Pre-Social Media Influencers

It is hard to believe but influencers date back all the way back to the eighteenth century. In the year 1760, the concept of influencers began. A potter named Josiah Westwood created a tea set for Queen Charlotte and publicized himself as the “Potter of her Majesty.” This title and the royal family’s stamp of approval deemed his brand as a staple and is called the “father of modern marketing”.

Then in the 1920s, Coco Chanel shocked the fashion world with her little black dress and pants suit. The little black dress was a versatile dress and for the first time women were able to utilize the same dress for both their day and night time looks. The pant suits broke a barrier between mens and women’s fashion. Chanel changed women’s perspective around the globe about the way they dressed. 

In 1984, the first celebrity endorsement deal came about with Micheal Jordan and Nike creating the infamous custom designed Air Jordan sneakers. That deal proved very lucrative for Nike as they gained $70 million dollars worth of sales the first year.

Mommy Bloggers as Influencers

The concept of modern day influencers did not start with social media platforms, it started with mommy bloggers. The first wave of mommy bloggers began in 2002 when Melinda Roberts created TheMommyBlog.com. On this site, Roberts would share the highs and lows of motherhood. Sharing tips, tricks, products, and toys that she bought for her children, influencing the way mothers across the globe would parent their children.

Bethanie Garcia is a mommy blogger based in Phoenix, AZ.

Mommy blogs only grew from there. Women across the globe saw mommy blogs as an opportunity to share their parenting struggles and wins with the world. As their popularity grew, brands began to take notice. In an interview with the New York Times, Catherine Connors, creator of the mommy blog Her Bad Mother noted that  “People began to see they could make more money with aspirational content — because brands prefer it. Aspirational sells better than truth-telling.” Mommy bloggers began to strike major brand deals and still continue to do so to this day.

Introduction of Social Media Platforms

In 2010, the social media app Instagram was launched. Instagram gave users the ability to connect with one another; posting pictures and sharing products that they enjoyed. Influencers utilized this platform as an opportunity to connect with their followers on a new level. Social media influencers shared their daily lives and fans quickly began to take notice of the products they were using. In 2013, Instagram introduced the feature of paid advertisements, easily connecting brands to various influencers across the platform. Selling products was easier than ever, with just a click of a button, influencers could share what they enjoyed and get paid for it too.

Then came Twitch, founded in 2011. Twitch brought in a whole new element of social media with live stream gaming. It gave gamers the opportunity to connect and livestream them playing while simultaneously allowing viewers to interact and comment while they play. This brought about a whole new category of social media influencers, gaming influencers. Gamers now had the ability to make money from streaming their content and sponsoring different games. The platform has grown past gaming with live streams that focus on other topics such as sports and music. Today, the platform is the world’s leading live streaming platform for gamers with 9.36 million active streamers. 

TikTok dominated social media app downloads in 2020.

In 2016, TikTok was founded. What sets TikTok apart from other platforms is that the content you see is truly specific to you. Through the “for you page”, users are able to gain a unique experience that is highly entertaining. Not only is it specific to you, but there is a wide variety of content, constantly keeping you entertained. Influencers have utilized the platform to grow their following and connect in a unique way. Through various song and dance trends, it gave influencers the opportunity to follow the trends while also putting their own spin on them. Creators have also utilized the platform to produce sponsored content.

Influencer marketing platform Find Your Influence utilized this space in order to connect brands with social media influencers. Since 2013, Find Your Influence has worked with more than 600 brands to execute more than 12,000 different influencer programs.

Influencers Today

Currently, the influencer marketing business has gained great success as a projected $13.8 billion dollar industry in 2021. Since 2010, the social media sphere has grown beyond Instagram. Platforms like Twitter and TikTok have given influencers the chance to share their lives in unique and engaging ways. They have the ability to interact with fans through their content and build connections. There is even more availability for paid advertising and brands have taken notice. According to the Influencer Marketing Hub, “the majority of brands (59%) have a standalone budget for content marketing, and 75% of them intend to dedicate a budget to influencer marketing in 2021”.

The Future of Social Media Influencers

With the popularity of influencers and influencer marketing booming over the last ten years with the rise of social media, who knows how far it will grow. Shane Barker, an influencer expert, predicts that we will see the rise of CGI influencers who are entirely computer generated. These are influencers like Knox Frost, a CGI generated character managed by Find Your Influence, who shares his “life” on social media and brands connect with him through paid advertisements. With technology constantly changing, the future of the influencer marketing industry continues to shine bright.

