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

You may recall our episode from late January in which I adopted an exaggerated satirical stance responding to a podcaster who had taken exception to my answer to a question on Twitter. The question, from my fellow Marketing Podcast Network creator Seth Goldstein, was whether or not podcasting was a modern form of busking, or a street performer playing for change. I said no and Tanner Campbell, a podcast consultant who has his own show called Podcasting Sucks, disagreed and fired off an episode about me. And I responded with my tongue in cheek finger wagging. You can check that episode out at a link in the show notes for this episode, of course.  In that back and forth, Tanner and I got to know each other a bit more and discovered we were kindred spirits in a lot of ways. So we thought a more friendly fire discussion about podcasting was in order. What evolved in our discussion was really interesting and fun. The first half of our conversation turned out to be Tanner asking me a bunch of questions. When I realized he was taking over my show, I flipped the conversation and got to know him a bit more. We talk about the history and recent explosion of podcasts, how both of us got started, our opinion of repurposing video content as audio podcasts … and on and on and on. We also spent a lot of time talking about the ability to grow and monetize podcasts in this era of mainstream media companies dominating the landscape. Super useful conversation.  There’s even some good nuggets in there on my history as a radio deejay.  Honestly, we could have kept talking for hours, but we’ll leave the marathon podcast to the wingnuts of the world out there. Today’s episode is probably the first of more to come as we just sat and picked each other’s brains. What resulted was what I think is a pretty damn useful listen for those of you interested in podcasts to build your influence as an influencer, or as a brand. 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. More links we referred to in this episode: Tanner Campbell’s calling out of Jason on Podcasting Sucks The previous episode of Winfluence where Jason responds The book Jason couldn’t remember the name of was Stiff: The Curious Life of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach. Tanner’s main website (TannerHelps.com) Tanner on Twitter Stoicismpod.com - Tanner’s stoicism podcast Retoldthepodcast.com - Tanner’s mythology & folklore podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If you’re an influencer or a talent manager, today’s commentary might make you a little uncomfortable. I’m just going to throw that out there as a warning. But bear with me … I’m going to dish some harsh realities to our brand and agency side friends, too.   We’ve been talking a lot lately about when to pay influencers. Last week’s commentary answered a listener question about when to transition from paying with only product, to adding cash to the mix.  But we haven’t really dug into WHY we pay influencers. And depending on your perspective, the answer to that question is different.  Influencers think we pay them for their talent. Brands think we pay them for their audiences. Talent managers think we pay them for a magical list of exhaustive qualities few of us pay attention to. And agencies think we pay influencers because they’ve duped the world into thinking they’re effective.  Sarcasm aside, the first thought of why we pay influencers has long been, to get our message in front of their audience. But that WHY is all wrong.  The problem is there are multiple WHYs in the equation. And those WHYs need to be considered by influencers and talent managers in how they price brand engagements. They also need to be understood by brands and agencies so what they pay is fair. But what is fair pay for influencer and content creator engagement? We’ll look at the various WHYs and I’ll share what I think is a direction towards fair, 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

I have been a student of stand-up comedy from my earliest memories. I would stay up late when I was little to watch The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson just to see the monologue, then hope beyond all hope one of the acts that night was a comedian. Later, I fell in love with David Letterman, who had more comedians and introduced me to a broader love of the craft. I bought cassette tapes of Dennis Miller, Bobcat Goldthwait and more. And, of course, anyone who grew up in the 1980s and loved stand-up comedy, had Eddie Murphy’s Delirious and Raw memorized.  I love stand-up. And stand-up comedians. So I was quite aware of the plight of them during the pandemic. Clubs couldn’t open safely. Many closed for good. And the comedians themselves? They had to turn to alternative ways to earn a living.  One of those comedians used the challenge of the pandemic to turn his colleagues from the club circuit into content creators for brands. Richie Redding spent 19 years as a club comedian. The last 13 of those that was his full-time job. When he reached the point of pandemic panic, not knowing how he was going to pay the bills, he got a call from an ad agency that needed a funny video.  The ask to be a content creator lit a fire under him and Redding started a comedy consulting firm. Funnier Than You Are offers brands the opportunity to tap into professional comedians for comedy content. Redding forms a writer’s room and matches the writer friends with the brand’s target audience. The content they’re producing is making a dent, helping brands churn out far better content than they would otherwise, even from their agencies … and I’m an agency guy! But beyond that, Redding is expanding the concept to help build individual influence and influencer status for his roster of comedy writer’s too.  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

If you’ve been paying attention to the goings on in the influencer marketing world, you know by now that there was a major acquisition announced recently. Sprout Social, long known as one of the top social media management solutions in the space, acquired Tagger Media. Its main product, Tagger, is one of the leading influencer marketing software solutions on the market. It was once a regular sponsor of this program as well. Tagger was actually also responsible for bringing me to the Influencer Marketing Show a couple of years ago. Pete Kennedy, its founder and I became friends with a shared vision and passion for the space. We had him on the show back in March of 2022. You can find that episode in our show notes at jasonfalls.com.  I loved what Tagger’s software could do. I used it exclusively for a couple of years. I still do for certain strategy and research projects, though CIPIO.ai and other tools are a part of my strategy arsenal as well. When the announcement came down that Tagger had been acquired, it was a personal celebration of sorts. My friends there reached the end game of the original goal of a startup business. It was sold for a reported $140 million in cash. So I have a couple of contacts who are a considerable amount wealthier now. That’s always a good thing to celebrate.  But the news and the move also leave a lot of questions.  So I reached out to Pete Kennedy and asked him to come answer them. We caught up last week and ironed out the what-ifs and what-nows of the big move, dug into the issues of the day in the influencer space, and I got Pete’s take on how AI factors into the influence space moving forward. We’ll dig into the news of the day and get one smart man’s perspective on other things, too. Pete Kennedy is coming up on Winfluence.  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/petekennedy2 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A couple of weeks ago a marketing executive with an online retailer in the United Kingdom reached out to ask for my feedback on something. Her situation was not dissimilar to many people who email or message me with influencer marketing inquiries.  The company sells sporting goods and apparel, has grown nicely over the last few years and is trying to find ways to drive more revenue and growth through social media. Like most of us, they’re turning to influencers as one channel to improve that part of their marketing mix.  But, again like many, they haven’t been overly impressed with the return on their investment in influencers. According to her inquiry, “many of our influencer campaigns perform poorly, or not quite as expected.” To date, the company has only engaged influencers willing to exchange posts for products. They haven’t had to outlay cash. In their defense, for those of you who think there should always be a cash offering to creators, some of the products they have had to offer score in the thousands of dollars, so it’s not out of the question to think a trade for services might be in order on occasion. That gray area between exchanging posts for product and investing in influencers on a more advanced, but also cash-centric level is a difficult one to navigate without upsetting some apple carts along the way, either internal or external. So the executive in question posed this as a question: “We’re finding it difficult to differentiate the accounts likely to succeed vs those that generate nothing. Generally, our outreach attempts do get responses, though more and more are requiring cash instead of product. Do you think it’s necessary to provide cash now as an incentive to better our chances at achieving our goals?” She said they would appreciate any ideas I had on how they should better approach influencers and how they should look at compensating them. I’ll share my answer 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

