Winfluence with Jason Falls

Research hit the wires last week that shows the racial pay gap between white and BIPOC influencers … that is those who are black, indigenous and people of color … is 29 percent overall and 35 percent between white influencers and black influencers. To put it another way, for every $100 a white influencer is paid, a black influencer is paid $65.

I’m tempted to end the podcast right there and just angrily say to us all, press stop and go fix it. And that instruction includes me, by the way.

The research was conducted by MSL, which is a public relations firm, and an organization called The Influencer League. It is a digital platform that serves as an education resource for influencers.

The research took place from February to September 2021 and included surveys and interviews with over 400 U.S. influencers. Each were asked to report their follower count, race and income from brands. 

The insights below the top-line pay gap numbers just underlined the sadness of the reality. But what bothers me more is we’ve been talking about this issue in earnest for well over 2-3 years. And the numbers aren’t any better.

I’ll illustrate and share my thoughts on how to start to solve the problem, in today’s commentary.

The recommended podcast today is Code Switch on NPR.

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’ve listened to this show for any length of time, you’ve heard me recommend the podcast of Scott Guthrie. He’s the consultant and industry thought leader behind the Influencer Marketing Lab. He has a great podcast that I recommend periodically to you here. He’s also been named one of Talking Influence’s Top 50 people in the industry, which is an annual recognition, but he’s been on it probably every year they’ve done it.

Scott consults, but he also is a frequent host of the Influencer Marketing Show, also a Talking Influence production and is frequently quoted and interviewed on the industry, mostly in Europe and the United Kingdom, but also around the world, including by media outlets here in the U.S. He also authors the Fourth Floor Weekly Email Newsletter which I’ve bragged about before as probably the best industry news resource for influencer marketing out there.

The long and short of it is that Scott is probably the most knowledgeable person on the planet about influencer marketing. His background is in the PR and comms world. He spent quite a bit of time at Ketchum, but is an MBA and business consultant going back to the early days of social media.

Recently, Scott launched the Influencer Marketing Trade Body in the UK with six big-name agency and company sponsors. That body is looking to become the trade association for influencer marketing there and unify other bodies around the world like the American Influencer Council, to put forth a unified set of standards for ethics and such globally. The idea is a much needed one in the business and the IMTB is certainly in good hands with Scott at the helm.

Scott and I had a great discussion about a number of topics including the IMTB, the trend of influencers becoming creative directors, the influencer pay gap and a lot more. If you are looking for what the top thinkers in the industry are thinking about things … you’ve come to the right place today. Scott Guthrie is one of them and he’s here.

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.

For the last probably year or year and a half, the conversation about the value of influencers has reverberated with the opinion that micro- and nano-influencers are more effective than the big stars with millions of followers. Logically, that makes sense. You have to spend a lot of money for one post with a big celebrity. You can get multiple posts from multiple micro-influencers that, over time, can add up to as much reach and far more frequency.

But now there’s actual evidence to prove that theory. In fact, a new report out from TrendHERO, an influencer marketing software company specific to Instagram and one of the recent sponsors of this podcasts, actually helped me connect some dots to calculate the average cost-per-thousand, or CPM rate, of celebrity influencers versus micro-influencers.

And the difference may startle you. 

I’ll tell you all about it, in today’s commentary, and I have a little book news update for you at the tail end of today’s show, so make sure to listen through to the end.

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.

I’ve never really considered myself an entrepreneur, even though technically and by definition, I’ve been one a few times. When I started Social Media Explorer as a blog in 2007, my hope was to use it to publish my thoughts on an emerging industry trend and perhaps position myself as a thought leader.

A couple of years later, that blog was the shingle I hung out in the consulting world. It then became a boutique strategy agency. I brought on a business partner and we grew to seven employees at one point. 

In 2016, I co-founded the Conversation Research Institute with two partners as well. We tried for two years to bootstrap an idea that turned out to be too far ahead of its time. It was also intellectual property heavy without subsequent technology, so it wasn’t as attractive to investor dollars as it needed to be to survive. 

While my side hustle role as an influencer in the social technology space can also be defined as entrepreneurial, it’s less build-a-business and more help some people out and make a little side money along the way. 

So I’ve been an entrepreneur, but not with a great deal of intent or focus. 

Lately, I’ve been hinting around at a new thing I’m doing. It’s a startup of sorts I’ve been building in what little spare time I have, but it’s something that I think you’ll agree fits into a passion spot for me and has a heck of a lot to do with influence marketing.

The idea was actually born out of this podcast, so in a way, you have a lot to do with it. 

It is a new business. I’m not leaving Cornett. It’s still a side hustle project at the moment, but for the first time in my professional life, I’m going into this with the intent and focus of building something exceptional. 

I’ll tell you all about the Marketing Podcast Network in today's commentary.

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.

A couple of weeks ago, we had an interesting conversation about race with talent manager Johanna Voss. She represents almost exclusively women of color, though she is not one herself. And most of her clients are of the Hispanic-Latina variety. The natural next step in this conversation for me, anyway, was to dive deeper into the African-American perspective, too. 

It just so happened that Lindsey Gamble reacted to and commented on the social content about that Johanna Voss episode. He is the influencer marketing and innovation manager at Mavrck, which is one of the top enterprise influencer marketing platforms and service providers out there. So we hopped on a call and chatted a bit, then I extended an invitation for him to come help us carry the conversation forward.

Gamble actually sees the influencer marketing space from a few angles. You know I like guests who have that varied perspective on things. He started out in the social media world as a hip-hop blogger. He built one of the more influential platforms for that topic in the Boston area after graduating from Bryant University where he played football.

Because he knew the content creation and social media space well, he wound up in roles at companies that wanted him to create content or connect with those who do. He landed at Mavrck in 2018 and managed a set of client strategies. He’s now in a senior role where he gets to advise across clients on innovating in the space. Which sounds like my dream job in a lot of ways.

We talk about all that, but also get into the thicker conversation about race and influencer marketing. What impact did the social unrest and issues in 2020 have on the conversation? Is that swell of attention gone or are brands still pursuing making strides in that area. Is there a way to solve the pay gap issues between white creators and creators of color.

For someone who works at a software and services vendor in the space, but knows the creator side as well, Lindsey brings an interesting perspective to the conversation.

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.

There’s an agency owner I know out there who listens to this show. He reads the articles I write. He follows my posts on social media. When I recommend a software or a tactical idea, he tries it out. By his own admission, I influence him.

I reached out to him recently via email to try and convince him to join a new little venture I’m starting that I’ll talk more about with you soon, but he was one of the people I thought to myself, “I’ve influenced him before. I’m sure I can convince him to do this with me so I can launch with more than just me.”

So, I sent him the pitch, a follow up document with anticipated questions he might have, and even provided some social validation by including him in a private Facebook group where he could see that others like him were doing this with me.

But he wouldn’t pull the trigger. 

So I did something that most of us forget about doing. I put down the Internet and turned to offline influence. I met him for a drink and we talked it out.

When all else fails in this virtual world of influencer marketing, you need to remember to turn offline to influence marketing to be successful. 

I’ll explain more in today’s commentary. 

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

Today 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.

Influence marketing is truly a global phenomenon. We’ve talked to guests on this program who practice this craft all around the world. But we don’t spend a lot of focused time understanding how influence marketing works in various countries and cultures.

Fabian Fernando Guevara Juarez, who goes by Fabian Guevara for a shorter version of his name, reached out to me recently to trade best practices and ideas. I simply hit record because I knew the conversation would be fascinating.

He is a content strategist and influence marketing campaign creator for Media House in Mexico City. His group works on influence campaigns for Coca-Cola. He also has experience working with Mattel and other brands.

Fabian shared with me his approach to influence marketing which he folds into a larger, 360-degree view of the consumer. A lot of what he told me he, Media House and Coca-Cola practice in Latin America was spot-on smart thinking. 

But he also shared that influencer marketing software and tools are looked upon with a large degree of skepticism in the Latin world. That surprised me, so we dove into that topic so I could better understand more. 

The conversation was fascinating for me and I know it will be for you, too. I’m really grateful to Fabian for reaching out and sharing his experience and insights with us.

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

Today 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.

Thursday evening I opened up my feed reader to browse the world wide web looking for the latest updates from the various blogs and websites I subscribe to. It’s always good to catch up on what’s happening in the industry. 

Once I read the blogs and websites I know and trust, I have a folder of feeds that are essentially Google Alerts for certain topics I want to keep a finger on the pulse of so I can see the information about that topic from sites I may not know or subscribe to. One of the topics in that folder is influencer marketing.

So there I am, scrolling through the headlines looking for an interesting article to read and I see one that catches my eye. It reads, “Why top influencers are buying Instagram followers.” It was from a site called TechBullion.com and written by a person named Kristel Staci.

I thought to myself, “Well I sure do want to know the reasons.” Buying followers, after all, is one of the most pronounced black eyes on our industry. That fraudulent practice alone is amplified enough that it discourages many brands from investing in influence marketing at all.

So I start to read. And I get uncomfortable. And then I see that the entire article is not telling me why top influencers buy Instagram followers. It’s recommending the practice to others. 

I’ll rant my way through the near stroke I had reading the article in today’s commentary. 

Today's episode is presented by TrendHERO. It’s a new but advanced influencer marketing software platform specific to Instagram. So, for those of you who focus all your influencer energies on that platform, TrendHERO can help you search and discover Instagrammers based on a wide range of filters, from nano influencers, all the way to celebrities. There are over 90 million profiles in their database. 

The feature I like most about TrendHERO is a big fat yellow highlighter to the topic of today’s commentary. It has advanced fake followers check. So you can detect if an influencer followed the advice in the article I’m about to rip apart in today’s episode. 

TrendHERO also has an algorithm that tells you the chances a given posts’s comments are real or fake. So if you’re in a vertical that might be susceptible to comment pods and fake followers … a vertical that might consider this article I’m about to talk about as reliable information, TrendHERO can help you suss out which Instagrammers are worth it and which aren’t.

TrendHERO also has a nice database of sponsored posts so you can quickly see how an Instagrammers content performs when they have to disclose a paid relationship. Or you can use two clicks to search for similar influencers and identify good targets quickly.

The great thing about TrendHERO is they’re giving you a 14-day free trial just for listening to Winfluence! And if you decide you want to use the platform after that, the lite plan is just $15.99 per month. 

Sign up for that free trial now at trendhero.io/falls.

The full script of today's episode is posted on the show notes page at http://jason.online/buyingfollowers

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’s always fun for me, and I hope for you, when I run across someone who has multiple perspectives on the influencer marketing industry. I feel like I bring that to the table a bit. I work at an agency, Cornett, and devise and manage influence marketing programs for a number of our clients. But I also have a modest network of B2B influencer as a social media and social technology person, plus a nice podcast audience … thank you for that … so I sometimes play the role of influencer myself.

Larry Beaman has a couple of perspectives at play on the topic, too. He’s currently the chief growth officer at Gen.Video, an influencer marketing platform with some neat path to purchase sales technology … so he’s on the software and vendor side of the aisle. Once upon a time he worked for IZEA one of the grandfather SaaS solutions in the industry. And he spent a bit of time at Edelman, one of the largest public relations firms in the world. So he has the agency side of the aisle covered, too.

Larry’s expertise is vast, but his specialty, if he has one, is building measurement programs for influencer marketing efforts. So we started the conversation there and ran through a gamut of industry topics in our conversation. He even took a swipe at what we’re going to be talking about in 2022 across the industry. Will it be all about the Metaverse?

We’ll find out.

I’ve been testing and talking to you about TrendHERO for the last two weeks. It’s a new but advanced influencer marketing software platform specific to Instagram. TrendHERO can help you search and discover Instagrammers based on a wide range of filters, from nano influencers, all the way to celebrities. There are over 90 million profiles in their database. 

The feature I like most is its advanced fake followers check. They also have an algorithm that tells you how real the comments are on a given Instagrammer’s content. So if you’re in a vertical that might be susceptible to comment pods and fake followers, TrendHERO can help you suss out which Instagrammers are worth it and which aren’t.

The great thing about TrendHERO is they’re giving you a 14-day free trial just for listening to Winfluence! And if you decide you want to use the platform after that, the lite plan is just $15.99 per month. 

Sign up for that free trial now at trendhero.io/falls.

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.

Not long ago, a client informed me they were moving their influencer marketing budget to their media agency. As in those who plan and buy advertisements. 

Previous to that point, my team and I managed the growth of several valuable and productive relationships over the course of several years. There were about five or six content creators we worked with consistently. We would mix in new ones to expand reach or try new approaches with, see how that went and perhaps add them to the mix. 

The brand wasn’t unhappy with what they were getting out of the influence programs we were building for them. But someone within the corporate structure decided influencer marketing was an ad buy, so the creative agency shouldn’t be managing it.

Needless to say, the 4-5 years of relationship building kind of went out the window. A couple of them even called asking what was going on. They weren’t renewed for the next campaign. The media firm just started picking influencers based on reach rather than relationships. They paid no attention to established channels of influence.

Another client I worked with a few years back insisted that influencers were an extension of their public relations effort. They were today’s journalists so everything should run through that department for influencer activations.

Still a third person I know, not a client though, says he handles influencers on his social media team because they’re instrumental in content creation for his brand. He treats them like freelance designers and photographers creating content for his social channels.

So, where does influencer marketing lie in the org chart? Who is responsible for managing those campaigns and budgets?

I’ll tell you what I think in today’s commentary.

We have a new sponsor to the show. I’ve been testing TrendHERO for the last two weeks. It’s a new but advanced influencer marketing software platform specific to Instagram. TrendHERO can help you search and discover Instagrammers based on a wide range of filters, from nano influencers, all the way to celebrities. There are over 90 million profiles in their database. 

The feature I like most is its advanced fake followers check. They also have an algorithm that tells you how real the comments are on a given Instagrammer’s content. So if you’re in a vertical that might be susceptible to comment pods and fake followers, TrendHERO can help you suss out which Instagrammers are worth it and which aren’t.

The great thing about TrendHERO is they’re giving you a 14-day free trial just for listening to Winfluence! And if you decide you want to use the platform after that, the lite plan is just $15.99 per month. 

Sign up for that free trial now at trendhero.io/falls.

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.