influencers Archives - Page 3 of 5

In News

An Instagram account is exposing influencer inequality

September 25, 2020 No Comments

Black influencers tend to be paid less than white influencers, and it has nothing to do with follower counts.

Talking about how much you’re paid can make for an awkward conversation, but Adesuwa Ajayi is asking just that of social media influencers. They can have followings of tens or hundreds of thousands and companies will pay them for promotions. Ajayi started the Influencer Pay Gap account on Instagram to highlight the fact that Black influencers are routinely paid less than white influencers, even when they have similar numbers of followers or the same reach. The account lets people share stories anonymously and learn from other people’s experiences about what a fair payment is for a particular job or endorsement.

I spoke with Ajayi, whose day job is managing influencers at the talent agency AGM. She said she’s been collecting hundreds of stories. The following is an edited transcript of our conversation.

Adesuwa Ajayi: One of the most interesting ones actually was a campaign an influencer was participating in. This was a white influencer. And she was approached last-minute by a beauty brand with the expectation that she was going to replace a celebrity. She was pitched £5,000 to be paid for that campaign. She turned up, but then realized that the celebrity that apparently wasn’t going to turn up actually did turn up. So, there was no need for her to be there. And she was still paid that £5,000. Whereas a Black influencer, who actually participated in the campaign, was paid around £1,700. And it had nothing to do with their influence and following.

Jack Stewart: It is one thing in a job where people get paid a salary and you can be fairly transparent about it or at least force that transparency. But with influencers, where there’s kind of just not that overall body, there’s not a union, there’s really no way, is there, to dig in and figure out what these differences are? It really lets you hide things quite easily.

Ajayi: One hundred percent, especially as there are different parties involved. You have the brands, but you also have the agencies, and agencies are often given big budgets from brands. And there’s no level of transparency, whereby if a brand gives an agency around £10,000, who’s to say the agency doesn’t cut off £5,000 for themselves and intentionally lowball influencers? I think there are so many things at play here. There are so many people involved in different ways, and each industry, each niche, there are different behaviours that are a lot more common within certain niches than others. So it’s a bit of a mess, to a degree.

Stewart: You work at a talent agency. Is there anything you can think of that would help fix this problem? Is there a way to structure pay? Is there a way for influencers to work together or form a union?

Ajayi: I am working hand in hand with a union that has actually been set up. They are working towards opportunities for advocacy when it comes to influencers in this space and creators in general, where people feel OK to discuss the ways in which they have been treated. I think reinvigorating influencers in the sense that where they feel a lot more confident, and a lot more, almost, heard, in the grand scheme of things is really important.

Stewart: Have you heard anything from brands either talking to you personally or speaking out publicly about the inequality issue?

Ajayi: There are some Black influencers who kind of feel a way about some of the posts that have been made by certain brands. Especially brands that have a habit of picking and choosing what they like from Black culture, but completely ostracizing Black influencers from their campaigns. And I think there is constantly, right now, a conversation around seeing Black influencers and Black creators as worthy of a level of respect. It shouldn’t be anything somewhat shallow because you’re scared of any repercussions.

Stewart: What do you hope changes as a result of this page and the work that you’re doing?

Ajayi: I would really love for it to create a space whereby people feel like they can be truly honest and they feel that they’ll be heard. And not only heard, but, based upon the feedback, brands will take steps to do what they know they should do. So that’s one thing. I would also say, just the sense of community has been amazing and just seeing influencers help one another. An influencer with a million [followers] can seem so far-fetched to an influencer who has 5,000. But on the page, it sort of brings people together and gives them an understanding of what different spaces are like and the things that other people go through. And so I’d love for a kind of close-knit way of people kind of advocating for one another. It also required people to use their privilege and also use their insight to help one another. And I think that is what has been really, really amazing about the page, and I think it will only continue to get even bigger and better in that sense.

Sourced from MarketPlace

In News

Influencers Are Plugging More Songs. Now Their Engagement Is Suffering

September 10, 2020 No Comments

By ELIAS LEIGHT .

Popular creators on YouTube and Instagram can make money promoting music, but if they promote too many duds, their popularity can take a hit.

Back in 2018, it was possible to break a single via an Instagram meme. It happened with Rich the Kid’s “New Freezer:” Omid Noori, co-founder of the digital marketing and management company ATG, stumbled on a meme featuring several kids whipsawing their heads to the track; he then paid a popular hip-hop channel on Instagram to re-post it. The meme morphed into the “New Freezer challenge;” the rapper, his label Interscope, and ATG spread it across the digital universe; and the single eventually earned a double-platinum certification.

But as the music industry became increasingly interested in using memes to raise awareness for songs, naturally their impact diminished. “Memes were a novelty, but then it became, if you have enough money, ‘what’s the song — I’ll find a clip that kind of matches it and run it,’” Noori explains. “Now people don’t discover music as much that way, because it’s such a common thing when songs get dubbed over memes.”

This illustrates one of the central challenges of digital marketing and promotion in music. As soon the music industry recognizes that one technique on one social media platform is particularly effective for bringing attention to a track, record companies try to turn it into a standard marketing strategy, which backfires by making the tactic less potent. Memes and dance challenges initially became popular because they seemed fun and spontaneous; when they are rote and forced, advertisements rather than ways to engage with others online, their energy quickly starts to dissipate.

Several marketers say they’ve noticed significant drops in influencer engagement across multiple social media platforms lately, which they believe is a cost of trying to force-feed songs without regard for listeners’ preferences. “I’ve seen some YouTube influencers’ engagement fall 30 or 40 percent because they’re just saying yes to [every paid opportunity to place a song in their channel],” says Dillon Druz, who manages the rapper Bankrol Hayden and runs marketing campaigns for multiple labels.

“Every day there are hundreds of songs that don’t make sense for TikTok” — the app tends to reward songs that elicit simple, replicable movements — “and people are like, ‘well this other one went viral on there, so let’s put $20,000 behind it,’” Druz continues. “It all comes back to not having a proper influencer marketing strategy and spending money in the wrong places.”

“I see a lot of influencers only posting promos” — paid posts — “and their engagement is lowering,” adds Leilani, who has been on TikTok since it was Musical.ly and has more than seven million followers and half a billion likes on the app. As a result, “I try to keep the promos low.”

Digital marketing is a key component of the modern music industry. In the old days, an artist could reach potential fans in just a few ways: radio, print, television, physical advertising like billboards and flyers, and live shows. Those are still around, but their relevance is declining; now, attention has splintered into a myriad of digital pockets. An artist can perk ears through subcultures on TikTok, gaming channels on YouTube, and filters on Snapchat, not to mention Instagram, Fortnite, Facebook, Triller, Twitter, Dubsmash, directly through Spotify, and elsewhere.

“You can climb in a hole where you keep posting bad content and you can’t really get out of it.”

Popular users emerge on each of these platforms and gain followers, often by providing a unique personal perspective — a special brand of humor or a knack for finding hits early. Artists and labels then pay these influencers to disseminate music to their followers. (The pandemic caused labels to shift even more money to their digital efforts.) On average, marketers say Instagram influencers are more expensive than TikTok influencers, but top TikTok creators can still charge $25,000 or more for a post. Once labels and artists start paying for content, though, this can sometimes weaken the personal connection between an influencer and his or her followers by transforming a quirky individual into a walking billboard.