We talked last time about the influencer pay gap and new data from IZEA that gives us a look at progress made … or not … in the breakdown of how women are paid compared to men and how various races and groups are paid when compared to white counterparts.  One of the surprising pieces of data there for me was the vast gap in the number of influencers by gender. IZEA’s numbers showed that 83 percent of the content creators it analyzed were women. Whether or not that gives us some level of explanation or context around the gender pay gap, that’s a huge difference in sheer numbers. Collabstr also recently released some interesting influencer industry data. Collabstr is also a software company that helps brands source influencers and content creators on various social networks. Its 2022 State of Influencer Marketing Report has another treasure trove of data analyzing the 5,000 brands and 27,000 influencers in Collabstr’s data set. It goes deeper in the gender and age breakdowns of influencers by platform. Did you know that over 80 percent of TikTok creators from 50,000 followers and down are women? Seventy-five percent of TikTokers making money with Collabstr are females. The number on Instagram is 78 percent. YouTube is even woman-heavy at 69% of creators from the female side of the gender aisle. Kyle Dulay is a co-founder at Collabstr. He joined med recently to talk through his company’s report, its implications for brands and, of course, we spent a little time talking about Collabstr’s platform and what makes it stand out.  Today's episode is sponsored by Tagger, a complete influencer marketing management solution. We talk to Tagger customers to get their insights on the platform and influence marketing. TJ Ferrara is one of those customers. He’s the co-founder of Bubs Naturals, a health and wellness family of products. I spoke to him recently about how he uses Tagger.  To learn more and get a demo to see if Tagger is right for you, just visit jason.online/tagger today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You can’t be involved in the influencer marketing space without hearing about, talking about or considering the influencer pay gap. When the topic first emerged, it referred to the disparity in pay between men and women who are content creators. Quickly, however, the influencer pay gap issue focused on the gap between white and non-white or BIPOC creators as well. For a while in early 2021, it was almost all we talked about. Mind you, I’m not complaining. We were right to talk about it. And talk about it a lot. The more equitable and fair pricing and payment can be across influencer categories, the better.  And it appears our conversations are having a positive impact on the gap. It is shrinking. New data out from IZEA, which has been tracking pay disparity among influencers since 2015, shows another year of progress in closing the gaps.  But when you look further at the data, more questions than answers emerge. It’s not time to celebrate yet. It is time to start asking deeper questions about the data so we’re not looking at false positives and missing hidden problems. I’ll dig into it, and explain, in today’s commentary. Today's episode is sponsored by Tagger, a complete influencer marketing management solution. We talk to Tagger customers to get their insights on the platform and influence marketing. TJ Ferrara is one of those customers. He’s the co-founder of Bubs Naturals, a health and wellness family of products. I spoke to him recently about how he uses Tagger.  To learn more and get a demo to see if Tagger is right for you, just visit jason.online/tagger today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Despite my best efforts, the world of social media continues to migrate to … some might say devolve to … short form content as the most desirable type. Forgive my contrarianism about TikToks, Reels and Stories, but I’m a podcaster and a blogger. I’m also a B2B content creator myself, which tends to lean toward longer-form content as the preference.  So my nature is simply the antithesis of 15-second videos and 10-second story frames. When I stop to consume content … and apparently create it … I want to read an article. Or watch an in-depth video interview or documentary. Or listen to a podcast, which depending on the topic, could last 15 minutes like my Monday commentaries. 30-minutes or so like these interview episodes, or even a lot longer if the subject of the interview or the topic of conversation is really interesting.  But, I’m creeping up on 50. The trendy audiences most marketers covet are half my age. And alas, have less than half my attention span.  All joking aside, all of us marketers, regardless of age or content preference, have to recognize, understand and implement strategies and tactics that feature short-form content. Ashwath Narayanan is the CEO and founder of Social Currant. It is a, “next generation youth-powered emerging media agency,” according to its website at SocialCurrant.co. It also has a companion influencer marketing search engine to help you identify content creators. But Social Currant specializes in that hot, trendy short-form content. So, I asked Narayanan to swing by and chat with us about why it is so imperative for marketers to embrace it, how to create good short-form content and his take on influence marketing in general. I turned a nice phrase in this episode that bakes in a nice reminder of how to mix short form content with long-form, so keep an ear out for that. I’m hoping it catches on.   This episode is sponsored by Tagger. It is a complete influencer marketing solution. You can find out more for yourself at jason.online/tagger.  In this episode, we visit with T.J. Ferrara from Bubs Naturals, a health supplement company, about how they use Tagger.  To start building your own experiences with my influencer marketing software of choice, go to jason.online/tagger today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Whether you’re an influencer or a brand, the concept of the creator marketplace brings with it some appeal. For the content creators out there, the opportunities to work directly with brands can be a lifeline. That’s especially true when you’re growing your audience from micro- to mid-tier or mid-tier to mega influencer. For brands, creator marketplaces mean simple integrations to support creator content with amplification through paid spend, and easily integrated analytics … no chasing screen shots or performance numbers from creators after the fact.  But the transparency in pricing in creator marketplaces also drives costs down over time. I know when I look through creator marketplaces for clients, I often look for 2-3 lower-cost creators that equal the impact of one with a larger following and larger fee. Eventually those larger fee influencers catch on and lower their rates to stay competitive.  So creator marketplaces are a boon for brands that often struggle with paying one influencer as much as it can cost to hire an entire agency to create an ad campaign. And over time, creator marketplaces mean the cost to the brand becomes more efficient.  While there seems to be good and bad for both creators and brands in the creator marketplace model, there are a few of us who know in the long-run, creator marketplaces will kill creators. I’ll explain how and why I know, in today’s commentary. Today’s episode is presented by Tagger. It is a complete influencer marketing solution. You can find out more for yourself at jason.online/tagger.  In this episode, we visit with Meredith Jacobson from We Are Boosters, about how she uses Tagger.  To start building your own experiences with my influencer marketing software of choice, go to jason.online/tagger today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For those of you who have been with me on this journey through influence marketing for a while, you know that I get really excited when we can zero in on the concept of influence rather than influencers. The whole theme of my book Winfluence, and a lot of what we talk about here on Winfluence, the podcast, focuses on the fact that removing the "R" from the term means we have a more holistic approach and success with leveraging third parties to influence audiences to take action. In the world of sales and marketing, the term Influence gets thrown around, but it often harkens people back to the seminal book on persuasion from Dr. Robert Cialdini called Influence. It was published in 1984 and is still selling today. In fact, the most recent update actually amended his six principles of persuasion. There are now seven which my guest and I get into today on the show. That guest is Brian Ahearn. He is a Cialdini disciple. So much so that he’s even been certified as a Cialdini instructor and teaches techniques in influence and persuasion to corporate sales teams, marketing departments and beyond for a living. I chatted with Brian on Digging Deeper, Cornett’s podcast a few months back. He told me then he was working on a new book.  That new book is out. It’s called The Influencer. And he’s here today to talk about it, but also to walk us through the principles of influence he teaches and how they can apply to our own credibility and influence, but also in practical manifestations like choosing the right influencers to use for your influence marketing efforts.  The book, by the way, is a story of fiction … a business allegory if you will … about a character named John Andrews, and his path to learning to become influential. I loved the book. It reminded me of a similar parable approach to business principles which is probably my favorite business book ever called Happy Work, by my pal Chris Reimer.  Brian will tell you more about it and influence in today’s episode, which is presented by Tagger. It is a complete influencer marketing solution. You can find out more for yourself at jason.online/tagger.  In this episode, we visit with Meredith Jacobson from We Are Boosters, about how she uses Tagger.  To start building your own experiences with my influencer marketing software of choice, go to jason.online/tagger today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

My pal Seth Goldstein asked an interesting question on Twitter last week. He posed this: “Is podcasting just a form of busking?” For those who don’t know, busking is a term used mostly in Britain to describe street musicians and performers. The root of the definition is people who perform publicly for tips. Seth is not only a friend, but one of my fellow Marketing Podcast Network hosts and creators, so I chimed in. My response was quick, but I think accurate and definitive: I said, “Certainly not. Podcast listening is opt-in and on-demand. Busking would be pushing your podcast through a loudspeaker system and blasting it to people who didn’t ask for it.” Tanner Campbell disagreed on Twitter. And then devoted an entire episode of his show Podcasting Sucks, to arguing against my position. He called me out and picked apart my answer in a good, old fashioned, social media throw down. Perhaps Tanner doesn’t realize that the first time I came to anyone’s attention on the Internet, I posted a scathing review of a social media conference by calling out the speakers there I thought did the attendees an injustice. The dais included Rand Fishkin, Danny Sullivan, Neil Patel and many others considered luminaries then and now. And I stood my ground. Which is, incidentally, why I started getting invited to speak at conferences rather than attend them. That’s right Tanner! I was kicking up stuff on the social medias before you had facial hair. You poked the bear, son.  I respond to Tanner’s rebuke in today’s commentary, which for the record, will be presented in a satirical caricature for fun. This is, after all, as Tanner put it, a silly topic. So I’ll be silly with it. Enjoy! This episode of Winfluence is presented by Tagger. It is a complete influencer marketing solution. You can find out more for yourself at jason.online/tagger.  In this episode, we visit with Meredith Jacobson from We Are Boosters, about how she uses Tagger.  