Traditional marketing models are in danger of killing blogger influence

Technical glitch throws up article from 2006

It was nice to see a brief from Google a few months ago that said “no blogger outreach!”

Interesting piece Louisa.

I’m curious to know why you believe there is an expiration date on brand/influencer partnerships? Certainly from our perspective at The Remarkables Group, campaigns are increasing in their success. I’m basing that on improving reach, engagement and also the effect on behaviour of communities: e.g a recent campaign generated $300,000 in revenue for a brand.

When an influencer has built up trust capital with their audience, that audience doesn’t just tolerate brand involvement but actively supports it. In a survey of 12,500 blog readers late last year, we found that 53% of readers said they liked sponsored content, 39% didn’t differentiate between branded and non-branded content (even though it’s clearly disclosed as such) and just 8% said they didn’t like it. Social media makes it incredibly easy for audiences to voice their displeasure if they’re not happy with how a blogger is engaging with brands – and that end user is what the partnerships are all about.

The influencer/brand fit is absolutely essential – the blogger must above all believe in the brand – and there should always be a “gift” in the content for the reader. Not in a flinging-freebies-around sense but truly helpful and interesting content that is relevant to them. The influencers (and their agencies) who recognise that will have longevity in this space – those who don’t will fall by the wayside.

If buying into bloggers delivers unique and/or incremental reach, then go for it.
Conflating ‘influence’ and reach is one of the great delusions of marketing.
Everyone is an influencer, but for most of us our sphere of influence is tiny.
Whether it’s Oprah, bloggers or YouTube star (or whatever) you are buying reach not influence. It’s media.

Blogger/Influencer followers to a large degree still believe they are ‘personal recommendations’.

Remember the introduction of ‘this is an advertisement’ on print ads that looked like editorial content? Let’s see how long it takes for full disclosure to become mandatory on all brand/influencer posts.

Aren’t bloggers just another media/promotion/potential sales channel amongst the many marketers have at their disposal? Smaller in audience reach than most other channels, but perhaps with higher frequency in some cases.

The whole engagement argument is a furphy, consumers don’t want to be engaged with most brands no matter how hard we try to convince ourselves they do. (hence why brands own social channels are where consumer engagement goes to die)

And authentic most of these brand/blogger partnerships are not…..they are in the same territory as most ill-conceived and opportunistic celebrity endorsements.

Why don’t we cut to the chase and call it what it is – a pure and simple media play, and use media metrics to justify it’s spend not in absolute terms, but relative to all the other media channels we have at our disposal.

Of course the blogger industry would like to see a lot of depth and complexity added to this scenario to create more spend on ‘content’ and ‘engagement’, but the incremental returns for increased investment beyond an ad play would need to be clearly justified, relative to how else those funds might be deployed.

Hi Lorraine, thanks for your comments! My argument isn’t that blogger/brand partnerships have an expiration date overall but that the current model is limited and will ultimately do what some of the other commenters recognise and been seen for advertorial. It’s also that the current model is kind of boring. We need to evolve beyond straight sponsored post + giveaway /gift to a model that dovetails with social and with readers. So I’m decrying the end of the industry, I’m asking for the stakeholders to be a bit bold and creative with how they approach it.

Hi Eaon, I agree that in the current social media environment, everyone has influence. I don’t agree that it’s really about reach, in fact I think that some of us have quite large influence. Some of the campaigns that have come across my desk would never work through straight ad buying, they need people to influence them to participate. My argument would be that just because you have reach doesn’t mean you have influence, and some bloggers will (unfortunately) never have influence and that’s a hard lesson for many on that side of the fence to learn.

Hi ‘Bogger’ I agree with you in many ways, not because it has to be that way but because agencies are so banal in their approach. I’ve just spent a couple of hours with someone who sits apart from this world, has a high disposable income and would love to be engaging with brands on social. My take is that for her, engagement equals recognition – the brand she loves, notices her. She is frustrated by how badly brands run their social and get taken over by campers wanting free stuff,rather than engaging with loyal fans. She is just one person but I suspects represents an important demographic of consumers who feel the same. When it comes to influencers, we need to stop making them into mini celebs before they become totally unrelatable. This industry is missing the hugest opportunity to do this well because they are not involving bloggers in the campaign creation process.