That’s not to say this approach to marketing doesn’t work — it’s easy to find the success stories, from labels fanning the flames of a challenge that materialized on TikTok to artists coordinating flashy activations on Fortnite. While it’s much harder to find stories about all the songs that don’t connect despite having plenty of marketing money behind them, in truth, the tracks that flop outnumber the ones that connect by a wide margin. Marketers are engaged in a complicated dance, trying to deliver effective ads and promotions while at the same time convincing their audience that they are not being spammed.

Marketers say that dedicated followers are often savvy enough to discern between posts that an influencer makes because they love a song and posts that are just about padding the bottom line. “It’s very obvious when people’s pages just become a paid platform, whereas before it was actually uploading clips in tune with them,” Druz says. “Their followers know it’s not authentic, and that’s why engagement is dropping.”

It’s possible that influencers are less susceptible to plummeting engagement on TikTok because of the sheer volume of posts common on the app — creators will often put up five or six clips a day on TikTok, far more than they would post on Instagram or YouTube. When an influencer is spewing out so many clips, each one has less weight.

“We have to post normally before we take on any more [paid] campaigns.”

Still, Leilani knows that her followers will not respond to some types of paid content. “Something they don’t like is if I do songs with dances that aren’t already popular,” she says. “They would always get the lowest engagement” in terms of views and likes, so she steers clear.

Since influencers post less frequently on Instagram and YouTube, the repercussions for a series of misfires on those platforms can be more serious. “You can climb in a hole where you keep posting bad content and you can’t really get out of it,” Druz says. “People care what goes on their Instagram and YouTube — they are more professional platforms” relative to TikTok, which prizes goofy spontaneity.

ATG’s Noori works with a network of influencers to help labels market songs, and he says that they sometimes decline to do promotions due to fears about alienating their audience. “A lot of influencers at one point in the last two months were like, ‘we can’t do as many [paid] campaigns this week, we need to get our engagement back,’” he notes. “People would say, ‘we have to post normally before we take on any more [paid] campaigns.’”

That’s part of the reason why Druz is changing the way he promotes music. Now “I’m very cautious,” he says. “I’m going to creators and saying, ‘is this a good fit for your channel?’ I have to make sure everyone actually believes in the song.”

Feature Image Credit: Photos in illustration by Adobe Stock/Kurkalukas, Adobe Stock/Endstern

By ELIAS LEIGHT

Sourced from RollingStone

In News

The pandemic has proved how important influencers are to the beauty industry

August 19, 2020 No Comments

BY HASINA KHATIB

With the ability to create content from home and motivate purchase decisions, here’s how independent content creators have served as an asset for brands during the lockdown.

It would be an understatement to declare 2020 a year unlike any other. The onset of the global health crisis threw the conveyor belt of marketing into disarray, with conventional press conferences, glitzy launch events and other hype-building activities stalled. However, even as the red carpet was being rolled back, online influencers went on with their work, lending further heft to the notion that the future is digital. While new product launches were stymied by the absence of glossy product photoshoots, at-home content creators carried on unabated. Conditioned by years of putting in the elbow grease to set up tripods and camera lights, this tribe continued to mobilise purchase decisions from within the comfort of their bedroom duvets.

As the beauty industry adjusts to the new normal, all eyes are now on influencer marketing. With multiple restrictions on social movement still in place, brands will now have to revisit the drawing board to devise virtual activations that can bank on creators’ cult-like following to clock in sales. We spoke to some of the key stakeholders in the industry to understand what the road ahead looks like, and here’s what we learned.

How beauty brands are meeting influencers in the virtual world

“I have had to spend a lot more time putting out fires rather than designing since the lockdown started,” says Masaba Gupta. The multi-hyphenate designer launched her beauty brand in conjunction with Nykaa last year, and recently celebrated the launch of a new range of perfumes, Moi by Nykaa, virtually. The launch couldn’t have been more different from the debut of the Lips and Tips collection last year, when friends of the brand swatched the new products over music and hors d’oeuvres while dressed in the designer’s signature prints. Fast forward to a year later, and the gallantry has now been swapped for an intimate roundtable conducted over a video call—open conversation, candid thoughts and shared sentiments abound instead. “Times change, and a part of being a successful business owner is changing with these times. Initially, we were a bit sceptical about having a digital launch, especially because it was a perfume, and people would obviously prefer to smell it before buying it. But this lockdown has opened up avenues of virtual soft launches and more extensive digital marketing strategies, which are low-cost and sustainable,” she says.

Freed from the formalities of on-ground events, influencers are welcoming the change of pace. Luxury content creator Natasha Luthra, who attended the virtual launch, believes that the online experience measures up to the physical events she has attended in the past. “As much as I miss attending events, I enjoyed the fact that I could sit on my bed in pyjamas for the online launch,” she says. Actor and presenter Roshni Chopra, who recently attended an educational series with Estée Lauder on skincare routines, believes that an online session allows for a more streamlined exchange of information. “While physical events have a great energy about them, the virtual event had its own relaxed and focused vibe.”

Why it’s essential for brands to build a strong network of influencers

With many sold-out launches attributed to their ability to swing followers, there is no questioning the power that influencers can wield over a company’s bottomline. A recent study offers further proof, with 82 per cent respondents admitting to purchasing or considering to purchase a product or service after seeing influencers post about it. The secret ingredient isn’t love—it is trust, opine the current generation of bloggers. Numbed by the steady drip of #sponcon or sponsored content over the years, the internet user of today can ID a paid post with a blindfold on. Authenticity, thus, assumes the driver’s seat in motivating product sales, and beauty blogger Aanam Chashmawala agrees. “The reason why consumers find influencers more trustworthy is that they can truly gauge how reliable their source is. Since I don’t edit my photos too much, I believe my audience relates to me because I’m the same person on my Instagram stories as I am on my feed. This connection is what makes the difference and results in great ROI for the brands I eventually work with,” she explains.

The pandemic has helped further bridge the gap between influencers and their audience. With an unprecedented lockdown in place, for the first time in forever, those doing the influencing and those being influenced were living the same life. Chopra believes that the lockdown has levelled the playing field for all content creators. “The pandemic has forced everyone to dig deep into our own creativity and make do with less. Now, it’s not about ‘follow me because my life is amazing’, but because I’m figuring how to make the best of the circumstances. It’s no longer about unattainable travel or luxury, but the conversations are instead moving in a healthier direction keeping a social conscience in mind.” Beauty influencer Saachi Bhasin Daga confirms that she has reconfigured her content strategy accordingly as well. “I do polls with my followers, take into consideration what they would like to see during these difficult times and integrate that into my content instead,” she says.

Why influencers have been able to adapt their content strategy better than anyone else

With commercial photoshoots put on hold, the spotlight was taken by content creators who have for years been creating content on their own—from unfolding hefty tripods to spending hours hunched over video editing software. Luthra reiterates that they have been prepared for this all along. “We are only now realising that we have been prepared for this eventuality because we have been shooting and recording content on our own for years now,” she says. New Delhi-based brand consultant Rasna Bhasin further elaborates, “Influencers and bloggers aren’t used to big sets and entourages to shoot with. I have always been amazed at the amount of content this community can churn out within a minuscule turnaround time and with limited resources.”