To start building your own experiences with my influencer marketing software of choice, go to jason.online/tagger today. More Links: Seth Goldstein's Entrepreneur's Enigma Seth Goldstein's Digital Marketing Dive Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In influencer marketing, and certainly in marketing overall, there are generally two types of focus. The one we talk about more often is consumer marketing, also know as business-to-consumer or B2C. Then there’s business-to-business, or B2B. B2B brands sell software, equipment or services to businesses, sometimes for price tags far too high for an individual purchase. So think of complex IT systems, office equipment, construction machinery or even professional services like legal, accounting, human resources or even marketing agencies. B2B sales cycles are longer … sometimes in excess of 12- to 18-months. So there’s a lot more for a brand to do to attract prospects, build relationships and trust, educate the prospect about the product and ultimately get them to commit sometimes significant corporate dollars to pay for it.  That relationship building and trust is key. And for many B2B brands, that’s where influencers come in. But not Instagrammers and TikTok-ers, per say. B2B influencers are those that have deep knowledge and trust in very specific communities. They’re often academics, industry analysts, executives, researchers and more. Often, their influence can’t be measured by their number of online followers. As such, B2B influencer marketing is often more difficult.  Justin Levy is the director of social media and influencer marketing for Demandbase. It is a company that provides software to manage the account-based experience. So think of CRM software that also ties your content marketing into the sales process. It keeps your database of prospective customers, a record of all the times and ways you’ve communicated with them, where they are in the sales process, and what content you should serve them next to move them along to purchase. Justin spent several years at Citrix managing the GoToMeeting and GoToWebinar social and influencer connections, so he has a lot of experience building B2B influencer relations. We caught up with Justin to talk about how he finds influencers for his B2B efforts, what kind of engagements he and the Demandbase team engage them for, and then how his company uses content in an innovative approach to meet the prospect and other stakeholders where they are in the process.  He gives us good insight into how a B2B brand works and thinks of influencers. I’m sure the conversation will inform and inspire you, even if your focus is more B2C. This episode of Winfluence is presented by Tagger. It is a complete influencer marketing solution. You can find out more for yourself at jason.online/tagger.  In this episode, we visit with Alexandra Walsh from 3 Day Blinds, a premium window treatment brand, about how she uses Tagger.  To start building your own experiences with my influencer marketing software of choice, go to jason.online/tagger today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What did you want to be when you grew up? I waffled between professional baseball player and fighter pilot when I was really young. Then I went through a phase of wanting to be an architect or to anchor SportsCenter. The latter of those indirectly led me here, which is at least in the right industry. I’ll guarantee none of you ever said you wanted to grow up to be a YouTuber. Or a TikTok star. But those are some of the top answers that children give today to that question.  A few years ago, we would laugh. Today, we probably still do, but we shouldn’t.  An online content creator, or influencer if you will, is a skilled craftsperson whose earning potential in today’s world far exceeds that of most of the jobs these kid’s parents have. To laugh at them and dismiss that career path because we think it’s short-sighted and foolish, only exposes us as being short-sighted and foolish.  My friend Arik Hanson had blog post last week that caught my attention. Arik is a social media and public relations consultant, speaker and influencer in his own right based in Minneapolis. He’s also one half of Hanson & Hunt, a great PR and communications podcast that is also on the Marketing Podcast Network along with this show. Arik’s post last Tuesday was titled, “Will your kids go to school to be professional social media influencers?” I know. Most of you chuckled at the notion. But you shouldn’t. I’ll tell you more about why in today’s commentary. Today's show also features reference to my daughter's young adult book review channel on YouTube and encourages you to add a subscription to my YouTube channel, now including a version of this podcast, so her 200 or so more followers than me can perhaps stop being a source of personal embarrassment. Heh. And we also highlight our first listener voice mail today. Marc Duke, a B2B influencer consultant and all-around CMO brain for hire in Great Britain, had some comments and a question about last week's commentary on influencer consultants. This episode of Winfluence is presented by Tagger. It is a complete influencer marketing solution. You can find out more for yourself at jason.online/tagger.  In this episode, we visit with Alexandra Walsh from 3 Day Blinds, a premium window treatment brand, about how she uses Tagger.  To start building your own experiences with my influencer marketing software of choice, go to jason.online/tagger today.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We’ve been spending some time on the show of late talking about the future of the creator economy and how influencers can plan for monetization either with or without the big social networks where much of their audience may lie today. Two episodes ago, we talked to Ramiro Canovas from FanBase, which is a lot like OnlyFans only without the stigma of everyone there being adult content creators.  Be sure to go back and listen to that episode as it makes a case for the owned content overall. This week, we’re going to dig into the concept of owning both your channel and your audience a bit deeper with P.J. Leimgruber. He is the co-founder of the Clash App … no, not an app that allows you to listen to London Calling and Rock the Casbah. Clash App is an owned content app that allows video creators to not only engage with their core fans and subscribers, but allows those subscriber to post Drops … these are cash payments … tips if you will … to those creators for their content.  The discussion made me think of the old blogger tip jars, but with a more defined purpose and a community of people conditioned to send them.  So today we’re hearing more about whether or not fan-funded content creators can go beyond just a subscription model. How does that future stack up from a creator monetization standpoint? And is Clash App a method you as an influencer can generate income. Do these platforms hold any relevance for brands as well? Sure … if the influencer has a big audience there. But we get into that and how the creator economy payment structure is flawed with P.J. I think you’ll appreciate is expertise and perspective.  This episode is presented by Tagger, the complete influencer marketing solution. Find out more and sign up for a demo to see if Tigger is right for you by visiting jason.online/tagger today.  In this episode, we chat with influencer marketing consultant Meredith Jacobson of We Are Boosters about how she uses Tagger.  To start building your own experiences with my influencer marketing software of choice, go to jason.online/tagger today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Marketing automation is a topic that most people dig into when they’re in the enterprise or B2B space. It’s an approach to marketing that allows you to set up triggers and events using software to drive leads, then work those leads down your funnel to conversion.  When you think marketing automation, you almost always think of email. Set up sequences of emails for people who fill out a form on your website or register for an event. They get an initial thank you email, then you automate one that sends them an offer or interesting reason to reengage on your website a few days later and so on until they buy. Marketing automation almost always leads people to think about businesses, usually larger, complex ones, where automation can save thousands if not millions of dollars and hours in labor. But marketing automation is far more accessible and an untapped opportunity for even small businesses. Including content creators.  Adam Tuttle is the senior director of customer activation for ActiveCampaign. It is a marketing automation software platform that has over 185,000 customers around the world. Some of them are small businesses. Some are even individuals like thought leaders, speakers and even content creators from the social media space. Adam’s company, ActiveCampaign, is a sponsor of the Marketing Podcast Network, but I thought it would be useful to have him come on the show and dig into how marketing automation can help content creators treat their influence and content business like other businesses leveraging tools and approaches like it.  Get ready to learn a few things and get inspired to level up your marketing today on Winfluence.  As always, this episode of Winfluence is presented by CIPIO.ai. Let us scale your user-generated content needs and deliver authentic, high-performing UGC to fuel your paid, owned and earned content strategies. Learn more at CIPIO.ai. But today, we want to take a reminder moment to tell you about Adam’s company, Active Campaign. If you looking for a way to grow your business, you need to check them out.  ActiveCampaign is a powerful marketing automation platform that can help you to increase your sales, improve your customer service, and build stronger relationships with your customers. With ActiveCampaign, you can create and send email campaigns, manage your leads and customers, create landing pages, set up automated workflows, and track your results. All in one approachable platform! And don’t take my word for it! ActiveCampaign has over 10,000 five-star reviews on G2 from happy users.  We’ll get into some examples in today’s conversation with Adam Tuttle. But as a sponsor of Winfluence and MPN, and for a limited time, ActiveCampaign is offering our listeners a chance to double your contacts for free. When you sign up at activecampaign.com/activate, if your email list has 10,000 contacts, you only need to pay for 5,000. Or, you can pay for the 10,000 and get an extra 10,000 totally free.  And if you’ve worked with any CRM or email software out there, you know additional contacts are like gold.  Once you start engaging all contacts in a personalized way at scale, your subscriber numbers will start to grow dramatically. It’s easy to hit those limits. So doubling your contacts is killer.  