Winfluence - The Influence Marketing Podcast – Details, episodes & analysis

As we enter 2024, I told you we were going to dial in our pursuit of changing the mindset in the influence marketing industry to help brands and agencies focus on influence, not just influencers. So we’re going to have a lot of conversations with a lot of different people along the way to make that happen. We’re going to kick off the year talking to one of my favorite people. Krista Neher has been a leading authority on digital marketing for as long as I can remember. She’s a six-time best-selling author and found of Bootcamp Digital, an education brand that offers digital marketing certification. Along the way, Krista has had to not only teach people about influence marketing, but dig in and practice the craft a bit as a consultant, too. But her wide range of expertise and ability, plus her focus on making digital marketing a practical and cost-efficient investment for her clients gives her that broad perspective I look for in someone to just chop up and chew through the conversations in the space. Today on Winfluence, I’ll dig into influence marketing with Krista. We’ll talk about how to build an influence plan, calculate the value of your influencer relationships and I’ll see if my assertions about influence marketing hold up to her scrutiny … it’s a perspective I certainly respect and know you’ll enjoy. This episode is presented by CIPIO.ai. Scale acquisition of user-generated content and flip those social videos into ad creative using powerful generative AI toolset. Sign up for a demo at https://jasonfalls.co/cipio Find this episode online at https://jasonfalls.co/kristaneher Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It’s been a minute. If you haven’t noticed, Winfluence has been on a bit of a holiday hiatus. Honestly, its a good thing for me … client work ramped up toward the end of the year and I simply didn’t have enough time to fit in the weekly interviews and production to give you an episode worth listening to. Instead of rushing to crank out something mediocre, I opted to step back, focus on the client work and reassess what Winfluence is and can be. For the last few weeks, I’ve thought long and hard about the show. I even entertained the notion that maybe it had run its course and wasn’t worth the energy to crank out more episodes in 2024.  But then two things happened. First, I thought about the state of things. And to be quite honest, we’re not done. There’s a lot still to accomplish in influence marketing. A good portion of the industry is still falling over itself doing things poorly.  The bigger the creator, the more likely you’re going to have to deal with talent managers.  Every talent manager I talk to these days seems to be more and more out of touch with the reality brands face with budgets and return on their marketing dollar. Brand managers are still pushing influencers to just be advertising shills. And we are still thinking of influencers as the key to success, when the whole premise of this show and my approach to the craft is centered around the influence … not the influencer.  It’s about to be 2024. And most of the people in the industry spending dollars on influence marketing are still functioning like it’s 2007. The other thing that informed my thinking, I want to save for later, so listen to the full episode for that. In this episode of Winfluence, I’m going to list some things that are still broken about our industry. I’m going to carve out a few ideas on what we can do to fix them. And I’ll recommit to you that this show is not only not going away, we’re just getting started. Watch or listen to the full episode at jasonfalls.co/2024reset Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What would you do if you didn’t have access to social media for a day? How about a week? What about three and a half months? How would that change your daily habits? How would it change where you turned for information. How would it affect your business?  Now, certainly for you social media content creators and brands that rely heavily on social media creators and content to drive customers, I’m sure if could be catastrophic. But really? Are there no other alternatives? Don’t get me wrong. I’m not here to advocate for a social media shut down, but someone did it recently and lived to tell. Meg Casebolt is a B2B SEO consultant. For a long time, she followed the crowds to social media, leveraged it for her business and her clients and did what we all do.  Now, SEO is a different discipline from social media. But it still requires creating content, promoting that content and staying relevant in the online world. That can imply staying connected on social media, too. But the perfect storm of social media fatigue, mental health concern and simply being too busy running all the other aspects of her business led Meg to do something amazing. She took a 100-day detox from social media. Cold turkey. No Facebook. No Instagram. No Twitter. No TikTok. No LinkedIn. And guess what? Her business not only survived, but thrived. Her mental health issues subsided. She was happier. She reconnected with previous clients, worked referrals, grew her business.  She created the Social Slowdown Podcast from all she learned. There, she leads business conversations around the reality of not using social media as a primary tool. Business does go on without it. Meg took a lot of the conversations from that podcast and has now shaped it all into a book called The Social Shutdown as well. It documents her experiment to leave social media for 100 days and not show a negative impact on her business.  