Winfluence with Jason Falls

When you have the opportunity to learn from a seasoned professional, you should always take it. When I found out I could get Chris Gibson on the line to pick his brain as it were about being an online content creator, an influencer who has created a career over the last 15-plus years doing that kind of thing, I knew I had to jump at the chance. 

Chris is known as one of the world’s foremost skincare experts. He published a book in 2004 called Acne Free in 3 Days. He went on a multiple-year media tour and became well known before YouTube, Instagram or TikTok existed.

Then in 2018, he started paying more attention to YouTube and has since migrated his traditional media and website following to an active online and social media one. His experience of ups and downs being a content creator are a treasure trove of knowledge that we will mine today.

This episode of Winfluence is going to be a little different than my normal interviews, thought. It turns out Chris had so much to say that I just stayed quiet and let him go. So I’ve edited things with more of a narrative approach to tie all the finer points together for you. 

But let me assure you, there’s a lot here for you content creators to learn. And all of it is extremely useful for brand and agencies to understand, too. 

Before we get to those insights, I want to share something our friends at Storyblok have to make you smarter. It’s a new report called the State of Content Management and is a very useful survey of 515 businesses in the U.S. and Europe – companies just like yours – and how they are approaching content distribution through their digital channels in 2022. 

Think about it … you have to provide content for your website. Maybe a mobile app. Then there’s e-commerce platforms. Voice-activated speakers … Managing content is more complex today than ever. Get insights and ideas on how companies like yours are tackling the content challenge with The State of Content Management Report from Storyblok. Just go to storyblok.com/winfluence for your free report. 

Storyblok is a headless content management system, rated as the #1 CMS for 2022 by G2. It is also a new partner of the Marketing Podcast Network.

Also, join me in New York City on April 27 for the Influencer Marketing Show. Go to jason.online/imsfalls and use the code FALLS for 15% off your ticket, just for listening to Winfluence.

Hosted by Jason Falls, Winfluence is a production of Falls+Partners. Explore the ideas and get help putting them into practice at fallspartners.com. Winfluence is a proud member of MPN – The Marketing Podcast Network.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

I’ve been working with and tinkering around on social media software, including influencer marketing platforms, for the better part of 20 years. I started cutting my teeth on content management platforms, social media management platforms … then in the late 2000s and early 2010s, I became somewhat established as having a degree of expertise with social listening platforms.

For some time now, I’ve been demo-ing, testing and using influencer marketing software. As you know, I use Tagger. They are the presenting sponsor of Winfluence. It’s a soup-to-nuts influencer marketing solution, very powerful and you’ve heard a lot about it here.

That said, I can count on one hand how many times I’ve been able to talk the CEO, president or owner of one of any of those platforms in a really candid conversation about the software space, their software and the industry in general. It’s not for lack of trying. But SaaS product executives are often protected by PR firms and beholden to shareholders first, so podcasters and industry influencers, if you will, are not primarily important. 

Well today, I’m getting closer to not being able to count those I’ve had deep conversations with on one hand. That’s because Pete Kennedy, the president and co-founder of the aforementioned Tagger, a sponsor of this program. But Pete is here today to chat. And without handlers or PR monitors looking over anyone’s shoulder. 

We dive into why there’s no real good, reasonable priced influencer marketing tools out there; whether or not these platforms are in an adversarial relationship with the social networks because of brand collaborations and payments of influencers; what should be on the roadmap for social influencer platforms, the trends in the industry and a lot more.

And coincidentally, Pete Kennedy and I will be on stage together at the Influencer Marketing Show in New York City on April 27. I have a discount code for you to get tickets to join me there.  

The Influencer Marketing Show is being held in North America for the first time. It’s a one day event in New York City, just off Broadway at the New World Stages on West 50th. It will be Wednesday, April 27, 2022 … coming up in just a few short weeks. I will be chairing one of the stages as well as moderating a panel featuring Pete Kennedy, who you’ll hear from today, and Jenny Heinrich, who leads influencer marketing strategy for Ketchum, one of the Omnicom companies. She’s just brilliant. 

 Go see the full speaker and topic lineup and get your ticket at jason.online/imsfalls. When you check out, use the code FALLS and get a 15 percent discount, just for listening to Winfluence. 

Before we get to the break, I want to share something our friends at Storyblok have to make you smarter. It’s a new report called the State of Content Management and is a very useful survey of 515 businesses in the U.S. and Europe – companies just like yours – and how they are approaching content distribution through their digital channels in 2022. 

Think about it: You have to provide content for your website. Maybe a mobile app. Then there’s ecommerce platforms. Voice-activated speakers … Managing content is more complex today than ever. Get insights and ideas on how companies like yours are tackling the content challenge with The State of Content Management Report from Storyblok. Just go to storyblok.com/winfluence for your free report. 

Hosted by Jason Falls, Winfluence is a production of Falls+Partners. Explore the ideas and get help putting them into practice at fallspartners.com. Winfluence is a proud member of MPN – The Marketing Podcast Network.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

This shouldn't come as a surprise to you, but I have a day job. At Cornett. It's an ad agency. And I love it there.

What may come as a surprise to you is Christy Hiler, the owner at Cornett, is very rare in the ad business. And by that, I mean less than one percent of all advertising agency owners are women. Read that one more time.

Yeah ... I know?!

Today, Christy is launching an industry change agent movement called Own It. The effort is calling on women who own all or most of ad agencies to come together to join a community of leaders to discuss, dissect and defeat the problem. Interested women or non-binary owners can sign up to be a part of conversations, mentorship and more, at UntilYouOwnIt.com.

Participants may also be invited to help discuss solutions to the problem on Christy's new podcast, also called Own It. Today on a special edition of Winfluence, we present a mini-version of the premier episode of the show. The 10-minute edit features Hiler interviewing Jean Freeman, the principal and owner at Zambezi, the largest female-owned advertising agency in the U.S.

And for those of you who are interest in knowing, I produce the show for Christy. It is also the newest entry in the Marketing Podcast Network.

This episode of Winfluence is still presented by Tagger, but we're foregoing the sponsor talk today so you can hear the debut of Own It from Christy Hiler.

Be sure to subscribe to Own It at UntilYouOwnIt.com or by searching for Own It wherever you get your podcasts.

Hosted by Jason Falls, Winfluence is a production of Falls+Partners. Explore the ideas and get help putting them into practice at fallspartners.com. Winfluence is a proud member of MPN – The Marketing Podcast Network.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

I waxed poetic a couple of weeks back about the Metaverse. It is part of the larger grouping of new technologies and opportunities that fall under the umbrella of Web 3.0. The Metaverse, which is largely virtual worlds, is all about experiences. 

Then you have crypto currency, which my best explanation of is the coins and virtual currencies you might be used to earning in video games, only they’re tied to a real market value and actual financial markets and exchanges which gives them real world value. Crypto can be exchanged for actual dollars.

When we talk crypto we’re talking about Bitcoin or Ethereum … those are two the largest cryptocurrencies. But, there are hundreds. You can even sign up for your own personalized cryptocurrency and dole it out to people as a reward. Yes, it costs real money to have some crypto money. But the volatility of the crypto market means you could see the value of, say $100 in crypto one day, suddenly be several hundred the next day.

There’s no guarantee, of course. And that value can also go the other way, too. For the record, I have invested exactly $50 in cryptocurrency to date. It is currently valued at about $28. So I’m not convinced.

And then there’s NFTs. Just the thought of that gives me a headache. And I’m not the only one.

Which is exactly why Joseph Jaffe is here today. Frankly, it’s why Joseph Jaffe exists. He is a forward-thinker. An innovator. A change agent. He wrote a book called Join the Conversation before brands were echoing that mantra about social media. 

And he’s at it again. Jaffe has pulled together a collection of Web 3.0 thinkers into a new premium community called the Alpha Collective. It’s a limited-capacity, paid membership community that will feature weekly lectures to help members wrap their heads around succeeding in Web 3.0 business and technology.

But each member will have direct access to each of the speakers and other experts in the community for networking Q&A, potential consulting and the like. 

The name Alpha Collective implies you’ll get to see things before anyone else. And that’s the point. If you or your business wants to be on the forefront of Web 3.0 success, whether you’re a brand or an influencer, you should pay close attention today. 

On a side note, I’m speaking at the Influencer Marketing Show in New York City on April 27 and I have a discount code for you to get tickets to join me there. IMS has been held in London the last few years. I’ve been honored to be an emcee and moderator for the last two as they were virtual events. Now IMS is not only back to IRL, but it’s here in the U.S. for the first time. 

It’s a one day event in New York City, just off Broadway at the New World Stages on West 50th. It will be Wednesday, April 27, 2022 … coming up in just a few short weeks. I will be chairing one of the stages as well as moderating a panel for my friends at Tagger. They’re the presenting sponsor of this podcast, by the way.

Go see the full speaker and topic lineup and get your ticket at jason.online/imsfalls. When you check out, use the code FALLS and get a 15 percent discount, just for listening to Winfluence. 

Hosted by Jason Falls, Winfluence is a production of Falls+Partners. Explore the ideas and get help putting them into practice at fallspartners.com. Winfluence is a proud member of MPN – The Marketing Podcast Network.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

I attended my first in-real-life conference last week. Social Media Marketing World happened with actual, physical people in an actual physical place – the San Diego Convention Center – and mostly without masks, though the hugs and enthusiastic closeness is still faint compared to what they once were.

Ironically enough, the buzz was all about the Metaverse and NFTs … the fake worlds where the prognosticators are saying the future lies. Everyone was excited about being back in person only to talk about never having to do anything in person anymore. But that’s me being Mr. Crankypants, I guess.

My talk on influence marketing and the concepts we talk about here on Winfluence went over pretty well, I think. The Social Media Marketing World audience is made up more of the small to medium sized business owner and marketer who is still new to a lot of the digital and social space. Influence marketing there is probably an advanced topic. And I was the only one speaking on the subject. But the crowd was engaged, asked good questions. I got good feedback, so hopefully I helped a few folks along with their thinking.

Maybe even a few of them have joined us here on the podcast.

And that’s kind of what I want to talk to you about today. Public speaking and public speakers. I’ll break it down in a couple of ways. First, public speakers are influencers. The nature of their craft is to stand in front of a room of people to persuade them of something. That’s our core definition of an influencer – someone who can persuade an audience to take action. 

It’s important for you to know who the influential public speakers about your industry, business, topic or product category are. They are low-hanging fruit in terms of finding influential people to help you.

But I also want to talk about what makes an audience not trust a speaker.

Also, and speaking of speakers, I am speaking at the Influencer Marketing Show in New York City on April 27 and I have a discount code for you to get tickets to join me there. IMS has been held in London the last few years. I’ve been honored to be an emcee and moderator for the last two as they were virtual events. Now IMS is not only back to IRL, but it’s here in the U.S. for the first time. 

It’s a one day event in New York City, just off Broadway at the New World Stages on West 50th. It will be Wednesday, April 27, 2022 … coming up in just a few short weeks. I will be chairing one of the stages as well as moderating a panel for my friends at Tagger.

Go see the full speaker and topic lineup and get your ticket at jason.online/imsfalls. When you check out, use the code FALLS and get a 15 percent discount, just for listening to Winfluence.

This episode is sponsored by Tagger, the complete influencer marketing solution. It has recently released a new product feature called Signals, which provides creator listening for its customers. Tagger president and founder Pete Kennedy joins Jason Falls to explain more about Signals.

To see it for yourself and get a demo of Tagger, visit jason.online/tagger today.

Hosted by Jason Falls, Winfluence is a production of Falls+Partners. Explore the ideas and get help putting them into practice at fallspartners.com. Winfluence is a proud member of MPN – The Marketing Podcast Network.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

About three or four years ago my daughter Katie came home with a gallon jug of borax and another of Elmer’s glue and announced she was going to make slime. As you can imagine, I was more than thrilled to have a 10-year-old playing with chemicals and food coloring all over my house. 

But she and a couple of her friends had fallen into the slime craze and wanted to make it.

A similar thing happened to Angelina Ly maybe a year to earlier than that. She was 14-years-old at the time. She started making slime and posting pictures and recipes on social media channels and became quite popular as a slime influencer.

So she started making slime recipes, packaging them and selling them on Etsy. Then migrated over to her own website and Shopify account. Late last year, she sold her 15,000th order.

And all this was happening while she was in high school and her first year of college.

Angelina Ly is the influencer and entrepreneur behind Firefly Slime. She is a mega influencer in the space, has done brand partnerships and all the things that go along with being an influencer. But she also walked that interesting entrepreneurial balance of also selling products and driving revenue for her own brand.

She has been so successful doing it, her parents finally let go of the obsession with telling her to be a doctor or a lawyer. 

Angelina and I caught up recently to chat so we could learn more about her balancing act of being an online business owners and an influencer. All around slime.

This episode is sponsored by Tagger, the complete influencer marketing solution. It has recently released a new product feature called Signals, which provides creator listening for its customers. Tagger president and founder Pete Kennedy joins Jason Falls to explain more about Signals.

To see it for yourself and get a demo of Tagger, visit jason.online/tagger today.

Hosted by Jason Falls, Winfluence is a production of Falls+Partners. Explore the ideas and get help putting them into practice at fallspartners.com. Winfluence is a proud member of MPN – The Marketing Podcast Network.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

How many of you would call yourselves a gamer? Well, if you play Wordle, you’re a gamer. If you got sucked into Angry Birds, Candy Crush, or Trivia Crack … gamers all. 

I have 3-4 games I have on my phone to pass time waiting at a doctor’s office, or to watch while I sit with my family watching a show I’m either not into or can listen to rather than watch. That makes me a gamer.

The demographics and statistics on gamers are actually quite surprising. According to Statistia, 38% of gamers are 18-34 years old, but 35% are 35-64. The female segment has always been far higher than one might expect. Statistia says 45% of gamers are female. Our guest today has data that says the majority of gamers are women.

But gaming as an avenue for influence marketing seems a bit of an enigma. My perception of that is a someone on Twitch playing Halo wearing my brand’s logo on their T-shirt. But millions of people watch video gamers play games just like mainstream consumers watch sports, go to concerts and more.

Irina Shames says people just appreciate the artistry at play with gamers. And those huge audiences present opportunities for brands. 

Irina is the executive vice-president of revenue and strategy for 3BlackDot, a digital entertainment studio that connects brands to audience-driven creators. So a version of influencer marketing. She joined me to chat about the somewhat mysterious world … at least to me … of gamers as influencers.

There’s a lot of great insights in this discussion, folks. The gaming world relies heavily on the concept of community, with influential gamers having their own and a very genuine relationship with them. Brands coming to the table with them need to be community focused, which is not the standard operating procedure for most brands. 

This episode is sponsored by Tagger, the complete influencer marketing solution. It has recently released a new product feature called Signals, which provides creator listening for its customers. Tagger president and founder Pete Kennedy joins Jason Falls to explain more about Signals.

To see it for yourself and get a demo of Tagger, visit jason.online/tagger today.

And here are links to the Creator Camp my pal T. Adeola is leading in Dayton, Ohio:

Hosted by Jason Falls, Winfluence is a production of Falls+Partners. Explore the ideas and get help putting them into practice at fallspartners.com. Winfluence is a proud member of MPN – The Marketing Podcast Network.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Many of you know I host another podcast on the Marketing Podcast Network called Digging Deeper. Occasionally on that show, we interview someone that has a perspective or focus on something that either is, or is related closely to influencer marketing. When we do, I like to share that interview here as well. Why not make sure you get the good intel, too.

Last week, I had the pleasure of chatting with Mark Anderson and Ryan Fey. Those names may or may not ring a bell with you, but they might if you just call them, Mark and Fey. They are The Grill Dads. Hosts of the popular Food Network show where two backyard grill jockeys cook up tasty recipes and some good humor for all to see.

But Mark and Fey are actually ad agency guys who started cooking out for friends, then for some pop-up restaurants and food trucks in the Los Angeles area. They entered one of Guy Fieri’s cooking competitions and won.

Now, they don’t do just the show even now. They have day jobs, Ryan is still a creative director in the ad world Mark is running a different kind of business these days, but still with his normal creative tendencies. 

I talked to the Grill Dads about the show, the social engine that drives it, where they see content marketing and creative leading both brands and influencers these days, and a lot more. It was a fun, funny and useful conversation. So I’ve pulled that interview out of Digging Deeper to share with you today. 

While I’m thinking about it, though, you should jump over and subscribe to Digging Deeper as well if you aren’t already. On that show, I tend to talk more to brand-side marketers and experts about marketing strategy, creative and such from a more broad level than we typically get into on Winfluence. 

You can find that show and links to all its various subscription platforms at cornett.online/diggingdeeper. 

And stick around after the interview. I’ve got a few housekeeping notes that will be of interest to you about some events.

This episode is sponsored by Tagger, the complete influencer marketing solution. It has recently released a new product feature called Signals, which provides creator listening for its customers. Tagger president and founder Pete Kennedy joins Jason Falls to explain more about Signals.

To see it for yourself and get a demo of Tagger, visit jason.online/tagger today.

Hosted by Jason Falls, Winfluence is a production of Falls+Partners. Explore the ideas and get help putting them into practice at fallspartners.com. Winfluence is a proud member of MPN – The Marketing Podcast Network.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The Metaverse has been on the top of minds and conversations of most people in the marketing space in the last few months. Ever since Mark Zuckerberg and Meta, ne’ Facebook, went all-in on VR to inflate stock prices because they had Oculus headsets to sell now, this seemingly new virtual world as a consumer and business reality has produced an explosion.

Unfortunately, the explosion as been one of consultants and experts and specialty agencies telling brands and influencers that if they’re not in the Metaverse, they’re yesterday’s news. 

Well, slow your roll there, though leader wannabes. The Metaverse is neat, but it’s not for everybody or every brand. And there’s still a lot of gap closing that needs to happen between consumer engagement there and brands solving the problem of how to drive that engagement. 

Last month I dedicated most of my monthly email newsletter to sharing my honest thoughts on the Metaverse and how brands, consumers and influencers can use it. The piece was so well received one of my fellow thinkers in the space, Ted Rubin, used my rant as his email newsletter last week.

It was the first newsletter in a long time that earned more than a couple of replies from subscribers, too. More than a dozen people reached out to say how excited they were to read it and how refreshing it was to have a realistic perspective on this new world to chew on. 

Today on Winfluence, I’m going to share much of that piece with you. I’ve put it through the filter of it being used as a podcast script and tried to underline the influencer marketing implications a bit, so it’s a little different than the original. 

 But I’m going to give you my honest opinion of the Metaverse and how we can and should prioritize its use in today’s commentary.

This episode is sponsored by Tagger, the complete influencer marketing solution. It has recently released a new product feature called Signals, which provides creator listening for its customers. Tagger president and founder Pete Kennedy joins Jason Falls to explain more about Signals.

To see it for yourself and get a demo of Tagger, visit jason.online/tagger today.

Hosted by Jason Falls, Winfluence is a production of Falls+Partners. Explore the ideas and get help putting them into practice at fallspartners.com. Winfluence is a proud member of MPN – The Marketing Podcast Network.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

You may recall our episode from late January in which I adopted an exaggerated satirical stance responding to a podcaster who had taken exception to my answer to a question on Twitter. The question, from my fellow Marketing Podcast Network creator Seth Goldstein, was whether or not podcasting was a modern form of busking, or a street performer playing for change.

I said no and Tanner Campbell, a podcast consultant who has his own show called Podcasting Sucks, disagreed and fired off an episode about me. And I responded with my tongue in cheek finger wagging. You can check that episode out at a link in the show notes for this episode, of course. 

In that back and forth, Tanner and I got to know each other a bit more and discovered we were kindred spirits in a lot of ways. So we thought a more friendly fire discussion about podcasting was in order.

What evolved in our discussion was really interesting and fun. The first half of our conversation turned out to be Tanner asking me a bunch of questions. When I realized he was taking over my show, I flipped the conversation and got to know him a bit more.

We talk about the history and recent explosion of podcasts, how both of us got started, our opinion of repurposing video content as audio podcasts … and on and on and on. We also spent a lot of time talking about the ability to grow and monetize podcasts in this era of mainstream media companies dominating the landscape. Super useful conversation. 

There’s even some good nuggets in there on my history as a radio deejay. 

Honestly, we could have kept talking for hours, but we’ll leave the marathon podcast to the wingnuts of the world out there. Today’s episode is probably the first of more to come as we just sat and picked each other’s brains. What resulted was what I think is a pretty damn useful listen for those of you interested in podcasts to build your influence as an influencer, or as a brand.

This episode is sponsored by Tagger, the complete influencer marketing solution. It has recently released a new product feature called Signals, which provides creator listening for its customers. Tagger president and founder Pete Kennedy joins Jason Falls to explain more about Signals.

To see it for yourself and get a demo of Tagger, visit jason.online/tagger today.

More links we referred to in this episode:

Hosted by Jason Falls, Winfluence is a production of Falls+Partners. Explore the ideas and get help putting them into practice at fallspartners.com. Winfluence is a proud member of MPN – The Marketing Podcast Network.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.