The latter might even serve as an edge over their celebrity counterparts. She agrees that both have their merits. “While a celebrity ambassador can serve as the face of the brand and reach an extremely large audience with their fanbase, I have always believed that micro-influencers are the ones who really drive consumers to make the sale. Celebrities are people you always look up to, while influencers are like that well-informed friend with intimate knowledge about a certain product. They’re more accessible, not bound by hard contracts and can give an honest view of what works or doesn’t. This makes it easy for the consumer to relate to them and trust their word on what to buy,” she surmises.

What the road ahead looks like for the beauty industry

While the business has witnessed a few speed bumps along the way, the key stakeholders in the industry unanimously agree that all eyes will be on the virtual-verse. Reena Chhabra, CEO of Nykaa Brands, foresees a mix of both traditional and digital activities paving the way forward. She says, “Creating consistent relationships with your core customers gives the business a definite competitive edge, thereby serving as an impetus to the bottomline. There are many innovative ways to achieve this emotional connection—however, storytelling is one of the strongest marketing tools for communicating the brand message, and evoking emotions is precisely the role that influencers play today. Through content creators and their followers, we also get an opportunity to listen to their feedback, which we have always taken seriously when working on our product portfolio.”

Gupta echoes the sentiment and says, “Where there’s a challenge, there’s also an opportunity. People are getting more comfortable with witnessing a launch digitally as opposed to getting stuck in a car due to traffic. We must push towards digital storytelling, where our communication is more conversational as opposed to a conventional product launch.” And for beauty brands looking to not just survive, but thrive in the revised pecking order, constructing a strong network of influencers will get half the job done.

BY HASINA KHATIB

Sourced from VOGUE

In News

8 of the Most Important Instagram Trends to Watch Right Now

July 23, 2020 No Comments

By Katie Sehl,

Like most social media trends, Instagram trends move quickly. And in 2020, change has been fast and furious, with a global pandemic, social uprising, and competitors, shaking things up.

Trends make the difference between looking out of touch or ahead of the curve. That doesn’t mean you should throw your social media content calendar out the window. It means you should stay informed and stay flexible.

There’s a lot to stay on top of at Instagram. From Instagram Story trends to Live Shopping, and Instagram Shops, we break down the biggest trends on the app.

Bonus: Download a free checklist that reveals the exact steps a lifestyle photographer used to grow from 0 to 600,000 followers on Instagram with no budget and no expensive gear.

9 of the most important Instagram trends in 2020

These are the top trends on Instagram to watch right now.

1. Brands and influencers reckon with racial inequality

On June 2, Instagram feeds were checkered with black squares in support of Blackout Tuesday. The original concept, The Show Must Be Paused, was created by music executives Brianna Agyemang and Jamila Thomas, as a day for the industry to “take a beat for an honest, reflective, and productive conversation about what actions we need to collectively take to support the Black community.”

But the black squares swiftly became symbols of performative allyship. The posts inadvertently drowned out the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag, a channel activists use to relay vital information. Many brands and influencers who participated were called out for virtue marketing or hypocrisy, spurring calls for transparency and action.

Designer Aurora James’s #15PercentPledge initiative calls on big retailers to pledge %15 of shelf space to Black-owned businesses. Brands including Sephora, Rent the Runway, Cupcakes and Cashmere have since made the pledge. UOMA Beauty founder Sharon Chuter launched #PullUpOrShutUp to challenge brands to back their marketing with employee diversity statistics.

Instagram plans to reexamine how its policies, tools, and processes impact Black and other underrepresented communities on Instagram. The company will focus on addressing harassment, account verification, content distribution, and algorithmic bias.

Black creators and professionals have also been speaking out about tokenization, pay disparities, and being sidelined. Several celebs, public figures, and influencers have responded to this disparity by sharing Black influencers and businesses or hosting account takeovers. As a result, many Black creators have seen their followings double overnight.

The social momentum behind Black Lives Matter is stronger than ever. But as initiatives like #PullUpOrShutUp demonstrate, brands need to know the difference between social trends and social movements. As eTalk CTV reporter Tyrone Rex Edwards said, “My trauma is not a trend.”

Anti-racism, inclusive marketing, equal pay and opportunity are not trends. They’re the new norm and the bare minimum of what consumers expect from brands going forward.

2. Instagram goes Live

Stay-at-home orders and event cancellations have helped propel Instagram Live viewership figures to new heights. Between February and March, the number of people tuning in for live broadcasts rose by 70%. More than 800 million people now watch live video daily across Instagram and Facebook.

Live lineups have been packed with star power. DJ D-Nice’s #ClubQuarantine sets have featured shoutouts to Rihanna, Zuckerberg, and Joe Biden as the viewership count soared above 100,000. Former U.S. President Barack Obama and Justin Bieber were among the 50,000 viewers punctuating a live convo between NBA star Stephen Curry and Dr. Anthony Fauci with emoji.

As people look for ways to replace in-person activities, brands and creators have jumped on live, too. In fact, 80% of live broadcasters have fewer than 1,000 followers.

Instagram Live sessions include everything from cocktail and comedy hours to virtual protests, yoga classes, and drawing tutorials. Desktop functionality, added in April, has made tuning in a lot more practical.

Like Instagram Stories, live videos tend to be more intimate and spontaneous than posts in the feed. Hosts can also respond to questions and comments in real-time, which is why Live videos tend to average six times more interactions on Facebook.

It’s too soon to know what staying power Instagram Live may have in a post-COVID world. For now, Instagram is rolling out enhancements, such as the option to save videos to IGTV and run fundraisers. Live Shopping and Badges allow creators to monetize livestreams.

Instagram is also testing showing two-rows of Stories in the feed, with live videos up top.

Until in-person activities resume, expect to see more memes and innovation on the Instagram Live front.

3. Creators can now make money directly on Instagram

Since its inception in 2010, Instagram creators have mostly monetized their audiences through affiliate marketing and brand partnerships. New features introduced in May now allow creators to make money directly.

Instagram is now testing Badges with a small group of creators and businesses. During a live broadcast, viewers can spend 99 cents to $4.99 for heart badges to stand out in the comment stream and unlock features. During the test phase, creators will receive 100% of revenue earned from these badges.

Source: Instagram

Tests for IGTV ads are underway as well. These ads can last up to 15 seconds and appear after someone clicks to watch the full IGTV video. On par with YouTube, 55% of ad revenue is shared with the creator. In addition to ads, Live Shopping tools now let creators and brands tag products during live videos.

Source: Instagram

These changes come as competition to retain creators heats up between platforms. They also cater to a cohort of “specialized” creators who monetize their audiences by offering valuable content, rather than featuring valuable products and experiences in their content. It’s why many are shying away from the label influencer in favor of the term creator, or even ambassador.

Brand partnerships will still remain an important source of revenue, but they’ve already become a lot less transactional. Expect to see some fine-tuning in the Brand Collabs Manager from Instagram (and Facebook).

4. Instagram Shops set brands up to cash in on conversions

Instagram Shops promise to make it easier for brands to make money, too. Shops let businesses create a storefront directly in the app, so people can buy without the need to visit a website. By eliminating this friction, brands should be able to drive significantly higher conversions and sales.

In May, Instagram and Facebook launched a phased rollout to businesses globally. The plan is for the shopping experience to eventually be integrated across all of Facebook’s apps. Once complete, it will mean that when someone puts something in their cart on Facebook, they can check out later on Instagram using stored credit card info or Facebook Pay (which will likely be integrated, too).