Make sure you’re part of influencer marketing’s future and request a demo with Find Your Influence today.

Freelance contribution especially written for Find Your Influence by Gemma Weinstein.

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Many unsuspecting users found themselves with a quick ticket to a large following on the platform, lending itself to be deemed as a network for endless opportunities for creators to grow, regardless of the size of their existing audience.

TikTok held their first ever Ready, Set, Grow summit for small and medium businesses on March 24, 2021. The event lasted more than two hours with multiple topics discussed and panelists answered many of the biggest burning questions. We’ll save you the trouble of trying to track down a copy of it online; here are the five biggest takeaways from this year’s TikTok summit.

Just Start

The biggest piece of advice from TikTok experts: Just jump in and begin! Everyone starts somewhere, so don’t feel the need to wait until you have fancy lighting or a nice studio to shoot in. Creators might not feel 100% ready to create perfect content, but the beauty of the app’s culture is any one piece of content can go viral, regardless of its production value.

• • Pro-tip: Make sure you’ve converted your account to a business profile so you’re able to collect insights on your following as well as the audience that is viewing your content. This will help you later down the line when you start thinking of things like a posting schedule.

Join a TikTok Community

TikTok’s algorithm serves you content you watch repeatedly, so blending in with other creators in your vertical will actually get you served to more of your target consumer. When you’re just starting out, search hashtags that relate to your business and join the communities that are using those hashtags. Use those same hashtags on your content to end up on the ‘For You’ page of your ideal consumer. Feel free to put your own spin on trends or content within your vertical so you can stand out among the crowd!

Teach Your Audience Something New

TikTok video’s that teach the viewer something, have shown the most growth. Consumers of TikTok look to the platform for tips/hacks on products they should be using for greater convenience, increased productivity and a better user experience. TikTok also values content on how often it is watched through, or “looped”, so the more views your video gets per one viewer, the better! Content that teaches a skill or shares a set of tips is often watched more than once so it sticks in the viewer’s memory.

TikTok Trends are KEY

Trends are a great way to grow quickly when you’re just starting out. For example, content where fashion influencers follow the same trend and use the same song to show their clothing hauls is a one-stop shop for fashion consumers to find new fashion creators, and therefore new places to shop and new products to try.It’s important to hop on trends early. Trend forecaster and TikToker Jera Foster-Fell recommends how to find trends early:

• • Keep your eye on the ‘For You’ page for trends that repeat themselves across different creators/verticals. Don’t be afraid to put your own spin on it, you might start your own mini trend!
  • Follow trend alert accounts like @gingermarketer or @jera.bean so you can jump on trends early. This will give you more exposure when people go to look through the trend’s hashtag or sound.
  • Use the ‘Discovery’ page to see what trends might be lurking there. They are most often being pushed by TikTok, which will favor you in the algorithm when you participate.

Learn from Others in Your Community

Look through other small businesses profiles and see what trends they’re participating in or what content they’re creating. Interact with this content if you have something to add by ‘dueting’. This helps you build momentum and visibility off the creator who originally posted.This could also start a relationship between you and someone else in your field, which could be a great collaboration opportunity down the line!

Ready to jump into TikTok, but need a helping hand? Reach out to our Influencer Management Team with your questions today. Send us an email at info@findyourinfluence.com

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In April 2019, Find Your Influence introduced FYI Exchange, a low-barrier-to-entry solution to influencer marketing. Since launching, nearly 200 different product campaigns have been delivered via this new tool within FYI’s influencer marketing platform. Those campaigns have engaged 2,880 influencers and achieved more than 1.58 BILLION impressions and 50 MILLION+ engagements, proving out the iconic Field of Dreams theory.

In June 2020, Find Your Influence connected with some Exchange users to learn more about their experiences with the platform.

Brand Priorities

As brands navigate the FYI Exchange, they post their opportunity to exchange their product or services for content for creators to review and signal their interest to participate. From there, brands can hand-select an unlimited number of influencers from their pool of interested applicants.

Hundreds of brands have activated Exchanges via the FYI platform. “When brands review influencer applicants to select for their campaigns, we often receive feedback that brands are surprised and delighted about the total number and quality of influencers who opt-in for exchanges,” said Joslyn Adasek, EVP of Strategic Partnerships with Find Your Influence.