She’s here today to share those insights with us and talk about the reality of social media, where it fits and how we all … creators included … can perhaps look at social content and channels in a more healthy light for us and our audiences. I know you’re skeptical, but trust me. This conversation is worth hearing. This episode of Winfluence is presented by CIPIO.ai. We are helping brands transform their digital marketing with user-generated content videos and images at scale. Come see us at CIPIO.ai. If you want me to personally show you the platform and how we can solve your digital marketing performance problems with high-performing UGC, just go to jasonfalls.co/cipio … fill out that form and I’ll personally set up time to chat with you. Find show notes for this episode at jasonfalls.co/megcasebolt. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This shouldn't come as a surprise to you, but I have a day job. At Cornett. It's an ad agency. And I love it there. What may come as a surprise to you is Christy Hiler, the owner at Cornett, is very rare in the ad business. And by that, I mean less than one percent of all advertising agency owners are women. Read that one more time. Yeah ... I know?! Today, Christy is launching an industry change agent movement called Own It. The effort is calling on women who own all or most of ad agencies to come together to join a community of leaders to discuss, dissect and defeat the problem. Interested women or non-binary owners can sign up to be a part of conversations, mentorship and more, at UntilYouOwnIt.com. Participants may also be invited to help discuss solutions to the problem on Christy's new podcast, also called Own It. Today on a special edition of Winfluence, we present a mini-version of the premier episode of the show. The 10-minute edit features Hiler interviewing Jean Freeman, the principal and owner at Zambezi, the largest female-owned advertising agency in the U.S. And for those of you who are interest in knowing, I produce the show for Christy. It is also the newest entry in the Marketing Podcast Network. This episode of Winfluence is still presented by Tagger, but we're foregoing the sponsor talk today so you can hear the debut of Own It from Christy Hiler. Be sure to subscribe to Own It at UntilYouOwnIt.com or by searching for Own It wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I waxed poetic a couple of weeks back about the Metaverse. It is part of the larger grouping of new technologies and opportunities that fall under the umbrella of Web 3.0. The Metaverse, which is largely virtual worlds, is all about experiences.  Then you have crypto currency, which my best explanation of is the coins and virtual currencies you might be used to earning in video games, only they’re tied to a real market value and actual financial markets and exchanges which gives them real world value. Crypto can be exchanged for actual dollars. When we talk crypto we’re talking about Bitcoin or Ethereum … those are two the largest cryptocurrencies. But, there are hundreds. You can even sign up for your own personalized cryptocurrency and dole it out to people as a reward. Yes, it costs real money to have some crypto money. But the volatility of the crypto market means you could see the value of, say $100 in crypto one day, suddenly be several hundred the next day. There’s no guarantee, of course. And that value can also go the other way, too. For the record, I have invested exactly $50 in cryptocurrency to date. It is currently valued at about $28. So I’m not convinced. And then there’s NFTs. Just the thought of that gives me a headache. And I’m not the only one. Which is exactly why Joseph Jaffe is here today. Frankly, it’s why Joseph Jaffe exists. He is a forward-thinker. An innovator. A change agent. He wrote a book called Join the Conversation before brands were echoing that mantra about social media.  And he’s at it again. Jaffe has pulled together a collection of Web 3.0 thinkers into a new premium community called the Alpha Collective. It’s a limited-capacity, paid membership community that will feature weekly lectures to help members wrap their heads around succeeding in Web 3.0 business and technology. But each member will have direct access to each of the speakers and other experts in the community for networking Q&A, potential consulting and the like.  The name Alpha Collective implies you’ll get to see things before anyone else. And that’s the point. If you or your business wants to be on the forefront of Web 3.0 success, whether you’re a brand or an influencer, you should pay close attention today.  On a side note, I’m speaking at the Influencer Marketing Show in New York City on April 27 and I have a discount code for you to get tickets to join me there. IMS has been held in London the last few years. I’ve been honored to be an emcee and moderator for the last two as they were virtual events. Now IMS is not only back to IRL, but it’s here in the U.S. for the first time.  It’s a one day event in New York City, just off Broadway at the New World Stages on West 50th. It will be Wednesday, April 27, 2022 … coming up in just a few short weeks. I will be chairing one of the stages as well as moderating a panel for my friends at Tagger. They’re the presenting sponsor of this podcast, by the way. Go see the full speaker and topic lineup and get your ticket at jason.online/imsfalls. When you check out, use the code FALLS and get a 15 percent discount, just for listening to Winfluence.