign was called Don’t Cover UP and featured popular self-taught makeup artist Lauren Luke

PRODUCED CONTENT

Refuge were trying to reach out to teenage girls and young women and the ad’s targeting couldn’t have been more appropriate as Lauren Luke’s has almost half million subscribers within this demographic

THE TARGETING WAS SEAMLESS

It isn’t just the popular you tubers though that you can class as influencers because let’s face it unless you have large budgets to put towards this and spend up to £30k for one instragram post you aren’t going to get very far There are lots of other bloggers and people producing content who are just as powerful and come with their readymade loyal audiences that are tunes in

Tanya Burr Pixiwoo Gary Vaynerchuk

Kayla Itsines Seth Godin

NOT JUST ABOUT POPULARITY

So if you are looking to target HR directors, .NET developers, science teachers or even marketers then there are people out there who will amplify or collaborate your content. How do we find these people because we might not know who they are?

READY MADE AND LOYAL AUDIENCES

One of the tools that we use for our reach is inky bee and this is a blogger outreach tool where you can manage your outreach programme:

SEEK AND FIND

Search using key words You can rank each blogger by key metrics such as size of audience, levels of engagement, how often they post and number of social connections You can create lists of people so you can closely monitor their activity And you can automatically connect, follow their social media profiles ready for engaging When implementing an influencer strategy engagement is key because if you get this wrong you might as well not botherWe all liked to feel values and know that our opinions matter

Search Rank Create lists See contact details

INKY BEE LETS YOU

You need to engage early and authentically in order to be successful in outreach, make friends before you need themAnd you do this by liking and sharing their content over a period of time, we did this for 6 months before we approached our influencers to host or feature our contentAnd you can do this by liking, sharing, commenting on their content but if you want to take a step further we featured their content in our blogs and created a list of top 10 influential people in their space and put them in it and told them

ENGAGE EARLY AND AUTHENTICALLY

People like to feel valued and if they are then they are more likely to reciprocate and agree to work with you

PEOPLE LIKE TO FEEL VALUED

So if you have people in your teams designated to just doing social media make sure outreach is integral to what they do. Look at how they are spending their time and make it a more equal split between pushing messages through posts and outreachBecause behind every successful digital strategy lies effective influencer engagement

EQUAL SPLIT

One important part of forming and launching an influencer strategy but is often over looked is employee advocacy Your employees have the potential to be one of your biggest marketing assets and are yet an untapped territoryOne of the best examples of this that I have seen recently is with boutique fitness club 1rebel This company was launched a couple of years ago to revolutionise the UK fitness industryWhat it does differently is that it offers an experience whether that is in the luxury changing rooms kitted with shower gel, moisturisers, hair straighteners or through one of its high intensity fitness classes with its highly energetic trainers but what aims to do is to be memorable and not like any other gym

EMPLOYEE ADVOCACY

Part of what has helped it become such a cult brand is the amplification of the brand through it’s employeesAll of the trainers have or are actively encouraged to have their own social media profiles attached to the 1rebel brand which increases the reach dramatically. There are currently nearly 10000 pictures on Instagram linked to the brand which is pretty good for only 2 locations in London. So a lot of employee advocacy going there

A LOT OF EMPLOYEE ADVOCACY

To implement this in your businesses you can start of by picking your most digitally savvy people to share your content. Some of your employees may hold more online reach influence then your own CEO or even brand so start with these people first

CHOOSE THE RIGHT PEOPLE

Two things are critical to the success of employee advocacy and the first is trustYou need to have a transparent culture of trust for it to work because these will motivate shares, and encourages genuine conversations. It builds the confidence in your employees that you trust their judgement

TRUST

The second thing is freedom you can set guidelines and guide on best practice but you have to give them the freedom to do it on their own. Or also you can’t force them to do it because it won’t be genuine

FREEDOM

To help manage employee advocacy and measure effectiveness there are number of online tools on the market that enable your employees to know which content to share, publish content and also incentives through gamification to actively encourage your employees to get involved. This one is called SMARP but there are many out there on the market

SMARP

When it comes to measuring your influencer strategy remember that the objective is not to influence the influencer but to influence the influencers audience as this is the point at which the impact of the influencer engagement is both felt and measured

MEASURE

We can assign lots of different metrics on this such as traffic to website, video views, and increased conversions but ultimately your metrics need to tie back into what your original goal was. For us it is leads and conversions because these add tangible ROI to the bottom line for your organisation it might be different but in a sales driven business it is the £ that matter

Number of impressions

WHAT VALUE?

Leads generated

Increased conversions

Enhanced credibility

Be prepared and recognise your tipping points Engage early and authentically Use online outreach tools to implement and measure outreach

TAKEAWAYS

Recognise tipping points

and adapt your digital

strategies

Engage early and

authentically

Use online outreach tools to implement and measure

outreach

Create a transparent culture of trust and freedom when undertaking employee advocacy The value that you assign to influencer marketing is linked to your objective

TAKEAWAYS

Create a transparent

culture of trust and freedom

when implementing

employee advocacy

The value that you assign to

influencer marketing should be

linked to your objective

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Presented by: Nicola Barker Company Name: Impellam

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