Regardless of campaign goals, selecting the right influencers is critical to the success of any influencer marketing campaign. The most successful influencer marketing campaigns are a result of brands doing their homework and understanding who the influencers are and which influencers will be the best fit to authentically endorse your product. Pairing a vegan influencer with a new hamburger chain isn’t going to yield positive results.

Influencer Priorities

Based in California, Joseph Lucido is a fashion, lifestyle and travel influencer. The voice behind The Lucido Life, Joseph has participated in many campaigns via FYI Exchange. “I love new brands that I can share with my followers,” he explains. “My most recent Exchange was with Fisher and Baker, a great menswear brand. The product was really high-quality and was a classic piece.”

As influencers review campaign offers within FYI Exchange, they are each looking for different product types to try and/or review. Raceen, a fashion, food and travel blogger based in New York selects exchange opportunities when they naturally fit into her lifestyle. 

“If it doesn’t fit within my niche or my lifestyle, there is no reason to waste the product or the brand’s time trying to fit it into my life,” she said. “The thought process behind every campaign, gifted or paid, is about how I can fit it into my life.” In addition to influencer campaigns on Instagram, Raceen also features brand content on her blog, Armed By Rae.

Joseph and Raceen are just two of the more than 2,800 influencers who have signaled their interest in participating in specific Exchange campaigns since April 2019. Influencers creating content via FYI’s influencer marketing solution, Exchange, have created most of their content on Instagram (32%). Facebook (20%) and blogs (18%) round out the top three most request platforms by brands.

Metrics That Matter

Every influencer campaign has a different set of performance metrics it hopes to achieve. For some, they may be focused on top-of-the-marketing-funnel metrics like engagement and impressions. Other campaigns may be more bottom-of-the-funnel focused with an emphasis on driving purchase behavior.

A handful of brands have run multiple Exchange campaigns, each for a different product line. “We’ve seen brands beta test campaigns with FYI Exchange to better understand how different parts of the marketing funnel perform,” Adasek outlined. Some brands are also testing campaign performance across different platforms, including not only Instagram and Facebook but Pinterest and YouTube too. This low-cost barrier to entry has been able to identify where they can invest more significantly for greater ROI.

FYI Exchange campaigns haven’t proven a correlation between audience reach and ROI. Oftentimes influencers with smaller followings but high engagement rates can drive much better ROI than influencers with a larger number of followers. 

“When brands look to select influencers for an Exchange campaign, we advise them that prioritizing audience reach doesn’t always need to be the top priority,” explained Adasek. “Because campaign goals differ from brand to brand, making the audience reach the top priority can lead to poor campaign performance.”

Successful Influencer Marketing Campaigns on FYI Exchange

A common question asked by many brands is ‘what are the ingredients to a successful influencer marketing campaign?’. As you may imagine, there is no perfect recipe for all campaigns, as every campaign has a different target audience, set of goals, target KPI and budget.

“For some campaigns it makes sense to leverage 100 influencers, for another, five influencers could suffice,” Adasek explained. “We’ve heard directly from some brands using FYI Exchange that when their campaigns use a combination of both Instagram and Facebook, they are often seeing higher upper-funnel performance.”

As brands consider using FYI Exchange, they often ask if social influencer campaigns can be effective when gifting products to influencers vs. paying influencers. They believe the stigma that influencers will only create content in exchange for a fee.

“Product exchanges still have a great place and I really enjoy doing them,” said Lucido. “I did an exchange with a coffee brand that I love and was more than happy to do that as a gifted campaign because I was already such a fan. It is important to do a product-only campaign because it can unlock possible future paid campaigns with the brand. It’s a way to prove your work and show that you’re easy to work with. I think it opens a lot of doors.”

If You Build It, They Will Come

The performance of FYI Exchange speaks for itself in the data but the real power lies in the experience for brands and influencers.

When asked if he had any advice to other influencers about using FYI Exchange, Lucido quipped, “Just use it! Be open to product campaigns.” 

And on the other coast, Raceen shared his sentiment. “I was a new blogger when I discovered the FYI platform,” she explained. “I love it and it has made things so much easier. It feels like all the leads are coming to me and I don’t have to go out spending my time and energy searching for brand contacts to pitch myself. I used to Google PR numbers or PR emails for different brands. I would send emails out and literally almost nothing would come back. It’s a lot of time and energy to do that when you can just use FYI.”

