Your top competitors are as influential with your customers and prospects as you are. This raises an interesting question: how can you leverage competitors as part of your influencer marketing program? One proven tactic is recruiting influential staff from competitors. Another tactic is getting competitors to talk about your company in a positive way. To do this, you want to … Read More
Marketing with a $0 budget
Imagine you’re the marketing lead at a small company and you’re gearing up to launch a product, service, or even the company. One morning, the CEO informs you, “The marketing budget is now $0, and we will figure out a way to get to market.” That’s one of 6 things that CEOs of small companies and start-ups should be saying … Read More
Building communities of one
Marketers tasked with building online communities learn quickly that size matters. Which would you rather aim for: building one community of 50 members, or 50 communities each with one member? Odds are good you’ll go for the one larger community. It’s a matter of survival, isn’t it? Your professional reputation, job security, and next quarter’s budget may hang in the … Read More
Recessionary marketing: prepare for cuts in spend, jobs
The tech outlook keeps sliding in the wrong direction — IDC revising forecasts downward, NPD forecasting lighter holiday spend on consumer electronics, etc. — and sooner or later that means cuts in marketing spend and marketing jobs. In terms of marketing spend, adopting influencer relations should be a priority. Influencer identification and engagement can improve measurable results from marketing, despite … Read More
Defrag – a gathering of influencers
Everybody seems to have their own ideas about which events are best for influencer relations — meeting and engaging with influencers, becoming an influencer. This is especially true right now in the Web 2.0 / social software realm. One event that’s earned my respect over the last year is Defrag. Let me tell you why. Defrag has 4 of the … Read More
Influencer marketing – get the basic ideas
You can ramp up quickly on some basic influencer marketing concepts and strategies thanks to webmasterradio.fm. Co-hosts Brandy Shapiro-Babin and Jiyan Wei conducted a lively interview with Influencer50 founder and president Nick Hayes last week. They covered good ground — who is an influencer, how influence works, why it’s important, plus some basic influencer marketing strategies. The podcast is part … Read More
Does influence equal online popularity?
Today I saw 2 more threads in the ongoing debate over whether social media popularity is a good way to measure influence. First, my colleague Duncan Brown writes that Google is launching an AdWords-style SEM program across big social networks. As an online publisher, I can see how this Google program makes perfect sense for media buyers. It will play … Read More
Social media driving competition for purchase influence
Tom Smith’s guest post at Mashable makes the point that we now trust the opinions of strangers as much as we trust our close friends, thanks to social media. He’s highlighting findings from the Universal McCann study, “When did we start trusting strangers”. Don’t let yourself get lulled into thinking this phenomenon is taking place only in consumer markets. Social … Read More
Many ways to touch influencers
You would think that Chris Brogan, an impossibly wise and kind thought leader in social media circles, would never run into difficulties in engaging with influencers. Yet, he does. He shares a personal story about it, and how he succeeded, on this beautiful autumn morning. His story highlights one of the tenets of influencer marketing: human beings respond differently to … Read More
WOMMA invites comment on Influencer Marketing Handbook
Tarah Remington was in touch with Influencer50 today, with a heads up that the Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA) has released a draft of the WOMMA Influencer Handbook for public comment. The handbook is about best practices in the use of influencer marketing: “WOMMA believes influencer marketing is real and here to stay. It is not a myth, or … Read More