CommsCon 2016: Influencer 101
In a series of highlights from this year’s CommsCon event, we look at the increasing role and importance of influencers in marketing campaigns and brand associations.
Influencers aren’t necessarily a new thing but the term did gain a serious amount of traction in 2015. What are they, who are they, how can agencies find them and connect them with their clients and the key pitfalls to avoid will be discussed by the panel.
Moderator: Stuart Gregor: founder and managing director, Liquid Ideas
Panel:
Matt Kendall: head of digital strategy, One Green Bean
Renee Bugg: social media specialist, brand & health and care marketing, Bupa
Laney Galligan: founder, Agents of Influence and general manager, ProBlogger
Chris Carroll: blogger, The Life Creative
https://youtu.be/tsY-8q_syEg
Timeline:
- 0:43 Likes and Shares are not the same as creating influence
- 1:35 Bupa: how influencers spread message beyond brand channels
- 4:00 Be transparent, declare all sponsored posts
- 4:55 Laney from ProBlogger: how to make money
- 6:00 Is our job as public relations professionals to make bloggers rich?
- 6:15 Who is teaching bloggers ethics?
- 8:27 Blogs aren’t triggered by press releases
- 9:13 Bloggers are not the same as journalists: different spaces
- 12:00 What’s your number for highly-engaged?
- 16:00 Checking engagement pre and post
- 18:42 Matching bloggers with brands vs bloggers coming to brands with ideas
- 20:30 Disparity between what the brief is and what the blogger understands
- 23:00 Audience questions: How do you measure the quality of an influencer’s audience?
- 25:00 Look into your potential influencer and demand data
- 26:00 What do top bloggers earn?
- 30:00 Multicultural influencers
- 31:00 Increasing understanding of declaring sponsorship
- 33:00 Bloggers need some sort of affiliate marketing in their strategy
- 35:00 Stu suggests all bloggers and influencers read Ryan Holiday’s ‘Trust Me, I’m Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator’ book
- 35:11 Are you teaching your bloggers to speak to your brand’s market or theirs?
- 36:00 Audience questions continue
- 44:14 Presentation concludes
Sponsored by media intelligence company iSentia, CommsCon helps PR and communications professionals better understand their discipline and the issues the ever-changing industry is facing.