Source: Facebook

To improve discoverability, Instagram will soon have a dedicated Shopping tab, like the Explore tab, which already features a shopping section. Accounts with shops have a View Shop button on their profiles, as well as a shop tab. Businesses can customize how collections appear, connect loyalty programs, and benefit from the platform’s built-in AI to create personalized experiences.

There are now more ways to spend money in Stories, too. In addition to product tags, companies can share gift card, food order and donation Stickers.

Set up Instagram Shopping so you can sell your products.

5. Shopping and advertising get AI-powered upgrades

More people shopping across Instagram and Facebook means more data. And more data brings the company closer to its vision of “making anything shoppable while personalizing to individual taste.”

To make anything shoppable, the Facebook engineers have developed an A.I called GrokNet that can automatically tag the products in a business’s catalog in seconds. The A.I., which is already used on Facebook Marketplace, can scan photos, identify attributes such as colour and style, cross-reference with catalogs, and suggest descriptions. On the flip side, this data is used to deliver better search results and targeted ads to users.

Rotating View is another A.I. project that aims to enhance social shopping. The feature, which allows people to create 3D-like images, is currently being tested on Marketplace. Maybe it will crop up on Instagram, too.

Instagram may soon introduce ads that use augmented reality to let people “try on” beauty products or preview furniture in their homes. Facebook already offers an AR ad format, and Zuckerberg recently announced more developments are on the horizon.

Read our complete guide on how to advertise on Instagram.

6. Instagram Guides accompany the rise of “info-social”

Brands and influencers often get asked for recommendations, from “where should we eat in Marrakech?” to “how do you talk to your kids about climate change?”. In the past, these requests have been handled by referring followers to highlights or blog posts. Now guides can be created directly on Instagram.

Source: Instagram

According to Instagram head Adam Mosseri, guides were initially developed for travel, but that idea was curtailed by the coronavirus outbreak. Instead, they launched under the theme of wellbeing, with more themes coming up. Instagram recently assembled a racial justice resource guide, too.

Guides have their own devoted tab on profiles, and can be shared to Stories or appear in the Explore tab. They can include curated posts and videos with added notes and tips.

There’s a growing appetite for informative social content. On TikTok, educational videos are surging in popularity, especially in China, with a reported 14 million “knowledge-based” posts created last year. In the United States, career coaches, personal finance experts, and fitness experts are finding success on the app.

On Instagram, everything from “practice accounts” to doctor and nurse micro- and nano-influencers are popular, proving that engaged communities are much more valuable than high follower counts.

7. Values take center stage

Authenticity is a big buzzword in the influencer industry. But it’s not just an influencer trend. Consumers increasingly demand authenticity from brands, too, especially in the form of transparency.

As brands and influencers use their platforms to take a stand, promote values, and support causes, transparency will be more necessary to retain authenticity. For example, sustainable beauty brand Elate Cosmetics goes into great detail to explain the eco-attributes of its products and practices.

Influencers will share more about their decision making in general, and be more upfront about why they partner with specific brands. To maintain trust, disclaimers and clear labelling between spon-con and regular posts will be necessary, particularly in Stories.

With social advocacy on the rise, Instagram has added several fundraising tools, including live fundraisers and donation stickers. The company is also reportedly testing the option to add fundraisers to profiles. Nonprofits already have access to account Donate buttons.

Instagram is also adding context to posts from high-reach accounts. In April, the company started piloting a feature that shows location and where followers are based on posts from these accounts.

Source: Facebook

8. TikTok, Twitter, and Giphy invade Instagram

The days when Instagram was only a place for filtered images are long gone. Instagram’s feed now features everything from memes and Twitter takes to TikTok challenges, special effects, music, and more.

To keep up with competition from TikTok and Snapchat, Instagram’s been on a feature-adding bonanza—especially in Stories. The recent acquisition of Giphy, which already sourced 25% of its traffic from Instagram, will add to a collection of interactive features that already includes stickers, filters, and other special effects.

Despite more content variety in the feed, the Instagram aesthetic still creeps in. As Arimeta Diop points on in Vanity Fair: “It’s the end of the iPhone-Notes-App-Apology Era.” Bold typefaces, templates, and hand-drawn sketches have proven more popular, thanks in part to Instagram’s strong design community. Infographics and visual storytelling have taken off, too.

Most cross-platform sharing is up to the users, except when it comes to Facebook’s family of apps. Further integration between Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp, Messenger—on the front and back end—is looming. Beyond a fully integrated shopping experience, Facebook is developing an option for users to view and reply to Instagram Stories from Facebook.

Facebook is also planning to merge messaging across its apps by the end of this year. Once complete, Instagram users would be able to message friends on WhatsApp and Messenger, even if those friends don’t have Instagram accounts. This level of integration would make the app family comparable with the WeChat, the super app that dominates in China.

Manage your Instagram presence alongside your other social channels and save time using Hootsuite. From a single dashboard you can schedule and publish posts, engage the audience, and measure performance. Try it free today.

By Katie Sehl

Sourced from Hootsuite

In News

Barilla pays influencers to peddle pasta because no one’s making TV ads

June 26, 2020 No Comments

Sourced from Crain’s Chicago Business

Influencers can often produce content faster and more cheaply than a TV ad campaign team, helping brands adapt faster as consumer circumstances change. Italian pasta company Barilla, whose U.S. headquarters is based in Northbrook, is a case in point.

(Bloomberg)—Advertising has mostly collapsed, but brands are still spending — just not on billboards, newspaper ads or TV spots. This has opened a new frontier for social media influencers, the newcomers to the ad game, that could help them bounce back when the crisis eases.

The great pullback in advertising budgets hasn’t been evenly distributed. Spending on platforms such as Facebook Inc.’s Instagram and ByteDance Inc.’s TikTok is down, even for influencers, just not as much as traditional media.

It’s partly about following the consumer. There’s not a lot of motivation to freshen up a billboard when streets are so empty. Cinema screens are dark, and there are hardly any commuters to read the free newspapers handed out at rail stations. However, social media usage has surged.

Though there’s still less impetus for, say, travel destinations to ink deals with social media stars when the airline industry has all but ground to a halt, some brands that would never have considered an arrangement with an influencer are giving them another look.

Before Covid-19, companies might have considered influencers, and their large fan bases, a “support mechanism” rather than something that’s central to brand planning, said Frances Sinclair, a strategy partner at Dentsu Group Inc. agency Carat. The sudden economic shock and lifestyle upheaval wreaked by the virus is changing that.

“We’re seeing brands shift their investment from more-traditional media channels, which might not make sense to them at the moment, to being in an influencer environment where the engagement is very real-time and ready,” she said.

It’s also important to change the content of a campaign to reflect the reality of life under lockdown. For example, standard ad campaigns featuring carefree, optimistic people mixing freely outdoors are on the back burner in a post-virus world marked by job insecurity, health fears and uncertain prospects.

Influencers can often produce content faster and more cheaply than a TV ad campaign team, helping brands adapt faster as consumer circumstances change.

Italian pasta company Barilla, whose U.S. headquarters is based in Northbrook, is a case in point. A year ago, the brand was wooing consumers with a glossy television spot which showed tennis champion Roger Federer cooking its spaghetti at a mansion reception with top chef Davide Oldani.