Go to activecampaign.com/activate to sign up today. And thanks to ActiveCampaign for their support of the Marketing Podcast Network. You should check them out even if only that they help bring great marketing podcasts like Winfluence to you each week. Links for this Episode: Adam Tuttle on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/j-adam-tuttle/ Active Campaign online: https://activecampaign.com/activate Scale UGC with CIPIO.ai: https://jasonfalls.co/cipio Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Influencer marketing done right can be quite the task for a marketer, or even a marketing team. It takes time and thoughtfulness to select, engage, manage, execute and measure influence marketing campaigns, just like it does for any other type of marketing. For many businesses, influencer marketing is just a small piece of their overall marketing puzzle, so they need help. Enter the influencer consultant. But what exactly does an influencer consultant do? And how much do they charge? Ask 100 people in the industry those questions and you’re liable to receive 100 different answers. That’s largely because each consultant is different and even the role of a consultant is vague.  I’ve been hired as a social media consultant before, but performed tasks that would be better defined as public relations, digital marketing or just marketing. Inevitably, I employ a wide range of experiences to just help clients move their business forward, so putting one discipline’s label on it is misleading. The same can be said for an influencer consultant, too. The inference is they’ll handle your influencer marketing. They may. But depending on the consultant, they may only handle parts of the process. Or they may have a wide breadth of knowledge and experience and also help you with creative ideas, public relations, social media and beyond. In my current role at Cornett, I serve as the chief influence strategists … a type of consultant … to our clients. I also advise and refer others to influencer consultants if Cornett is not a good fit. It's my job to know what an influencer consultant does. Today on the podcast, I’ll spell it out in as much detail as will fit into a 10-15 minute show, so that you can understand whether you need one, or what type of influencer consultant is better for your business.  This episode is presented by Tagger, the complete influencer marketing solution. Find out more and sign up for a demo to see if Tigger is right for you by visiting jason.online/tagger today.  In this episode, we chat with influencer marketing consultant Meredith Jacobson of We Are Boosters about how she uses Tagger.  To start building your own experiences with my influencer marketing software of choice, go to jason.online/tagger today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Is the future of the creator economy and influencer marketing in subscription based content? If you read the tea leaves in the industry, one may think so. Content creators face potential problems when they put all their content and audience eggs in someone else’s basket. If the Instagram servers go berserk one day, some content creators will take a hit in revenue. If the rules on TikTok or YouTube suddenly change, we’ll … influencers may S-O-L. Brands are also starting to value creators and influencers that have stronger relationships with, and thus influence over, their audience. What that means is an influencer with a big email marketing list, or captive on a podcast, is more valuable than someone who just has a social media following that may or may not see a sponsored post fly by in their streams. Subscription platforms offer content creators both a way to connect directly with their audience, building a following tied to email addresses and more rich contact information, but also to derive direct revenue from their fans.  Instead of following your favorite Instagrammer there, you pay a subscription fee of, let’s say $5 a month on a subscription platform, and you get exclusive access to the influencer’s content and maybe the influencer.  The most well-known of these platform is OnlyFans. But it is most well known for being a popular subscription platform used by adult content creators, so there is bit of a stigma there. Fortunately, there are other options. One of them is FanBase. Its chief technology officer Ramiro Cánovas, joined me recently to talk about the future of the creator economy. The challenged posed to creators by the existing social networks and influencer ecosystem, and the opportunity for content creators to create more direct revenue streams and genuine connections with their fans.  As you can imagine, I geeked out with Ramiro a bit. It didn’t help that he’s also a former professional soccer player, so we started off talking about some connections we have through the beautiful game.  This episode is presented by Tagger, the complete influencer marketing solution. Find out more and sign up for a demo to see if Tigger is right for you by visiting jason.online/tagger today.  In this episode, we visit with Alexandra Walsh from 3 Day Blinds, a premium window treatment brand, about how she uses Tagger.  To start building your own experiences with my influencer marketing software of choice, go to jason.online/tagger today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It doesn’t seem to matter where, how or how often I talk to people about influence marketing, I inevitably get questions and seemingly confused looks and frustration from people about measuring what we do. Hey, I get it. Measurement can be confusing. It’s often an afterthought. But it shouldn’t be and it shouldn't be hard or intimidating. Back in September, my friends at Tagger asked me to contribute an article to the company’s blog that included my thoughts and helpful tips on measuring influencer marketing. The piece was well received and I was particularly proud of the thoughts I pulled together there. Today, I’m going to share that article with you in narrative form so that you, too, can hear my thoughts on why measuring influencer marketing shouldn’t be hard. Thanks to my friends at Tagger for inspiring the article and allowing me to share it here with you as well. You can find the original article on Tagger's website. If you click through you can also find your way to knowing how awesome a platform Tagger is for influencer marketing. They are the sponsor of this episode. It is a complete influencer marketing solution. You can find out more for yourself at jason.online/tagger.  In this episode, we visit with Alexandra Walsh from 3 Day Blinds, a premium window treatment brand, about how she uses Tagger.  To start building your own experiences with my influencer marketing software of choice, go to jason.online/tagger today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We’re now in 2022 and are within 12 to 24 months of a cookie-less world. Google announced in February of last year that sometime in 2023 it will no longer support third-party cookies for behavior tracking of is browser users. Safari and Firefox had already headed down that road, so it was rather inevitable. That poses a significant challenge for brands as advertising targeting and retargeting has often been tied to third party tracking of browser usage. We’re entering a cookieless world. David Tintner is the man behind a company that says it has the brand’s toolbox for thriving in a world without cookies. The company is called Thought Leaders. It leverages the long-form and social content and audiences of influencers to help brands target using better triggers for content and context. He loves building media plans for companies that includes ad spend on deeply contextual, long-form content … like podcasts.  So we hit it off nicely, as you might imagine. We’re going to dive in with David today to find out his take on how brands can better target audiences without cookies … perhaps more effectively than they did with them. We also dive deep into podcasters as influencers, the effectiveness of podcast advertising and much more. This episode is sponsored by Tagger. It is a complete influencer marketing solution. You can find out more for yourself at jason.online/tagger.  In this episode, we visit with Alexandra Walsh from 3 Day Blinds, a premium window treatment brand, about how she uses Tagger.  To start building your own experiences with my influencer marketing software of choice, go to jason.online/tagger today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Happy New Year! We’re kicking off 2022 as many podcasters, bloggers and prognosticators are … by looking ahead and anticipating what may come. But, I’ve got a couple things working against me in that regard. First, I’ve been observing and commenting on the social media space for over 15 years now. I’ve seen many a prediction post. I’ve written a few myself.  That means I know most of them are nothing more than pissing in the wind. No one who makes them has a clue what will actually happen. They just guess. As long as they don’t go off the deep end … and some do … they sound fairly smart and we nod and smile.  The other thing working against me is that I am quite a contrarian when it comes to the wide-eyed optimism of the tech elite and one percent of the one percenters that most of the truly new innovations and activities will apply to. So, my prediction posts aren’t real sexy. But they’re far more realistic than most.  I want to help you prepare for 2022 and what may come, but I also want you to be grounded in reality so you don’t waste time or money preparing for someone else’s imagination. Today on the show, I give you the honest truth about what to expect in 2022 … like it or not. This episode is sponsored by Tagger. It is a complete influencer marketing solution. You can find out more for yourself at jason.online/tagger.  In this episode, we visit with Alexandra Walsh from 3 Day Blinds, a premium window treatment brand, about how she uses Tagger.  To start building your own experiences with my influencer marketing software of choice, go to jason.online/tagger today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today is a special episode of the show. I thought between the Christmas and New Year’s holidays I’d give you a treat and introduce you to one of our sister podcasts on the Marketing Podcast Network. For those who may not recall our episode from December 2nd of 2021, I have launched a network for marketing podcasts that serves two purposes: Allow like-topic podcasts an easy way to support and promote one another, and give advertisers wishing to reach marketers … an audience like you … an easier way to get to them.  