Winfluence - The Influence Marketing Podcast

One avenue of conversation we haven’t really explored here on the show is diving into the nuances of influencer marketing within different social networks. A great creator on Instagram may not be very good on Twitter. A strong YouTuber may not help you at all on Facebook.  YouTube is the first avenue I think it’s worth diving deeper into. Not only is video far more engaging for consumers, but YouT...

Of all the questions marketers ask about building successful influencer marketing campaigns, the two that stand out are the top two, by a mile: First, how do I find the right influencers? The second is how do I measure success of influencer marketing.  And honestly, those two components of the process are probably the most important. You can have a great idea, messaging and such, but if you don’t...

A recurring theme on this show is finding examples influence marketing, not just marketing involving online influencers. When we uncover a non-traditional perspective on this thing we do, it unlocks a lot of interesting thinking for all of us. I am one who geeks out about offline examples of influence marketing, but there are variations of the theme online, too. And you find those examples sometim...

Welcome to Winfluence episode number 100. We started this journey back on September 2, 2020 when the old Jason Falls Show live stream turned podcast switched to an audio-only show dedicated to discussions of influence marketing. Thank you for joining me along the way. Here’s to another 100. In keeping with the theme, this episode is all about history. Not of the show, but of the craft of influence...

In my day job at Cornett, influence marketing is very important, but it’s not the only thing we do. So small businesses or startups that need consulting don’t typically fit into what I can provide. Lately, I’ve found that I needed either a small firm or an independent consultant to either manage something for us or to just refer the business to. That’s why I was excited to get to know our guest to...

Do you even know what true influence looks like? We get lost in the day-to-day of influencer marketing, where we count on people who post interesting things on social media to persuade their audiences to try and buy our products and forget the core thing we need to do … really influence people. Does seeing a product in the hands of a person you follow on Instagram have a real impact on you? Probab...

We’re creeping up on a year of Winfluence the podcast and in that time we’ve talked to a number of incredibly smart people who are working to make the influence and and influencer space better for creators, brands, service providers, agencies and beyond. I think by now you all probably get a feel for my perspective on influence marketing being more about finding ways to create influence than findi...

Are influencers worth the rates they charge? Isn’t that the most frequently asked question among brand managers when it comes to influencer marketing these days? The answer, as always, is that it depends.  It depends on what they charge versus what the brand gets in return. Determining that depends on a variety of factors. How many followers does the influencer have. What’s their engagement rate,...

Each episode of this podcast begins with me asking the question, "Want Instagrammers and YouTubers to mention your brand? Or do you want to influence an audience to buy your product?" I then say this podcast is about illustrating the difference between using influencers and actually influencing. There are few venues that underline the necessity of that approach than healthcare marketing. The short...

The circle of life isn’t just an inspirational Elton John and Disney song. It’s an apt description of how a lot of things work, especially trends in the marketing world. Remember about seven or eight years ago when all the marketing talking heads were trashing QR codes? Alright, now think about how you’ve accessed the menu in a restaurant in the last couple of months.  Whether it's the technology...

In one of the chapters of Winfluence - Reframing Influencer Marketing to Ignite Your Brand, I tell the story of a fashion and style influencer who launched a product only to have it fall on deaf ears. The chronicle is of Arii, who was a teenager at the time and should have been lauded just for trying to start her own business based on her social media fame. Instead, she was mocked and declared a f...

Winfluence - The Influence Marketing Podcast is serious, though playful and fun. We have interesting conversations about the industry, how brands can leverage influence, how influencers can better connect with brands and how the software companies and agencies all fit into the mix. We do that in order to help you get smarter, better and have more success leveraging influence marketing, influencers...

Probably the most frequent quality of influencer selection I’ve talked about in the last month or so is brand alignment. Does the influencer match your brand in terms of values, aesthetics and beyond. The more aligned your influencers and content creators are with your values, your brand voice and perhaps content pillars, the easier their audience will make that leap to accepting you as a trustwor...

Instagram announced last week it was testing new affiliate marketing tools for influencers. Many influencer marketing software solutions have begun integrating affiliate marketing components into their softwares as well.  The reason is brands have been clamoring for them because brands think the affiliate model of marketing is going to magically make influencer marketing cheaper. They’re looking f...

We’ve thrown around the term micro-influencer a lot on this show. The term refers to someone with generally around 5,000 to 50,000 followers. They’re probably not quite to the point of making a living doing it, but they have an impact on a fair number of people. Lots of brands love micro-influencers because they can be cheaper and less hassle to deal with. No offense to our mega-influencer friends...

I know what brands want from influencers. But what brands say they want from them and what they actually want from them are different things. Ask a brand manager what they want from their influencers or influencer programs and they’ll say things like: Engaging content Enthusiastic endorsement Or the stomach-turning authentic collaboration But brands are not measured by the amount of content they c...

It’s always a treat to get insight from influencers on the show. My research and analytics tell me most of you are brand-side marketers or agency folks that serve the brands playing in the influencer marketing space. So, when we have the opportunity to hear from a content creator, there’s a lot of insight to be had. How to work with them. What works well or doesn’t. How they view brands, agencies,...

The underlying theme of my book Winfluence - Reframing Influencer Marketing to Ignite Your Brand, is that we have to stop thinking about this practice as all about influencers and think of it in terms of how to drive influence. That can come from online influencers with big followings, but it can also come from your own brand building influence in your industry. It can come from partnering with co...

One of the biggest challenges for brands in influence marketing is tying all these wonderful content collaborations with creators back to the bottom line. Not only do brands not often have full or direct exposure to an influencer’s analytics, but many don’t sell direct to consumer, meaning sales data is often in the hands of another third party in the form of retailers. And if you’ve ever dealt wi...

As the influencer marketing space evolves, so will the tools, platforms and services out there that make things better. We’ve interviewed some folks behind some of these startups here on the show already and we’ll continue to do so. I like to think we’re keeping an eye on what’s out there in case a better mousetrap comes along. One topic of discussion in the influencer and influence marketing spac...

Two weeks ago I spent several hours judging entries in an influencer marketing awards contest. Part of the submission was for the brand or agency to describe their organization’s unique selling proposition. Every single entry had some version of the following in their answer: “We focus on authentic, transparent and human connections with our … blah blah blah.” You could literally copy and paste on...

We recently had a conversation with Brandon Brown of influencer platform Grin about CGI influencers—computer generated avatars that seem to be real people posting influencer-like content and gaining followers. That conversation opened up some discussion about using the influencer landscape as a palette for creativity. We joked that Kentucky Fried Chicken should create a Colonel Sanders influencer...

My previous commentary that focused on the idea that Words Matter pointed out a flaw in semantics with how HypeAuditor reported fraudulent behavior. That semantic difference—a simple poor choice of words—lead Campaign U.S., a popular advertising industry publications, to post the statement that more than half of Instagram influencers—"engaged in fraud"—with 45 percent of accounts—"fake."  Engaged...

Once upon a time, I was a fairly knowledgeable guy about social listening. (I still am, I think. But in the early 2010s I was kind of known for that.) Analyzing online conversations to mine for consumer insights became such a focus for me that I started a company around the practice. The Conversation Research Institute didn't last long because we didn't have artificial intelligence and machine lea...

For much of the last year or so in the influence marketing space, there has been a growing trend to move away from mega-influencers in favor of micro- and nano-influencers. Those with fewer than 50,000 or even 10,000 followers. The reasons, as we’ve discussed with several of our guests, is that the smaller the following, the higher the engagement rate … generally speaking. If the engagement rate f...