Winfluence with Jason Falls

You could argue that one communications discipline that has changed more than others as a result of the world of social media is public relations. is a PR pro who came to the profession at the dawn of the digital area. He is a digital strategist for Golin, one of the larger public relations firms in the U.S. He and I chatted about the media landscape, why some public relations professionals are still not hip to the whole social media or influencer marketing game, what the mainstream media’s problem is with influencers and a lot more.

But then Jim shared a case study and his philosophy on hyper-local influence. Now this is really fascinating stuff because it takes influence marketing down to the street level, beyond the nano-influencer, even. Jim actually got super granular to tap into people whose primary influence is over their family and friends … and he did it in such a way that it was successful and even scaled, at least within a local market.

And listen closely to how he triangulated the influencers he used. It’s kind of amazing.

Jim’s work goes to another point I underline in the book—everyone has influence. When we’re building strategies to influence, not just those that involve influencers, the offline is as important than the online.

He also dives into his definition of an Alpha consumer, which is kind of the holy grail of influencers to partner with.  

This episode of Winfluence, the podcast, is sponsored by Winfluence, the book! Get a special discount by clicking the button below, buying on the Entrepreneur Press bookstore and using the discount code FALLS20. That earns you 20% off the retail price, just for being a Winfluence (the podcast) listener. Read and learn why we’ve been backed into a corner to think influencer marketing means Instagram and YouTube and how reframing it to be “influence” marketing makes us smarter marketers.

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.

Billion Dollar Boy, an influencer marketing agency based in both the U.K. and U.S., publishes the pay rates of its influence campaigns broken down by ethnicity on its website. This bold act of unabashed transparency is a stark flag in the landscape of an industry challenged by the influencer pay gap and how influencers of color are treated by agencies and brands.

CEO Edward East joins Winfluence to explain why his firm is so open about what CPMs and the like it pays broken down by race. We also discuss how gender might play into the pay gap issue and what other firms might do to emulate the leadership of Billion Dollar Boy in the practice. We also discuss influencer fraud and how to combat it.

East also explains what Billion Dollar Boy is and does to distinguish it from other influencer marketing solutions.

This episode of Winfluence, the podcast, is sponsored by Winfluence, the book! Get a special discount by clicking the button below, buying on the Entrepreneur Press bookstore and using the discount code FALLS20. That earns you 20% off the retail price, just for being a Winfluence (the podcast) listener. Read and learn why we’ve been backed into a corner to think influencer marketing means Instagram and YouTube and how reframing it to be “influence” marketing makes us smarter marketers.

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.

One of the topics I explore throughout the book Winfluence - Reframing Influencer Marketing to Ignite Your Brand is that everyone can be an influencer. In fact, the whole point of the book is to say that we need to focus on influence marketing (without the R) so we don’t fall into the trap of thinking we’re only talking about people with big follower counts on Instagram and YouTube.

In the book we talk about the circles of influence where I illustrate you can build influence strategies through your employees, you vendor partners and your customers.

AdoreMe.com uses customers as its influencers, intentionally turning influencer marketing on its head. Its creators community welcomes in passionate brand fans and rewards them with gift cards for more product purchases when they post about the brand to their social followings. 

You can have 10 followers and be an AdoreMe.com influencer.

Ranjan Roy is AdoreMe’s VP of Strategy. He joined me recently to explain the customer loyalist as influencer approach the company takes, why it evolved from experiments with larger audience influencers they didn’t find particularly effective and he answers the question of whether or not that kind of influencer strategy would work in other verticals.

We also dig into the really cool purpose-led brand that is AdoreMe, which is not the only unique thing about the company. Instead of finding ambassador or CRM software to fuel this Creator network, Ranjan and team built the software that fuels their program internally. So we talk about the challenge and opportunity of building your own mousetrap.

Give it a listen and then please, share it with someone who may enjoy the episode as well.

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.

When you get down to the core of what an online influencer is, these are people who leverage self-publishing tools like blogs, social networks, photo and video sharing sites to create content. Those that create compelling content or engage an audience of people around that content, or both, accumulate a following of people they have some degree of influence over. 

One of those platforms where people create content and build an audience is podcasts. The current wave of podcast explosion which includes the emergence of the one you’re listening to, is actually the second generation of podcasts if you will. The medium had its first wave in the early to mid-2000s. 