I am a professional blogger and I think this shift has already started. I am currently working with two brands who have handed creative control to me and these campaigns are very much engagement focused and not at all about the “sell”.

It is exciting to be a part of it!

Tony Abbott eats unpeeled, raw onions. I don’t see greedy people and the naive walking down the street eating onions?

That’s great Mrs Woog, I look forward to seeing what you do. I certainly look forward to seeing more creativity in the space!

As a second thought Mrs Woog, ‘sell’ is not a bad thing, it’s the end goal for brands after all. It’s the creativity element that is crucial, in my opinion.

As you know Louisa, I’m not a fan of one-off sponsored posts, which is why we focus on 6-12 month arrangements between brands and the bloggers we work with – the partnership model you mention. I think the frustration with the current model being broken is actually just a natural outcome of the transition that’s occurring between earned and paid media. Blogger outreach, in the sense of influencer marketing, evolved to earn media from bloggers to leverage their WOM power and influence with their communities. It’s the holy grail – an organic recommendation. But then every blogger, regardless of their influence or skill/experience in creating paid content, wanted to be paid, hence the rise of the clunky and often times, detrimental sponsored posts, with a small win thrown in the audience. Blogger outreach is broken because bloggers don’t want to work for free, but often the results don’t warrant being paid. I believe the ROI on this kind of activity just can’t compete with a smart ad spend somewhere else, unfortunately.

Those bloggers who make the transition to working with an agency have done so, not just on the basis of their influence, but also the size of their audience (actually, sometimes just because of the size of their audience). With experience (or the support of an agency) they essentially become media, another channel to market. Their sponsored content may not be as influential or credible as WOM, but their reach (sometimes amplified by a network) is attractive to brands. I’d love to see this kind of model move away from one-off sponsored posts towards more partnerships, but from experience even then it is hard to get the brands to let go of the campaign messaging mentality, and with that I agree that a more collaborative model needs to evolve.

Great article Louisa!

As a marketer involved in managing the mix of communication channels, the choice to get involved with influencers is a challenging one and one that should not be done lightly. For us it has been an amazing journey and I use to think we were just lucky to have a product that was just a natural fit to what influencers do daily. However what I have learnt is that virtually every brand can engage within this space if they approach it from the position of a common understanding and core beliefs. The challenge to achieve this is that it requires communication, relationships and common passion point for both the influencer and the brand. From my perspective this has become the key to getting influencer strategies right and, yet it is something a lot of brands and agencies seem to not understand.

After all, isn’t the reason brands are interested in influencers is because of their relationships and communities; thus shouldn’t this be put at the heart of the engagement between the brand and the influencer?

People do business with people, not corporations and brands.

Thanks Laney, I always enjoy your insights. You and I have long held similar views on this topic, and it’s great to watch the way you have chosen to approach this issue.

This comment stood out to me:
“Blogger outreach is broken because bloggers don’t want to work for free, but often the results don’t warrant being paid.”

I’m not sure that I would say that that is why blogger outreach is broken, but I agree that it’s a challenge brands face in working with bloggers. This issue could be mitigated by brands if they:
– improved their blogger/influence selection process
– start running creative activations that acknowledge the intuitive nature of social and WOM (this could be as simple as online and offline events, through to larger scale inter-personal activations)
– and of course, looking to longer term partnerships with mid and top-level influencers.

I also hope that as those in the marketing industry have more and more experience with social themselves, and as we participate in these sorts of discussions we will see a greater willingness to move outside the campaign based mentality.

Absolutely Kristie, and I think you are doing some of the most innovative and exciting work in this space at the moment! I believe this is because of your commitment to truly working alongside bloggers and identifying those shared passion points – both with the blogger and within their communities.

I also agree that this is possible for any brand and if we all took that “people to business with people” attitude we’d see a huge shift to this landscape. I look forward to seeing more marketing managers adopt your approach!

