People don’t solve problems in a vacuum. At least most people don’t. Problems are usually solved when two or more people get together and collaborate on ideas. That’s the nugget of truth behind the concept of networking. You get together with others to share ideas, but also challenges, tapping into the crowd for resources, solutions and suggestions.

Jessy Grossman knows the power of networking. She comes from the talent agent world where who you know is probably as important as anything. As she migrated into the actors and actresses becoming more online content creators and influencers, she saw a void in the influencer marketing space she quickly filled.

Jessy started Women in Influencer Marketing -- a professional networking community focused on the women in the industry, mainly those who hire and support influencers in what they do. So, talent managers, agency representatives, brand-side marketers. The group has been growing now for five years and has now become a key source of not just networking, but education and resources for women in the industry.

Curious about the group, I invited Jessy to come on the show and tell us about it. Though I played the dumb guy and asked why an industry that is decidedly populated by women would need a gender focused organization, I also asked an important question: What issues that face women in the industry can be better addressed if men become part of the solution? So the conversation turned in a more solution-oriented direction, I think.

We had a great discussion and got into not only the details of gender issues within influencer marketing and the benefits WIIM brings to the table for its members, but also what Jessy sees as the important issues facing influencer marketing today. Which actually inspired Monday’s commentary post to a degree.

This episode of Winfluence, the podcast, is sponsored by Julius. I mention that software more than others in my book because it’s the platform I’ve been using for a few years now to find influencers, engage with them and manage campaigns. 

Julius has powerful filters that let me drill down find just the food and beverage influencers in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Or the men’s fashion voices that most impact Vancouver. But it certainly also gives me the mega influencers and celebrity influencers I might need to help launch a beauty, tech or automotive product.

And in most cases, it has contact information so I don’t have to go fishing to reach them.

All the elements of campaign management are in the software, too. I love the fact I can assign a purchase price or value to every single social deliverable that is a part of campaign, automatically track it based on when the influencer says they’ll post, and get an ROI report for each element. 

You know I wouldn’t say this if it wasn’t true -- You owe it to your brand or agency to do a demo of Julius today. Go to jason.online/julius and request one. That’s jason.online/julius.

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There is a force at play in the influencer marketing space that puts the entire industry in danger. If that force isn’t reckoned with, and soon, the practice of leveraging individual content creators with attractive audiences on social networks for brands will die.

This particular group isn’t killing influencer marketing intentionally, mind you. But they’re treating the space we all know and love as a money grab, rather than a way to build a sustainable business. For all the talk they spout about influencer marketing being how brands do business and how marketing happens in todays world … they’re slowly chipping away at the magic that influencer marketing can be.

So who is killing influencer marketing? Influencers.

I explain in today’s commentary. 

This episode of Winfluence, the podcast, is sponsored by Julius. I mention that software more than others in my book because it’s the platform I’ve been using for a few years now to find influencers, engage with them and manage campaigns. 

Julius has powerful filters that let me drill down find just the food and beverage influencers in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Or the men’s fashion voices that most impact Vancouver. But it certainly also gives me the mega influencers and celebrity influencers I might need to help launch a beauty, tech or automotive product.

And in most cases, it has contact information so I don’t have to go fishing to reach them.

All the elements of campaign management are in the software, too. I love the fact I can assign a purchase price or value to every single social deliverable that is a part of campaign, automatically track it based on when the influencer says they’ll post, and get an ROI report for each element. 

You know I wouldn’t say this if it wasn’t true -- You owe it to your brand or agency to do a demo of Julius today. Go to jason.online/julius and request one. That’s jason.online/julius.

Find out how influencers are killing influencer marketing in this episode of Winfluence. And for reference, see my article on The New Influencer Creative Brief I reference in today's show.

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What’s the sexiest medical device you can think of? I recently discovered that eyeglasses are technically considered a medical device. And that puts them squarely in the crosshairs of style and fashion.

Marissa Cundiff is the vice-president of marketing for Kenmark Eyewear, a manufacturer that supplies some of the most recognizable sunglass and eyeglass collections in the world. Vera Wang. Lilly Pulitzer. Gemma Styles and the list goes on. They do both their own brands and collaborations like all of those. They have a direct to consumer play in Baxter & Bonnie, but mostly sell through eyeglass retailers.