In 2007, an aspiring science fiction writer was turned down by publisher after publisher. And then he read an article about podcasting. After some investigation, he decided to start recording the first part of his book as episodes of a podcast. Fast forward a couple years and his audience of 50,000 listeners suddenly looked appealing to St. Marten’s Press, a well-known publisher.

That author was J.C. Hutchins. The novel was 7th Son: Descent. He was a new media publisher who built an audience in a self-publishing medium and became an influencer. And that led him to the opportunity to sell his work through a traditional publishing medium. Some might call that being “legit” but it’s probably now becoming more aligned with “old fashioned.”

Hutchins went on to self-publish the second and third book in the series. He’s continued his writing for television shows and other side projects, but also leads the content efforts for a content marketing firm. 

J.C. joined me on the show to talk about his episodic life through self- and traditional publishing, becoming influential and putting that into perspective with age. We both share some back and forth of our experience in publishing, so for those of you interested in writing a book or self-publishing something, this episode will be particularly interesting. 

He also says if he had it all to do over again, he would do a few things differently.

This episode of Winfluence, the podcast, is sponsored by Winfluence, the book! Get a special discount by clicking the button below, buying on the Entrepreneur Press bookstore and using the discount code FALLS20. That earns you 20% off the retail price, just for being a Winfluence (the podcast) listener. Read and learn why we’ve been backed into a corner to think influencer marketing means Instagram and YouTube and how reframing it to be “influence” marketing makes us smarter marketers.

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 book is officially launched and for those of you who have your copy of Winfluence - Reframing Influencer Marketing to Ignite Your Brand, you’ve probably started in on the book and know the name Tiffany Mitchell now. Her story of the now infamous motorcycle accident opens the book. 

To catch those of you up who haven’t yet read her story in the book, Tiffany is Tifforelie online. Her Instagram account has over 200,000 followers. She’s a lifestyle influencer, photographer and artist who has passionate, loyal fans, primarily because she is so very vulnerable with the ups and downs of her life. 

The motorcycle accident I write more about in the book was controversial because the photographs she chose to share in its aftermath were very good. Too good. Professional. And in one, there was a SmartWater bottle conspicuously placed. Social media, then the traditional media exploded with claims she staged it, it was all a sponsorship play and so on. 

It wasn’t staged. It also wasn’t sponsored. And the incident was one of several beacons in the influencer space in 2019 the mainstream media grabbed hold of to declare influencer marketing dead. And Tiffany's opportunities dried up for a year afterward. 

But, Tiffany is still Tifforelie and still providing outstanding content, engaging her audience and she got back to occasionally partnering with brands and sharing partner content as well. To celebrate the launch of the book, Tiffany agreed to come on the show, rehash a little of the story one more time, but also dive into how she approaches brand partnerships, creating content and the risks of being out there. 

She’s very candid in her advice for aspiring influencers and offers up interesting insights into the content creator’s mindset that brands and agency types alike will learn from.

This episode of Winfluence - The Influence Marketing Podcast is presented by Winfluence - Reframing Influencer Marketing to Ignite Your Brand, my new book from Entrepreneur Press. You can find it in bookstores everywhere.

Winfluence, the book, is not just a strategic blueprint to help you employ smart influence marketing strategies for your business or clients, but it explains why our common perception of influencer marketing is all wrong. I take you through how to re-think and reframe the concepts to turn influencer marketing into influence marketing … broaden the perspective and open new avenues of leveraging influential people -- online and offline -- to grow your business.

Winfluence (the podcast) listeners get a special 20% off code. Go to http://jason.online/buywinfluence and on checkout, use the code FALLS20 for 20% off the retail price.

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 official launch date of the book, Winfluence - Reframing Influencer Marketing to Ignite Your Brand - is Tuesday! This is technically the last episode of the podcast before the book is officially out — though Amazon has already started shipping it, so you can get it before then — but that launch date brings us to another book sneak peek episode and today we’re going to talk to Daniel Lemin.

He is the co-author of Talk Triggers - The Complete Guide to Creating Customers with Word of Mouth, written with Jay Baer. We talked about word of mouth on the last episode with Ted Wright and he comes up in the conversation here, too. But Daniel and I chatted while I was writing the book because I use some research he and Jay Baer conducted that was relevant to influencers. But I needed clarification as to whether or not an online influencer might qualify as an “expert” in terms of a source for product recommendations and research.

For the conversation today, we start there, but get a little deeper in what role influencers play in ratings and reviews and Daniel’s main area of focus which is online reputation management or ORM. He explains what that is for those of you who may not know, but it’s essentially a combination of the disciplines of SEO, social media, content, public relations, corporate comms and beyond, to ensure a company’s online presence is protected. 

Daniel recently joined the team at Edelman, one of the world’s largest PR firms, to head a team devoted to ORM. You can find him online at DanielLemin.com or on Twitter or LinkedIn.

This episode of Winfluence - The Influence Marketing Podcast is presented by Winfluence - Reframing Influencer Marketing to Ignite Your Brand, my new book from Entrepreneur Press. You can find it in bookstores everywhere.

Winfluence, the book, is not just a strategic blueprint to help you employ smart influence marketing strategies for your business or clients, but it explains why our common perception of influencer marketing is all wrong. I take you through how to re-think and reframe the concepts to turn influencer marketing into influence marketing … broaden the perspective and open new avenues of leveraging influential people -- online and offline -- to grow your business.

Winfluence (the podcast) listeners get a special 20% off code. Go to http://jason.online/buywinfluence and on checkout, use the code FALLS20 for 20% off the retail price.

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.

Word of Mouth has been called the holy grail of marketing. Some of the world’s best marketing case studies center around brands with great word of mouth, or WOM programs. The Harley Davidson Owners Group, Maker’s Mark Ambassadors, Fiskars Scissors, Pabst Blue Ribbon’s hip resurgence—all classic Word of Mouth case studies. 

But Word of Mouth is still a bit of an enigma to many brands. The output isn’t an ad. Or a website. Or a piece of collateral. The outcomes … at least of those of successful programs … is often incredible lift for the brand over time. But over time is complicated. Was it this magic sauce word-of-mouth that you don’t actually see or was it all the other marketing things we were doing?

Ted Wright has authored probably half of the top 10 most successful word of mouth marketing programs. He is perhaps known most for reigniting the Pabst Blue Ribbon brand 20 years ago. A good portion of Chapter 14 of Winfluence - Reframing Influencer Marketing to Ignite Your Brand is pieces of my interview for the book.

But I wanted to go deeper with him on some of his experience and ideas about word of mouth to see if influence marketing and even online influencers are just a variation of the theme. In some ways, I feel like what we do as influence marketers is build word of mouth programs. But I know better than to outright claim that because folks like Ted tend to take exception to people hitching onto their wagon without at least running it by them first.

In the spirit of my interviews of late, I suppose, we get a little vocal toward the end as Ted builds an argument that influencers aren't effective. But that's what happens me Ted and I get together. We enjoy the disagreements and are never disagreeable with one another.

Enjoy this one. Ted Wright is always fun to talk to.

You can find Ted on LinkedIn and Fizz at FizzCorp.com.

This episode of Winfluence - The Influence Marketing Podcast is presented by Winfluence - Reframing Influencer Marketing to Ignite Your Brand, my new book from Entrepreneur Press. You can find it in bookstores everywhere.

Winfluence, the book, is not just a strategic blueprint to help you employ smart influence marketing strategies for your business or clients, but it explains why our common perception of influencer marketing is all wrong. I take you through how to re-think and reframe the concepts to turn influencer marketing into influence marketing … broaden the perspective and open new avenues of leveraging influential people -- online and offline -- to grow your business.

Winfluence (the podcast) listeners get a special 20% off code. Go to http://jason.online/buywinfluence and on checkout, use the code FALLS20 for 20% off the retail price.

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 hard to dig deep into social media marketing or influencer marketing and not come across the name Jim Tobin. He started one of the first social media agencies at Ignite Social Media in 2007. When he saw influence marketing becoming its own thing, he launched a second firm called Carusele which helps brands and other agencies drive performance-based influence marketing programs.

Jim and Erin Ledbetter lead the team and Carusele. Both joined me to talk about the evolution of both firms and how each company interacts with each other. But then we get into their approach to performance-based influence marketing. Carusele guarantees outcomes. It does so with a mix of organic and paid executions, but also with interesting innovations in analytics for influencers.

Carusele has developed a True View metric to report the actual views of an influencers content, rather than reporting reach numbers based on the amount of followers someone has.

Tobin is one of the industry experts I interviewed for Winfluence - Reframing Influencer Marketing to Ignite Your Brand and the book includes a few Carusele case studies. He, Ledbetter and I dig deeper in this episode into how that particular agency ticks and what innovations they're bringing to the space. We also talk about whether brand paid spend on influencer content can damage the influencer's organic reach. So lots to cover here.

If you like the episode, please share it with your network.

This episode of Winfluence is made possible by Podchaser Pro, a media database that is solely focused on podcasts. Find and prioritize podcasts for media planning, public relations or influencer outreach and discover each podcast's audience size and demographics. It's about time podcasts -- which reach over 100 million Americans each month -- had proper media planning information available to brands and agencies. Now they do. Go to PodchaserPro.com/falls to sign up and reach more and more relevant customers through podcast sponsorships and outreach. Be sure to go to the URL PodchaserPro.com/falls so they know you heard about PodChaserPro here.

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.

Nick Bilton's HBO documentary Fake Famous portrays influencers as superficial, purposeless and purveyors of staging their lives, followings and engagement. The film is compelling and certainly exposes the worst practices of social media influencers trying to just create fame. But it leaves out the rest of influencers, I would argue most of them, that build genuine trust and engagement with real followers through great content and personality.

Bilton joined me on Winfluence to have a little intellectual sparring match over the issues I had with the show. The discussion was, frankly, an amazing back and forth and exploration of some of the problems with influence marketing we both agree are problems and should be addressed. Bilton's overall point in making the film aligns with a notion I think we can all get behind—social media's impact on society needs a good cleaning up.

But he sees influencers as being overrun with the peace sign, duck lips, selfie-addicts who do buy followers and engagement. I see that segment as a problem, but not nearly the majority of what's out there. The back and forth was healthy and fun. I applaud Bilton, who is a seasoned journalist who writes for Vanity Fair and formerly wrote about technology and politics for the New York Times from 2013-16, for agreeing to an interview he had to know would potentially be combative.

It was, but in a very respectful, friendly discussion. Yes, I believe the film misses the boat on the full spectrum of influencers. Nick doesn't. And that's fine.

The movie is well made and written and is certainly worth watching. You can find it on HBO and HBO Max. Just keep in mind there's some disagreement on whether or not his portrayal of influencers is representative of them all.

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.

One of the perspectives we haven’t touched on nearly enough on Winfluence is that of the talent manager or influencer agent, if you will. At some point in an influencer’s growth, they may look to a talent agency, manager or agent to help them manage or grow their business.

The talent manager, however, presents a bit of perception issue. Many agency strategists and even brand-side marketing managers hear “talent manager” and think, ‘Oh, great. There’s another 25% in cost just to use that particular influencer.” That’s not a fair perception, really, but a talent manager’s job is to look out for the influencer, make sure their value is well represented and respected and their likeness, rights and such are protected.

Kyle Hjelmeseth is the founder of G&B Digital Management, a talent management firm that represents influencers and content creators. It started when his wife, Stephanie needed representation. She is an influencer in the style and beauty space … she’s @honeynsilk on Instagram.

Kyle came on the show to talk about his firm and their interesting and unique, value-based position. In fact, G&B is made up of a roster of almost intentionally diverse influencers. Kyle and his wife are both people of color, though Kyle admits his mixed-race makeup isn’t obvious. 

So we talk about the diversity topic and 2020’s impact on that. But I also dig in and ask him all the questions about that cost misperception, what a manager’s goals are for the clients and how agencies and brands can work best with them. I also asked him when an influencer knows it’s time to seek representation. 

This episode of Winfluence is made possible by Podchaser Pro, a media database that is solely focused on podcasts. Find and prioritize podcasts for media planning, public relations or influencer outreach and discover each podcast's audience size and demographics. It's about time podcasts -- which reach over 100 million Americans each month -- had proper media planning information available to brands and agencies. Now they do. Go to PodchaserPro.com/falls to sign up and reach more and more relevant customers through podcast sponsorships and outreach. Be sure to go to the URL PodchaserPro.com/falls so they know you heard about PodChaserPro here.

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.