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The power of word-of-mouth is amplified through social networks. These days, when you’re considering any purchase, you have an entire focus group to call upon via your smartphone any time, and that focus group isn't some random sample. These are people you care about, people you listen to and trust. These people are influencers, and through social connection, those influential voices can be virtually anyone. And now brands are looking to tap into that potential.To get a better handle on the opportunities of influencer marketing, Tapinfluence recently commissioned Altimeter to conduct a study of more than 1,700 influencers and 100 marketers to get their insights into thecurrent state of influence and how brands can, and are, using it to advantage. The full report contains some great insights into the growth of influencer marketing, particularly from the perspective of the influencers themselves, and they’ve incorporated the key findings into this new infographic....
Influencer marketing was huge in 2015. Just take a look – it’s been on a pretty fast trajectory recently:That presents a challenge to marketers who have been doing it for awhile. Sure, you might have a network that’s engaged with your content and a few VIPs you can rely on to help promote, but they’re getting busier as more companies try to work with them.
With more companies start sending outreach emails, it’s getting harder to get the attention of your targets. The key is following the right steps in planning, research, and nurturing relationships consistently.
To demonstrate the entire process from start to finish, Paul May, co-founder of BuzzStream, joined us for a webinar last week walked us through the real, complete influencer strategy involved in the launch of a previous BuzzStream ebook....
Wondering how your business blog ranks among the best in the U.K.? Would you like to know what parameters are preventing you from being number one? Do you know what the best blogs are doing to be number one?
Looking for a list of the top 100 U.K. business blogs that you can add to your reading list or pull inspiration from? If you're wondering about any of the questions above, then you’re going to love the update to our InboundRank tool, which is tailored specifically to U.K. marketers running business-related blogs. In addition to marketing, InboundRank is now open to the following categories: finance, software & tech, and general business....
Don’t get me wrong—a good tips post has helped me greatly over the years. But I’m a sucker for posts containing facts, strategies backed up with data, and most of all… charts!
There is always good research coming out in the world of marketing, but in the past few weeks, the quantity and quality of data published has increased greatly. For this post, I’ve rounded up some of my favorites....
The sponsored content wasps are swarming!
Every day I get pitches from companies seeking to pay me to feature their products on my blog, or even pay for entire posts about their products. Not only is the number of requests increasing, the amount of money being offered for these posts is going up too.
This is a trend I predicted in the 2012 book Return On Influence.
As the effectiveness of “traditional” advertising channels dries up, marketers will seek to “borrow” the large and loyal audiences of bloggers and other content creators.
This movement has exploded so fast in the past 12 months, one journalist asked me last week if it needed to be regulated. She pointed out the number of young YouTube stars who are being paid to peddle everything from candy bars to backpacks withot disclosing that this is paid advertsing....
“Every brand, large or small, service, CPG, and beyond, should be moving their efforts to include IRM [influencer relationship marketing] to be a pillar in their communication and marketing plan,” Massura said. “IRM is important not only to affect purchase decision and consideration, but when deployed strategically, it can benefit reputation, employee retention and recruitment, and diffuse crisis.”
From the glowing online content about influencer marketing blanketing the webto Danny Brown and Sam Fiorella’s much-buzzed about book “Influence Marketing,” almost everyone seems to value the power of IRM. However, almost everyone does not include NeedTagger CEO Vernon Niven....
Important online influencers are opinionated hard workers and socially active. Here's how to approach them.
...What is an online influencer according to LEWIS PR? Everyone can share his opinions about products, services, business or specific topics nowadays. A ‘real’ online influencer is someone who has the potential to alter the attitudes and sentiments of others, more than “others”.
They are often strongly opinionated and have a large network. However, the ability to influence how others look at products, brands or certain matters, is more important than the abstract numbers. Especially since online influencers tend to be highly specialized in a specific domain....
It’s my goal for everyone reading this post to never be called out publicly on Twitter for composing a horrible pitch. The following “short stories” are stories I’ve gathered from both PR pros and bloggers telling me about their experiences with blogger outreach gone bad.Read it. Take it in. These are examples of what not to do….
