Winfluence with Jason Falls

We’re going to do something a little different today. I’ve always been fascinated with the origin stories and journey to content creator or influencers of those that I meet along the way. I’ve met and interviewed dozens who sat out be social media famous and monetize their content. I've talked to many who fell into by accident. 

But the constant thread in all those journeys is their stories are fascinating to me. A couple of weeks ago, I came across a local content creator, influencer and podcaster here in Louisville, honestly by happenstance. I knew who she was, of course. I like to keep my eye on who is creating content in my backyard. But she and I hadn’t had reason to make a more one-to-one connection. Until we did.

Rosa Hart runs LouReview.com. The cornerstone content there is the Lou Review Podcast. She has the obligatory social media channels, too. She mostly reviews restaurants around town, but also shares more broad experiences with events, attractions and the like. 

My team at CIPIO.ai put her on a list of creators matched up with one of our clients. We reached out and were moving through the agreement and deliverables when Rosa decided she didn’t want to connect her channels to our platform. Just didn’t know who CIPIO was and whether or not connecting her social channels to a company like that was a good idea.

My team let me know and I reached to introduce myself more formally and reassure her that we use that connection just to make measurement easy for everyone, we’re a trusted partner and I’m literally a 10 minute drive up the road so you can come ring my neck if we ever do you wrong.

Rosa … invited me to her house. So I went. And probably heard several of the most interesting explanations of a content creator’s origin story, motivations and journeys I’ve ever heard. And, as a bonus, Rosa’s now three-year journey as a content creator has opened up a surprising and awesome new project that brings her day job and her passion together. 

That project is Strong After Stroke, a new offering from Norton Healthcare in Louisville. Rosa's day job is a stroke after care nurse for Norton's Neuroscience Center. The new show launches the very day this episode dropped. You can find it on YouTube as well.

Today on Winfluence, I’m going to take you with me to meet Rosa Hart. This isn’t a virtual interview. We’re going to her house. We’ll meet her dog. Her daughter’s cartoons will play faintly in the background. 

Today’s Winfluence is an audio journey. Come along for the ride. 

This very special episode of Winfluence is presented by CIPIO.ai where you can create a consistent flow of authentic user-generated content to fuel paid, earned, shared and owned campaigns that set your content marketing on fire! One of the main methods of doing that is by shifting your influencer marketing focus to a Community Influence Marketing one. That’s where you discover the influential voices in your own community of customers, fans and followers, and partner with them to create authentic content that recommends your brand. 

Download CIPIO.ai's new ebook called The Marketer’s Guide to Community Influence Marketing. It’s a step-by-step manual that shows you how to do it. The result is a more cost-efficient way to engage creators and drive word-of-mouth marketing while capturing better-performing content for your paid and owned social media 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.

There’s been a shift in the trade winds across the advertising industry in the last few years and the gusts are starting to come into our shores at an alarming rate now. Tighter economies lead to tighter waistlines, at least in the budget metaphor and what was once standard operation procedure goes out with a new way of thinking.

The shift I’m talking about has to do with advertising models. The economy has forced brands to find more efficient ways to get the word out. Spend less, while doing as much, or even more. And while that makes perfect, smart business sense for the brand in question. The impact that tightening has on the services, agencies, vendors and media channels isn’t around the waist. It’s around the neck.

More and more brands are insisting on cost-per-performance ad models. You may also hear them referred to as cost-per-acquisition approaches. Or, if you want to get down to the pedestrian level and call a spade a spade, it’s basically affiliate marketing.

If an influencer. Or a podcast. Or website. Or any other advertising channel helps the brand make money, then and only then, do they get paid. Conversions are the key. Measurement and attribution are most crucial. But if my audience clicks on my link or uses my code upon checkout, I make a commission off the sale.

Pretty simple, right? Pretty fair? 

You brand folks are probably saying yes. I’m saying no. And not only is it not fair. It’s borderline criminal. 

This episode of Winfluence is presented by CIPIO.ai where you can create a consistent flow of authentic user-generated content to fuel paid, earned, shared and owned campaigns that set your content marketing on fire! One of the main methods of doing that is by shifting your influencer marketing focus to a Community Influence Marketing one. That’s where you discover the influential voices in your own community of customers, fans and followers, and partner with them to create authentic content that recommends your brand. 

Download CIPIO.ai's new ebook called The Marketer’s Guide to Community Influence Marketing. It’s a step-by-step manual that shows you how to do it. The result is a more cost-efficient way to engage creators and drive word-of-mouth marketing while capturing better-performing content for your paid and owned social media 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.