To craft a more appropriate message for their locked-down audience, Barilla’s marketers looked to social media star Chiara Ferragni, whose portraits modelling red-carpet dresses and pool-side leisurewear have drawn 20 million Instagram followers.

Recently, she’s been showing off her homemade Barilla spaghetti dinners instead.

“One of the reasons brands use influencer marketing in this moment is that it’s fast to activate and solved the issue of production that was on halt,” said Alessio Gianni, the company’s digital and content marketing director. “Content is more spontaneous, close to the people. Chiara, being Italian and locked at home as everyone else, cooked herself a carbonara. It was the best person to involve.”

Europe’s biggest pay-TV provider, Sky, has enlisted Dentsu Aegis influencer agency Gleam Futures to promote shows and movies to homebound families. Parenting Instagrammer Louise Pentland posted pictures to her 2.4 million followers showing her children contentedly watching “Trolls World Tour,” made by Sky’s parent Comcast Corp.

Sky is using digital channels like Instagram and getting near real-time feedback in a way it hasn’t before, said Dentsu’s Sinclair.

“Whereas once it might have been very much about the brand and the content, now it’s very much about the experience you have within your isolation,” she said.

Influencers were a rare bright spot in M&C Saatchi’s April market update, which cited “steady” business in the newer channel despite “a sharp drop in demand across the group.”

S4 Capital Plc’s CEO, Martin Sorrell, said some European clients started to change their thinking on influencer marketing that month, accelerating a digital transformation of advertising that was already underway. S4’s IMA agency has picked up work on an influencer campaign to promote HP Inc. laptops.

“We certainly saw that on the influencer side—so whereas I think it was pretty dead in the back-end of March, it got pretty lively as we got into April,” he said.

Influencer marketing can still be a minefield given how easily a brand campaign can appear cynical and turn off followers. With billions of people tiring of lockdowns and worried about coronavirus, companies can’t look like they’re seeking to profit from a miserable situation.

“A lot of the feedback the influencers receive from their audiences is: ‘How can you go on like everything is normal, saying to buy this candle, or this make-up?” said Robert Levenhagen, CEO of marketing software company InfluencerDB.

That’s limiting any boost the medium can receive from the current situation. M&C Saatchi’s Thompson said lots of social media stars are shunning commercial ventures in favor of charity and community work.

It’s taken years to convince many companies that there’s as clear a return on investment in influencers compared to TV or other forms of digital advertising. It’s been easy for influencers to buy “fake followers” and generate artificial engagement activity, making it hard to assess their true audience reach and impact.

There’s always the risk they’ll do something dumb that gets a company all the wrong kind of publicity. That’s made some traditional brands reluctant to jump in, according to Hayley Brady, a partner at Herbert Smith Freehills who advises companies on digital advertising.

In 2015 Kim Kardashian promoted a morning sickness treatment but failed to mention its side-effects, earning a reprimand from the FDA. Then there’s the bad behavior: YouTube star Logan Paul lost advertisers in a controversy sparked by posting a crude video which showed a dead body in a Japanese forest known for suicides.

Still, the ability of influencers to pivot quickly to match popular sentiment is what’s boosted their appeal for some brands in the current environment. This bodes well for their outlook when the worst of the pandemic is in the past.

“Influencer marketing spend will come back quicker,” said Dafydd Woodward, global head of INCA, the influencer division of WPP Plc’s GroupM. “It’s agile, because we can create content very very quickly that reflects the mood of the nation, and the messages that are being put out by governments.”

Sourced from Crain’s Chicago Business

In News

Learn how to grow your business on Instagram the same way influencers do

June 5, 2020 No Comments

By Alex McGeeney, StackCommerce

Instagram has come a long way in the past decade. No longer is it just a tool to make your sub-par iPhone pictures look better; the platform allows users to live-stream, share photos and enjoy a variety of dynamic face-recognition filters. But, perhaps more important than all this is the fact that it has become a huge advertising and money-making tool for brands and influencers.

Want to harness that power for your business? The 10 Instagram Growth Secrets From Celebrities & Influencers Course breaks down what it takes to grow a business on the social media platform, and it’ll only run you $13.99 right now.
The online boot camp is led by entrepreneur and marketing expert, Benjamin Wilson, who taps into the knowledge of big-name influencers and tastemakers on the platform.

Armed with expert advice and practical applications in hand, Wilson breaks down how to exponentially increase your following, generate profit, use hashtags to your advantage, and ultimately build an engaged audience that continues to come back to your content day after day.

So far, over 200,000 students have already taken this specific course, rating it an impressive 4.4 out of 5 stars. As one past customer notes, the step-by-step guide was “Amazing. The course is up to date and at the edge of what is happening now. I am enjoying the easy natural presentation and the logical step by step guides and procedures.”

If you’re ready to get serious about the ‘gram, consider enrolling in the 10 Instagram Growth Secrets from Celebrities and Influencers Course. Currently, the digital course is on sale for $13.99 — a total savings of over 90% off its normal retail price.

By Alex McGeeney, StackCommerce

Sourced from New York Post

In News

Influencers are putting up paywalls. What does that mean for brands?

March 19, 2020 No Comments

By Kati Chitrakorn.

Influencers are charging fans for a more intimate social media experience, calling the future of brand partnerships into question.

Key takeaways:

Influencers with big followings on Instagram and other platforms are starting to put up “paywalls” by charging fans for exclusive content.
Some charge a monthly fee to become a “Close Friend” on Instagram, while others are trialling WeChat’s new paywalls. In effect, content quality is becoming a focus.
While these payments add another revenue stream for influencers, analysts say brand partnerships will remain as a source of credibility.

Caroline Calloway, a 28-year-old internet personality known for her lengthy Instagram captions, and, more recently, the controversy surrounding her workshops and her relationship with Natalie Beach, started offering her 717,000 Instagram followers the option to sign up for paid access to her “Close Friends” list in August 2019. She decided the content on her Instagram was personal enough to warrant paying for.

“What I do provides value and I should be compensated for that service, just like anyone else,” says Calloway. “A stranger is not entitled to consume what I make, just as I am not entitled to reap the benefits of whatever job they are employed at.”

Patreon, a membership platform that launched in May 2013, lets creators set up pages for subscription payments from patrons by offering certain perks or incentives, and donors can pledge certain sums of money based on those tiers and perks. Today, it counts over 150,000 creators and more than 4 million patrons.

Fans of Calloway can pay a monthly fee of $2 via Patreon to see her “Close Friends” Instagram Stories, or $100 for exclusive content plus a monthly 25-minute FaceTime session with the influencer herself. “Because my content is monthly, I want what I make to be really special and meaningful,” she explains. For Valentine’s Day, she planned to share with her 419 Close Friends the details of her secret boyfriend.

Caroline Calloway

Gabi Abrão has used Instagram’s Close Friends feature in a similar vein. The 25-year-old Los Angeles-based artist behind the popular meme account @sighswoon, which counts over 104,000 followers, discovered Patreon last summer. “It was a lot of people wanting more from me. They wanted more things about my life and more content,” she says. “I thought about how I could make content that was more personal but have a guaranteed income.”

Abrão currently has 415 subscribers on Patreon: for $3.33 a month, she’ll add users to her Close Friends list on Instagram. For $9, she’ll share a vlog every week on a password-protected Vimeo site. For $55 a month, users can receive merch. Fans who pay the highest tier — $222 a month — receive personal emails from Abrão every week, answering questions, giving advice or just talking about their lives.

Calloway and Abrão aren’t fashion influencers, but the industry has a collection of Instagram personalities who have massive, monetisable audiences: Chiara Ferragni has over 18.5 million followers on Instagram; Aimee Song has 5.5 million. There’s also opportunity for magazine publishers like Vogue — 26.2 million people follow US Vogue on Instagram alone — to offer exclusive behind the scenes content for a fee. (Vogue Business and US Vogue share a parent company, Condé Nast.)

Influencer marketing is a growing industry. The global influencer market is expected to reach $15 billion by 2022, up from $8 billion in 2019, according to Media Kix data. But it’s nascent, and any shift can spell change for the entire category. Last year, Instagram experimented with hiding the number of likes on posts, with the intention of minimising the social pressures that come with social media. Some experts believe if this becomes a permanent feature, it could incentivise brands to spend more on ads and less on posts that feature influencers.

Influencers who develop a second revenue stream through the monetisation of close friends and private groups could be seen as a threat to brand partnerships, as they can drive their own income and might be less likely to want to introduce ads or sponsored content to an already-paying audience.

But it could also be a benefit for brands, as the influencers they work with could be more likely to develop stronger partnerships and produce higher quality content. “It will enable influencers to avoid having ‘one night stands’ with brands and rather focus on creating long-term ambassadorships with brands that are truly authentic to their lifestyle,” says Krishna Subramanian, CEO of influencer marketing and branded content firm Captiv8.

Private subscriptions for fans

“It’s the way of the future,” says Subramanian. “If you look at these fan clubs or VIP memberships that have launched, it’s tied to exclusive, specific types of content being provided by influencers and celebrities.” Erotic models have paved the way here by offering private subscriptions for their most loyal fans on platforms like Onlyfans.

Instagram introduced its Close Friends feature in November 2018 as a way to give users a space to post less curated content, similar to what has become increasingly popular with secondary “Finstagram” accounts. (The launch of Close Friends was a transparent move to recapture the interest of younger people, who were turning to platforms like Snapchat and TikTok for content they don’t want parents, teachers or any unapproved eyes to see.)

According to a spokesperson at Instagram, the Close Friends feature is used by millions of people worldwide today, with the average Close Friends list being around 20 people.

While influencers like Calloway use the Close Friends feature as a hack to charge money for more intimate access, others ask that their fans fund and support specific projects. Former venture capitalist Jenny Gyllander, who runs the product-review Instagram account @thingtesting with 42,700 followers, charges a one-time fee of $100 for a spot on her Close Friends list, which includes exclusive content such as a behind-the-scenes look at her product review journeys. (Three hundred people have been granted access so far, and Gyllander says there’s currently a waitlist.)

Gabi Abrão of @Sighswoon

This gives creators a way to monetise their work without relying on brand-sponsored posts. It also incentivises them to make more quality content. Millennial astrologer Aliza Kelly charges users anywhere from $5 to $200 a month for varying access to The Constellation Club — which she describes as “a private virtual community built around astrology, magic, spirituality and esotericism”. Of her 28,500 Instagram followers, about 300 have signed up for a paid subscription, which at its most basic level offers access to the chat group on Discord and private Instagram account @constellationclub.

“I’m trying to provide a balance of free content for people to enjoy on my Instagram, while also being able to give paid-for, personalised attention,” she says, like providing birth charts or answers to questions about compatibility.

For Tribe Dynamics president Conor Begley, the opportunity for influencers to monetise their fans “should give more freedom to post content that their audience will find interesting rather than purely branded content. We’ve recently seen a decline in the volume of branded posts being created by influencers that this could be connected to”.

According to Kelly, her fans are global, with most being in the US, followed by Canada, Australia and the UK. She says that the paywall approach has been a significant way to “build a community, scale my business and offer my true dedicated fans the type of quality content they wouldn’t be able to receive on a free basis”.

New forms of social media transactions

While Patreon has helped build out this model, other platforms enable similar transactions. On Twitch, people can buy virtual goods as gifts for creators. TikTok allows users to “tip” live streamers (although some creators have been linking their Venmo handles in their captions so fans can send donations directly). YouTube quietly rolled out a subscription-inspired “join” button in 2018 where fans can pay creators a monthly $4.99 fee in return for rewards such as members-only content, early access to new videos and merch discounts.

In January 2020, WeChat — China’s most popular social messaging app, with over 900 million users — began rolling out optional paywalls on a trial basis. According to the platform, articles published by its 500 most popular accounts received 39,000 views on average in 2019.

Li Huanxin, a content creator with over 500,000 followers on WeChat, was among the first to introduce a paywall to his account, where he publishes commentaries on social issues. His article about WeChat’s new paywalls costs RMB 1 ($0.15) to read and has been purchased over 5,000 times since it was published on 15 January.

The Constellation Club founder Aliza Kelly

Meanwhile, Li Jianqu, who runs a history and politics-focused account, with 33,480 followers, normally has an article open-rate of 37 per cent, far above the industry average of 1.2 per cent. On 17 January, he posted an article discussing issues in Iran that was available to read for RMB 3 ($0.43). Nearly 700 readers paid for the post, accumulating him RMB 2,064 (about $295).

These paywalls don’t always pay dividends. According to data from Tom Boruta, a developer who tracks Patreon statistics under the name Graphtreon, only 2 per cent of Patreon’s creators — 1,393 people — made the equivalent of federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour, or $1,160 a month, in October 2017, indicating that in this network initially designed to support creatives, most of the money is still concentrated at the top.

If influencers make money directly from their followers, it would be an added revenue stream, but it doesn’t mean they won’t still go after brand partnerships, says Harry Hugo, co-founder of influencer marketing agency Goat, because being associated with brands like Mac or Gucci still represents a level of clout.

“As influencers get larger, they can monetise in a variety of ways that don’t involve brand partnerships, whether it’s launching their own brand, getting a cut of advertising revenue through YouTube or paid subscription services to exclusive content,” adds Tribe Dynamics’ Begley. “But brand partnerships will continue to be a part of the equation because these brands can have a positive impact on an influencer’s credibility and audience.”

To receive the Vogue Business newsletter, sign up here.

By Kati Chitrakorn

Sourced from Vogue Business

In News

The Implications of Instagram Becoming One Big Shop

December 13, 2019 No Comments

By Moya Lothian-McLean.

Many fans of influencers say they aren’t bothered by advertising and that ‘selling out’ doesn’t really exist on the platform. But why?

Emily can almost always spot an influencer #ad on Instagram – even when the tell-tale hashtag is buried at the bottom of a lengthy caption. The giveaway, she says, is the tenuous nature of the post. “I usually begin to read a caption and start to feel that it’s very disingenuous or flimsily linked together. That’s when I think, ‘This has got to be an ad,’” says the 25-year-old, whose preferred content creators tend to be lifestyle and interiors influencers like Liv Purvis. “Sure enough, when I scroll down, the post will be hashtagged ‘#AD’.”

Emily describes a scenario that’s likely familiar to those of us who while away our lives looking at pictures of other people’s. Since September 2018, whether consciously or not, anyone following UK-based influencers on Instagram may have noticed a rise in the amount of paid marketing – AKA spon(sored) con(tent) – that these professionally Shiny Happy People churn out.