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I attended my first in-real-life conference last week. Social Media Marketing World happened with actual, physical people in an actual physical place – the San Diego Convention Center – and mostly without masks, though the hugs and enthusiastic closeness is still faint compared to what they once were. Ironically enough, the buzz was all about the Metaverse and NFTs … the fake worlds where the prognosticators are saying the future lies. Everyone was excited about being back in person only to talk about never having to do anything in person anymore. But that’s me being Mr. Crankypants, I guess. My talk on influence marketing and the concepts we talk about here on Winfluence went over pretty well, I think. The Social Media Marketing World audience is made up more of the small to medium sized business owner and marketer who is still new to a lot of the digital and social space. Influence marketing there is probably an advanced topic. And I was the only one speaking on the subject. But the crowd was engaged, asked good questions. I got good feedback, so hopefully I helped a few folks along with their thinking. Maybe even a few of them have joined us here on the podcast. And that’s kind of what I want to talk to you about today. Public speaking and public speakers. I’ll break it down in a couple of ways. First, public speakers are influencers. The nature of their craft is to stand in front of a room of people to persuade them of something. That’s our core definition of an influencer – someone who can persuade an audience to take action.  It’s important for you to know who the influential public speakers about your industry, business, topic or product category are. They are low-hanging fruit in terms of finding influential people to help you. But I also want to talk about what makes an audience not trust a speaker. Also, and speaking of speakers, I am speaking at the Influencer Marketing Show in New York City on April 27 and I have a discount code for you to get tickets to join me there. IMS has been held in London the last few years. I’ve been honored to be an emcee and moderator for the last two as they were virtual events. Now IMS is not only back to IRL, but it’s here in the U.S. for the first time.  It’s a one day event in New York City, just off Broadway at the New World Stages on West 50th. It will be Wednesday, April 27, 2022 … coming up in just a few short weeks. I will be chairing one of the stages as well as moderating a panel for my friends at Tagger. Go see the full speaker and topic lineup and get your ticket at jason.online/imsfalls. When you check out, use the code FALLS and get a 15 percent discount, just for listening to Winfluence. This episode is sponsored by Tagger, the complete influencer marketing solution. It has recently released a new product feature called Signals, which provides creator listening for its customers. Tagger president and founder Pete Kennedy joins Jason Falls to explain more about Signals. To see it for yourself and get a demo of Tagger, visit jason.online/tagger today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

About three or four years ago my daughter Katie came home with a gallon jug of borax and another of Elmer’s glue and announced she was going to make slime. As you can imagine, I was more than thrilled to have a 10-year-old playing with chemicals and food coloring all over my house.  But she and a couple of her friends had fallen into the slime craze and wanted to make it. A similar thing happened to Angelina Ly maybe a year to earlier than that. She was 14-years-old at the time. She started making slime and posting pictures and recipes on social media channels and became quite popular as a slime influencer. So she started making slime recipes, packaging them and selling them on Etsy. Then migrated over to her own website and Shopify account. Late last year, she sold her 15,000th order. And all this was happening while she was in high school and her first year of college. Angelina Ly is the influencer and entrepreneur behind Firefly Slime. She is a mega influencer in the space, has done brand partnerships and all the things that go along with being an influencer. But she also walked that interesting entrepreneurial balance of also selling products and driving revenue for her own brand. She has been so successful doing it, her parents finally let go of the obsession with telling her to be a doctor or a lawyer.  Angelina and I caught up recently to chat so we could learn more about her balancing act of being an online business owners and an influencer. All around slime. This episode is sponsored by Tagger, the complete influencer marketing solution. It has recently released a new product feature called Signals, which provides creator listening for its customers. Tagger president and founder Pete Kennedy joins Jason Falls to explain more about Signals. To see it for yourself and get a demo of Tagger, visit jason.online/tagger today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How many of you would call yourselves a gamer? Well, if you play Wordle, you’re a gamer. If you got sucked into Angry Birds, Candy Crush, or Trivia Crack … gamers all.  I have 3-4 games I have on my phone to pass time waiting at a doctor’s office, or to watch while I sit with my family watching a show I’m either not into or can listen to rather than watch. That makes me a gamer. The demographics and statistics on gamers are actually quite surprising. According to Statistia, 38% of gamers are 18-34 years old, but 35% are 35-64. The female segment has always been far higher than one might expect. Statistia says 45% of gamers are female. Our guest today has data that says the majority of gamers are women. But gaming as an avenue for influence marketing seems a bit of an enigma. My perception of that is a someone on Twitch playing Halo wearing my brand’s logo on their T-shirt. But millions of people watch video gamers play games just like mainstream consumers watch sports, go to concerts and more. Irina Shames says people just appreciate the artistry at play with gamers. And those huge audiences present opportunities for brands.  