I hesitated at first to provide a link to a blog by Marji Sherman (a social media and blogging guru in the USA) because it revolves around Red Burlesque’s approach (my company), but what the hell, it’s very pertinent. buff.ly/1RQHWjX

That’s a great example of getting it right Adam! Well done, and thanks for sharing the link. Identifying influencers is often the part of outreach that brands find the hardest and it’s great to see an example of how easy it can be.

Never forget that many so-called social media stars artificially inflate their followers, reach and traffic. Instagram, for example (which does not allow a person’s followers to be viewed by others) is full of people you’ve never heard of claiming to have 30,000 followers (which they purchased from Russia) and demanding free product from promoters.

True, Caro. However it takes mere seconds to weed them out by checking what proportion of their supposed followers view, like, comment and share their posts.

Hi Louisa I really enjoyed this article, and reading through the comments has been equally thought provoking, thank you!

I feel as though the options are quite limited for those of us who want to work in a truly authentic, heart centred and creative way with brands as bloggers, small business people and humans.

I hope that the opportunities do expand and create more space for long term partnerships 🙂

Cheers for the article Louisa, it was a good read! Lorraine, I loved the stats in your reply above. I had the pleasure of listening to you speak at one of the Entourage events in Melbourne last month. I like the fact you use strong data to always back up your comments online. Louisa, I understand your views and also agree with a more “bold and creative approach” from both brands and bloggers.

Thank you for this interesting and thought provoking article Louisa. As I develop the section of my website I hope to work with brands on – business & financial insights for the style set – I really do see the possibility of long term, genuine engagement with my readers, working with appropriate brands that I already use myself so that the content produced is not forced, faked or simply ‘purchased’. I agree with Louisa that to really benefit my readers and to provide the result desired by the brand in a powerful way, a longer term engagement is required. I actively do not want to become a “celebrity blogger”; I have always wanted my message to be the star and consequently, I agree with Lorraine Murphy that the brand fit is absolutely essential. I will only work with brands I either use myself, have used, positively, in the past or would use in the future should my personal circumstances require the services provided by that brand. At Lorraine says I need to “believe in the brand” to work with them and I feel this provides much more informative content for the reader.

I like how Lorraine has described the “gift” for the reader as “truly helpful and interesting content that is relevant to them”. This is always top of mind and I think this is of utmost importance. I have reviewed products absolutely truthfully – if it was not up to scratch I have said so, including during sponsored posts. The PR agency working with the brand has been happy with this approach, as it shows my readers that I tell it like it is and when I say something is fantastic during a sponsored post, then the reader knows they can truly believe it and will act on those recommendations. Let’s watch this space to see where the blogger / brand relationship extends to in the next 6-12 months!

Great comments Emilia and Catherine! The challenge for bloggers in working with brands is watching the impact it has on the consistentcy of their messaging and, avoiding diluting their ability to endorse products over time.

Thinking about a friend who tells me about the newest product/brand they love each time we meet, ultimately it becomes a bit overwhleming and a kind of white noise. If they love every new thing, then how I know what’s really great or which might be right for me? Compare this to a friend to expresses long term loyalty to a few brands and who is continually singing their praises to you – which one will be more convincing in the long term? I think this is something all bloggers involved in this arena need to consider.

Brand fit is essential and I think it is the one thing that most people working in the industry would completlely agree on (personally I think reader fit is actually more important that blogger fit, but that’s another conversation!) but I think that we need to ask tougher questions, and it’s what I have enjoyed so much about the comments on this article!

I’m afraid i see bloggers as advertisers and apply the same level of caution.

Further, try and find independent serious research that shows blogging actually benefits brands. Bogger is rignt, the whole engangement arguement , is a furphy. Who wants to be ” engaged” with a bloody product Yeah, I love coke, I’m thinking of moving in with them,

The only real role for a blogger re brands is to crap on the opposition – and many do exactly that. And many consumers work out to ignore such claims. Anyway who reads blogs these days.