I actually explained the Marketing Podcast Network in more depth a few weeks ago on Nick Westergaard’s outstanding show On Brand. Yes, it is an MPN podcast. Nick interviews all the important people in the world of branding and marketing, so his show is more broadly focused than mine. But he drills into podcasting or influence marketing and other topics, too. In our conversation, Nick and I talked about podcasting, but a lot more. In fact, he asked my thoughts on the Metaverse … our next horizon to conquer on the Internet. And, pardon the indulgence, but I offered up some thinking brand folks should hear. So, today on Winfluence, I’m going to share with you an episode of On Brand with Nick Westergaard, with me as the guest. I think you’ll find his show to be well-done and worth the subscription, but also the conversation we had to be quite useful. Winfluence is presented by Tagger. It is a complete influencer marketing solution. You can find out more for yourself at jason.online/tagger.  In this episode, we visit with T.J. Ferrara from Bubs Naturals, a health supplement company, about how they use Tagger.  To start building your own experiences with my influencer marketing software of choice, go to jason.online/tagger today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As I browsed the headlines from around the influencer marketing industry this weekend, something I do daily to keep up with all the things, I stumbled upon another of those Top Influencer lists. Now, we’ve covered my disdain for them before. The episode that published on September 20 of 2021 said it was time to do away with them. Alas, the content managers for many of the software companies still publishing them don’t listen to Winfluence … or maybe they do and just don’t listen to my advice. Which, I begrudgingly understand. But I found one from IZEA, a company I love and have worked with before. Ted Murphy, its founder and CEO was the first guest on this podcast when it re-shaped to become Winfluence. It caught my attention because it was ripe for another of my criticisms of how many people think of influencer marketing. The post was called Top 10 Basketball Influencers. I’ll tell you why I was leery of reading it and why I was pleasantly surprised when I did, in today’s commentary. This episode is sponsored by Tagger. It is a complete influencer marketing solution. You can find out more for yourself at jason.online/tagger.  In this episode, we visit with T.J. Ferrara from Bubs Naturals, a health supplement company, about how they use Tagger.  To start building your own experiences with my influencer marketing software of choice, go to jason.online/tagger today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If you’re a regular listener to Winfluence, and I know you are, you know that podcasting itself is a medium I consider a big part of our territory in the influence marketing space. While you may think of influencers as primarily social media stars with lots of followers – like Instagrammers and TikTokers – podcasters are also social media content creators. And many of them have big audiences. So, when we talk influence marketing, we have to talk about podcasts, too. Trevor Oldham latched onto the podcast wave a few years ago with not just his own, but freelancing to help people who wanted to do it, but didn’t have all the experience and technical skill to make it happen. Then, he stumbled upon a gap in the marketplace that has turned out to be a lucrative business for him. Trevor heads a company called Podcasting You. It’s main focus is to get its clients booked to be guests on podcasts. Think of it as a PR firm for those who want to get interviewed on this red hot medium. So, instead of starting a podcast, you can just position yourself or someone in your company’s leadership, to be a great podcast guest and earn that media versus paying for it. I caught up with Trevor to chat about what he sees in the podcast marketplace for brands and influencers themselves. He actually has a surprising answer to whether or not social media influencers should leverage podcasts to build their followings.  The clever thing about Trevor being on Winfluence … his team pitched him as they would a client. And the way they did it, well … it obviously worked. We talked about that, too.  Some good tips on how to leverage podcasts as an influence channel for your business or brand … and some salient ideas for you influencers are on today’s show. This episode is sponsored by Tagger. It is a complete influencer marketing solution. You can find out more for yourself at jason.online/tagger.  In this episode, we visit with T.J. Ferrara from Bubs Naturals, a health supplement company, about how they use Tagger.  To start building your own experiences with my influencer marketing software of choice, go to jason.online/tagger today. And today's influence marketing podcast recommendation is the Onalytica podcast. Subscribe at Onalytica.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Research hit the wires last week that shows the racial pay gap between white and BIPOC influencers … that is those who are black, indigenous and people of color … is 29 percent overall and 35 percent between white influencers and black influencers. To put it another way, for every $100 a white influencer is paid, a black influencer is paid $65. I’m tempted to end the podcast right there and just angrily say to us all, press stop and go fix it. And that instruction includes me, by the way. The research was conducted by MSL, which is a public relations firm, and an organization called The Influencer League. It is a digital platform that serves as an education resource for influencers. The research took place from February to September 2021 and included surveys and interviews with over 400 U.S. influencers. Each were asked to report their follower count, race and income from brands.  The insights below the top-line pay gap numbers just underlined the sadness of the reality. But what bothers me more is we’ve been talking about this issue in earnest for well over 2-3 years. And the numbers aren’t any better. I’ll illustrate and share my thoughts on how to start to solve the problem, in today’s commentary. The recommended podcast today is Code Switch on NPR. This episode is sponsored by Tagger. It is a complete influencer marketing solution. You can find out more for yourself at jason.online/tagger.  In this episode, we visit with T.J. Ferrara from Bubs Naturals, a health supplement company, about how they use Tagger.  To start building your own experiences with my influencer marketing software of choice, go to jason.online/tagger today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If you’ve listened to this show for any length of time, you’ve heard me recommend the podcast of Scott Guthrie. He’s the consultant and industry thought leader behind the Influencer Marketing Lab. He has a great podcast that I recommend periodically to you here. He’s also been named one of Talking Influence’s Top 50 people in the industry, which is an annual recognition, but he’s been on it probably every year they’ve done it. Scott consults, but he also is a frequent host of the Influencer Marketing Show, also a Talking Influence production and is frequently quoted and interviewed on the industry, mostly in Europe and the United Kingdom, but also around the world, including by media outlets here in the U.S. He also authors the Fourth Floor Weekly Email Newsletter which I’ve bragged about before as probably the best industry news resource for influencer marketing out there. The long and short of it is that Scott is probably the most knowledgeable person on the planet about influencer marketing. His background is in the PR and comms world. He spent quite a bit of time at Ketchum, but is an MBA and business consultant going back to the early days of social media. Recently, Scott launched the Influencer Marketing Trade Body in the UK with six big-name agency and company sponsors. That body is looking to become the trade association for influencer marketing there and unify other bodies around the world like the American Influencer Council, to put forth a unified set of standards for ethics and such globally. The idea is a much needed one in the business and the IMTB is certainly in good hands with Scott at the helm. Scott and I had a great discussion about a number of topics including the IMTB, the trend of influencers becoming creative directors, the influencer pay gap and a lot more. If you are looking for what the top thinkers in the industry are thinking about things … you’ve come to the right place today. Scott Guthrie is one of them and he’s here. This episode is sponsored by Tagger. It is a complete influencer marketing solution. You can find out more for yourself at jason.online/tagger.  In this episode, we visit with T.J. Ferrara from Bubs Naturals, a health supplement company, about how they use Tagger.  To start building your own experiences with my influencer marketing software of choice, go to jason.online/tagger today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The influencer marketing landscape is changing. Now, that’s not a statement many people would find alarming. It’s always changing. But when you watch the industry like I do and for as long as I have, you see the tea leaves. And when they perk up a certain way, you sense a change is a brewin’.  Mavrck is out this week with its annual Creator Compensation Report. It’s a yearly survey of several hundred content creators that asks specific questions about how much they make, what type of work fuels that revenue, what kind of brand deals are they working and the like. It’s usually an insightful measuring stick to see where your brand is trending … are you paying well enough or not enough … are you offering the types of value others are and such. I started telling you about six months ago that the brands I and CIPIO.ai were working with had started to shift what they were asking for. Many were foregoing the traditional ask for influencer marketing collaborations, opting instead for just user-generated content.  Brands want content to fuel their paid and organic social. That’s good for companies like CIPIO.ai. We go get UGC on scale for brands. But it’s not a great sign for influencers who monetize their audience as much as their content.  Now, that alone is only one tea leaf if you will. And influencers can still create content for payment and still benefit from UGC-driven campaigns.  