TikTok may be in trouble in the United States. Our Congress has no fewer than four pieces of legislation in motion right now that in some form or fashion could ban the use of the platform in America. Most constitutional law experts are skeptical such a ban could survive scrutiny of the courts because it’s a clear violation of freedom of speech, a first-amendment right in this country. 

Now, I’m the last person in the world interested in talking politics. I gave up on the possibility our elected officials actually represented the public’s interests in the 1990s. I keep informed so my vote still counts for something, but have zero interest in discussing or debating our dysfunctional, two-parties with all the power system.

So, that’s not what we’re going to do on this episode of Winfluence. We’re going to actually look at a real TikTok ban and imagine the implications for the what-if scenario. 

India banned TikTok and more than 200 other apps three years ago. It was in response to Chinese military aggression along the border between the two countries in June of 2020. The Indian government cited privacy and national sovereignty as the main issues. The move abruptly turned off the app for 200 million Indian users. 

Once again, that was almost three years ago. So we’ve had time to see how such a ban would take hold. Yes, India and the U.S. are different countries and cultures. But we’re not that far apart. Surely, we can glean some insights and peer into a possible future by understanding India now versus India with TikTok.

Pooja ParasuRaman is my professional counterpart at Affable.ai. It is an end-to-end influencer marketing platform. While Affable is a competitor of CIPIO.ai, technically speaking, we both have different philosophical approaches to the practice. And a common level of respect for one another.

Pooja operates out of India. So she not only has first-hand experience with what the TikTok ban has done to her country, but she’s working in the influencer marketing world where TikTok is for many creators, a primary source of income, and for brands engaging in influencer marketing, a fairly effective channel on which to market.

I asked Pooja to join and educate us on the ban and its effects in India so we can have a peek at what might soon be our own reality in the States …or perhaps your reality in your country should a TikTok ban be in the offing.

This episode of Winfluence is presented by CIPIO.ai. the community commerce marketing platform. You brands out there probably have a content problem. You need more and better performing content for paid social campaigns. Facebook, Instagram, TikTok … the ad creative that performs best is user-generated content. CIPIO.ai does two things really well. We source authentic UGC from your community of customers, fans and followers and fill those content coffers. The other thing … identify the influential people in your community and have them also post on their channels, sharing valuable word-of-mouth recommendations with their friends, family and followers. 

Book a demo with me … Jason Falls. I’m going to do the demo with you. Just go to jasonfalls.co/cipio now and fill out that form. 

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 haven’t been smacked in the face with a conversation about AI or artificial intelligence in the last month, and you’re in the marketing space, you’re not getting out much. The algorithms and machine learning robots have gotten awfully good and at an awfully lot of things, including written content, graphic and image generation and all sorts of other tasks. 

But what does AI have to do with influencer marketing? And how will it impact what we do as brands, agencies, and creators? How will it impact the software vendors we work with?

I wanted to explore that topic a bit with Daria Belova and Anne Puzakova. They are both with HypeFactory, a very successful global influencer marketing agency. They’ve been winning awards and making some noise working with a lot of clients in the gaming world, among other verticals. 

We dug into AI and how it will impact influencers and influencer marketing, but then also took a tour through the Metaverse and influencers there, virtual influencers and how or whether they can even be trustworthy and a lot more. 

This episode of Winfluence is presented by CIPIO.ai. the community commerce marketing platform. You brands out there probably have a content problem. You need more and better performing content for paid social campaigns. Facebook, Instagram, TikTok … the ad creative that performs best is user-generated content. CIPIO.ai does two things really well. We source authentic UGC from your community of customers, fans and followers and fill those content coffers. The other thing … identify the influential people in your community and have them also post on their channels, sharing valuable word-of-mouth recommendations with their friends, family and followers. 

Book a demo with me … Jason Falls. I’m going to do the demo with you. Just go to jasonfalls.co/cipio now and fill out that form. 

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.

Most of you know I spent the last five years or so at Cornett, a very good advertising agency in Lexington, Kentucky. Being an influencer marketing strategist at an agency is both fun and challenging. When you’re at an agency, you get work with a variety of clients, so you don’t get lulled into the same ole, same ole if you’re just working on one brand. 

But, clients need cajoling. Educating. They don’t always know how influencer marketing works. Sometimes they don’t even really believe in it. And more often than not, they try to turn it into a programmatic ad buy and say, “Just tell them to post about the product and tell people to buy it.”

Certainly, not all clients are like that. Some push the envelope and bring cutting edge ideas to you. Others trust your judgment and vision and let you build concepts that may move the needle. Or even win an industry award or two. 

Zach Walker knows all about the ebb and flow influencer marketing at an agency. He is the social media director at The Motion Agency in Chicago. Influencer marketing is one of his charges there. 

He’s worked with brands like Oscar Meyer, Burt’s Bees, Triscuit, Kool-Aid and Fireball Whiskey, which we actually have in common. I also found out he’s actively running an influence marketing effort for the smart app capabilities of my garage door opener brand. I’m kinda bummed I wasn’t on his list.

Then again, you don’t listen to me because I can give you good advice on smart home appliances, right?

I invited Zach to sit in with me on Winfluence to talk about the unique linchpin position of leading influence marketing for an agency, get his thoughts influencer compensation, coaxing clients into investing in the practice, and a lot more. Just a show full of good tips and tricks for those of you in similar positions … or those brands, creators and partners who work with agencies to get better feel for their perspective on what we do.

This episode of Winfluence is presented by CIPIO.ai, the community commerce marketing platform. One of the family of apps in CIPIO.ai’s arsenal is turning heads at brands and agencies. And that is our Community Generated Content application. It helps you source UGC on scale for paid and organic social creative and beyond. To learn more about CIPIO.ai’s user-generated content solution, visit CIPIO.ai/cgc. 

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 got a special episode this week. You may recall a couple of weeks ago, I shared an episode of The Rise – The Community Commerce Marketing Show in which I talked to author and marketing thought-leader Jay Baer about his Time to Win research. This week, I share another episode of The Rise for similar reasons.

Mark Schaefer is another marketing industry expert and author-speaker type. He and I have been friends and collaborators for several years. I’ve always enjoyed his perspective on the marketing world. He actually authored one of the first big books about influence marketing called Return on Influence. Well worth the read, though it’s a few years old now.

Well, Mark has a new book out now called Belonging to the Brand. The subtitle of the book is “Why Community is the Last Great Marketing Strategy.” As you might expect for a guy who leads marketing for CIPIO.ai, which is the Community Commerce Marketing Company, this book immediately won me over. It’s chock full of goodness so having Mark on The Rise was a no-brainer.

But his insights and ideas are very relevant for us on Winfluence, too. Your content creators and influencers you work with are extensions of your community. If you do it well, they become beacons both in and for your community to stay connected, engaged and informed. 

Today, we’re going to watch and listen to that episode of The Rise and learn more about Mark’s new book, his take on why community is the last great marketing strategy and a lot more.

You can subscribe to The Rise at cipio.ai/podcast or by searching for The Rise – The Community Commerce Marketing Show wherever you get your podcasts. The show’s also stream each Wednesday at 2 p.m. Eastern, 11 a.m. Pacific on CIPIO.ai’s LinkedIn, YouTube and Twitter channels. I often simulcast it on my Twitter channel, too. Make a note on your calendar to check it out, if you’re interested.

This week, though, you don’t have to do anything more than you’re doing now. I’m going to play an episode of The Rise from a couple weeks back when my pal Mark Schaefer came on to talk about Belonging to the Brand.

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 friend of mine reached out recently and asked me if influencer marketing was possible for B2B businesses. Keep in mind this friend isn’t in the bubble of marketing and doesn’t follow along with the same type of topics you or I do. He also probably didn’t give it much thought before asking.

When I explained to him that not only is B2B influencer marketing possible, but in my opinion, B2B brands have been deploying influencer marketing in far more sophisticated ways than B2C brands for a long time. I asked him rhetorically, “Who do B2B brands call on to be guests on their webinars or co-author reports and white papers? Industry experts, right? Who are influencers.”

My friend is a pretty bright guy. He actually responded with a “Duh” moment and thanked me for correcting his blind spot. 

It is true. Business to business brands use influence marketing all the time. I happen to host second podcast and streaming video show for CIPIO.ai called The Rise – The Community Commerce Marketing Show. You can find that wherever you get your podcasts or at CIPIO.ai/podcast. 

Our guests on that show are influential people in the world of marketing, business, technology and community building. We’ve talked to big-shot industry thought leaders like Bruce Cleveland, author of The Traction Gap, former Hubspot marketing lead Jeanne Hopkins, and many more. The reason we’re bringing those people to the podcast is because they are influential in the space of marketing decision makers and C-level executives we hope to reach with our product. They are influencers.

Soon, we’ll be rolling out webinars featuring someone other than me to help our customers and prospects learn better techniques to build and nurture community. CIPIO.ai’s suite of applications facilitates things like community influence marketing, so leveraging influential people who are knowledgeable about the topic attracts more people to our content which drives more leads and customers.

In fact, every webinar you’ve ever attended that featured a speaker from outside the company presenting the webinar … influence marketing for that company.

I can talk about this all day, but I thought it best to bring an influencer in the B2B influencer marketing space to the show to bring far more wisdom than I can muster. Rachel Miller lead influencer marketing efforts for SAP for a long time. She’s now heading up her own agency working with other clients on influence strategy in both the B2B and B2C space. 

Rachel has long been one of the big B2B brand representatives at the various influencer marketing marketing events out there, so a lot of the world of B2B influence marketing thinkers have learned from or been inspired by her. 

Today, we’re going to mine Rachel’s experience for insights on B2B versus B2C, what issues are holding brands back in influence marketing and more.

Winfluence is made possible by Cipio.ai – The Community Commerce Marketing platform. What does that mean? It’s an influencer marketing software solution, but it has additional apps that function to tap into your brand community to drive commerce. Community Commerce Marketing moves beyond influencers to fans and followers, customers, employees and more. Try its generative AI application, Community Generative AI (GCI), with a two-week free trial at cipio.ai/cgiapp, and generate a library of social captions in minutes you can use right away.

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 got a special episode today for a couple of reasons. First, my pal Jay Baer has new research out on the Time to Win. It’s a fascinating study on how responsiveness in all its variations really can be the difference between getting new business and not … and keeping business and not.

Jay and I came up together as social media talking heads, if you will. His Convince and Convert blog and his awesome insights and ideas about social media catapulted him to become one of the most sought after speakers in the marketing space. His work took him through several themes, and best-selling books, but has sort of always revolved around customer service, customer care and customer experience.

His book Hug Your Haters was a fantastic look at how the social media customer care theory of engaging those who slam you online became an instant handbook for customer experience professionals. He followed that with perhaps the best book ever written about word-of-mouth marketing. It’s called Talk Triggers. I refer to it a lot and even included some of the research from it in my book.

One of the fundamental things that makes Jay’s books far more thorough and impressive than mine or those of many others, is they are typically based upon a foundation of original research. Hell of a formula to write best-selling books if you can muster it. Jay can. And he’s good at it.

For his next big act, Jay has done original research around that topic of brand responsiveness. And the ideas and insights he’s sharing as part of his speaking engagements and webinars these days are fascinating and inspiring for all brands and businesses. 

I invited Jay to join me to talk about The Time to Win on a recent episode of The Rise – The Community Commerce Marketing Show. That podcast and streaming video show is the second reason this episode of Winfluence is a bit of a treat. I’ve not shared a lot about my other podcast here, so this gives me impetus to do so.

As you all know I took on the challenge of becoming the executive vice-president for marketing at CIPIO.ai, in November. We’ve since launched a content strategy to help educate the market … and that means all of you … on the concept of Community Commerce Marketing. That’s activities that help brands grow by working through its community of customers, fans, followers, employees and more as a starting point. 

The Rise – The Community Commerce Marketing Show is our weekly interview series with thought-leaders and experts from the world of marketing, business, sales, e-commerce, and community building. The underlying focus is to make the audience smarter about leveraging community to drive their brand’s growth. 

Influence marketing is part of it. CIPIO.ai even has a dandy influence marketing software solution that starts with your brand community as influencers. But the show goes beyond that into topics we wouldn’t normally cover here on Winfluence. 

You can subscribe to The Rise at cipio.ai/podcast or by searching for The Rise – The Community Commerce Marketing Show wherever you get your podcasts. The show’s also stream each Wednesday at 2 p.m. Eastern, 11 a.m. Pacific on CIPIO.ai’s LinkedIn, YouTube and Twitter channels. I often simulcast it on my Twitter channel, too. Make a note on your calendar to check it out, if you’re interested.

Today, though, I’m going to play the episode of The Rise from a couple weeks back when Jay Baer came on to talk about the Time to Win. Those of you watching will see a replay of that stream, in full technicolor. Those of you listening on the podcast feed will hear the full episode as well. I’ll come on after as I usually do to share some final thoughts.

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 haven’t been thinking about user-generated content and how your brand can leverage it lately, well, you’re late to the party. UGC has become one of those three-letter abbreviations that everyone instantly understands. At least in the marketing world. 

Why is that? Well, content from users … the normal, regular social media user who posts content about a product or service is, by definition, more authentic. We’re talking about your normal fans and followers here, not necessarily influencers or professional creators, though they cross over into the same space sometimes, too. 

That authenticity is present because the content is coming from people just like the audience … people who are thumb-scrolling on a social network hoping to see something interesting. If I see a professionally produced photo or video from a brand, it has to be super compelling right away to stop and look or watch. If I see content about a brand from a friend or person who seems more real to me, I’ll give it more of a chance to sink in because they’re using or showing me a product the way I might see it or use it.

Some of these users … consumers … whatever you wish to call them … actually produce some pretty good content. Brands can then seek permission to repost or even license that content for everything from their own social media content to paid advertising creative and everything in between.

Influencers and creators can also be tapped for their content without any requirement they post it on their own channels. Many brands are tapping into this influencer-as-freelancer approach because in many cases, online content creators are better at speciality content like Instagram Reels, TikToks and the like, than, say, classically trained advertising creatives at agencies. Using a professional influencer as your creative production outlet can save costs from professional photographers or videographers, but it can also come with the other part of influencers … exposure to their audience as well. 

But therein lies a bit of a conundrum for marketing professionals. If you start sourcing creative from the crowd, what happens to our production houses, professional photographers and other creatives that are an important part of our ecosystem?

I wanted to dive into UGC a bit more so I called upon Adam Dornbusch. He is the CEO and Founder of EnTribe. It is a software company that helps brands cultivate, license and organize UGC. So if anyone knows about this stuff, it’s him.

Adam got his start in the entertainment industry and at one point wound up at GoPro where content acquisition was one of his duties. Remember that GoPro campaign that awarded up to $5 million for the best photos and videos submitted from GoPro users? Adam had something to do with that. 

You could say he’s spent the better part of the last 10 years helping brands figure out how to get authentic content from the crowd. And often at a much better cost than the alternatives. 

So today, I’m going to ask him to fill us in on all things UGC, then arm wrestle a bit and ask how much is too much? I think you’ll be interested in what he has to say.

Winfluence is made possible by Cipio.ai – The Community Commerce Marketing platform. What does that mean? It’s an influencer marketing software solution, but it has additional apps that function to tap into your brand community to drive commerce. Community Commerce Marketing moves beyond influencers to fans and followers, customers, employees and more. Try its generative AI application, Vibe Check, with a two-week free trial at cipio.ai/vibecheck, and generate a library of social captions in minutes you can use right away.

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 want to know more about you. Actually, I need to know more about you. The more I know about you, the better I can make this show. The better the show, the happier you are being a listener.

Of course, in full transparency, the more I know about you, the audience, collectively, the better I can select sponsors or advertisers to bring to you. I don’t want a podcast ad to turn you off, so knowing you better allows me to say within some degree of reason that an advertiser either is or isn’t relevant for you to know.

Either way, my focus on wanting to know more about you is to continually improve your experience. If I don’t do that, I won’t have listeners or advertisers. 

Fortunately for me, my friend Tom Webster shared some great insights about discovering more about your podcast audience this week on Sounds Profitable. That’s the podcast from the company of the same name. Sounds Profitable is an industry think tank if you will for podcasting and podcasters. The Marketing Podcast Network which I run and on which Winfluence airs is a Sounds Profitable partner. 

Tom has deep experience as a consumer researcher. He spent nearly two decades at Edison Research and was the main engine behind its Infinite Dial research which is still the social and online media research report of record. I attend its unveiling each year and devour the stats as it informs all the strategies I develop for clients. 

Tom shared questions he would ask listeners of a podcast to get to know them better. I have borrowed those recommendations with some minor tweaks into a listener survey I’d like to direct you to. But I thought I’d choose this episode of the podcast to share those questions with you and give you time to think before you jump in and answer.

If I can persuade you to jump over to the Winfluence survey after sharing the questions and why I am asking them with you on the show today, I will be very grateful for your participation in helping me make a better show for you. 

And even if you’re not necessarily inclined to have a small take-home assignment and fill out a survey after listening to a podcast, please do listen to the full episode. It may give you a better understanding of what you like and dislike about podcasts and help you choose more satisfying ones in the future.

I’m going to break down Winfluence, all of its elements, explain my intention and expectations for them, then ask you for feedback to make it all better.

Fill out the listener survey at jasonfalls.com/survey.

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.