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Influence marketing and native advertising are gaining popularity as brands continue to shift away from “interruption marketing” and embrace a more customer-centric approach. But in trying to sell without selling, it’s possible brands have made the “soft sell” a bit too soft, disguising advertising as organic influencer posts. Smart marketers have been extra vigilant about disclosure since the Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”) issued an enforcement policy last December. Actually, the truly smart have been tightening up their own disclosure requirements since the FTC updated its online advertising disclosure guidelines in March 2013. The threat’s been building for years. The agency’s been beating the drums for a while. Statements, letters and guidelines have warned marketers and bloggers of the oncoming campaign against sponsored content that doesn’t look sponsored: social media posts that don’t clearly state that they’re contest entries, influencer posts that don’t disclose that the influencer received compensation from the brand, etc.....
The people who you want to know are the influensters. Influenster is a product discovery platform and reviews site that enables consumers to find new products, and gain fresh insight and tips about new products so that all members can make better informed shopping decisions.
And we’re talking five million plus honest product reviews from 1.5M+ socially active trendsters, on over a million products for consumers to discover.
There’s also a gamification aspect to it, allowing trendsters and influensters a chance at receiving more new products....
In my first post, I summarized the shift currently taking place in corporate communications. We’re now ready to delve more deeply into the digital communications landscape, starting with the rise of the influencer. In today’s world, setting a solid influencer strategy means that we need to understand….
The influencers in your niche are probably receiving hundreds of friendly requests a day. Hence, the trick behind successful outreach is to stand out among your peers and catch the intended party's attention.
The success probability may be bleak, but influencer engagement is not exactly rocket science. And it can drive significant results with the right strategy and social media practices....
Want to find key influencers in specific topic areas? You need the right tools to save you time. Find the top influencer research tools here.
But first you need to know who these influencers are.
You could hop from social network to social network, doing manual research. Or you could take the easy option and use a tool that is designed to do influencer research and get the insights that you need to leverage the power of influence.
In this post I’ve put together 8 of the best, with a range of different features and a lot of them are affordable or can be used for free....
When was the last time you checked your Klout score? And more importantly, did you really care about it?
The answer to that question could help explain why, late last week, Klout gave itself a whole new business model. Now it won't just measure your score and offer dubious perks, it will also provide you with a stream of content you'll most likely to want to share, actively boosting your score. It went from playing the referee to playing the coach.
During a conversation with Mashable, Klout founder and CEO Joe Fernandez insisted that the new service change is "not a pivot" — rather, it is a response to the most common question he had been asked by users for five years: How can I boost my Klout score? "We always knew the Klout score was the foundation," Fernandez says. "We think of this as extending our value proposition."...
In 2014 we can expect to see growth in influencer marketing including investment in identifying influencers and in the growth of outreach strategies to engage such influencers.According to InNetwork around $240m is spent in North America each year on influencer marketing. This is a figure we can expect to grow in 2014, partly because there is so little trust in advertising, but primarily because people trust people.
Surveys have consistently shown a low a level of trust in marketing such as advertisements, with some surveys finding up to 75% people do not believe advertisements. This is in marked contrast to recommendations from other people. The 2011 Neilson survey asked people what sources of information were most relevant to them when seeking information about products and services. The response was overwhelmingly recommendations from people. Over 90% of people felt that recommendations from friends were highly or somewhat relevant to them and 75% felt that consumer opinions posted online were were highly or somewhat relevant to them. This compared to ads on social networks being down at 36%....
A recent report by the Pew Research Center stated that 78% of Internet users research products and services online. And this is not people going to company websites to be spoon-fed corporate descriptions – this is people engaging with brands, reading reviews, and seeing how their peers view companies and products.
A large majority of this is done through social media and if you are not a part of the conversation, you are losing out on a chance to manage and grow your brand’s reputation. One of the best ways to grow your brand’s presence is by targeting and engaging influencers, this allows you to quickly grow your brand’s awareness and influence.
These five steps will show you the ins-and-outs of targeting and engaging influencers to maximize your brand presence....
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Loads of valuable influencer marketing Insights in this research report.