Irina is the executive vice-president of revenue and strategy for 3BlackDot, a digital entertainment studio that connects brands to audience-driven creators. So a version of influencer marketing. She joined me to chat about the somewhat mysterious world … at least to me … of gamers as influencers. There’s a lot of great insights in this discussion, folks. The gaming world relies heavily on the concept of community, with influential gamers having their own and a very genuine relationship with them. Brands coming to the table with them need to be community focused, which is not the standard operating procedure for most brands.  This episode is sponsored by Tagger, the complete influencer marketing solution. It has recently released a new product feature called Signals, which provides creator listening for its customers. Tagger president and founder Pete Kennedy joins Jason Falls to explain more about Signals. To see it for yourself and get a demo of Tagger, visit jason.online/tagger today. And here are links to the Creator Camp my pal T. Adeola is leading in Dayton, Ohio: Cohort Scarlett - March 21-26 Cohort Gray - March 28-April 2 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Many of you know I host another podcast on the Marketing Podcast Network called Digging Deeper. Occasionally on that show, we interview someone that has a perspective or focus on something that either is, or is related closely to influencer marketing. When we do, I like to share that interview here as well. Why not make sure you get the good intel, too. Last week, I had the pleasure of chatting with Mark Anderson and Ryan Fey. Those names may or may not ring a bell with you, but they might if you just call them, Mark and Fey. They are The Grill Dads. Hosts of the popular Food Network show where two backyard grill jockeys cook up tasty recipes and some good humor for all to see. But Mark and Fey are actually ad agency guys who started cooking out for friends, then for some pop-up restaurants and food trucks in the Los Angeles area. They entered one of Guy Fieri’s cooking competitions and won. Now, they don’t do just the show even now. They have day jobs, Ryan is still a creative director in the ad world Mark is running a different kind of business these days, but still with his normal creative tendencies.  I talked to the Grill Dads about the show, the social engine that drives it, where they see content marketing and creative leading both brands and influencers these days, and a lot more. It was a fun, funny and useful conversation. So I’ve pulled that interview out of Digging Deeper to share with you today.  While I’m thinking about it, though, you should jump over and subscribe to Digging Deeper as well if you aren’t already. On that show, I tend to talk more to brand-side marketers and experts about marketing strategy, creative and such from a more broad level than we typically get into on Winfluence.  You can find that show and links to all its various subscription platforms at cornett.online/diggingdeeper.  And stick around after the interview. I’ve got a few housekeeping notes that will be of interest to you about some events. This episode is sponsored by Tagger, the complete influencer marketing solution. It has recently released a new product feature called Signals, which provides creator listening for its customers. Tagger president and founder Pete Kennedy joins Jason Falls to explain more about Signals. To see it for yourself and get a demo of Tagger, visit jason.online/tagger today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Metaverse has been on the top of minds and conversations of most people in the marketing space in the last few months. Ever since Mark Zuckerberg and Meta, ne’ Facebook, went all-in on VR to inflate stock prices because they had Oculus headsets to sell now, this seemingly new virtual world as a consumer and business reality has produced an explosion. Unfortunately, the explosion as been one of consultants and experts and specialty agencies telling brands and influencers that if they’re not in the Metaverse, they’re yesterday’s news.  Well, slow your roll there, though leader wannabes. The Metaverse is neat, but it’s not for everybody or every brand. And there’s still a lot of gap closing that needs to happen between consumer engagement there and brands solving the problem of how to drive that engagement.  Last month I dedicated most of my monthly email newsletter to sharing my honest thoughts on the Metaverse and how brands, consumers and influencers can use it. The piece was so well received one of my fellow thinkers in the space, Ted Rubin, used my rant as his email newsletter last week. It was the first newsletter in a long time that earned more than a couple of replies from subscribers, too. More than a dozen people reached out to say how excited they were to read it and how refreshing it was to have a realistic perspective on this new world to chew on.  Today on Winfluence, I’m going to share much of that piece with you. I’ve put it through the filter of it being used as a podcast script and tried to underline the influencer marketing implications a bit, so it’s a little different than the original.   But I’m going to give you my honest opinion of the Metaverse and how we can and should prioritize its use in today’s commentary. This episode is sponsored by Tagger, the complete influencer marketing solution. It has recently released a new product feature called Signals, which provides creator listening for its customers. Tagger president and founder Pete Kennedy joins Jason Falls to explain more about Signals. To see it for yourself and get a demo of Tagger, visit jason.online/tagger today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices