Winfluence with Jason Falls

What did you want to be when you grew up? I waffled between professional baseball player and fighter pilot when I was really young. Then I went through a phase of wanting to be an architect or to anchor SportsCenter. The latter of those indirectly led me here, which is at least in the right industry.

I’ll guarantee none of you ever said you wanted to grow up to be a YouTuber. Or a TikTok star. But those are some of the top answers that children give today to that question. 

A few years ago, we would laugh. Today, we probably still do, but we shouldn’t. 

An online content creator, or influencer if you will, is a skilled craftsperson whose earning potential in today’s world far exceeds that of most of the jobs these kid’s parents have. To laugh at them and dismiss that career path because we think it’s short-sighted and foolish, only exposes us as being short-sighted and foolish. 

My friend Arik Hanson had blog post last week that caught my attention. Arik is a social media and public relations consultant, speaker and influencer in his own right based in Minneapolis. He’s also one half of Hanson & Hunt, a great PR and communications podcast that is also on the Marketing Podcast Network along with this show.

Arik’s post last Tuesday was titled, “Will your kids go to school to be professional social media influencers?”

I know. Most of you chuckled at the notion. But you shouldn’t. I’ll tell you more about why in today’s commentary.

Today's show also features reference to my daughter's young adult book review channel on YouTube and encourages you to add a subscription to my YouTube channel, now including a version of this podcast, so her 200 or so more followers than me can perhaps stop being a source of personal embarrassment. Heh.

And we also highlight our first listener voice mail today. Marc Duke, a B2B influencer consultant and all-around CMO brain for hire in Great Britain, had some comments and a question about last week's commentary on influencer consultants.

This episode of Winfluence is presented by Tagger. It is a complete influencer marketing solution. You can find out more for yourself at jason.online/tagger. 

In this episode, we visit with Alexandra Walsh from 3 Day Blinds, a premium window treatment brand, about how she uses Tagger. 

To start building your own experiences with my influencer marketing software of choice, go to jason.online/tagger today.

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.

We’ve been spending some time on the show of late talking about the future of the creator economy and how influencers can plan for monetization either with or without the big social networks where much of their audience may lie today. Two episodes ago, we talked to Ramiro Canovas from FanBase, which is a lot like OnlyFans only without the stigma of everyone there being adult content creators. 

Be sure to go back and listen to that episode as it makes a case for the owned content overall.

This week, we’re going to dig into the concept of owning both your channel and your audience a bit deeper with P.J. Leimgruber. He is the co-founder of the Clash App … no, not an app that allows you to listen to London Calling and Rock the Casbah. Clash App is an owned content app that allows video creators to not only engage with their core fans and subscribers, but allows those subscriber to post Drops … these are cash payments … tips if you will … to those creators for their content. 

The discussion made me think of the old blogger tip jars, but with a more defined purpose and a community of people conditioned to send them. 

So today we’re hearing more about whether or not fan-funded content creators can go beyond just a subscription model. How does that future stack up from a creator monetization standpoint? And is Clash App a method you as an influencer can generate income. Do these platforms hold any relevance for brands as well? Sure … if the influencer has a big audience there.

But we get into that and how the creator economy payment structure is flawed with P.J. I think you’ll appreciate is expertise and perspective. 

This episode is presented by Tagger, the complete influencer marketing solution. Find out more and sign up for a demo to see if Tigger is right for you by visiting jason.online/tagger today. 

In this episode, we chat with influencer marketing consultant Meredith Jacobson of We Are Boosters about how she uses Tagger. 

To start building your own experiences with my influencer marketing software of choice, go to jason.online/tagger today.

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.

Influencer marketing done right can be quite the task for a marketer, or even a marketing team. It takes time and thoughtfulness to select, engage, manage, execute and measure influence marketing campaigns, just like it does for any other type of marketing. For many businesses, influencer marketing is just a small piece of their overall marketing puzzle, so they need help.

Enter the influencer consultant. But what exactly does an influencer consultant do? And how much do they charge?

Ask 100 people in the industry those questions and you’re liable to receive 100 different answers. That’s largely because each consultant is different and even the role of a consultant is vague. 

I’ve been hired as a social media consultant before, but performed tasks that would be better defined as public relations, digital marketing or just marketing. Inevitably, I employ a wide range of experiences to just help clients move their business forward, so putting one discipline’s label on it is misleading.

The same can be said for an influencer consultant, too. The inference is they’ll handle your influencer marketing. They may. But depending on the consultant, they may only handle parts of the process. Or they may have a wide breadth of knowledge and experience and also help you with creative ideas, public relations, social media and beyond.

In my current role at Cornett, I serve as the chief influence strategists … a type of consultant … to our clients. I also advise and refer others to influencer consultants if Cornett is not a good fit. It's my job to know what an influencer consultant does.

Today on the podcast, I’ll spell it out in as much detail as will fit into a 10-15 minute show, so that you can understand whether you need one, or what type of influencer consultant is better for your business. 

This episode is presented by Tagger, the complete influencer marketing solution. Find out more and sign up for a demo to see if Tigger is right for you by visiting jason.online/tagger today. 

In this episode, we chat with influencer marketing consultant Meredith Jacobson of We Are Boosters about how she uses Tagger. 

To start building your own experiences with my influencer marketing software of choice, go to jason.online/tagger today.

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.

Is the future of the creator economy and influencer marketing in subscription based content? If you read the tea leaves in the industry, one may think so.

Content creators face potential problems when they put all their content and audience eggs in someone else’s basket. If the Instagram servers go berserk one day, some content creators will take a hit in revenue. If the rules on TikTok or YouTube suddenly change, we’ll … influencers may S-O-L.

Brands are also starting to value creators and influencers that have stronger relationships with, and thus influence over, their audience. What that means is an influencer with a big email marketing list, or captive on a podcast, is more valuable than someone who just has a social media following that may or may not see a sponsored post fly by in their streams.

Subscription platforms offer content creators both a way to connect directly with their audience, building a following tied to email addresses and more rich contact information, but also to derive direct revenue from their fans. 

Instead of following your favorite Instagrammer there, you pay a subscription fee of, let’s say $5 a month on a subscription platform, and you get exclusive access to the influencer’s content and maybe the influencer. 

The most well-known of these platform is OnlyFans. But it is most well known for being a popular subscription platform used by adult content creators, so there is bit of a stigma there. Fortunately, there are other options. One of them is FanBase.

Its chief technology officer Ramiro Cánovas, joined me recently to talk about the future of the creator economy. The challenged posed to creators by the existing social networks and influencer ecosystem, and the opportunity for content creators to create more direct revenue streams and genuine connections with their fans. 

As you can imagine, I geeked out with Ramiro a bit. It didn’t help that he’s also a former professional soccer player, so we started off talking about some connections we have through the beautiful game. 

This episode is presented by Tagger, the complete influencer marketing solution. Find out more and sign up for a demo to see if Tigger is right for you by visiting jason.online/tagger today. 

In this episode, we visit with Alexandra Walsh from 3 Day Blinds, a premium window treatment brand, about how she uses Tagger. 

To start building your own experiences with my influencer marketing software of choice, go to jason.online/tagger today.

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.

It doesn’t seem to matter where, how or how often I talk to people about influence marketing, I inevitably get questions and seemingly confused looks and frustration from people about measuring what we do.

Hey, I get it. Measurement can be confusing. It’s often an afterthought. But it shouldn’t be and it shouldn't be hard or intimidating.

Back in September, my friends at Tagger asked me to contribute an article to the company’s blog that included my thoughts and helpful tips on measuring influencer marketing. The piece was well received and I was particularly proud of the thoughts I pulled together there.

Today, I’m going to share that article with you in narrative form so that you, too, can hear my thoughts on why measuring influencer marketing shouldn’t be hard.

Thanks to my friends at Tagger for inspiring the article and allowing me to share it here with you as well. You can find the original article on Tagger's website.

If you click through you can also find your way to knowing how awesome a platform Tagger is for influencer marketing. They are the sponsor of this episode. It is a complete influencer marketing solution. You can find out more for yourself at jason.online/tagger. 

In this episode, we visit with Alexandra Walsh from 3 Day Blinds, a premium window treatment brand, about how she uses Tagger. 

To start building your own experiences with my influencer marketing software of choice, go to jason.online/tagger today.

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.

We’re now in 2022 and are within 12 to 24 months of a cookie-less world. Google announced in February of last year that sometime in 2023 it will no longer support third-party cookies for behavior tracking of is browser users. Safari and Firefox had already headed down that road, so it was rather inevitable.

That poses a significant challenge for brands as advertising targeting and retargeting has often been tied to third party tracking of browser usage. We’re entering a cookieless world.

David Tintner is the man behind a company that says it has the brand’s toolbox for thriving in a world without cookies. The company is called Thought Leaders. It leverages the long-form and social content and audiences of influencers to help brands target using better triggers for content and context.

He loves building media plans for companies that includes ad spend on deeply contextual, long-form content … like podcasts. 

So we hit it off nicely, as you might imagine.

We’re going to dive in with David today to find out his take on how brands can better target audiences without cookies … perhaps more effectively than they did with them. We also dive deep into podcasters as influencers, the effectiveness of podcast advertising and much more.

This episode is sponsored by Tagger. It is a complete influencer marketing solution. You can find out more for yourself at jason.online/tagger. 

In this episode, we visit with Alexandra Walsh from 3 Day Blinds, a premium window treatment brand, about how she uses Tagger. 

To start building your own experiences with my influencer marketing software of choice, go to jason.online/tagger today.

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.

Happy New Year!

We’re kicking off 2022 as many podcasters, bloggers and prognosticators are … by looking ahead and anticipating what may come. But, I’ve got a couple things working against me in that regard. First, I’ve been observing and commenting on the social media space for over 15 years now. I’ve seen many a prediction post. I’ve written a few myself. 

That means I know most of them are nothing more than pissing in the wind. No one who makes them has a clue what will actually happen. They just guess. As long as they don’t go off the deep end … and some do … they sound fairly smart and we nod and smile. 

The other thing working against me is that I am quite a contrarian when it comes to the wide-eyed optimism of the tech elite and one percent of the one percenters that most of the truly new innovations and activities will apply to.

So, my prediction posts aren’t real sexy. But they’re far more realistic than most. 

I want to help you prepare for 2022 and what may come, but I also want you to be grounded in reality so you don’t waste time or money preparing for someone else’s imagination.

Today on the show, I give you the honest truth about what to expect in 2022 … like it or not.

This episode is sponsored by Tagger. It is a complete influencer marketing solution. You can find out more for yourself at jason.online/tagger. 

In this episode, we visit with Alexandra Walsh from 3 Day Blinds, a premium window treatment brand, about how she uses Tagger. 

To start building your own experiences with my influencer marketing software of choice, go to jason.online/tagger today.

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.

Today is a special episode of the show. I thought between the Christmas and New Year’s holidays I’d give you a treat and introduce you to one of our sister podcasts on the Marketing Podcast Network.

For those who may not recall our episode from December 2nd of 2021, I have launched a network for marketing podcasts that serves two purposes: Allow like-topic podcasts an easy way to support and promote one another, and give advertisers wishing to reach marketers … an audience like you … an easier way to get to them. 

I actually explained the Marketing Podcast Network in more depth a few weeks ago on Nick Westergaard’s outstanding show On Brand. Yes, it is an MPN podcast. Nick interviews all the important people in the world of branding and marketing, so his show is more broadly focused than mine. But he drills into podcasting or influence marketing and other topics, too.

In our conversation, Nick and I talked about podcasting, but a lot more. In fact, he asked my thoughts on the Metaverse … our next horizon to conquer on the Internet. And, pardon the indulgence, but I offered up some thinking brand folks should hear.

So, today on Winfluence, I’m going to share with you an episode of On Brand with Nick Westergaard, with me as the guest. I think you’ll find his show to be well-done and worth the subscription, but also the conversation we had to be quite useful.

Winfluence is presented by Tagger. It is a complete influencer marketing solution. You can find out more for yourself at jason.online/tagger. 

In this episode, we visit with T.J. Ferrara from Bubs Naturals, a health supplement company, about how they use Tagger. 

To start building your own experiences with my influencer marketing software of choice, go to jason.online/tagger today.

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.

As I browsed the headlines from around the influencer marketing industry this weekend, something I do daily to keep up with all the things, I stumbled upon another of those Top Influencer lists. Now, we’ve covered my disdain for them before. The episode that published on September 20 of 2021 said it was time to do away with them.

Alas, the content managers for many of the software companies still publishing them don’t listen to Winfluence … or maybe they do and just don’t listen to my advice. Which, I begrudgingly understand.

But I found one from IZEA, a company I love and have worked with before. Ted Murphy, its founder and CEO was the first guest on this podcast when it re-shaped to become Winfluence. It caught my attention because it was ripe for another of my criticisms of how many people think of influencer marketing.

The post was called Top 10 Basketball Influencers. I’ll tell you why I was leery of reading it and why I was pleasantly surprised when I did, in today’s commentary.

This episode is sponsored by Tagger. It is a complete influencer marketing solution. You can find out more for yourself at jason.online/tagger. 

In this episode, we visit with T.J. Ferrara from Bubs Naturals, a health supplement company, about how they use Tagger. 

To start building your own experiences with my influencer marketing software of choice, go to jason.online/tagger today.

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.

If you’re a regular listener to Winfluence, and I know you are, you know that podcasting itself is a medium I consider a big part of our territory in the influence marketing space. While you may think of influencers as primarily social media stars with lots of followers – like Instagrammers and TikTokers – podcasters are also social media content creators. And many of them have big audiences.

So, when we talk influence marketing, we have to talk about podcasts, too.

Trevor Oldham latched onto the podcast wave a few years ago with not just his own, but freelancing to help people who wanted to do it, but didn’t have all the experience and technical skill to make it happen. Then, he stumbled upon a gap in the marketplace that has turned out to be a lucrative business for him.

Trevor heads a company called Podcasting You. It’s main focus is to get its clients booked to be guests on podcasts. Think of it as a PR firm for those who want to get interviewed on this red hot medium. So, instead of starting a podcast, you can just position yourself or someone in your company’s leadership, to be a great podcast guest and earn that media versus paying for it.

I caught up with Trevor to chat about what he sees in the podcast marketplace for brands and influencers themselves. He actually has a surprising answer to whether or not social media influencers should leverage podcasts to build their followings. 

The clever thing about Trevor being on Winfluence … his team pitched him as they would a client. And the way they did it, well … it obviously worked. We talked about that, too. 

Some good tips on how to leverage podcasts as an influence channel for your business or brand … and some salient ideas for you influencers are on today’s show.

This episode is sponsored by Tagger. It is a complete influencer marketing solution. You can find out more for yourself at jason.online/tagger. 

In this episode, we visit with T.J. Ferrara from Bubs Naturals, a health supplement company, about how they use Tagger. 

To start building your own experiences with my influencer marketing software of choice, go to jason.online/tagger today.

And today's influence marketing podcast recommendation is the Onalytica podcast. Subscribe at Onalytica.com.

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.