When Find Your Influence launched in 2013, the company’s intent was to service businesses of all sizes so they could scale their influencer programs. FYI Exchange was built. And brands and influencers have come.To request a demo of FYI Exchange, email info@findyourinfluence.com.

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It shouldn’t stop you from trying, though, because the Internet gives you the chance to target more than 4.5 billion users worldwide. Almost every customer can learn about your business if you prepare well and begin publishing a lot of quality posts. 

But how do you create a thought leadership marketing strategy at the age of online influence? Keep reading as we are about to show you four steps to become a key opinion leader in your niche. 

The Basics of Thought Leadership Marketing

A lot of entrepreneurs are still not familiar with the concept of thought leadership, so let’s define it first and see what it really means. By definition, thought leadership marketing is the process of increasing the visibility of specialized expertise and accelerating market influence to accomplish business goals.

 In other words, this marekting strategy turns you into a trustworthy source of information and helps you build stronger relationships with the target audience. You can also raise brand awareness, generate new leads, boost customer loyalty, discover business development opportunities, and attract talented professionals to join your organization.

Practical results of thought leadership are immense:

• Nearly 60% of decision-makers say they choose a business based on its thought leadership.
• Almost 50% of buyers said their opinion of a company had decreased after reading poor quality content.
• 70% of customers feel closer to a brand after engaging with their content.

However, it turns out that only 50% of marketers have a strategy in place to produce thought leadership marketing content. If you are among those who don’t have a clear plan of work, check out the tips we have prepared for you.

4 Ways to Become a Key Opinion Leader

It takes a lot of work to become recognized as the key opinion leader in your niche, but it’s doable if you follow the right course of action. Here are a few practical ways to achieve this goal.

1. Answer the right questions

Thought leaders are there to help the audience find answers to the most interesting or intriguing questions, so your primary task is to identify the dilemmas that the average customer is facing. Jake Gardner, a blogger at the essay writing service UK and the first person I call to write my paper, believes anyone can do it quickly using a couple of research mechanisms:

• Read blog comments and questions on social platforms because that’s where your followers will leave a lot of interesting content proposals.
• Conduct online surveys on your website or social media accounts and ask fans to give you content proposals directly.

2. Create high-quality content

Now that you know what to write about, it is time to create high-quality content. The best articles you can find online are long-form, which is exactly why the average Google first page result contains 1,447 words.

The point is that users want to read in-depth analyses with lots of data-driven conclusions and fresh insights. Therefore, you should always try to support posts with official reports and statistical facts. 

Besides that, thought leaders are always trying to develop a unique style of content creation. This trait depends on your personality and professional preferences, but you must keep in mind the importance of standing out of the crowd and not writing like every other content creator in your field of work.

3.Use multiple communication channels

We live in the age of communication, which means you have to utilize more than one platform to approach target consumers. If you are just starting a thought leadership campaign, we suggest using the following communication networks: 

• A website is the first place where you should publish blog posts and other relevant stories
• Social networks will help you to engage with fans and show personality
• Guest blogging gives you exposure to new audience groups
• Email newsletters allow you to solidify relationships

4. Use a two-way communication strategy

Another thing to remember is that the Internet promotes two-way communication. You can’t just publish content and neglect users’ comments, so do your best to engage and initiate a dialogue with your followers.

This is an excellent opportunity to exchange opinions and generate fresh ideas while making your audience feel appreciated and acknowledged. Sooner or later, they will start anticipating your next posts and wait eagerly to hear what you have to say about relevant niche-related topics. 

In the long run, it will turn a lot of followers into loyal consumers and probably even full-time brand advocates, a major achievement if you know that 65% of a company’s profit comes from recurring customers.

The Bottom Line

Thought leaders are genuine trendsetters with a strong influence on modern consumers. The audience is tired of traditional advertising, so the only natural way to approach them is by proving your expertise and letting users engage with your content.

In this post, we analyzed four simple steps to improve your thought leadership marketing. It’s a great starting point, but we also recommend you to adjust the strategy so as to suit your business in particular. Good luck!

Freelance contribution especially written for Find Your Influence by Justin Osborne.

The post Thought Leadership Marketing at the Age of Online Influence appeared first on Find Your Influence.

Creating digital content for your social media channels is a big investment of time, money, energy and resources. But have you paused to measure the return on your investment? Once you understand how to monetize various social media platforms, the rewards will soon follow. The Client Success Team at Find Your Influence offers the following as a beginner’s guide to best monetize your Pinterest account.

It’s Not Personal, It’s Business

You won’t be able to grow your brand on Pinterest as quickly with a Personal Account. With a Business Account on Pinterest, you have access to Pinterest Insights where you can monitor content performance and learn more about what interests your audience. Understanding how your content performs allows you to lean in to top performing content and grow your following organically.

According to Planoly’s 5 Reasons Why You Should Switch to a Business Account on Pinterest, “With a business account, you’ll have more control over branding and content attribution on the platform – as well as access to more marketing tools.”  They also cite that a business account will help drive traffic and grow your customer base by integrating campaigns, creating compelling ads, and using the Pinterest Ads Manager.

Post to Pinterest with SEO in Mind

You likely already know about search engine optimization (SEO).  If the term is still new to you, SEMRush does a wonderful job explaining it in their Ultimate SEO Copywriting Guide. They explain, “SEO copywriting is all about finding the perfect balance between content that engages (and persuades) users and content that Google ranks highly for your target keywords.” 

In order to monetize via SEO, it’s critical to focus on increasing audience engagement, search visibility and overall traffic to your page. Because Pinterest operates like a Google-esque type search engine, doing your keyword research is imperative. The Search Engine Journal published 10 Pinterest SEO Tips That Will Set You Up For Success and highlights using “..AdWords to trial specific keywords to see how they perform before launching a long-term SEO campaign.” They further suggest that if you have questions about the topics to target, you could take your best-performing keywords on Google and use Promoted Pins to see if they continue performing well on Pinterest too.

Video is King

You know by now that video content is king and generates more engagement than any other type of post across all social media platforms. Continuing the SEO conversation from above, nothing optimizes keywords better than videos. Typically there is less competition or keyword density with videos. While there are always exceptions, Pinterest users have a better chance of rising to the top of search rankings when using keywords within their video content.

According to Social Media Today, video views on Pinterest during COVID-19 lockdowns increased by more than 3x in 2020 when compared to the same period in 2019. Not confident in your own videography abilities? There are a myriad of options available to review including FYI Studios or Lemonlight.

Product Pins for the Win

Pinterest’s shopping feature originally known as ‘Buyable Pins,’ was rebranded to ‘Product Pins’ in 2018. These Pins allow you to feature the most current pricing, availability and product descriptions on Pins, as taken directly from your website. This direct-access-to-product shopping feature is a quick way to get buyers directly to the products they want.

Anyone with a Pinterest Business Account can create Product Pins. To create these pins, it’s as simple as uploading a product catalog to the platform. Glossy reports that after launching Product Pins in March 2019, Pinterest stated two quarters later that the number of merchants uploading catalogs increased 75 percent over the previous quarter.

Since the June 2020 drafting of this original post, Pinterest has made considerable investments into it’s shopping features. In June 2021, AdWeek reported that research from Pinterest showed Pinners are over seven times more likely to purchase products they have saved. This data can be leveraged by Pinterest creators when negotiating rates for brand partneships.

Analyze and Optimize

Pinterest can be a beautiful platform to highlight and discover great brands and products. But if you aren’t taking a timeout to understand your performance, you’ll likely plateau. Review your Pinterest Insights to best understand what content has performed best and then pin it again. By analyzing insights, you can optimize your results, thus increasing your earning potential.

If you’re a blogger, you don’t have to optimize Pinterest on your own. Consider adding the “Share to Pinterest” widget to your blog allowing your readers to share your content to their Pinterest audiences too.

Are you ready to monetize Pinterest for your bottom line? If you’re a brand or an agency looking to explore creative ways to leverage Pinterest in your influencer campaigns, drop us a line today. If you’re an PINfluencer, let us know too. Sign up to be discovered (for free) in the FYI influencer community.

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When it comes to influencer marketing, Pinterest is more than a social media platform, it’s a powerful search engine to help your brand reach an audience who may not have been searching for you. When included in influencer marketing programs, Pinterest can catapult the performance of even the most successful influencer marketing campaign to the next level.

In May 2020, the team at Find Your Influence put out a query to brands and influencers alike to understand how they have successfully harnessed the power of Pinterest. What follows are our five favorite Pinterest secrets for brands.

Lean in to Trends

Jessica Randhawa is the head chef, recipe creator, photographer and writer behind The Forked Spoon, creating delicious family-friendly recipes that anyone can make. Jessica has been active on Pinterest since it launched in 2010 and has more than 465,000 followers and more than 10 million monthly views. “One timely tip I have is that Pinterest recently rolled out the new ‘Trends’ dashboard (for Pinterest Business Accounts in the Analytics menu at the top),” Randhawa outlines. “Since it rolled out, I have been using this new ‘Trends’ section strategically to help me make informed decisions on what content I should be producing next.” Being able to effectively time a rising tide in searches on a trending topic on Pinterest, along with the ability to pair it with strategic content, can greatly enable traffic to websites and stores.

Know Your Niche

Pinterest, like many other social media platforms can be helpful in promoting your product or service. However, if you don’t know your niche, you aren’t setting yourself up for success. “This is probably the most important strategy that needs to be understood by every beginner,” outlines Jennifer Willy, Editor at Etia. “Your first step should be to research the available products in your niche. Pinterest has the ability to tell you the exact color, style, or even design-type that is trending recently.”

Willy also suggests using Pinterest for competitive research. “You can take advantage by researching your competitors and come up with original and new ideas from the already trending ones.”

Drive Traffic Away From Pinterest

“Our main goal with Pinterest is to build our brand and send traffic back to our website,” says Megan Marrs, founder of K9 of Mine. To do this most effectively, Marrs makes it a point to create Pinterest boards that will resonate with her target audience. “For boards where we do have a lot of pins that connect back to articles on our website, we’ll aim for more enticing pin titles and descriptions, plus a call to action (such as “Read the full article to see the details!”).

Optimize Everything

Richa Pathak is the founder and editor at SEM Updates and has used Pinterest to generate a strong subscriber base for her digital marketing blog. “My strategy to grow my brand on Pinterest was posting pins regularly, all the content of my site is completely optimized on Pinterest, pins, hashtags, links, summaries,” Pathak explains. “All these small efforts bring a great difference in your brand positioning. It drives pretty decent traffic, it helps me curate user-generated content pointing to my blog.”

Host Contests and/or Challenges

Consider hosting contests or challenges on Pinterest leading into a special event. Maybe it’s your company’s anniversary or a corporate milestone and you want to get your audience engaged to create content. Host a contest asking them to create a video using your product or service in the most unique way. Offering unique prizes may inspire more participation “Aside from getting more customer engagement, your audience’s followers will also be able to know about your brand, making you visible to more users,” said John Howard, founder and CEO with Coupon Lawn.

What Pinterest strategies have worked well for your brand? Comment below and let us know.

The post 5 Pinterest Strategies for Brands appeared first on Find Your Influence.

As a result, new and effective sub-niches have been created that provide specific and direct ways to improve a business or website. Even better, these sub-niches, which fall under the social media marketing umbrella, can work under any social media platform. That said, if there is one platform that was made for these benefits, it would be Instagram. 

Overall, the Instagram platform provides not only the most active users and followers, but it also provides the most diverse group. This gives account holders the benefit of reaching new markets and niches with relative ease. As far as how this is done, this is mostly done through the power of tools such as analytics. 

In and of itself, the analytics tool has become powerful in its own right. Much like a lot of social media, analytics has also grown to the point where it is becoming a necessity for most users trying to take advantage of a platform like Instagram. However, the technicality of analytics tends to be a drawback to more casual Instagram account holders. Nonetheless, rest assured knowing that there are simple ways around these technicalities that can be more beneficial than people realize. With this in mind, let’s go over seven analytics tips to improve Instagram follower engagement.

#1: Optimizing High Bounce Rate Instagram Posts/Pages

In analytics, an important metric that you will want to know is the bounce rate. The bounce rate metric shows you how long a follower interacts with your account before leaving. Quite obviously, you will want to optimize the posts and pages that your accounts put out to make this rate as low as possible. In regards to user engagement, the idea is that lower bounce rates will naturally contribute to increased follower engagement. 

#2: Increasing Instagram Session Duration Time

In addition to the bounce rate metric, another important metric you need to know from analytics is session duration time. This metric illustrates how long any activity a follower engages in is. Increasing this time can be done by creating more specific content, posts, and other similar strategies from your Instagram. Also like the bounce rate metric, the idea behind this tip is that increased duration times will lead to a naturally increased follower engagement.

#3: Optimizing Follower Behavior Through Behavior Metrics

Among the many useful data that analytics will give you, understanding the follower behavior data is most useful for increasing engagement. Apart from other metrics, this metric gives more specific information as to what followers are doing on your account. This knowledge gives you the power to create more relevant account changes that will increase engagement.

