Yahoo7 names Gina Liano as fourth influencer personality for lifestyle site, Be
Yahoo7 has named Real Housewives of Melbourne star Gina Liano as its fourth influencer personality signed up to make content for its fledgling, socially-driven lifestyle site, Be.
Liano was unveiled at an event in Sydney last night, and will be making a series of fashion videos called Judge Gina and Ask Gina, where she runs the rule over the latest fashion trends. The site posted its first video with her last night.
Gina Liano enjoyed a celebrity welcome at the Be launch party
She joins the already announced personalities 2DayFM host Maz Compton, and former My Kitchen Rules contestants Ash Pollard and Scott Gooding on the Be influencer roster, sharing their exclusive content with fans and drawing them into the Yahoo7-owned site.
Yahoo7 CEO Ed Harrison said their data so far had shown them the site was “over-indexing” in women 18-34, and in particular those women were more interested in seeing celebrity generated content.
He told Mumbrella there were no plans for how long the current personality group would be kept on, while Caroline Casey, product and audience director for Yahoo7, said they were going to use data to make their content more effective.
“It’s early days, we’ve got several months of content with them in the works so we’ll work with them around that,” she said.
“And we’re pretty data-driven so we’ll work with them and see if there’s areas of interest for our audience we’re not capturing at the moment, and is there an opportunity to extend more in the blogger and influencer space.
“Facebook Live we’ve had success with, Tumblr and Twitter and Snapchat. We’re trying to reach out on those platforms but do it in a way that makes a lot of sense. It helps the people we’re working with are influencers.”
Asked which areas of the site were performing well three weeks after its soft launch Casey, admitted they were surprised how well travel was performing for them.
“Before we bought Be together Travel had never been been our forte, but since we soft launched we’ve found it’s doing really well,” she said.
Casey said the brand had also been experimenting heavily with Facebook Live streaming, saying it has had success through that, with more than 30,000 likes for its Facebook page already.
Harrison said they view the platform as an audience acquisition driver at the moment, pointing to the rise of native and integrated brand content in videos as ways the company can monetise the reach off-platform, going forward.
He said they had worked hard to make the content feel “authentic” and build a unique and positive tone of voice for the site.
“That authenticity is important as these personalities already have large audience bases they are talking to, so they know how to communicate with them, what they like and what’s relevant,” he said.
“They’re not being asked to work in spaces they feel uncomfortable, that’s not going to work for anybody.”
Asked for his thoughts on rival Nine Network’s appointment of former Australian Women’s Weekly editor, Helen McCabe, as its head of lifestyle for its digital titles, Harrison said: “It’s no surprise they’re investing in lifestyle, we’ve seen it work for us so I wouldn’t be surprised if it works for them.”