That sets them up to have an interesting approach to influencer marketing. Yes, they have the big celebrity product lines, so that’s one segment. They gift eyewear to micro and nano influencers which is another. They also participate in some paid partnerships with mid-tier and mega influencers which is a third.

But since they primarily sell via channels—they’re mainly a B2B brand—they use the influencer content to supply their retail partners with inspiration, as well as to create awareness that might lead to sales.

Marisssa and I caught up recently to dive into her and Kenmark’s experiences, learnings and approach to influencer marketing. They seem to have carved out their own pathway to leverage influencers in effective ways for them, rather than following the industry trends and hype. And it’s working for them.

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Last month the Screen Actors Guild and American Federation of Television and Radio Artists or SAG-AFTRA in the trade, unveiled a plan to account for influencers in its union. My initial take was applause for the move because it meant that an influencer or content creator now had at least a path to health benefits and pensions they don’t normally have as independent entities. As it turns out, the promise had some good sizzle, but not enough meat. 

Patrick Janelle is a lifestyle influencer and also the chairman of the board of the American Influencer Council -- a trade association, not a union, for influencers. He sees SAG-AFTRA’s move both from the individual perspective, but also from that of an industry leader looking out for the good of all influencers.

He joined me to talk about where SAG-AFTRA comes up short and what’s really needed for such an effort to be more inclusive of all creators, not just ones that are either already SAG-AFTRA members, or celebrity influencers who can afford the investment.

To qualify for the benefits, you pay dues and surrender a percentage of your income to the union, so it’s not just something you sign up for. It’s an investment.

But I wasn’t going to led Patrick out without diving into much much more. Janelle is the influencer behind @aguynamedpatrick. He has almost 450,000 followers on Instagram posting about life in New York City, style, restaurants, travel and my favorite … cocktails. He also owns an influencer talent agency called Untitled Secret. 

We talked about his journey from graphic designer to influencer, how he migrated from accepting gifts from brands to getting paid. And we spent some time breaking down all that goes into an influencer’s creative output. You brand and agency folks need to take note. I use a brilliant collaboration he and one of his agency’s clients did with Q-Mixers as an example and we discuss the work and investment that went into that. It will help you see what you’re paying for when you engage the good ones. You influencers should take note, too. The collaboration is a brilliant example of how to do a collaboration with a brand.

As a related piece of content, I wrote my own recap of the SAG-AFTRA agreement, including comments from Janelle and others, on Entrepreneur last week.

This episode of Winfluence, the podcast, is sponsored by Julius. If you’ve read my book, you know I’ve depended on Julius for influencer discovery and campaign management for some time now. When I’m looking for the right influencer for my clients, Julius allows me to search across Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, TikTok, Twitch, Twitter, Pinterest, Blogs and more. When I click into an influencer’s profile, I can see their audience demographics, what other networks they have reach through and quickly scan their recent posts to decide if they’re a right influencer for my brand. All the pieces of campaign management are there, too. Julius allows you to reach out, document contracts, share and approve influencer content and, of course, measure the ROI of each campaign, influencer or post. You owe it to your brand or agency to do a demo of Julius today. Go to jason.online/julius and request one. That’s jason.online/julius.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Words matter. Perhaps now more than ever. Why? Largely because the proliferation of information and content has forced all of us into attention deficit disorder consumption. We skim. We thumb scroll. We let our short attention span perceptions shift our understanding of the world around us without stopping to think.

So words matter.

If you see a headline that says “more than half of instagram influencers engaged in fraud” you probably don’t have the time or interest to read the story. You assume the resource posting that is not posting a lie or a misstatement of the truth and you assume the majority of influencers are fraudulent.

That headline was real. It was posted by Campaign U.S., a popular resource for the advertising industry. It was quoted to me last week by a well-respected public relations professional considered a thought leader and expert in his field. 

But the assertion he made based on believing a poorly worded headline is 100 percent false. Words matter.

I’ll explain in today’s commentary. 

This episode of Winfluence, the podcast, is sponsored by Julius. If you’ve read my book, you know I’ve depended on Julius for influencer discovery and campaign management for some time now. When I’m looking for the right influencer for my clients, Julius allows me to search across Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, TikTok, Twitch, Twitter, Pinterest, Blogs and more. When I click into an influencer’s profile, I can see their audience demographics, what other networks they have reach through and quickly scan their recent posts to decide if they’re a right influencer for my brand. All the pieces of campaign management are there, too. Julius allows you to reach out, document contracts, share and approve influencer content and, of course, measure the ROI of each campaign, influencer or post. You owe it to your brand or agency to do a demo of Julius today. Go to jason.online/julius and request one. That’s jason.online/julius.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The world of live is taking over social media. There are hundreds, if not thousands of live stream programs happening all across Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter and LinkedIn. Add to that SnapChat, TikTok and now Amazon Live, then add in the live stream platforms like Twitch, Only Fans and beyond. What’s hot is what’s live.

In case you didn't know, I host a live stream interview show more broadly focused on marketing and creative practitioners with my team at Cornett on Tuesday mornings at 11 a.m. Eastern time across Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and YouTube. The show is Digging Deeper and you should subscribe to its audio podcast, too, by the way. But I also sometime host Clubhouse chats, Amazon Live's for my book and more.

Gregarious Narain, who has always been someone with a finger on the pulse of what’s next and the bleeding edge in social technology, is banking on live becoming the new way we create most of our social content. His new startup Zealous is built to allow content creators, influencers if you will, organize their live streams and content, whether that’s broadcasts on social networks, Clubhouse, Twitch, YouTube and more, charge premiums for all or part of that content and capture data about your fans and audience to more effectively market your content to them.

Gregarious and I chatted recently about the movement to live-first, how Zealous empowers influencers and content creators—including live streamers and podcasters—to take all these disparate places where we create live content, and bring them together in a controlled community where you can engage your most ardent fans more frequently and effectively, while monetizing your content better than ever before.

We also got philosophical, as we’re apt to do when chatting, about social audio and other topics. The conversation is a fascinating stroll through two social nerds geeking out. But in a way you can follow along and learn some good ideas to build your social presence in new and interesting ways.

This episode of Winfluence, the podcast, is sponsored by Julius. If you’ve read my book, you know I’ve depended on Julius for influencer discovery and campaign management for some time now. When I’m looking for the right influencer for my clients, Julius allows me to search across Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, TikTok, Twitch, Twitter, Pinterest, Blogs and more. When I click into an influencer’s profile, I can see their audience demographics, what other networks they have reach through and quickly scan their recent posts to decide if they’re a right influencer for my brand. All the pieces of campaign management are there, too. Julius allows you to reach out, document contracts, share and approve influencer content and, of course, measure the ROI of each campaign, influencer or post. You owe it to your brand or agency to do a demo of Julius today. Go to jason.online/julius and request one. That’s jason.online/julius.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What if I told you that you didn’t need to use influencers to grow your brand? At least not the way we often think of influencers. Imagine you could get people to endorse and post about your brand online without spending a dime and without giving away product?

Sam Malone has figured out how to do that. He is the founder and CEO of Guru Club. It started out as an exclusive, invite only influencer marketing network. A marketplace of sorts. But Sam and his team quickly figured out that traditional celebrity and celebrity wanna be influencers were both riddled with fraudulent followers, but also over-saturated with brand deals.

What Guru Club’s customers really wanted were actual customers posting about them to spark word of mouth about the brand.

So Sam and Guru Club pivoted. 

Now the app tells people who are already buying your product that if they post an Instagram story and tag your brand, they’ll get a rebate of sorts -- an instant refund of a portion of their purchase price. 

Let that sink in. You already have their money. You offer a 10 or 20 percent refund or rebate if they tag you in an Instagram story. Their friends and followers see they’ve purchased your product in a snackable medium that is highly engaging and relevant. You get exposure and third party validation without having to pay for it. Guru Club make sure the person is real, their engagement is real, the story stays live for 24 hours and then a rebate is triggered and returned to the person’s credit card. 

You’ve made money, earned third party endorsement of your product to the customer’s friends, sparking word of mouth for your brand, the customer is happy they feel valued and given an extra financial break for simply sharing about their purchase. Oh … and you get the customer’s social connection to see if you might have a real influencer with a large audience on your hands. 

Guru Club is currently only available as a Shopify add-on, but is coming soon to non-Shopify customers with a new feature Sam actually announces during the interview for the first time. We sat down last week -- literally … he came by my office -- to chat about Guru Club and what being an influence marketer without the need for influencers in the traditional sense, looks like. 