#4: Creating Relevant Post Copy For Increased Time On Content

Not to be confused with the session duration time, the time on content is a more broad view of how long a follower interacts. As far as how you can increase this time to drive engagement, a proven way to do so is by creating a relevant post copy that is convincing to click on.

#5: Targeting Engaged Visitors Through Visitor Analytics

One tip that doesn’t get as much attention as it should is the engaged visitors metric in analytics. More specifically, this metric allows you to target visitor groups that already have high engagement rates as a way to increase engagement further. This is done through smaller settings within the platform such as Instagram follower tracking.

#6: Setting Instagram Awareness Goals For Engagement

Another benefit of using a setting like Instagram follower tracking is that it allows you to create analytics goals. Within the analytics platform, goals as a great way to measure performance on things like content quality, engaged visitors, and follower engagement as well.

#7: Predicting & Comparing Engagement Goals

Last but not least, another proven tip that can be used to improve follower engagement is to use the predict and compare strategy with the goals metric. Doing so gives you the fullest understanding of finding weaknesses within your account, where strong spots are, and what changes to make.

Freelance contribution especially written for Find Your Influence by Lindsey Patterson.

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Marketing budgets are stretched thin. Every year teams are asked to do more with less. Brands looking to improve their marketing ROI in 2020 should look no further than adding influencer marketing to their marketing strategy. And to increase those results further, consider a series of content amplification strategies.

Influencer marketing is the art of connecting brands and the powerful voices of digital content creators. Each piece of content created by an influencer integrates a brand’s messaging in order to connect and motivate potential customers. This connection helps to drive authentic conversations around a product message, conclusively driving awareness and engagement. Because influencer marketing is often compared to word-of-mouth advertising, the messages often feel more authentic.

Social media influencers create quality content to share with their followers, often the brand’s target customers. However if that content exists solely on the influencers channels, there is often a “decay” rate over time. When a campaign includes content amplification strategies, the ROI expands exponentially over time as content is repurposed, further increasing engagements. Brands can use a variety of content amplification tools to promote the influencer content that has already proven effective.

Three Content Amplification Strategies

Plan to Re-Gram

A plant-based milk brand tackled their influencer marketing campaign by incorporating both macro and micro-influencers. The brand contracted 150 influencers and sent each influencer four different flavors to experience and create content around.

3 Smart Content Amplification Strategies for Brands

The micro-influencers each shared their content in their Instagram feed and on their Instagram stories. The brand understood the value they were getting from the influencers and included brand amplification in their strategy. The brand is sharing influencer stories on its Instagram feed and in the future will be re-gramming influencer content, all with the intent to extend the life of the work.

Invest in High-Quality Production

A leading flavored beverage brand understands the relationship between brands and influencers. Recently they launched an influencer campaign that began with an investment in production. The campaign was designed to produce commercial-quality content with influencers creating original cocktails and mock-tails.

The brand allowed the content creators to develop original recipes and invested in a third-party production team to produce the video content. The final content pieces were not only shared on the influencer’s social channels but also on the brand’s Instagram page. The campaign was designed to create content that could be used by both the influencer and the brand. As a result, it quickly became one of the most engaged Instagram posts of all time on the brand’s Instagram page.

Repurpose By Retargeting

Many brands turn to Demand-Side Platforms (DSP) to create custom ads featuring influencer content. This amplification tactic drives new eyes to an influencer’s great content, resulting in new engagement opportunities and a larger share of voice. These custom ads can be served to precise targeted audience segments, extending the influencer’s reach and scale.

By pursuing relevant internet traffic, brands can repurpose the third-party content that exists on the influencer’s channels. This strategy not only benefits the brand but also supports the influencer by driving a new audience to their pages.

Brands looking to amplify content produced by influencers should begin by following industry best practices. Begin by defining amplification plans during the influencer recruitment process. This provides transparency up front. Influencers may require a slight increase to their traditional rate when the brand plans to amplify. However, the longer-term value is often worth the brand’s incremental investment.

There are a myriad of content amplification strategies to aid brands in their influencer-driven investments. Consider goals and which tactic can generate the largest impact to your ROI.

The post 3 Smart Content Amplification Strategies for Brands appeared first on Find Your Influence.

