Winfluence with Jason Falls

Winfluence - Reframing Influencer Marketing to Ignite Your Brand is set to hit shelves February 23. In the coming episodes here, I'll interview some of the experts and practitioners that are highlighted in the book.

Today’s sneak peek guest is Lisa Joy Rosner, the senior vice-president for brand and digital at Oracle. She was the chief marketing officer at NetBase in 2009 when I was building Social Media Explorer, my old blog, and writing a lot about social technology. She reached out to me as an influencer in that segment despite the fact I was some random PR guy in Kentucky—not a big shot in Silicon Valley. 

The story of why she chose me and what happened after I wrote about NetBase is a great lesson I share in the book. We start off the episode talking about it as well. But we then dive into Lisa Joy’s deep experience in leading marketing teams for large, enterprise, B2B software companies. I ask her if influencers are imperative in the B2B space and how she has used them over the years. We then spent some time exploring the new challenge she faces at Oracle.

Lisa Joy has spent 30 years as a marketing leader in Silicon Valley and was leveraging influencer marketing before there were websites. She gave me examples of how she has used influencers over the years to both change perceptions of the company she was working for, or to educate her target audiences to open more opportunities for future sales.

This episode is made possible by PodchaserPro, where media planners, pubic relations and influence marketing professionals go to find audience and demographic information about podcasts. Build better media and PR plans by choosing the right podcasts based on data. Sign up for PodchaserPro today at PodchaserPro.com/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.

Is a celebrity an influencer? By that, I mean someone that falls into the category of influencer marketing? Or is celebrity endorsement a category in and of itself?

I tend to classify celebrities as different because they’ve earned their influencer for something other than being an influencer. Even if a content creator illustrates expertise or talent, they are building influence themselves, not through sports or the media or movies or television.

That definition aside, though, celebrities do have influence. The point of my exploration of influence marketing, through my new book and my podcast, is that we have to reframe our thinking to steer away from filtering everything through influencers … with an R … and influence, which is the action you’re trying to achieve. And celebrities can help you achieve influence over an audience. 

Sarah Shaw has made a career out of leveraging celebrities to enhance both her own brands … she started a handbag company that got big thanks to celebrities showing up with them … and those of her clients. She joined me to talk about the art and practice of getting real celebrities, not just online influencers with a lot of followers, to try, use and even endorse your product. And often times, it happens without having to pay them. Sarah says it’s easier than you think.

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 Facebook set to kill the influencer economy? That question arose during my recent conversation with Gary Arndt of Everything Everywhere and the Everything Everywhere podcast, and it’s a question we seriously have to consider and contend with in the coming year or years.

He explained every time a brand or an agency, or one of the influencer marketing platforms, pays an influencer to post content on social platform, those are dollars that the social platforms aren’t getting. How long do you think Mark Zuckerberg and the MBAs that pull the strings at those networks will tolerate that?

Gary Arndt is one of the most influential travel creators in the world. His Everything Everywhere blog has been a mainstay for the industry for more than a decade. I asked him to come on the show to discuss is recent pivot to podcasting. But boy, did I ever uncover so much more. We talk about his shift away from social media influencer work because of COVID, the volatility of the travel space and the potential threat from Facebook. He goes deep in his strategy -- including the dollars and cents monetization approach -- to building his new podcast. 

But we also talk about how social media is killing blogging, how an expert in the field collaborates with brands in multiple mediums and what mistakes he sees brands and influencers making today he would clean up if he could.

I call this a "head explode" episode. Listen. Learn. And share!

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 first jobs I tackled when I began focusing on social media marketing in the mid-2000s was to arm wrestle with a room full of corporate lawyers about what a client could and couldn't do on social media. Fortunately, I was working with attorneys who had an attitude of possibility, not risk-aversion. They tried to find ways within the rules and regulations to say "yes" rather than "no."

Most influencers or content creators out there don't have the advantage of a room full of lawyers on their side. And reading things like mandates from the Federal Trade Commission or legal briefs from cases that set precedent in legal matters is better than sleeping pills. So influencers need to know about the law, but don't always have somewhere to turn for legal advice.

Jamie Lieberman is that somewhere to turn. She and her team at Hashtag Legal specialize in helping small businesses, entrepreneurs and influencers understand how the law affects them, their clients, content and beyond. We chatted recently about the ins and outs of FTC disclosure, intellectual property and even defamation, which Jamie brought up as an area of concern.

Even if you think you know how to avoid legal risk as an influencer or even what you need to understand as a brand or agency, reviewing the legal issues of the day is a good idea. Listen in to my conversation with Jamie Lieberman and share the episode with an influencer friend when you're finished.

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.

Dr. Karen Freberg is heading into her 11th year of teaching public relations at the University of Louisville. She also teaches a master’s level course for one of my alma maters … West Virginia University. Dr. Freberg started teaching a new version of public relations as the 2000s were winding down and social media had started to work its way into businesses and brands. She is one of the pioneer comms professors who has redefined what is taught in the classroom about PR. 

And, as one might expect from a leader in the space, Dr. Freberg has written a new text. The book is called Discovering Public Relations and while it is a college textbook, it’s written and designed to be a strong business book as well. In fact, at the end of each chapter, Dr. Freberg outlines which topics are must-knows for taking and passing the Accreditation in Public Relations course. That APR standard is the industry’s designation for, “I know my stuff.”

This book is great for students learning about the craft of PR, and influence marketing from a PR perspective. But it’s also good for business owners and brands who need to understand what public relations in today’s world means. Heck, it’s even a great resource for influencers who want to learn how to leverage PR partners to enhance their content, and their revenue. 

I asked Dr. Freberg to talk about what the book has to offer, but we also find out about her journey from four-time All-American college athlete to teaching college athletes and students all about PR, media relations and, yes, influence marketing.

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 I were to describe a person to you who had built a large following for themselves online, parlayed that into a job at one of the biggest companies in the world in a given industry, fell ill with cancer, beat that cancer, then started his own agency which is winning national and international awards for its work, what’s the picture in your mind of that person?

My guess is it doesn’t look anything like Suhit Amin. The reason your mind’s eye probably isn’t seeing him? He’s 19 years old. And yes … all of those things I used to describe our imaginary person are not imaginary. That’s the story of his very young life.

Suhit started gaming, then YouTubing at age 13. He discovered YouTube subnetworks and started helping other YouTubers manage their content and advertising revenues. EPL, the biggest gaming company in the world, hired him when he was the ripe old age of 16 years old. One month later, he was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Disease, a cancer of the lymphatic system -- lymph nodes. Fortunately, his prognosis was good, he underwent the necessary treatments and had a clean bill of health two years later. 

Instead of returning to EPL or doing what he’d always done, he decided to follow a dream and start his own talent management and influence marketing agency. Saulderson Media works with brands to engage with influential gamers, YouTubers and other creators. His firm won an Influencer Marketing Award last year for a campaign they did with a video editing software.

Suhit and I caught up recently to talk about his incredible journey and the influencer marketing space. He took me through his path from teenage gamer to knowing the ins and outs of the YouTube multi-channel network ecosystem that supports video creators, through his time at EPL and now his goals and growth at Saulderson Media.

Listen and get inspired by Suhit Amin.

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 a reason Winfluence often features people representing the influence marketing software solutions and it isn't sponsorship dollars. These are the people working in and thinking about influence marketing every day, so they have great insights and perspective to share.

I thought I knew most of the players in the software space until I recently stumbled upon Find Your Influence, an end-to-end influencer marketing software and managed services company based in the Phoenix area. Its co-founders, Jamie Reardon and Cristine Vieria, sat out to build the first complete software solution for the industry. They've been around since 2013.

We did a deep dive into their software platform, but then chatted about what 2021 has in store for us in the influence marketing space. Jamie even opened up the conversation about performance-based influencer marketing, which triggered a slightly different context for me, but we had a very informative and insightful conversation about that and other topics you'll be smarter for hearing.

Dive in with us and be sure to share the episode with a friend or colleague who might enjoy the discussion as well.

This episode is made possible by PodchaserPro.

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.

Arik Hanson offered up a theory on his excellent PR and communications blog Friday. His theory is that older public relations professionals, "completely detests and doesn't trust the influencer culture." He then proceeded to prove the theory with fairly trustworthy facts and statistics, convincing me it's more than a theory.

The key statistics he used to illustrate the problem were ones I'm very familiar with as I, too, used them in Winfluence - Reframing Influencer Marketing to Ignite Your Brand. He pointed to the Edelman Trust Barometer and PR industry research from Cision and PR Week. The Edelman information I report in the book is, according to the 2019 Edelman Trust Barometer, 58 percent of Americans have admitted to purchasing a product based on discovering it through an online influencer. Arik shared similar stats.

Then he cited the Cision and PR Week data surveying public relations and media relations professionals. When asked how much of their PR efforts are focused on mainstream media versus influencers, three out of four—74 percent to be precise—said mainstream media. When's the last time you saw data that indicated media coverage of a product or service led to someone purchasing it?

Instead of just posing my own reactions to Arik's wonderful piece, I called him up and we chatted about it on a special episode of Winfluence - The Influence Marketing Podcast. I played devil's advocate a bit just so we could gut-check both his and my assertions and assumptions, but I think you'll enjoy the discussion and the "what now" ideas we came up with.

Find Arik Hanson's original piece over at ACH Communications where he blogs. You can connect with him on Twitter or LinkedIn as well. Oh, and Arik co-hosts a pretty darn good communications podcast along side Kevin Hunt of General Mills called The Talking Points Podcast. You should subscribe

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.

Rachel Clay of Matter of Form says Influence Marketing is essentially Social SEO -- That is, making sure when someone looks for your brand or type of product on sites like Instagram, there's plenty of great content there to surface you. It's a smart way to translate influence marketing strategy to brands that perhaps think in terms of search.

She shared that opinion during an interesting conversation for Winfluence. We discussed influence strategy, how brands are starting to follow the leading edge companies and think more long-term about their influencer relationships. Clay comes from the PR world, but works primarily on influencer marketing efforts with luxury brands, which she says are a bit more mature than others in the influence world.

We also discussed the differences between the marketplaces in the United Kingdom, where she is based, and the United States. She says the U.S. is far more robust and mature as an influencer marketing ecosystem than what the U.K. offers. She explains more as to why in the discussion.

Give it a listen and be sure to share the episode with someone you know who could use the inspiration.

You can find Rachel Clay on LinkedIn or connect to Matter of Form on its website.

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.

Welcome to our first episode of 2021. Happy New Year!

You know an industry has come to some level of maturation when trade organizations begin to form. Last year, the American Influencer Council was started by a group of creators and brand marketers to try and bring some advocacy for creators to the industry. And one of the key players in that happening was AIC co-founder Qianna Smith Bruneteau. 

Bruneteau is a familiar name to those who watch social media case studies. She previously led social media teams at Nordstrom, Saks Fifth Avenue and the U.S. Tennis Association. Bruneteau might also be the person with the most Shorty Award nominations in history. She’s won two and been nominated seven times. She was also one of the early practitioners of social media for Time, Inc., and Essence Magazine. 

Bruneteau wound up in publishing because she began her digital career as an influencer. A blogger to be more precise. Back in the day when social networks weren’t the primary publishing platform for everyone. That background as an influencer and content creator gives her a unique perspective working from the brand-side of the equation.

It’s that perspective that helped her see that a trade organization like the American Influencer Council was needed. We talked about the role of the AIC, what benefits it provides creators and touched on a lot of the issues that face the industry.

Give it a listen and share with someone who might benefit from what AIC has to offer!

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.