And that’s because last autumn UK advertising bodies the ASA – who apply the codes of advertising as written by the Committee of Advertising Practice (CAP) – and the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) issued stricter new guidelines for online influencer marketing. Easy-to-follow language left no room for confusion about what counts as an advert – and no loopholes for influencers to plead ignorance with, if caught flouting the rules. And so they state: any content paid for (whether payment is financial or in goods) by a third party is an ad. If an influencer is promoting their own products – e.g: Zoella hawking her own brand cosmetics – that’s an ad. Giveaways? Ads. Freebies? Ads too, unless there’s no affiliate relationship with the brand and it has no editorial control over what influencers post (often this can be something as ‘small’ as just having final approval or the influencer agreeing to post a specified amount of times).

The new guidelines also spell out exactly how such a post should be labelled; either as ‘AD, advert, advertising, advertisement or advertisement feature.’ Influencers who soften the impact of declaring paid content by only tagging their posts as ‘sponsored content’ or ‘sponsorship’ risk falling afoul of the CMA or ASA and having their account features limited by Instagram (ie: ‘shadow banning’). Phrases like ‘in association with’ or ‘thanks to [brand] for making this possible’ are explicitly called out for being too vague. Equally, just @-ing the brand doesn’t cut it. “The main thing to remember,” the guidelines say, “is you need to make it obvious [emphasis their own].”

As someone like Emily knows, this leaves influencers little room to hide. But, for her, that’s not a big deal. Research has previously found that sponsored content and non-sponsored content receive equal interaction (measured in the form of likes); instead, the glaring factors that made sponsored content perform poorly was text placed on photos, unnatural product placement and poor photography. Influencers also have long mastered the art of blending ‘genuine’ content with uploads they’re contractually required to make. Yet Emily also admits that knowing content is paid-for doesn’t necessarily make a world of difference to how she engages with it.

“If it’s an influencer I follow who I have genuinely seen recommend the thing anyway, or I feel they’re authentic enough that I’d truly believe they’d like/use the product then I wouldn’t care,” she adds. “[It’s only] if the link between their love for this product and their partnership with the brand feels forced then I’d absolutely pause.” Unsurprisingly, users say their reaction to spon con differs depending on how well they perceive it aligns with the influencer’s brand.

“It depends on the picture whether I engage or read on,” says 28-year-old publishing PA Indre, who cites her favourite influencers as lifestyle and/or empowerment bloggers like Amelia Perrin (full disclosure: Amelia is a friend of the author) and Megan Jayne Crabbe. “If it’s interesting to look at then yes, I’ll engage. If it’s just them holding the product, I’d actually consider unfollowing them straight away – especially if it’s something that looks random or not their typical area.”

Indre has noticed the influx of new #ad tagged posts (which she says puts her off – “I prefer gifted”), but is torn. On the one hand, she says advertising feels ‘normalised’ and she’s happy to plug into it – but only when it appears ‘genuine’, which she admits is somewhat oxymoronic. But recently she’s mass-unfollowed a bunch of influencers because their feeds had become over-saturated with #ad posts and little else.

“I felt like there was no honesty left there, like I was being constantly sold and lied to,” Indre tells me. “Why would I voluntarily follow what’s essentially an ad page? I rarely unfollow influencers just because of the spon con – I unfollowed Louise Pentland when she became a parenting influencer because her content was no longer relevant to me – but if the spon con is for shit that’s way out of my budget, or if their posts become mostly spon con, I smash that unfollow button.”

As that research showed, pretty or well-made sponsored posts don’t put people off liking or interacting with them. Instagram has quickly turned into a giant shop, warm in your back pocket and ready to be opened at any time. Its shift from strictly image-sharing to a tool for big businesses and influencer marketing was never expressly detailed to Insta users. Rather, the change crept up, from the odd post here and there, to the swipe-up features for business and verified accounts, to the full in-app shopping features used by boutiques and brands. Anyone who opens the app, following people outside of their direct friendship circles for personal reasons, steps into this marketplace automatically. And at times, followers are more than happy to engage on that hyper-consumerist level.

“Sometimes I engage with an ad – I don’t comment but I ‘like’ it without intending to buy if it’s a product that isn’t really for me but seems of good quality and I like the influencer” says Rebecca, a 31-year-old Londoner who works in marketing, making her more conscious of the power her engagement with paid posts carries. She describes her tastes in influencers as ‘feminist,’ citing Florence Given (@florencegiven) as an example. “I’m aware that interaction with a post is something that brands who work with an influencer will consider,” she continues. “So I see a ‘like’ as my way of providing very minimal support for their career.”

Rebecca’s also not too bothered by influencer ads, so long as they’re balanced with alternative content. “I care about being ‘sold to’ because I see it as a sort of relationship,” she says. “I want to support interesting people who seem authentic and who care about what they put their name to. It feels disrespectful to your audience to try and shill any old crap.”

Rebecca’s stance reflects a sentiment I continue to hear, where following influencers implies an acceptance of a certain level of spon con. It’s not seen as ‘selling out.’ As 21-year-old student Lachlan puts it: “It doesn’t tend to bother me if it’s a subtle post and they’re not bombarding you with ads; gotta get the bread somehow.” Capitalism is so embedded in the fabric of our lives that few of the digital natives I speak to sound particularly thrown by influencers ‘just doing their job’.

However, as Lachlan continues, “There is nothing worse than a ‘genuine’ caption paired with an ad; someone trying desperately to convince you a beautiful river they’re stood over reminds them of a cool beer or something.” That being said, she still feels the constant hum of advertising. “I get targeted ads all the time on social, using my most personal information that they’ve skimmed out of my messages. So I’m not going to get that bothered about someone I like enough to follow on Instagram, earning a bit of cash if they can.” Followers just want to buy into the idea that the ads and persona their chosen influencer has presented to them is ‘genuine’, no matter if deep down, they know it’s not.

Feature Image Credit: Collage by Chelsea White for VICE, featuring photo by Benjamin Egerland via Alamy Stock Photo

By Moya Lothian-McLean

Sourced from Vice

In News

How to Get Influencers to Promote Your Brand

November 20, 2019 No Comments

By Jonathan Jeffery

Earlier this month, I published an article on how to leverage a large Instagram account to build a lucrative career. Today, I want to approach the same topic, this time from the brand’s point of view. Indeed, influencer marketing is a powerful tool. According

As this marketing channel blossoms, it becomes evident that there’s still confusion and uncertainty around how to approach it. Sixty-one percent of marketers responded to a survey agreeing that it’s difficult to pinpoint the correct influencers for a given campaign, which is why I wanted to find an entrepreneur or brand that has made a name for themselves through influencer marketing; a brand that others can learn from.

That’s how I was introduced to Sean Kelly, founder of Jersey Champs, an online clothing company that almost exclusively uses influencers to sell jerseys. In a recent interview, I took the opportunity to ask Kelly in-depth about his overall influencer strategy.

In the early days of Jersey Champs, Kelly was enrolled in Rutgers University and running the company out of his dorm room. After seeing a business opportunity in the popularity of sports jerseys, Kelly set out to see if he could sell jerseys with custom designs that weren’t necessarily related to sports. Fast forward three years, and Jersey Champs has sold hundreds of thousands of jerseys, with influencer partnerships including Logan Paul, rappers 2 Chainz and Logic, Mark Cuban and other celebrities and athletes. Kelly attributes much of his success to celebrity and influencer endorsements, telling me that “at first it was a matter of sending a free jersey to an influencer and praying that they would share it, and when they did it made our day, But now that we’ve grown so much and understood the importance of it, we have annual partnership contracts set up to legitimize and scale it.”

Kelly went on to explan that there are three significant lessons he believes have been responsible for Jersey Champs’s most successful influencer campaigns.

1. Be hyper-specific when considering partners.

With so many influencers to choose from, considering who to partner with can be difficult. “We defined our absolute ideal customer and then built our entire business and growth strategy around that, including the influencers we work from,” says Kelly. He and his team have positioned their brand around high-schoolers and college students, and their choice of influencer follows.

“We spent a lot of time trying to figure out who our customers follow on Instagram, the music they listen to and who they watch on YouTube to determine who we reached out to for a partnership,” he elaborates. “Once we discover a rapper or personality that’s gaining popularity, we don’t waste any time reaching out to them.” Kelly attributes a lot of this to being “tapped-into” the social media hype himself, making an effort to pay close attention to the Explore page within Instagram, trending news on Twitter and Google News, as well as frequently engaging with customers.

2. Judge an influencer’s value on engagement, not audience size.

With so many fake followers and unengaged audiences, Kelly jokes that he’s become a bit of an Instagram detective when it comes to spotting influencers. “For some people, it’s a kick to be featured on an Instagram page with one million followers, but when it comes down to sales, audience loyalty and engagement is way more important,” he says. “For example, partnering with Logan Paul is awesome for us, because he has such a strong relationship with his audiences, so when he wears our jersey on his podcast, we know people are going to watch the entire video and think highly of it.” Interestingly, 48 percent of marketers who answered an Influencer Marketing Hub listed audience loyalty as the most valuable factor when considering an influencer. But there is a powerful lesson here for anyone looking to work with an influencer: While impressive followings may be persuasive, it doesn’t reflect loyalty. According to Kelly, “Jersey Champs was built on partnering with actual influencers with loyal audiences who look up to them, not just personalities with large but unattached followers.”

3. Don’t settle on a single post.

Once you’re confident with your choice of influencer, Kelly recommends doing everything you can to maximize the transaction. “When we start talking to an influencer, we’re shooting off ideas of what we can do with them,” he details. “Custom jerseys, exclusive giveaways [and] fun ways of creating content. It’s not just about getting a single post on their feed. We want them to want to promote our brand and see value in it for them, too. That’s why we’ll design a custom jersey for them to help them ‘prime’ their audience so that they’re more engaged. It’s all about hype.”

Another big part of extracting value from influencers is accessing their audiences for paid ads. As part of the transaction, Kelly will often try to negotiate access to their Facebook-ad audiences, so he can supplement the influencer’s promotions with paid ads promoting Jersey Champs. As he concludes, “It ties back to the original point [about being hyper-specific]. A big part of marketing is getting in front of the right audiences, and if your influencer has done that already, you need to leverage that in many ways, not just a single post.”

Feature Image credit: Sean Kelly | Instagram

By Jonathan Jeffery

Growth at 24Slides

Sourced from Entrepreneur Europe

In News

No evidence disclosure hurts Influencers: Instagram

November 13, 2019 No Comments

By Emma Koehn

A senior Instagram executive says there is little evidence that sponsored posts don’t perform as well as regular posts and transparency on partnership content is key to building trust.

Instagram fashion and beauty partnerships manager Kristie Dash has said influencers should not be afraid to label as ‘sponsored’ as more attention comes on the disclosures made by users when partnering with brands.

“Nobody wants their feeds to feel like one big ad and so, I get why there is a hesitancy [about being transparent with posts]. At the end of the day, if you’re not being transparent with your followers, you’ll lose trust over time,” Ms Dash said.

Instagram is launching its biggest marketing campaign in Australia this week.Credit:Bloomberg

Ms Dash, who is based in New York and manages the Instagram team working with beauty brands and influencers, was in Australia last week for social media workshops with local small businesses.

The Age and Sydney Morning Herald asked Ms Dash whether Instagram needed to do more to ensure adequate disclosure of business partnerships given recent news that influencers have been under scrutiny by regulators in Australia over the level of disclosure they have given to consumers when promoting cosmetic dental products like Invisalign.

She said the platform had clear tools and guidelines to guide creators on what information to give their followers about sponsored deals.

“It is our job to educate the industry on how to use those tools,” she said.

Ms Dash acknowledged that influencers may have concerns about appearing authentic when creating sponsored content. She argued that if an influencer felt concerns about being authentic and was reluctant to be clear in partnership posts, they should rethink their agreements with brands.

“That kind of speaks more to the brands that creators are choosing to partner with. And if there’s that kind of concern… if it’s a brand that doesn’t feel authentic to you, then maybe it’s not the best decision to partner with [them],” she said.

“We have no data to prove that sponsored posts don’t perform as well as regular posts and we really, really encourage creators to be transparent about labelling when content is sponsored or a partnership.”

Instagram been focusing marketing efforts in Australia in recent months, launching a multi-million campaign in the local market last month.

Ms Dash said local brands were creating compelling content on the platform, with companies like Frank Body and Go-To skin care creating strong voices and “visual signatures”.

“They have very specific or easy to identify voices that when you’re going through your feed, you can kind of quickly tell it’s a post from that brand.”

By Emma Koehn

Emma is the small business reporter for The Age and Sydney Morning Herald based in Melbourne. Follow MySmallBusiness on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.

Sourced from The Sydney Morning Herald

influencers

Related links: More insight from Jack Stewart

Sourced from MarketPlace

Popular creators on YouTube and Instagram can make money promoting music, but if they promote too many duds, their popularity can take a hit.

By ELIAS LEIGHT

Sourced from RollingStone

How beauty brands are meeting influencers in the virtual world

Why it’s essential for brands to build a strong network of influencers

Why influencers have been able to adapt their content strategy better than anyone else

What the road ahead looks like for the beauty industry

9 of the most important Instagram trends in 2020

1. Brands and influencers reckon with racial inequality

2. Instagram goes Live

3. Creators can now make money directly on Instagram

4. Instagram Shops set brands up to cash in on conversions

5. Shopping and advertising get AI-powered upgrades

6. Instagram Guides accompany the rise of “info-social”

7. Values take center stage

8. TikTok, Twitter, and Giphy invade Instagram

By Katie Sehl

Sourced from Hootsuite

Influencers can often produce content faster and more cheaply than a TV ad campaign team, helping brands adapt faster as consumer circumstances change. Italian pasta company Barilla, whose U.S. headquarters is based in Northbrook, is a case in point.

Sourced from Crain’s Chicago Business

By Alex McGeeney, StackCommerce

Sourced from New York Post

Influencers are charging fans for a more intimate social media experience, calling the future of brand partnerships into question.

Private subscriptions for fans

New forms of social media transactions

By Kati Chitrakorn

Sourced from Vogue Business

Many fans of influencers say they aren’t bothered by advertising and that ‘selling out’ doesn’t really exist on the platform. But why?

By Moya Lothian-McLean

Sourced from Vice

1. Be hyper-specific when considering partners.

2. Judge an influencer’s value on engagement, not audience size.

3. Don’t settle on a single post.

By Jonathan Jeffery

Sourced from Entrepreneur Europe

By Emma Koehn

Sourced from The Sydney Morning Herald