When you think of influencer marketing, Instagram is likely the platform that comes to mind first. The photo-sharing app has been dominant in recent years, however Pinterest is a sleeping giant that has not lost its power.

Pinterest has been creating opportunities for creators since January 2010. The platform is an effective tool to boost a creator’s SEO. 

“Pinterest is a very effective social media platform for me,” said Alicia Tenise, a Washington D.C.-based lifestyle and travel blogger. Tenise has more than 1.7 monthly views on her Pinterest page. “Today Pinterest drives more traffic to my blog than any other social media platform.” 

Influencer marketing is the art of connecting brands with the powerful voices of digital content creators. The most successful influencer marketing campaigns drive authentic conversations around a product message, ultimately driving brand awareness and engagement. When brands work with Find Your Influence to find the right influencers, including Pinterest creators helps to reach the largest target market. 

Chelsea Goodson has been working directly with influencers at FYI for more than five years. In that time, she’s seen tremendous success with campaigns that incorporate Pinterest creators. “The power of Pinterest lies in its ability to directly impact a creator’s SEO. For brands, Pinterest content has the innate ability to garner millions of views,” said Goodson, FYI’s Director of Influencer Management.

ChelseaBird Pinterest page

Influencer partnerships can cross any of an influencer’s platforms. “When brands build out their influencer marketing strategies, they are most effective when they aren’t limited to just one platform, but cross over into the many platforms where the targeted audience engages daily,” explained Goodson. “Digital marketers understand the inherent values of each platform individually but the explosive power of platforms used in coordination with one another is where the magic is.”

When brands engage influencers, it’s important to understand that no one knows an influencer’s audience better than the influencer.  “I know that my content performs differently across all platforms,” said Tenise. “My photos on Pinterest perform best when I’m not looking directly at the camera.”

As brands work with Tenise (and other influencers), releasing some level of control and empowering influencers will yield the greatest results. And including Pinterest as a platform for campaigns can have a long-tail effect on brand SEO, too. 

Brands can negotiate with influencers up front to syndicate their content via the brand’s social channels. Similar to other social media platforms, Pinterest allows brands to do sponsored pins, further boosting the reach of the already high-performing content.

The Power of Pinterest in Influencer Marketing

Key performance indicators (KPI) of every influencer marketing campaign will vary. If the KPI for a campaign is to drive traffic to a specific website or landing page, Pinterest outperforms every other platform. Working with Find Your Influence, brands see their KPI maximized through quality content optimized across all platforms.

Does your influencer strategy today include Pinterest? Connect with the team at FYI for a demo and let us help grow your brand.

The post The Power of Pinterest in Influencer Marketing appeared first on Find Your Influence.

Using FYI’s proprietary survey technology, the survey was sent to a sample set of influencers within the FYI network. The survey was distributed to active U.S.-based social media influencers and was conducted online between December 27-29, 2019.

“We were really interested in better understanding what influencers were feeling about established platforms, changes to established platforms as well as rising platforms,” said Cristine Vieira, President and co-founder of Find Your Influence. “Influencers are the fuel to the influencer marketing engine and coming to understand their habits and concerns can in turn help Find Your Influence aid brands in the development of successful influencer marketing campaigns.”

Influencer Insider: Social Media Platforms

The complete survey and results:

Are you worried about Instagram permanently removing likes?

77%  No 

23%  Yes 

How much more time do you spend creating Instagram Stories vs. In-feed posts?

51%  I spend more time on in-feed posts than Instagram Stories

26%  1 hour  

16%  2 hours

  4%  4 hours 

  2%  3 hours

How many different social media platforms do you use to create sponsored content?

62%  3-5 platforms

30%  1-2 platforms 

  8%   5-7 platforms

What social media platforms do you use most often to post sponsored content?

65%  Instagram

14%  Blog

10%  Facebook

  8%  Twitter

  3%  Pinterest

 .1%  TikTok

Do you see TikTok competing with more established social media platforms for sponsored content opportunities?

62% No

38% Yes 

Do you see Twitch competing with more established social media platforms for sponsored content opportunities? 

85% No

15% Yes

Influencers who responded to the survey ranged in follower count from 720 to 9.8 million. The average follower count of the influencers surveyed was 115,092.

To speak with Find Your Influence directly about survey results, please contact Tami Nealy, tami@findyourinfluence.com.

The post Influencer Insider: Social Media Platforms in 2020 appeared first on Find Your Influence.