Winfluence with Jason Falls

I’ve been using and reviewing social technology software for almost 20 years now. One of the most frequent categories of software I’m either pitched or someone recommends I try is in the social media management category. These are platforms like HootSuite or Sprout Social where you’re able to plug in all your social media channels, manage your comments and message from each in one place, publish and set up calendars to pre-load content and such. 

Some of them add features like social listening. Most of them just have a social inbox and call it social listening, but that’s a different rant for a different day. But each social media management platform out there has some bell or whistle that makes them cool or unique. 

Every now and then someone comes along and looks at the category from a different angle and innovates a bit. Normally when that happens the new social media management solution combines functionality from some other software category for a mashup that serves a given niche. 

At a startup event in Silicon Valley recently, one such platform caught my eye. 

The platform is called RellaSocial. It’s the brainchild of Natalie Barbu. If you recognize that name it’s probably because you’re one of her 300,000-plus subscribers on YouTube or followers on other social media platforms. 

Natalie has been creating content on YouTube for well over a decade. But she was always frustrated with trying to manage her content calendars and creation, goals, plans and even income from brand collaborations. She was tracking things in spreadsheets and in multiple software packages. One day, she decided to solve the problem by building her own app.

RellaSocial combines social media management, content planning and scheduling, project management and even income tracking. Because this is built by a creator for creators, there’s even a handy tab where you can see what other creators are charging for various types of posts. 

I’m sure I disappointed Natalie a bit when I approached her in the pitch room at the startup event. She was standing at a table hoping to talk to potential investors. I was just some dork hoping to have her on my podcast. But she said yes, so she’s here today to tell us how she became a creator, why she decided to build RellaSocial and how it helps content creators do what they do.

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 talk to you about leveraging podcasts for your marketing. No, this isn’t a pitch to get you to start a podcast, though I can certainly spell out dozens of reasons you should. I’m not here today to wax poetic about Winfluence, the podcast, nor the Marketing Podcast Network which I run.

I’m secure in the knowledge you understand that I’m deeply invested in podcasts. I think they’re a great tool for any marketing effort and I’m always happy to discuss that if you’re interested. 

But what I want to go over today is leveraging the ability and opportunity to be a guest on other people’s podcasts as a business tactic. Now, we’ve covered that topic a few times on this show. I’ll refer you back to episodes with Spencer Carpenter from Outlier Audio. That was in late October of 2022. Trevor Oldham from Podcast U was a guest in December of 2021. 

To get to those episodes all you do is use jasonfalls.co/ and type in the name of the guest. So the URL for Spencer Carpenter’s episode is jasonfalls.co/spencercarpenter. Trevor’s is jasonfalls.co/trevoroldham. 

But I want to tackle the topic on this episode with a little of my contrarian, piss and vinegar rants. I have come across some examples of people out there in the business world whose behavior when it comes to being a guest on a podcast illustrates they not only don’t understand the value, but think they’re doing the podcast world a favor by being on one. 

Now, we all know that creating content or being interviewed for someone else’s content brings with it people who have some degree of ego. There’s a diva in every crowd. And probably a little bit of one in all of us. I know, I’ve been one on occasion before. I try not to be, but I also have a short fuse when someone is just blatantly disrespectful or ignorant of what I bring to the table. 

Because I’ve been on both sides of that coin, I’m not going to make this about diva bashing. My advice and cautionary tales today are not meant to attack anyone who might think they’re above others. If I kick out the frail legs of the ladder of overcompensation they stand on, it will only be by accident.

But we’re going to talk about why you should want to be a guest on podcasts, how you can be, and how you’d better behave if you know what’s good for you.

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.

Before we get into the show today a reminder for those of you listening on the podcast that Winfluence is now available in amazing technicolor. If you’d like to see the magic as well as hear it, just pop over to the YouTube channel and subscribe. The easy way to get there is jasonfalls.co/youtube. Of course, you can also search for Jason Falls Winfluence or just Winfluence on YouTube and find it.

The new video episodes will also be offered up on YouTube, LinkedIn and Twitter each Monday. We’re going to shift the publishing of the show to 11 a.m. ET so folks can join us for lunch, brunch or breakfast viewing on the stream. The audio podcast will still be there for you, just a couple hours later than it normally fires. 

Regardless of where you’re listening or watching, thank you for being here and following along our journey to understanding more about influence and influence marketing.

And now to today’s topic.

It’s been more than two years now since the NCAA passed legislation that allowed college athletes at its institutions to accept payment for use of their name, image and likeness. The NIL push as most people know it has created millions of dollars for student-athletes who had long been handcuffed by eligibility rules that prevented them from profiting from their status as influential or celebrities within their sport, or geographic relevance. 

We’ve seen some interesting, if not amusing, uses of NIL deals between brands and athletes. One law firm in Kentucky has billboards all over the state for personal injury service with several University of Kentucky athletes on it, claiming “Bigger is Better,” talking about the size of their firm … law firm, that is. 

The kid of the Popeye’s chicken meme now plays college football and just signed a long overdue NIL deal with the chain restaurant to actually profit from its use of his likeness, too. 

As the usage of NIL has grown, there are some interested people out there studying it to see how well they work, what athletes are profiting, if it’s actually leveling the playing field for some sports and such. One of those such people is Tiffany Kelly from Curastory. 

Her interest in student-athletes migrated from her work as a student at Nova Southeastern, then a tutor and athletic department intern at LSU. She then worked on staff as an analyst for ESPN. She’s a statistics and analytics person … not in the points per game sense, necessarily, but analyzing the data around things. Some of her work at ESPN included analyzing fan passion, for example.

Under her leadership, Curastory, which is a video editing platform, did an analysis of NIL student athletes and projected the average monetization amount per video each had across all sports. The results were quite surprising. Let’s just say football and men’s basketball student-athletes are not the highest earners. 

I asked Tiffany to come on the show and walk us through the analysis and discuss what it tells us about student-athletes we should, and maybe shouldn’t, be investing in as brands. We also talked about Curastory and how it can be a useful addition to the content production and distribution for any brand or creator.

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.

In a now exclusive audio commentary episode, Jason Falls takes on the sudden irrational reaction to the trend of #deinfluencing on TikTok and other channels. It has inspired many a creator to poke fun at the influencer marketing space. Some of them are poking fun at creators who do a lot of sponsored content. Others are making fun of brands who pay those creators. 

It’s causing a stir in industry conversations. 

But it shouldn’t. Jason explains why on this commentary 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.

Before we jump into this episode, a note for the listeners: Winfluence is now available as a video show. If you’d like to see the magic as well as hear it, just pop over to the YouTube channel and subscribe. The easy way to get there is jasonfalls.co/youtube. Of course, you can also search for Jason Falls Winfluence or just Winfluence on YouTube and find it.

The new episodes will also be offered up on YouTube, LinkedIn and Twitter each Monday. We’re going to shift the publishing of the show to 11 a.m. ET so folks can join us for lunch, brunch or breakfast viewing on the stream. The audio podcast will still be there for you, just a couple hours later than it normally fires. 

Regardless of where you’re listening or watching, thank you for being here and following along our journey to understanding more about influence and influence marketing.

Now on to today’s show. 

There’s a lurking problem in the influence marketing space today. I’ve noticed it and mentioned it a few times on the show. A few others are starting to see it, too.

The problem is not with the mechanisms, softwares or logistics of influence marketing. Brands engage creators they probably find via software. There’s an exchange of value … the influencer is compensated somehow and the brand gets exposure or content or both. All of that is well and good. But all of that is becoming a commodity of sorts. 

The problem is the thinking behind most influence marketing efforts today is, well, meh. A brand says, “here’s product and money, tell your fans to try it.” The creator puts on their best happy face and gushes about said product and cashes their check. The audience sometimes buys it. Sometimes not. (The product or the pitch.)

That failure is why I originally launched a consulting firm. I wanted to focus on the strategy and creative concepting that was so blatantly missing from the industry. It’s also a part of why I pivoted to join CIPIO.ai because we go at influence from a different perspective. Plus, I can still bring that strategic thinking and concepting to the table for our customers. 

But I’m not the only one who sees the gaps.

Noah Eisemann is a similar thinker in the space. He’s the partnerships lead at Lumanu, a software company that is building infrastructure pieces for the creator economy. They’ve been working on some innovations in approach to payments I found pretty interesting. 

But Noah also thinks there are shortcomings and shortfalls in how brands engage with creators, creators engage with brands and the folks in the middle like agencies and software companies are playing. I invited him on the show today to fill those gaps with me. We also touch on what Lumanu is up to.

A good conversation about what needs to get better in the influence marketing space is coming up.

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.

Live streaming is becoming more and more popular for both creators and brands today. The ability to not only deploy video content to engage an audience, but do it live, in real-time, tears down almost all the barriers social networks present to get to and engage an audience. 

The social network sites prioritize live video content over anything else in their algorithms. They even force feed pop-up notifications on you to tell you when someone you’re following is live while you’re there, hoping you’ll come over and watch. It makes the social network experience stickier. You stay longer. You’re more engaged. Your more likely, then, to satisfy the site’s need to present better user statistics which means they can sell more ads. They can also present more ads to you the longer you’re on the site.  

According to Statista in 2020 consumers spent 482.5 billion hours on live streaming apps. Live streaming videos reach almost 30% of all consumers worldwide. Consumers are expressing interest in live shopping, too. As of 2021, 14 percent of U.S. consumers said they are interested in live shopping experiences on social networks. TikTok and youTube are already deep into live commerce features. Amazon Live is turning the register regularly for many creators. 

I even used it as a test to sell copies of my book. It worked to a degree. I didn’t have an established audience on Amazon to work with, but every time I went live, a few copies sold. That’s not bad in an uber-competitive and oversaturated publishing market.

But live streams aren’t really engaging for the viewer. It’s basically the home shopping network online. Until now. 

Lux Narayan is the founder and CEO of StreamAlive. It’s a platform that uses a combination of interactive questions and content devised by the live stream host and AI technology to ensure everyone in the audience is represented in the live engagement of a stream. For example, the hosts asks where everyone is watching from, people just drop a city name, state or country in the comments and a live map dynamically plots all the watchers for all to see. 

There are many more applications of it, of course. Since it’s something that can help both creators and brands improve their live stream content, thus commerce output on the other end, I thought it would be good to have Lux on to tell us all about it.

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.

Those of us on the agency or services side of the influence marketing industry covet one thing really: Insights from brand-side marketers, particularly those who are the decision-makers in the business. I would imagine talent managers and some creators also covet that since the brand’s investments in any of us is what makes the industry tick.

In that broad category of brand decision makers, there are a wide variety of businesses and brands. You have small businesses, often mom and pop, local shops, who are regular businesses we encounter all the time. They’re probably not often called startups, which is a separate category. 

These are companies that often take on investments and try to grow to be medium to large businesses. They’re tricky because when they’re really new, they don’t have any money to invest in marketing. As they grow or take on investments, that budget grows and they can wind up being a godsend for those of us looking for brands to help who area also able to pay for that service.

And then there are mega brands … the ones you always hear about. They have big teams, multiple brands within portfolios and lots of money to spend.

A few weeks ago on LinkedIn, one person at the latter of those three types of companies struck up a conversation that caught my attention. Kyle Peters works in the strategy and innovation department at Nestle … the largest retail company in the world. He focuses on internal innovation, but he joined the team there after building a startup ice cream brand. So he’s been on the startup and small business side, too.

Kyle asked this: What is the value of an influencer? I was intrigued. So I jumped in and contributed to the comments, but then asked Kyle if he’d like to come on Winfluence and talk about the topic. We’d be tickled to have someone from Nestle sharing that kind of conversation with us. His perspective from the startup and small business side are helpful too.

So today, Kyle joins me to talk about his background, but then, the value of influencers from both sides of the aisle … how influencers and creators value themselves versus how agencies and brands do. 

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.

We all like killing to birds with one stone, right? Metaphorically, of course. I don’t actually kill birds. Neither do you, I hope. 

But when you can learn amazing insights from someone who leads influence marketing for a big brand, but that person also happens to be a content creator themselves, well now we can double our takeaways and smarts without having to go two different directions.

Zeena Koda has been a content creator and media personality for the better part of the last 15-20 years. She’s been everything from a red carpet host on television to a voice-over artist to a podcast host and even a standup comedian. Her background is in the music industry … she’s been in a band as well … and like any artist or creator, she has multiple avenues and outlets for that content and creativity. 

But sometimes we also have to pay the bills if that art doesn’t necessarily take off right away, so she’s also built a nice career on the brand side of things engaging communities, building marketing and influence programs and more.

She recently landed at 2K Games, which is one of the most successful video game companies out there. With titles like PGA Tour 2K23, Marvel’s Midnight Suns and the Borderlands series, Zena has the interesting challenge of managing community and influencers for 2K … the brand … but also the sub-communities and influence programs for each title, because each game is different with a different audience, and influencers.

When I realized we had the opportunity to learn two volumes of expertise from one guest, well, I jumped on it. 

Zeena and I caught up recently to dig into her new role at 2K, her approach to influence and influence marketing, and some of the other issues she tackles in the business. She still has a popular podcast called Everything is Political, so she’s still a creator and influencer in her own right. She is also a co-founder of the Asian-American Collective, which is an organization worth paying attention to.

We’ll explain why and dive in deeper with Zeena on Winfluence.    

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.

If you don’t know the importance of acquiring and leveraging first party data in marketing yet, let me give you a quick recap. Consumers generally do not want companies like ours capturing and using their data without their explicit permission. Regulatory guidance like GDPR in Europe, and consumer-focused policy trends like not allowing 3rd party cookies to scrape data from website users are responding. 

Soon, places like Google that not only allows the use of 3rd party data for targeting, but helps you capture it, too, will sunset that ability. Other browser makers like Apple with its Safari browser and seemingly ubiquitous iOS mobile devices, have long been anti-cookie … at least so far as to give consumers clear access to prevent the data from being captured.

What that means is within a year or two, the only data you’ll likely be able to use for audience targeting and data insights will be that you capture yourself … first party data. 

Now, in general, this is a good thing. It respects consumer privacy. It allows them to control or choose what to give you and what to not. It holds us accountable and honest and prevents some marketers for spinning out of control and becoming creepy. 

But that doesn’t change the fact that it makes it harder for companies to get first party information to better inform their marketing.

Well, I happened to use a clever little app recently to help run a ticket giveaway on Instagram. It allowed me to have my Instagram followers come to a landing page where they could give me their email address, birthdate and other pieces of information about them voluntarily. First party data. 

The lightbulb went off. This is how we get to know our social followers and even customers better. We incentivize them to give us that information we need voluntarily. Excited at the prospects of making this happen more regularly, I thought I’d invite the people behind that app to come talk about it.

The app is called Stampede Social. Jeff Dwoskin is one of the founders and people behind it. 

Jeff dropped in to talk about the tool, what it does and how it helps solve the third party data problem for brands. But he also has some big brand experience, heading up digital customer engagement for Little Caesars and such, so we had a good time talking about marketing in general. 

You’ll hear more about how to solve for the big data issue, but also learn a few more things today as we chat with Jeff on Winfluence.

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 be painfully honest with you today, gang. What we do in the influence marketing space, or the marketing space overall, often seems to me to be superfluous. Will the world survive if marketing died? Sure it would. Heck, some people would even say it might be a better place. 

Sometimes, I’m not sure those voices are wrong.

Don’t get me wrong! I love what we do. And I do think that connecting brands to the audiences that can benefit from knowing them has meaning. While that might be a stretch for someone who markets luxury footwear. It becomes more relevant for those of us who do it for non-profits or businesses that have a real impact on people’s lives. 

But when I stumble across someone who looks at the creator economy or influence marketing and sees a real path to change the world, I am both excited and humbled. Excited that what we do can have great meaning and impact. Humbled that I’m some schlep who does it more for money than for a greater purpose. 

Last spring, my friend T. Adeola, invited me to speak at an event he was putting on in Dayton, Ohio. T, who is more formally known as Temitayo Adeola Osinubi but thankfully is comfortable with just T, is an experienced digital marketer. I met him years ago at an event he says was the first digital marketing event he ever attended. 

He’s done time with several brands over the years, including Proctor & Gamble. He also teaches as an adjunct professor at more colleges than most people can name. 

It’s that role of educator that makes him invaluable to our community. I saw how invaluable in Dayton almost a year ago. 

The event was a creator camp – a weeklong workshop to teach people how to be content creators. The attendees? Underserved children in disadvantaged communities. And, to an extent, their parents. 

T asked me to come talk to both groups about the creator economy and how there is real opportunity for young people to earn a living from content creation. The focus of the event, and the organization T leads, which is called STEM Whisperers, is to disrupt what he calls the School-to-Prison pipeline and give at-risk youth inspiration, training and opportunities in the creator economy. 

I get chills just explaining it. 

T uses the data that kids today say they want to be influencers, YouTubers, Instagrammers. Not astronauts or doctors or lawyers. He thinks we should be embracing that and fostering their education, aspiration and opportunity. 

T also just launched a companion podcast for STEM Whisperers on the Marketing Podcast Network. It’s called Tiny Giants. I was honored to be the first guest on the first episode this month. 

I invited T on to talk about the problem, his solution and what challenges he needs our help overcoming to make STEM Whisperers successful and disrupt that misdirected pipeline for our young people. Pay attention folks … I’m going to ask you to jump in and help him in the discussion. I think you’ll see why. 

T. Adeola and the finest reason to focus on influence marketing I’ve ever heard of is coming up on the show.

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.