But Mavrck’s new Compensation Report has a few more tea leaves turning up of interest. Rachael Cihlar is Mavrck’s vice-president for corporate communications and public relations. She is busy getting this handy compensation report out to folks, but took some time to visit with me to go over some of the findings and talk about their implications. Some things I explore with her include these nuggets, surfaced by the report: The rates offered by brands are lower than previous years Affiliate compensation offers seem to be on the rise More than half of creators say affiliate income is a part of their array of earnings Does this mean brands are starting shift away from sponsored content and brand collaboration deals in favor of more performanced-based compensation? Or are these numbers just a settling of the market? Only time will tell, of course, but the time we have with Rachael today gave me the opportunity to ask how she interprets the data. She and I do that on this episode. Links for this Episode: Rachael Cihlar on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/influenceexpert/ Mavrck’s Website: https://mavrck.co/ Mavrck’s 2023 Creator Compensation Report: https://info.mavrck.co/creator-compensation-report-2023 Scale UGC with CIPIO.ai: https://jasonfalls.co/cipio 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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For the last probably year or year and a half, the conversation about the value of influencers has reverberated with the opinion that micro- and nano-influencers are more effective than the big stars with millions of followers. Logically, that makes sense. You have to spend a lot of money for one post with a big celebrity. You can get multiple posts from multiple micro-influencers that, over time, can add up to as much reach and far more frequency. But now there’s actual evidence to prove that theory. In fact, a new report out from TrendHERO, an influencer marketing software company specific to Instagram and one of the recent sponsors of this podcasts, actually helped me connect some dots to calculate the average cost-per-thousand, or CPM rate, of celebrity influencers versus micro-influencers. And the difference may startle you.  I’ll tell you all about it, in today’s commentary, and I have a little book news update for you at the tail end of today’s show, so make sure to listen through to the end. This episode is sponsored by Tagger. It is a complete influencer marketing solution. You can find out more for yourself at jason.online/tagger.  In this episode, we visit with T.J. Ferrara from Bubs Naturals, a health supplement company, about how they use Tagger.  To start building your own experiences with my influencer marketing software of choice, go to jason.online/tagger today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I’ve never really considered myself an entrepreneur, even though technically and by definition, I’ve been one a few times. When I started Social Media Explorer as a blog in 2007, my hope was to use it to publish my thoughts on an emerging industry trend and perhaps position myself as a thought leader. A couple of years later, that blog was the shingle I hung out in the consulting world. It then became a boutique strategy agency. I brought on a business partner and we grew to seven employees at one point.  In 2016, I co-founded the Conversation Research Institute with two partners as well. We tried for two years to bootstrap an idea that turned out to be too far ahead of its time. It was also intellectual property heavy without subsequent technology, so it wasn’t as attractive to investor dollars as it needed to be to survive.  While my side hustle role as an influencer in the social technology space can also be defined as entrepreneurial, it’s less build-a-business and more help some people out and make a little side money along the way.  So I’ve been an entrepreneur, but not with a great deal of intent or focus.  Lately, I’ve been hinting around at a new thing I’m doing. It’s a startup of sorts I’ve been building in what little spare time I have, but it’s something that I think you’ll agree fits into a passion spot for me and has a heck of a lot to do with influence marketing. The idea was actually born out of this podcast, so in a way, you have a lot to do with it.  It is a new business. I’m not leaving Cornett. It’s still a side hustle project at the moment, but for the first time in my professional life, I’m going into this with the intent and focus of building something exceptional.  I’ll tell you all about the Marketing Podcast Network in today's commentary. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A couple of weeks ago, we had an interesting conversation about race with talent manager Johanna Voss. She represents almost exclusively women of color, though she is not one herself. And most of her clients are of the Hispanic-Latina variety. The natural next step in this conversation for me, anyway, was to dive deeper into the African-American perspective, too.  It just so happened that Lindsey Gamble reacted to and commented on the social content about that Johanna Voss episode. He is the influencer marketing and innovation manager at Mavrck, which is one of the top enterprise influencer marketing platforms and service providers out there. So we hopped on a call and chatted a bit, then I extended an invitation for him to come help us carry the conversation forward. Gamble actually sees the influencer marketing space from a few angles. You know I like guests who have that varied perspective on things. He started out in the social media world as a hip-hop blogger. He built one of the more influential platforms for that topic in the Boston area after graduating from Bryant University where he played football. Because he knew the content creation and social media space well, he wound up in roles at companies that wanted him to create content or connect with those who do. He landed at Mavrck in 2018 and managed a set of client strategies. He’s now in a senior role where he gets to advise across clients on innovating in the space. Which sounds like my dream job in a lot of ways. We talk about all that, but also get into the thicker conversation about race and influencer marketing. What impact did the social unrest and issues in 2020 have on the conversation? Is that swell of attention gone or are brands still pursuing making strides in that area. Is there a way to solve the pay gap issues between white creators and creators of color. For someone who works at a software and services vendor in the space, but knows the creator side as well, Lindsey brings an interesting perspective to the conversation. This episode is sponsored by Tagger. It is a complete influencer marketing solution. You can find out more for yourself at jason.online/tagger.  In this episode, we visit with T.J. Ferrara from Bubs Naturals, a health supplement company, about how they use Tagger.  To start building your own experiences with my influencer marketing software of choice, go to jason.online/tagger today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

There’s an agency owner I know out there who listens to this show. He reads the articles I write. He follows my posts on social media. When I recommend a software or a tactical idea, he tries it out. By his own admission, I influence him. I reached out to him recently via email to try and convince him to join a new little venture I’m starting that I’ll talk more about with you soon, but he was one of the people I thought to myself, “I’ve influenced him before. I’m sure I can convince him to do this with me so I can launch with more than just me.” So, I sent him the pitch, a follow up document with anticipated questions he might have, and even provided some social validation by including him in a private Facebook group where he could see that others like him were doing this with me. But he wouldn’t pull the trigger.  So I did something that most of us forget about doing. I put down the Internet and turned to offline influence. I met him for a drink and we talked it out. When all else fails in this virtual world of influencer marketing, you need to remember to turn offline to influence marketing to be successful.  I’ll explain more in today’s commentary.  Today's episode is sponsored by Tagger. It is a complete influencer marketing solution. You can find out more for yourself at jason.online/tagger.  Today we visit with T.J. Ferrara from Bubs Naturals, a health supplement company, about how they use Tagger.  To start building your own experiences with my influencer marketing software of choice, go to jason.online/tagger today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Influence marketing is truly a global phenomenon. We’ve talked to guests on this program who practice this craft all around the world. But we don’t spend a lot of focused time understanding how influence marketing works in various countries and cultures. Fabian Fernando Guevara Juarez, who goes by Fabian Guevara for a shorter version of his name, reached out to me recently to trade best practices and ideas. I simply hit record because I knew the conversation would be fascinating. He is a content strategist and influence marketing campaign creator for Media House in Mexico City. His group works on influence campaigns for Coca-Cola. He also has experience working with Mattel and other brands. Fabian shared with me his approach to influence marketing which he folds into a larger, 360-degree view of the consumer. A lot of what he told me he, Media House and Coca-Cola practice in Latin America was spot-on smart thinking.  But he also shared that influencer marketing software and tools are looked upon with a large degree of skepticism in the Latin world. That surprised me, so we dove into that topic so I could better understand more.  The conversation was fascinating for me and I know it will be for you, too. I’m really grateful to Fabian for reaching out and sharing his experience and insights with us. Today's episode is sponsored by Tagger. It is a complete influencer marketing solution. You can find out more for yourself at jason.online/tagger.  Today we visit with T.J. Ferrara from Bubs Naturals, a health supplement company, about how they use Tagger.  To start building your own experiences with my influencer marketing software of choice, go to jason.online/tagger today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Thursday evening I opened up my feed reader to browse the world wide web looking for the latest updates from the various blogs and websites I subscribe to. It’s always good to catch up on what’s happening in the industry.  Once I read the blogs and websites I know and trust, I have a folder of feeds that are essentially Google Alerts for certain topics I want to keep a finger on the pulse of so I can see the information about that topic from sites I may not know or subscribe to. One of the topics in that folder is influencer marketing. So there I am, scrolling through the headlines looking for an interesting article to read and I see one that catches my eye. It reads, “Why top influencers are buying Instagram followers.” It was from a site called TechBullion.com and written by a person named Kristel Staci. I thought to myself, “Well I sure do want to know the reasons.” Buying followers, after all, is one of the most pronounced black eyes on our industry. That fraudulent practice alone is amplified enough that it discourages many brands from investing in influence marketing at all. So I start to read. And I get uncomfortable. And then I see that the entire article is not telling me why top influencers buy Instagram followers. It’s recommending the practice to others.  I’ll rant my way through the near stroke I had reading the article in today’s commentary.  Today's episode is presented by TrendHERO. It’s a new but advanced influencer marketing software platform specific to Instagram. So, for those of you who focus all your influencer energies on that platform, TrendHERO can help you search and discover Instagrammers based on a wide range of filters, from nano influencers, all the way to celebrities. There are over 90 million profiles in their database.  The feature I like most about TrendHERO is a big fat yellow highlighter to the topic of today’s commentary. It has advanced fake followers check. So you can detect if an influencer followed the advice in the article I’m about to rip apart in today’s episode.  TrendHERO also has an algorithm that tells you the chances a given posts’s comments are real or fake. So if you’re in a vertical that might be susceptible to comment pods and fake followers … a vertical that might consider this article I’m about to talk about as reliable information, TrendHERO can help you suss out which Instagrammers are worth it and which aren’t. TrendHERO also has a nice database of sponsored posts so you can quickly see how an Instagrammers content performs when they have to disclose a paid relationship. Or you can use two clicks to search for similar influencers and identify good targets quickly. The great thing about TrendHERO is they’re giving you a 14-day free trial just for listening to Winfluence! And if you decide you want to use the platform after that, the lite plan is just $15.99 per month.  Sign up for that free trial now at trendhero.io/falls. The full script of today's episode is posted on the show notes page at http://jason.online/buyingfollowers Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It’s always fun for me, and I hope for you, when I run across someone who has multiple perspectives on the influencer marketing industry. I feel like I bring that to the table a bit. I work at an agency, Cornett, and devise and manage influence marketing programs for a number of our clients. But I also have a modest network of B2B influencer as a social media and social technology person, plus a nice podcast audience … thank you for that … so I sometimes play the role of influencer myself. Larry Beaman has a couple of perspectives at play on the topic, too. He’s currently the chief growth officer at Gen.Video, an influencer marketing platform with some neat path to purchase sales technology … so he’s on the software and vendor side of the aisle. Once upon a time he worked for IZEA one of the grandfather SaaS solutions in the industry. And he spent a bit of time at Edelman, one of the largest public relations firms in the world. So he has the agency side of the aisle covered, too. Larry’s expertise is vast, but his specialty, if he has one, is building measurement programs for influencer marketing efforts. So we started the conversation there and ran through a gamut of industry topics in our conversation. He even took a swipe at what we’re going to be talking about in 2022 across the industry. Will it be all about the Metaverse? We’ll find out. I’ve been testing and talking to you about TrendHERO for the last two weeks. It’s a new but advanced influencer marketing software platform specific to Instagram. TrendHERO can help you search and discover Instagrammers based on a wide range of filters, from nano influencers, all the way to celebrities. There are over 90 million profiles in their database.  The feature I like most is its advanced fake followers check. They also have an algorithm that tells you how real the comments are on a given Instagrammer’s content. So if you’re in a vertical that might be susceptible to comment pods and fake followers, TrendHERO can help you suss out which Instagrammers are worth it and which aren’t. The great thing about TrendHERO is they’re giving you a 14-day free trial just for listening to Winfluence! And if you decide you want to use the platform after that, the lite plan is just $15.99 per month.  Sign up for that free trial now at trendhero.io/falls. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Not long ago, a client informed me they were moving their influencer marketing budget to their media agency. As in those who plan and buy advertisements.  Previous to that point, my team and I managed the growth of several valuable and productive relationships over the course of several years. There were about five or six content creators we worked with consistently. We would mix in new ones to expand reach or try new approaches with, see how that went and perhaps add them to the mix.  The brand wasn’t unhappy with what they were getting out of the influence programs we were building for them. But someone within the corporate structure decided influencer marketing was an ad buy, so the creative agency shouldn’t be managing it. Needless to say, the 4-5 years of relationship building kind of went out the window. A couple of them even called asking what was going on. They weren’t renewed for the next campaign. The media firm just started picking influencers based on reach rather than relationships. They paid no attention to established channels of influence. Another client I worked with a few years back insisted that influencers were an extension of their public relations effort. They were today’s journalists so everything should run through that department for influencer activations. Still a third person I know, not a client though, says he handles influencers on his social media team because they’re instrumental in content creation for his brand. He treats them like freelance designers and photographers creating content for his social channels. So, where does influencer marketing lie in the org chart? Who is responsible for managing those campaigns and budgets? I’ll tell you what I think in today’s commentary. We have a new sponsor to the show. I’ve been testing TrendHERO for the last two weeks. It’s a new but advanced influencer marketing software platform specific to Instagram. TrendHERO can help you search and discover Instagrammers based on a wide range of filters, from nano influencers, all the way to celebrities. There are over 90 million profiles in their database.  The feature I like most is its advanced fake followers check. They also have an algorithm that tells you how real the comments are on a given Instagrammer’s content. So if you’re in a vertical that might be susceptible to comment pods and fake followers, TrendHERO can help you suss out which Instagrammers are worth it and which aren’t. The great thing about TrendHERO is they’re giving you a 14-day free trial just for listening to Winfluence! And if you decide you want to use the platform after that, the lite plan is just $15.99 per month.  Sign up for that free trial now at trendhero.io/falls. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

There’s no doubt that the environment around influencer marketing and race, culture and diversity has undergone an incredible amount of change in the last two years. While the issues of pay gaps and brands ignoring influencers of color have always been present in the industry, the combination of social unrest in the United States and other countries, the Black Lives Matter movement, and a more vocal and present conversation around closing the racial pay gap have amplified the issues. In the course of my work with brands and content creators in the last two years, I’ve tried to be very intentional about listening, learning and advocating to ensure that at least my little corner of the influencer marketing world moves forward with more intention. In that work, I ran across Johanna Voss, a talent manager who represents an unusually high number of influencers of color in her work. In fact, Johanna has a client that I have engaged for one of our clients at Cornett. So, we actively work together on a brand campaign right now. It’s that up-close and personal interaction that beckoned me to invite her on the show to talk about influencers and race. Now, you should know, Johanna is not a person of color. So, ironically, this conversation about race is going to be between two people who do not have the first-hand experience of being a person of color. But our conversation is quite revealing I think about how brands think of influencers of color, the disparities in brand and agency approaches when looking to them versus those creators who are white, and the nuances of managing influencers and influence programs in the Hispanic or LatinX community. Needless to say, we as brands, agencies, talent managers and creators still have a long way to go. My hope is this conversation continues our communal learning and wisdom to one day find ourselves in a place where race and culture are embraced and celebrated by all, not separated or singled out with different priorities in budget and beyond. And there are some glimmers of hope in here, too. There have been some interesting steps of progress made thanks to the always on nature of activism and awareness of the issues. Do listen closely for those, too.  This is an important conversation. Because Johanna’s roster of talent features a much higher number of Latina influencers, we focus a bit more of the Hispanic version of people of color and not as exclusively on the Black community. We’ll continue to have those conversations here with those who bring more depth in their perspective, I assure you.  But this segment of the greater conversation we’re having about influencers and race on Winfluence is one I think you’ll find enlightening. regardless of your race, background or perspective. We have a new sponsor to the show. I’ve been testing TrendHERO for the last week. It’s a new but advanced influencer marketing software platform specific to Instagram. TrendHERO can help you search and discover Instagrammers based on a wide range of filters, from nano influencers, all the way to celebrities. There are over 90 million profiles in their database.  The feature I like most is its advanced fake followers check. They also have an algorithm that tells you how real the comments are on a given Instagrammer’s content. So if you’re in a vertical that might be susceptible to comment pods and fake followers, TrendHERO can help you suss out which Instagrammers are worth it and which aren’t. The great thing about TrendHERO is they’re giving you a 14-day free trial just for listening to Winfluence! And if you decide you want to use the platform after that, the lite plan is just $15.99 per month.  Sign up for that free trial now at trendhero.io/falls. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For those of you who listen regularly, have read my book or follow me on social channels, you know the difference between influence marketing and influencer marketing. One is focused on the noun. When we say “influencer” marketing, your brain is conditioned to think about Instagram, YouTube or TikTok. The other, is focused on what you’re trying to accomplish. The verb. You wish to influence. You don’t wish to influencer. That makes no sense.  Still, most brands and agencies are conditioned by the R to be very tunnel visioned on leveraging those who have large or relevant social media audiences. They look at follower counts. Some smarter one also look at engagement rates. The good ones also look at content and brand alignment.  But even those good ones are often still seeing the opportunity with blinders on. I can help you remove those blinders and really focus on influencing, not just influencers.   I’ll explain how in today’s commentary. Today, I welcome a new sponsor to the show. I’ve been testing TrendHERO for the last week. It’s a new but advanced influencer marketing software platform specific to Instagram. TrendHERO can help you search and discover Instagrammers based on a wide range of filters, from nano influencers, all the way to celebrities. There are over 90 million profiles in their database.  The feature I like most is its advanced fake followers check. They also have an algorithm that tells you how real the comments are on a given Instagrammer’s content. So if you’re in a vertical that might be susceptible to comment pods and fake followers, TrendHERO can help you suss out which Instagrammers are worth it and which aren’t. The great thing about TrendHERO is they’re giving you a 14-day free trial just for listening to Winfluence! And if you decide you want to use the platform after that, the lite plan is just $15.99 per month.  Sign up for that free trial now at trendhero.io/falls. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What are your goals? More importantly, do you write them down? How often do you refer to them?  Or are you like me and have vague ideas of what you want to accomplish in your head, but they kind of morph and change depending on the day? Certainly, we’re more disciplined about business goals. They typically have to be articulated in strategies and presentations, discussed in meetings and conference calls, probably ad nauseum. But they’re important to have, to revisit frequently and to refer to when making strategic decisions for your business.  Debra Eckerling is a goals strategist. She helps entrepreneurs, executives and employees identify and make a plan for personal and professional goals. She’s even got a clever methodology … the DEB Method … that is spelled out in her book Your Goal Guide. I’m familiar with Deb because her weekly live stream show and podcast, called The DEB Show, is a sister podcast of this one on the Marketing Podcast Network. I’ve had the pleasure of sitting in on her weekly themed discussion. It’s well worth the subscription, the links to which we’ll post in the show notes.  But Debra is also an influencer away from the marketing space, too. She’s a foodie writer and podcaster, too. Her show Taste Buds with Deb digs into her culinary side with guests to discuss and debate various food-related topics. It’s distributed by the Jewish Journal where she has been a contributor for a while. Whether you’re a brand or agency marketer, a service provider in the influencer space or a content creator, you could certainly use a refresher on goal setting and goal getting. So I asked Deb to join us this week to talk about goals, the DEB Method and her experiences as a foodie creator.  We’ll probably get hungry and set a goal of satiating that need on today’s show. Links for this episode: Debra Eckerling on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/coastbunny/ The DEB Method online: https://thedebmethod.com/ Your Goal Guide on Amazon: https://amzn.to/3DepnY5 Jason's appearance on The DEB Show: https://marketingpodcasts.net/2023/05/320-storytelling-with-jason-falls-peter-markel-christy-smallwood/ Taste Buds with Deb: https://tastebudswithdeb.com/ Scale UGC at CIPIO.ai: https://jasonfalls.co/cipio 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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Influencer marketing software is, in many ways, the backbone of our industry. Sure, you can feasibly find influencers manually by browsing social networks, snooping around hashtags or doing some Google searches for link-bait posts about the top influencers in one category or another, but that’s time consuming and laborious.  Influencer marketing software platforms like IZEA, Mavrck, CreatorIQ, Onalytica, Aspire, Julius, and certainly Tagger, our official platform and sponsor of this show … they are our engines that run our programs. We use them to search and discover relevant influencers, analyze and prioritize the list and in some cases connect, contract, coordinate and even compensate the creators we work with. Now, as much as I love Tagger, I also loved using Julius before. I’ve also enjoyed using IZEA in the past as well. Not to mention the dozens of smaller players who might only focus on one social network or have some other niche application. Each platform has strengths and weaknesses but all of them can work for you in some capacity. But we are about to enter a phase where the competition for users gets heated. There’s a new need coming for the industry … for influencers and brands alike … that these software companies are going to have to solve for. It will be a race to the finish line for the true winner of this next software battle to be determined. Well, I know which software company is going to win the race and emerge as the new influencer marketing software of choice for most brands.  I’ll tell you who in today’s commentary. Today's episode is sponsored by Tagger. It is a complete influencer marketing solution. You can find out more for yourself at jason.online/tagger.  Today we visit with T.J. Ferrara from Bubs Naturals, a health supplement company, about how they use Tagger.  To start building your own experiences with my influencer marketing software of choice, go to jason.online/tagger today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The stereotypical influencer is someone who has a topic, industry or talent. They create content around that and create an audience to build a platform. If they’re lucky, they monetize it in a way that supports them. If they’re real lucky they become famous and sign entertainment deals and such to spin off into more traditional show business or media roles. But there are different paths for influencers. John Chamberlin started a blog in Pittsburgh about 10 years ago. The original intent was to give local businesses and events a pathway to reach audiences in the Three Rivers region. But with the stories and news, events and promotions that the mainstream media outlets often passed on. The website and blog was called YaJagoff.com. Accompanying social media channels like Facebook and Twitter helped establish the site and John as an influencer. Eventually, he added a podcast. That helped him see more opportunities to do live video and audio episodes at local businesses. As things grew, Rachael Rennebeck joined John as a partner in YaJagoff Media. The business grew into more than just a typical influencer platform. They now do PR, marketing and event consulting. And work with companies beyond the geographic confines of Western Pennsylvania. I asked John and Rachael to come on the show and tell us how they built YaJagoff Media, what types of content and channels work for local content, how the local media intertwines with their efforts and a lot more. John has a great insight about listening to your audience in the middle of this discussion that alone is worth paying attention. They gave me, and now you, an interesting perspective on how else to become a successful influencer. Or influence platform. For those that don’t know Pittsburgh well, YaJagoff is a regional term there that can be an insult, “You cut me off YaJagoff!” but it can also be a term of endearment. “How ya been, YaJagoff!” Pittsburgh has its own language to a degree. We get into that a bit in the conversation today as well. Today's episode is sponsored by Tagger. It is a complete influencer marketing solution. You can find out more for yourself at jason.online/tagger.  We’ve been talking recently to Meredith Jacobson, an independent influencer marketing consultant who was on a past episode of the show, to tell you about how she uses Tagger with We are Boosters.  Hear more about how she uses Tagger on today's episode. To start building your own experiences with my influencer marketing software of choice, go to jason.online/tagger today. NOTE: Cover Photo by Elan Mizrahi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

There’s always been an unspoken attitude in the world of social media and now in influence marketing that advertising, or at least its philosophies and priorities, does nothing but muck everything up. Social media, and it’s immediate by-product of influencers and thus influence marketing, was, in essence, a way for consumers to push back against advertising. We were tired of brands just yelling their messages at us all the time and not listening, as well. Markets are conversations, said the Cluetrain. So forgive me for the soap box, but that kind of biases a lot of us to think that someone with that advertising background is out of place in the world of influencer marketing. At least so the stereotype would tell you. But Justin Kline is not a stereotypical anything. He started out managing ads for the Drudge Report, then managing the placement of ads for the sharing app Add This. So he sees the world of advertising form multiple perspectives. Nowadays, Justin runs Markerly, an influencer marketing agency that takes his experiences in the advertising world to advise and deploy attention-getting campaigns for clients. Markerly and Justin came to my attention when they ran the Meow Mix Remix campaign for the cat food brand and engaged pet influencers on TikTok and other channels to help re-think how Meow Mix is thought of by consumers. I asked him to join us to take us through the irony of an ad guy now running a firm on the influencer side of things, what it's like to work with pet influencers and much more. I love bringing different perspectives to the table for our discussions and this is certainly one of them. Today's episode is sponsored by Tagger. It is a complete influencer marketing solution. You can find out more for yourself at jason.online/tagger.  We’ve been talking recently to Meredith Jacobson, an independent influencer marketing consultant who was on a past episode of the show, to tell you about how she uses Tagger with We are Boosters.  Hear more about how she uses Tagger on today's episode. To start building your own experiences with my influencer marketing software of choice, go to jason.online/tagger today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices