Winfluence with Jason Falls

We can talk about influence marketing or even influencers … or for that matter just social media marketing all day and it still doesn’t necessarily mean the C-level folks in your business are going to understand and approve what we want to do.

Some of us talk to the C-level. Some of us are at the C-level in our organizations. But the hard truth of the matter for marketers, even the CMO, is that those of us in the weeds of building marketing strategies and executions are seldom understood or even trusted by the CEO, COO, CFO and other executives in charge. That makes it harder to do our job.

So we need to market internally to the C-Suite. And that means we have to market ourselves.

Stacey Danheiser knows all about marketing internally to the C-Suite. She is the author of the books Stand Out Marketing and Value-Ology. She’s also the CEO of Shake Marketing, which works with C-Suite executives at B2B brands help help them understand marketing and growth.

She took some time to sit down with me recently to talk about what the C-Suite’s perception of Influence and Influence marketing was, how we can better market ourselves to them and what the future may hold for us and our work. 

Some executive level smarts coming up from Stacey on the show today.

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.

You already know we focus our attention here on influence marketing. That encompasses what many traditionally think of as influencer marketing (with the R) where a brand finds a social media content creator with a large audience to post about their product or service. We expand that conversation to include anyone with influence … social media followers be damned … to help communicate your message. 

That brand-to-creator-to-audience style of influence makes up the lion’s share of how we think in the influence or influencer space. 

But then along comes a slightly different model that makes us take note and perhaps inspires us to think differently.

Cooper Lycan is not your typical marketer. Nor is his company in a typical vertical. His background and instincts are different enough, that he came up with a slightly different model for using influencers, even though he may not have labeled that as influencer marketing.

Cooper is the founder and CEO of a sports betting community called SoBet. It’s a place where sports bettors can get wagering advice from influencer in the handicapping and betting space. These influencers exist on social channels and with their own websites. Cooper, though, has built a place where the influencer can find more fans and followers because SoBet shows off their results and recommends them to a community of bettors. 

The brand is taking the audience to the influencers, not the other way around.

I was fascinated by the model so I asked Copper to come on the show and walk us through how it came to be, how it’s working and so we could get some inspiration for perhaps looking at our influence marketing differently.

This conversation is going to be quite insightful. I’m willing to bet on 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.

We’ve got a little holiday feed drop you today. I know many of you may not pick up the podcast player during this yule tide season or even on until the New Year, but if you’re like me you get through the festiveness and overeating and need a little alone time with a good podcast.

Of course many of you will be traveling … perhaps with family or alone to see family. Some of you will be driving for a considerable distance while the kids zone out to their devices or DVDs in the back. So, an episode like this has some utility for you.

Today, I’m going to share with you an episode of The Fuel Podcast with Keith Smith. It is perhaps the finest podcast out there devoted to agency new business. It’s supported by The Advertist, which is a new business development resource based out of the United Kingdom. But the strategies, ideas and conversations Keith discusses in the show are perfectly appropriate and relevant for agencies anywhere in the world.

In fact, a lot of the conversations had on The Fuel Podcast are global in nature, including the one you’ll hear today.

I’m sharing with you the Christmas bonus special of the show which dropped on its main feed just a couple of weeks ago in which Keith interviews legendary creative strategist Paul Grubb. His current position is as regional creative director at Wunderman Thompson in Bangkok, Thailand. One of his charges is running Ford’s business across Asia. 

His career has included being a partner in Duckworth Finn Grubb Waters. They were one of the UK’s most respected and successful independent agencies of the 1990s. He also ran the Unilever business across Asia for Lowe Worldwide for sometime. .

Now, the Fuel Podcast is quite different from Winfluence in that Keith goes in deep on a number of topics with his guests without a lot of concern for a time limit. Some of the episodes of the show can go 90-minutes, up to two hours. But there’s so much goodness and insights to be had there, it’s worth the time, if you can make it.

Hopefully, you can with this episode. It runs about an hour and 20 minutes. You’ll get all of it as recorded … no commercial interruptions. 

If you like it, jump over to thefuelpodcast.com and subscribe. The Fuel Podcast is also one of our sister shows on The Marketing Podcast Network, so you can find it there … that’s at marketingpodcasts.net.

Enjoy this feed drop holiday treat from Keith Smith and The Fuel Podcast. I’ll be back with a new episode of Winfluence on Monday, as usual. 

Hosted by Jason Falls, Winfluence is a production of Falls+Partners. Explore the ideas and get help putting them into practice at fallspartners.com. Winfluence is a proud member of MPN – The Marketing Podcast Network.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

It’s hard to have a conversation about influencer marketing software platforms and companies without talking about IZEA. IZEA Worldwide is a publicly traded company on the NASDAQ. Annual revenues are thought to be in the $20 million range. As of the end of 2021 its revenue was actually up 96% year over year.

Not bad for a little idea called Sponsored Posts that Ted Murphy dreamed up at what was essentially a web development firm in Florida in 2006. 

Today, IZEA is one of, if not the, largest influencer marketing software solutions and managed services companies. In many ways it dictates what brands look for in a solution, largely because it’s been doing this a lot longer than everyone else. Its managed services clients are a Who’s Who of Fortune 500 companies. It’s lower-priced self-serve platforms and marketplace have served the industry well, too. And IZEA has done a nice job of keeping up with the trends, changes and innovations the industry needs.

A month ago or so, Murphy and team announced a whole new IZEA. They’ve reimagined what influence marketers need in a toolset and come out with a new platform called Flex. It features a series of toolsets that do one thing or another, but that can also be tied together nicely with links and associations to give people who build strategies for brands, more insight into everything from how right an influencer is, to the performance of their content, to their impact on ROI and beyond. 

Who better to ‘splain all this to us than Ted Murphy himself. He was actually the first guest on Winfluence back in September of 2020 when my old podcast rebranded to focus on influence marketing. Ted is often who I turn to for conversations and insights about the industry and it’s always fun to have him on the show.

I’ll admit it’s more fun now that he’s the CEO of a publicly traded company because, well from his PR team’s perspective, I’m a risk. Nevertheless, Ted and I always have a fun time chatting and he doesn’t mind a few hand grenades I toss him during the conversation. 

We caught up not long ago to have him tell me more about Flex, the new IZEA, and let me pull a pin and lob a couple hot ones at him. You’ll get to hear it all on today’s episode.

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.

The world of content creators is far more diverse that you think. I’ve personally worked with influential voices who produce furniture, pour concrete, sell steel cages in warehouses … there are creators out there for every niche and business vertical. 

Occasionally on Winfluence, we like to bring a content creator on the show to explore how they built their brand, but, for our brand and agency folks, I like to ask them how they partner with brands, what makes a collaboration work well and such. I find it helpful for us to see different approaches that we might incorporate into our influence marketing plans.

Corina Layton has built a fairly impressive social footprint on Instagram and TikTok. She’s young, attractive, has a dog and a lot of the other elements of the living your best life influencer crowd. And some of her content is that interesting lifestyle mix. 

But her core content is that of being a dental hygienist. With 2.4 million TikTok followers and another 125,000 or so on Instagram, she may be the most popular dental hygienist in the world. She’s done some very interesting brand partnerships and connected with brands in the dental care space, and has a unique perspective brands and agencies can learn from.

Of course, you prospective creators out there can pick up some inspiration as well. 

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. With Cipio.ai, you get the vital social media discovery and data you need for your typical influencer marketing effort. But additional apps help you uncover raving fans in your own community to increase sales, retention and engagement.

The best thing about Cipio.ai? You can start using it for free. Influencer discovery and list building doesn’t cost a thing. Go to jasonfalls.co/cipio and see the software that was so good, I joined the team.

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 the context of influencer marketing, there’s a big difference between an influencer and a celebrity. My definition of that difference has always been that an influencer is someone who built an audience on social media by creating content on social media. A celebrity is someone who built an audience on social media because of something else. They’re an actor. Or singer. Or politician. Or athlete. 

Social media content is not their primary thing. 

Now, before I go further, let me circle back to the very premise of this show and my approach to influence marketing. An influencer, broadly defined, is someone who can persuade an audience to take action. That can be someone offline. Not on social media. But for the sake of this discussion, we’re confining the definition to a social media influencer. 

So celebrities have big audiences on social media, but not necessarily because of their social media.

However, celebrity social media can be quite compelling and certainly advantageous to their career and visibility if managed properly. 

A lot of times, that’s where Cassie Petrey comes in. She is the CEO of CrowdSurf. It is an entertainment industry firm that handles social media content for big stars like Britney Spears, Camila Cabello and The BackStreet Boys. 

Cassie founded Crowd Surf with a friend after managing MySpace pages for country music stars back in the mid-2000s. She came to prominence in the music industry and quickly realized there was opportunity in handling these emerging online content platforms for the stars. That was 17 years ago. 

It’s that depth of experience with celebrities and social media that compelled me to ask Cassie to come on the show. It’s insightful for us to hear what the upper echelon of creators are doing, even if they aren’t the types of creators we in the influencer space are typically dealing with. 

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. With Cipio.ai, you get the vital social media discovery and data you need for your typical influencer marketing effort. But additional apps help you uncover raving fans in your own community to increase sales, retention and engagement.

The best thing about Cipio.ai? You can start using it for free. Influencer discovery and list building doesn’t cost a thing. Go to jasonfalls.co/cipio and see the software that was so good, I joined the team.

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 frequently on Winfluence about the pay gap in influence marketing, both as it refers to gender and race. We’ve also spent some time with some amazing people discussing the issues of inclusivity, diversity and equity. But I don’t think anyone would say we have done so enough.

It’s important for all of us to continue to discuss these issues to ensure all parties at the table in influence marketing are mindful and thoughtful about inclusivity, diversity and equity. That’s the only way we can better ensure progress continues.

Jacques Bastien is someone who has been actively making progress for the industry, for brands and the agency partners he’s worked with. He is the CEO of Shade, an influencer marketing agency that focuses on black or brown creators. He’s managed both a digital agency, but also a black and brown talent management service. 

He says overall, we’ve made progress in closing those race gaps in pay and opportunity, but there’s a lot of progress still to come. 

We connected recently to talk about the challenges brands and creators face in working to ensure equitable opportunities come. He shared his perspective on working with brands and the concept of cultural relevance and sensitivity for not just creators, but your audience..

Smarts and a smart conversation with Jacques Bastien from Shade today 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. With Cipio.ai, you get the vital social media discovery and data you need for your typical influencer marketing effort. But additional apps help you uncover raving fans in your own community to increase sales, retention and engagement.

The best thing about Cipio.ai? You can start using it for free. Influencer discovery and list building doesn’t cost a thing. Go to jasonfalls.co/cipio and see the software that was so good, I joined the team.

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.

Yes, this is a special edition of the program. This episode should drop on the Wednesday of Thanksgiving week here in the United States. So most of us are welcoming family to the house, or visiting relatives at theirs, readying for turkey and ham and, of course, Thanksgiving Day American football. 

But many of us have either can’t distract ourselves from thinking about work for a four- or five-day weekend, or perhaps some of us have families that wear out their welcome and force us to run, hide and hibernate with a good podcast for a bit. So, I thought I’d share something fun with you in case you needed a little holiday distraction.

Of course, if you’re elsewhere around the globe and this isn’t a holiday for you, this episode can be at least a little weekend respite. 

Today on the show I want to share with you a very different marketing podcast. A different concept even.

You all know that Winfluence is part of the Marketing Podcast Network. And I am the network’s executive producer. One of the now nearly 40 podcasts on MPN is a unique one called Ace Stone: Marketing Detective. It's a radio drama that parodies marketing!

This is going to be fun.

I invited its creator, Lacy Boggs, to come on, tell us a little bit of the back story, then we share the first episode of the podcast with you as a holiday weekend treat. You should run over and subscribe and binge the rest of season one, then ready yourself for season two which is in the works now.

Do that at AceMarketingDetective.com, look for the show on the MPN website at MarketingPodcasts.net or search Ace Stone Marketing Detective wherever you get your podcasts. 

No need for more today, folks. Thank you for taking time to listen to Winfluence - The Influence Marketing Podcast. I am Thankful for all of you. 

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.

Content creators and influencers typically receive payment for their work. It’s an exchange of goods and services. The brand pays them, sometimes in cash, other times in product or other valued items. In turn, the creator creates. The influencer recommends, and so on.

The nature of that exchange of goods and services means the government is going to want their share. Whether you’re in the United States or most other countries around the world, you as content creator, or those that you work with, are going need to treat what you do like a business.

Did you know the number of solopreneur businesses … those where the owner is the only employee … have risen 65% since 1997. The Internet and Social Media have fueled the individual business owner, in our case, content creators and influencers. 

Now, I’m not here to tell you that starting a business from a legal standpoint is all that difficult. I’ve done it a couple of times in my career as a consultant. But the legalities and requirements of anything can be confusing. So it helps to have legal counsel. Which I have turned to. And I’ve still run into tax issues over the years … nothing major … but it’s cost me more money than I’d care to recall. 

Mike Fiffik is an attorney with LegalShield. He operates out of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, one of my favorite cities. Mike knows the ins and outs of the legalities of setting up a business and helping content creators and influencers navigate those waters. He also has an eye on the most recent legal perspectives on other topics creators need to grapple with .. intellectual property.

I asked Mike to come on the show and share some wisdom with us. So you content creators out there had an easier path to follow than if you didn’t hear a lawyer tell you how to do all this. For those of you on the brand or agency side, the conversation is super relevant, too. Not only do you need to hear the running-the-business perspective of your creators, but the intellectual property issue is something you need a good grasp on as well.

We’re getting smarter about the law today.

Winfluence is presented by Cipio.ai, the Community Commerce Marketing Platform. See how influence marketing, without the 'r', comes to life in creating raving fans to grow your business from your brand's community – influencers, employees, customers and beyond. Sign up for a demo or the free influence discovery platform at jasonfalls.com/cipio.

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’ve been doing this for more than 15 years now. No, not podcasting. That’s about the last 4-5 years or so and just two years so far on this particular show. But I’ve been doing this social media, digital marketing, influencer marketing talking head thing for a long time. 

The first time anyone really took notice of what I was saying was when I started reviewing and talking about social media monitoring platforms. The industry vernacular knocked that term around a bit and they became known as social listening software platforms eventually.

In my book Winfluence, I tell the story of how one such social listening platform made a seven-figure sale because I wrote about them on my blog.

In the last 18 years, I’ve probably reviewed, demoed or tried hundreds, if not thousands, of software platforms. The one underlying theme that emerged in me from all that testing and trying was that I sure would love to get my hands on one. 

I would like to be a part of building a software solution. I’m guessing you’ve ascertained that from my occasional rant here about how the influencer marketing software companies aren’t providing good indexing for owned content. Or that none really take into account offline influence and other paths of identifying influential people for your brand beyond that which the social platform APIs provide. 

Well, I’m making a big move this week that finally puts me on the software side of the aisle. That’s right … as of today, I am officially the executive vice-president of marketing for CIPIO.ai. 

Those of you who follow my content might recall in July of this year I published a written and video review of Cipio.ai. You can find that review and the video on my website at jasonfalls.com/cipioreview. I’ll link to it in the show notes as well. 

In that video, I said this … 

“Because Cipio.ai also enables you to tap into the influence of your community … your customers, your followers and such … it’s the first platform I’m happy to call an influence marketing platform. Without the R.”

That alone should tell you why I jumped at the chance to merge my philosophy on influence marketing with a software platform and services company that thinks the same way. 

Today on the show, I want to tell you a little more about the move. What is in store for me and Cipio.ai in the near future. And explain what me being an employee of an software company that includes an influence marketing software application means … and doesn’t mean for this podcast. Spoiler alert … not much is going to change. 

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.