Winfluence with Jason Falls

For years now, one business-to-business, or B2B, marketing tactic has been to build executives of the company up as thought leaders. Reframing that purpose you could argue what B2B companies have been doing for years is building their executives up as influencers in their industries.

Carter Hostelley and his team at LeadTail have been building thought leadership for B2B clients for years, but with the longer-term play in mind of turning them into B2B influencers. He joined me on Winfluence to talk about the emerging trends he sees from what his clients are asking for and going, how executives as influencers has evolved to be a primary strategy today and what the different types of B2B influencers are and where the fall in your marketing funnel activities.

Hostelley actually first wrote about B2B influencer marketing in 2014, which was well before most people were even connecting those two terms. His experience and thought leadership of his own are worth a listen.

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 there is a beat writer for the influencer marketing industry it has to be Joele Forrester from Talking Influence. Her whole job is to interview the movers and shakers, break the news about new software product launches and industry trends, analyze the implications of influencer unions and legal interpretations for the industry and beyond. And she does it brilliantly.

Talking Influence exists to cover the influencer marketing space. The company behind it runs the Influencer Marketing Show and gives out the Influencer Marketing Awards. While all are based in the United Kingdom, they serve the industry on a global scale. 

Joele to sat in with Jason Falls on Winfluence to talk about a lot of great topics she has thoughts on. They discussed the unionization issue, what influencer marketing will look like in the years to come, what her favorite influencer marketing case study is and a lot more. When you want to know something about a particular topic, the person on the beat is the first one you should turn to. So today we turn to Joele Forrester of Talking Influence.

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 few weeks ago on the show, we talked to Emily Ho, the marketing strategist behind Authentically Social and a fashion influencer in her own right under the monicker Authentically Emmie. In that episode we talked about influencer fraud, comment pods, buying followers and the like. I even mused, “When is someone going to create a software to detect comment pods?”

Well, low and behold, I found one that not only has, but started its entire life as a tech startup to do just that for businesses and brands.

HypeAuditor has been on my radar for some time now. They’re an influencer discovery tool that allows you to search for relevant influencers across Instagram, YouTube and TikTok. I found a research report they published on influencer fraud. Here are some high points:

HypeAuditor did the research, so to HypeAuditor I went. CEO Alex Frolov joined me from St. Petersburg, Russia to dive into the research, explain the methodology and chat about the issues at hand. 

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 talked about a handful of books on influencer marketing here on Winfluence. While we await the publishing of Winfluence (the book) in early 2021, Jason Falls couldn’t help having more great discussions with smart people in the space, even other authors.

Justin Blaney is a professor at the University of Washington and the chief innovation officer at Principal Advantage, a lead-generation firm based in Seattle. He and his co-author, Kate Fleming, who is a skin care influencer as well as a digital analyst, have written a great book called Will Post for Profit. Unlike a lot of other influencer marketing books, Justin and Kate actually divide the advice in theirs between influencers and brands. Most books focus on one or other.

That being one of the strengths of the book, Falls talked to Justin about what aspiring influencers could do to launch, build and be successful, then dove deeper into the brand side to discuss what insights he has for them. There’s a little something in this episode for everyone in the influencer marketing space.

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.

Kroger was the first company to launch a branded TikTok challenge. They have also successfully engaged influencers for events like Hispanic Heritage Month and partnered with publishing platforms like Funny or Die to product share-worthy online content.

But the brand also has built incredible social media success in its own right and much of all that success can be linked to Casey Smith. She is the social media manager for influencer and publisher strategy at the Cincinnati-based company.

Smith joined Jason Falls on Winfluence to talk about the company's influence success, her perspective on the dividing line between influencers and celebrities, Kroger's process for creating engaging influence programs and much more.

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 not doing video today online, you’re not getting much traction. And that goes for brands, but also for influencers. Video content is more engaging. It draws people in, makes them stop in their feed and pay attention. 

P.J. Taei is the founder of UScreen. His platform provides just that -- a place for influencers and brands to house video content that can only be accessed through a fee … either one-time or a subscription based access model. He knows a lot about video marketing and the environment for content creators online, especially those who are looking to drive revenue and monetize their videos.

We chatted about video in general and then got into the different ways influencers and brands can monetize video content in this episode of 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.

Few people have been intimately involved in the influencer marketing industry since before it was called influencer marketing. Crystal Duncan is one of them. An early hire at IZEA before it because the behemoth influencer marketing platform, she is now the Senior Vice-President for Influencer Marketing at Edelman, the world's largest public relations firm.

Crystal joined Jason Falls on Digging Deeper, his other podcast, before Winfluence launched. This replay of that interview illustrates her perspective on how big agencies and brands manage influencer marketing campaigns, budgets and beyond.

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 of February of 2020, Twitch has 3.8 million unique broadcasters. As of March, it registered an average of 1.44 million concurrent viewers … that’s 1.44 million people watching all at the same time … on AVERAGE.  So, if you haven’t yet explored Twitch as both a viable platform for reaching consumers via advertising or as a place rich with influencers and opportunities for collaboration, this episode will help.

Mitch Canter is an active Twitch user but also an experienced digital marketer and technology educator. He is a senior web developer, but a social media maven as well. He’s super smart and loves helping businesses of any size understand tech and the web better. 

This conversation is revealing, both for brands and businesses who might find Twitch to be fertile ground for their influence marketing efforts, but also for potential influencers to grow a new audience and channel for their efforts. 

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.

Can influence marketing save broadway? Or how about arts organizations in general? Save might be an inappropriate word. Certainly, COVID and the pandemic restrictions of 2020 have had a huge financial impact on the arts, as would any economically challenging time. And broadway theatres, along with arts centers, theatres, community troops and groups are going to have to resort to some scrappiness in the coming year to get re-established. 

Is Influence marketing the key?

Sam Maher started Yes Broadway as a media company -- an online magazine if you will -- to help people figure out what shows to see, which were duds and the like. It was when he stepped into a producer’s role that he realized influencers could get the word out about the shows. But when he became a producer of a show, he realized he could get influencers to help promote the experience.

He joined Winfluence to discuss what he's learned, talk about how he's now turned on an influence marketing agency arm of YesBroadway and more.

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.

Carlos Gil’s latest book is called The End of Marketing. In it, and in this podcast episode, he claims Influencer Marketing is Bullshit. This is ironic coming from someone who not only advises companies and brands in the marketing space -- where influencers are a hot channel for discussion -- but has built a bit of a career as an influencer in his own right.

Carlos and I have sparred on a topic or two over the years. He’s an instigator and a disruptor and often brings a bit of a contrarian perspective on the status quo in the marketing conversation. But that’s what I respect about him most. I took the bait and had him on the show to spar a bit on the topic. What developed was a deep, interesting conversation about influence, the credibility of company executives, fake influencers, Snapchat's failures and beyond. 

Gil offers ideas in this discussion that are valuable for brand managers and influencers alike. He also opens up a bit about the impostor syndrome and how and why some people might be critical of his career and success, which frankly was refreshing to hear.

Give this one one a good listen, then share it with someone who might appreciate it as much as I did.

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.