By way of disclosure, after our conversation, I was asked to serve on an advisory board for Guru Club. I gladly accepted. So I have some modest formal involvement with the company. But I didn’t know that when we talked, so I think the conversation is still very relevant. And I think you’ll agree, this is a clever approach to spreading the word about your brand in an efficient way.

This episode of Winfluence, the podcast, is sponsored by Julius. If you’ve read my book, you know I’ve depended on Julius for influencer discovery and campaign management for some time now. When I’m looking for the right influencer for my clients, Julius allows me to search across Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, TikTok, Twitch, Twitter, Pinterest, Blogs and more. When I click into an influencer’s profile, I can see their audience demographics, what other networks they have reach through and quickly scan their recent posts to decide if they’re a right influencer for my brand. All the pieces of campaign management are there, too. Julius allows you to reach out, document contracts, share and approve influencer content and, of course, measure the ROI of each campaign, influencer or post. You owe it to your brand or agency to do a demo of Julius today. Go to jason.online/julius and request one. That’s jason.online/julius.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I’m exploring something new on this episode of the podcast. Each Monday, as I have the time to do so, I’m going to post a shorter episode that isn’t an interview, but my take on an issue within influence and influence marketing that has been on my mind. In some cases, like today, the topic is going to be inspired by something I’ve written, either at JasonFalls.com, on Entrepreneur.com or elsewhere. In some cases, it will be one of my fun rants about a given thing. 

The thought process here is to share my perspective occasionally so the podcast is more than just an interview series. I’ve had some feedback from a few of you that this kind of observation might be appreciated. So here’s my first offering in this new commentary episode I’m just calling my commentary for now. If you have a good idea for a catchy title to distinguish these types of episodes, let me know. 

Today, I’d like to share some of my own thoughts on the fallacy of achieving influence. We live in a get-rich-quick world where everyone is in search of the easy button. Thanks Staples. That’s the reason we have bots that automatically generate thousands of followers and tons of engagement on social channels. Someone knows there are dreamers and schemers out there who will pay for the perception a social media account is worth more than it really is. 

That’s the reason that high school kids today are setting their life goal of being an influencer. They see the posers on Instagram living their best life, oblivious to the fact that either that best life is staged or it takes a hell of a lot of work to reach, then maintain the kind of lifestyle that looks fab online, so they think … I just want to reach influencer status and then life will be easy.

Well, I’ve got news for you. Influence is not and end goal of a journey. It’s not a college degree that you work hard for over a period of time, then you always have it. 

Influence is not static. I’ll explain why in today’s commentary.

This episode of Winfluence, the podcast, is sponsored by Julius. If you’ve read my book, you know I’ve depended on Julius for influencer discovery and campaign management for some time now. When I’m looking for the right influencer for my clients, Julius allows me to search across Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, TikTok, Twitch, Twitter, Pinterest, Blogs and more. When I click into an influencer’s profile, I can see their audience demographics, what other networks they have reach through and quickly scan their recent posts to decide if they’re a right influencer for my brand. All the pieces of campaign management are there, too. Julius allows you to reach out, document contracts, share and approve influencer content and, of course, measure the ROI of each campaign, influencer or post. You owe it to your brand or agency to do a demo of Julius today. Go to jason.online/julius and request one. That’s jason.online/julius.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It’s been a bit since we’ve talked to an influencer about their journey, their approach to monetization and their advice for brands and other influencers on how to do this influence thing. Today, we’re going to spend some time with Heather Watson. 

She’s the person behind Her Kentucky. Yeah, I asked Heather to come on the show because she’s in my neck of the woods as we say around here, so she’s top of mind. We’ve collaborated a couple of times for some brands here in bluegrass … heck, it turns out after a conversation or two, we realized we crossed paths back in high school, even.

But there’s a whole lot of relevance for influencers and brands everywhere in this conversation. Heather’s audience is, shall I say, middle-aged and older women. Her primary influence mechanism is a blog and longer-form writing, not TikTok videos or Instagram stories. Yes, she’s influential and active on the social channels that are relevant to that audience -- Facebook and Instagram. But the wisdom of knowing your audience and what engages them is something she gives sound advice about.

Heather also brings the perspective of a geographic influence to the table. For those of you who run or work with local or regional businesses, someone with a bazillion followers on Instagram isn’t going to do you a lot of good. You have to find the Heather Watsons in your world to reach a higher percentage of a relevant audience to make influence marketing work smarter for you.

It was quite interesting to chat with Heather about the nuances of being a local and regional influencer, the story of HerKentucky’s evolution and how she’s monetized her content over the years. Pay close attention to the brands she mentions for partnerships, especially you influencers out there. She’s very smartly gone after very specific companies that her audience would find appealing, and who want to reach that older, discretionary income-friendly female consumer.

This episode of Winfluence, the podcast, is sponsored by Julius. If you’ve read my book, you know I’ve depended on Julius for influencer discovery and campaign management for some time now. When I’m looking for the right influencer for my clients, Julius allows me to search across Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, TikTok, Twitch, Twitter, Pinterest, Blogs and more. When I click into an influencer’s profile, I can see their audience demographics, what other networks they have reach through and quickly scan their recent posts to decide if they’re a right influencer for my brand. All the pieces of campaign management are there, too. Julius allows you to reach out, document contracts, share and approve influencer content and, of course, measure the ROI of each campaign, influencer or post. You owe it to your brand or agency to do a demo of Julius today. Go to jason.online/julius and request one. That’s jason.online/julius.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We’ve probably over-done the conversation on this show lately about fake influencers -- at least in the context of those who fraudulently buy followers and engagement to appear more influential than they really are. But there’s another kind of fake influencer out there that is potentially more frightening than the first.

In case you aren’t aware, there is an emerging niche within influencer marketing of literally fake influencers … avatars. CGI-manufactured versions of what appear to be people. I’m not talking deep-fakes, though I’m sure that will come into play soon, too. I’m talking about photo and video realistic, computer generated people. Who companies … mostly the graphics and CGI companies themselves … build social media accounts for. 

These fictional influencers, though, carry with them non-fictional influence. A survey from a company called Fullscreen in 2019 found that over half of those surveyed, in consumers ranging from 13 to 34, over half … had purchased a product, researched a product, attended an event or followed a brand on social media thanks to the recommendation and influence of what amounts to a modern day cartoon. 

CGI influencers are a thing. LilMiquela on Instagram is a computer avatar Photoshopped into seemingly real world adventures just like a real influencer would be placed. She has over 3 million followers. The company that created her is also responsible for LilMiquela’s pal … or rival … there’s apparently a storyline I didn’t have time to suss out … but Bermuda at @bermudaisbae has 291,000 followers. 

Brandon Brown is not a CGI influencer. He is the CEO and co-founder of influencer marketing platform Grin. He and I sat down recently to talk through the idea of CGI influencers. What are the risks, the fears, the dos and don’ts? Is there a place for them? Should they be considered a part of influencer marketing for strictly entertainment or branded content?

We also talked about several other things, including Brandon’s company. Grin is different from a lot of the other influencer marketing platforms in that it’s built for a direct-to-consumer business. They integrate with e-commerce partners to allow revenue attribution and ROI to be more easily mapped for influencer programs. Ironically enough, their e-commerce and D2C focus comes from a CEO whose philosophy is that influencer marketing is focused on building trust. 

We’ve talked before about the continuum of influencer marketing philosophies and how it runs from Transactional … e-commerce … to relational … more trust focused and relationship based. Grin seems to have a nice mix of both.

Lots of interesting conversation here, but the headline of this episode is going to be our fun banter back and forth. What in the world is up with CGI influencers?

This episode of Winfluence, the podcast, is sponsored by Julius. If you’ve read my book, you know I’ve depended on Julius for influencer discovery and campaign management for some time now. When I’m looking for the right influencer for my clients, Julius allows me to search across Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, TikTok, Twitch, Twitter, Pinterest, Blogs and more. When I click into an influencer’s profile, I can see their audience demographics, what other networks they have reach through and quickly scan their recent posts to decide if they’re a right influencer for my brand. All the pieces of campaign management are there, too. Julius allows you to reach out, document contracts, share and approve influencer content and, of course, measure the ROI of each campaign, influencer or post. You owe it to your brand or agency to do a demo of Julius today. Go to jason.online/julius and request one. That’s jason.online/julius.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices