My Time On Winfluence Influencer Marketing Podcast

Thanks to a connection, my path finally crossed with Jason Falls, author and the host of the Winfluence podcast. After getting to know each other, I was grateful to get a chance to talk about influencer marketing on his podcast. If you’ve been in the industry for as long as I have, you’ll get to meet many outstanding professionals. And just going through Jason’s list of guests, I’m honored to be one of the newer additions.

Check out two clips from our conversation below. And for the whole interview, check it out on YouTube or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

How I Leverage My Thought Leadership To Increase Reach & Engagement

Are you seeking a new marketing strategy to increase your reach and engagement? In today’s blog post, I’ll talk about a strategic concept when it comes to creating content as a subject matter expert. Specifically, the Hedgehog Concept by Jim Collins. The Hedgehog Concept is a powerful approach that leverages thought leadership to help you reach a wider audience and boost engagement.

This blog post will discuss why this strategy is so effective and how it can help you become a thought leader in your field. I’ll also provide practical tips on creating effective content and strategies for promoting your blog and brand on social media. By the end of this post, you will better understand the Hedgehog Concept and how it can help you increase your reach and engagement.

Finding ways to repurpose my speaking opportunities into shorter, digestible content. With a tool like Go.Charlie., I truly have a content creator’s best friend and repurpose video footage of my talks, into blogs and Twitter threads.

Creating Effective Content For Business Success

Creating content for your business is an essential part of any successful strategy. However, many businesses need help creating content that resonates with their audiences. According to a recent study by Content Marketing Institute (CMI), 45% of marketers say they struggle to create content that is both useful and interesting to their audience. This is partly because most businesses focus on what they know best instead of embracing a hedgehog concept – which means focusing on what they know best and delivering excellent value.

The book Good to Great by Jim Collins introduces the Hedgehog Concept. A concept that flows from a deep understanding of three circles: 1) what you are deeply passionate about, 2) what you can be the best in the world at, and 3) what best drives your economic or resource engine. Applying it to writing, the goal is not best writer in your field. It’s an understanding of identifying what you are good at, and leaning into that. We all have a unique story to tell based on our experiences, personal and professional. And by telling that authentic story, you can find your tribe.

By embracing a hedgehog concept, businesses can focus on delivering detailed buyer personas, segmenting the audience, becoming a thought leader by leaning on Google’s EAT (Expertise, Authority and Trust) principles, and making content shareable. In addition, thought leadership can be leveraged to change perceptions for the better in addition to being more trustworthy than marketing materials. By taking these steps, businesses can utilize their employees to help increase their content's reach and impact while engaging their target audience more effectively.

Strategies For Promoting Your Blog

You can find ways to increase your blog’s reach by utilizing social media as well. Having a social media presence is the first step, but you can also incorporate tactics to help. Bloggers everywhere are using social media to promote their blogs. In fact, according to a study by BrightLocal, 69% of bloggers use social share buttons on their blog posts. This is an effective way to ensure that your blog content reaches your target audience and makes it easy for them to share it with their respective audiences as well.

Instead of trying to develop supplementary products or services that will drive traffic, focus your energy on developing well-researched and unique products or services that stand out from your competitors. By identifying the topics that are driving the most clicks to your website, and writing content around that, you'll truly be tapping into your audience’s interests. This will put you in a better position to succeed over time, resulting in more eyeballs on your thought-leadership content. And lead to increased website traffic, higher search engine rankings, and building affinity with your audience.

Be sure to publish your blog content on LinkedIn. It's a great platform to become a thought leader in your local community and overall industry by engaging with your current and future LinkedIn connections. It's also an opportunity to share your organization’s culture with potential customers, partners, and future employees. 

When thinking about what type of content lives best on LinkedIn, a recent platform survey said 44% of respondents said the last piece of content they read on LinkedIn was straight to the point, and provided real value to businesses in their industry. 

Final Thoughts

By leveraging your thought leadership as a subject matter expert, you can increase your overall reach and engagement through blog content that resonates with your target audience. Over time, you can position yourself as a trusted source of information. Furthermore, social media, like LinkedIn, can be used to promote your blog and personal brand to reach more potential customers. Be sure to consider how the Hedgehog Concept can be used to identify what your niche is, so you can focus your content efforts on that.

Looking for more ways you can amplify your social media efforts, be sure to check out one of my freebies to help you and your brand.

How I View The World of Work

For an upcoming interview with Morning Brew’s education arm, Learning Brew, I shared two potential topics to discuss and some thoughts on both. The first was about my time as a marketer in the cannabis industry, and the second was about my thoughts on all things related to professional work in 2023. We ended up going with the former, but I wanted to share some of the highlights with you from the latter. More below:

If you’re new to my website, you can also download one of my freebies to help with your social media marketing efforts.

Remote Work Is Here To Stay

Saying it louder for those in the back, but remote work isn’t going away. Every role and industry is different, but after working nearly three years straight in fully-remote roles, I don’t see myself or others like me returning to anything less than hybrid roles. If you want the best talent, provide the best work environment for that talent.

Quiet Quitting over Quiet Firing

If you’re concerned with “quiet quitting,” maybe focus that energy inward to understand why employees would do that. Professionals often leave because they feel undervalued, underpaid or see no path forward for their careers (or a combination of those three).   

Even though companies are laying off employees at an unprecedented rate, know that economists still view it as an employee’s market. So be sure to know your value and what you bring to an organization. And find ways to work for organizations that align with your views of the world and how work can be done. Having a life and bring value to an organization through your skills are not mutually exclusive. 

“Change what you can, and deal with what you can’t.” -

Last but not least, you may not be able to change your customers, clients, or colleagues but you can change how you do the work. In our weekly touch base, I ask my team members, “If you were in my shoes, what would you differently?” This was something I learned during Learning Brew’s Leadership Accelerator, and the goal is to provide my team the opportunity to call out inefficiencies, challenges, and other issues when it comes to our work, that I may not have full visibility into.  

Looking for more social media and influencer marketing news worth using? You can read more of my writing, covering my favorite social media tools to use, like GoCharlie.ai. and more deep dives on specific topics on my blog.

And thank you for your time and thoughts!

Why I Started A Cohort-Based Class For Social Media Professionals

As a subject matter expert, I enjoy sharing my experiences and turning them into actionable insights. This is why I'm proud to announce I'm launching the 1st cohort of my Maven class: "SocialMedia Skills To Master.

Whether you work at an agency or are on the brand side, there is always an ask to connect better with one's target audience. Easier said than done, right?

The latest data from Social Media Week stated that the average attention span of consumers is roughly 2.5 seconds. 

How can we, as digital marketers connect authentically with a consumer when you have the same time it takes for a human to take a breath? 

So I set out to create a class at "Social Media Skills To Master” at Maven to help those working daily to succeed on #SocialMedia. 

I've been fortunate to work on iconic brands like Oscar Mayer, Clorox, Kingsford, Burt's Bees, Triscuit, and Kool-Aid to develop and execute social media content strategies that have reached millions of consumers across the globe.  

But I've also applied those strategies to challenger brands and small businesses. 

Leading to speaking opportunities at Chicago Social Media Week, SocialRock Conference, and most recently, partnering with @bipocann and Colorado's Office of Economic Development.

This cohort will get started on 11/3 and includes four weekly sessions, ending before the holidays. 

Have questions? Ask away but be sure to check out the FAQ here.

Learnings From Social Media Week (SMW) 2022

Do you feel that? Conferences are starting to return in full force, and that means digital marketers have an opportunity to learn from some of the most knowledgable and influential folks in the space.

Following Adweek's acquisition of Social Media Week (SMW), the conference has returned to New York for three days of insights, learnings, and inspiration. And as a former Social Media Week speaker, I am so glad to be able to share some of the learnings I picked up on.

• "41% of Gen Z social media users want to see content that is relatable to their situation" - Maggie Lower, CMO of HootSuite.

• "Brands can't keep approaching marketing as ‘advertising’ - product is [the] experience. Make content not, ads."

• The average attention span of consumers these days is 2.5 seconds. That's how much time brands and advertisers have these days, according to Maggie Lower, CMO of HootSuite.

• For content creators and influencers, 67% of content on social is made by this group. And yet only 12% of creators today earn more than $50k a year, according to Pearpop CMO Alex Morrison.

• Reddit founder Alexis Ohanian stated, "I don't think you'll be able to do marketing in 10 years at the best level without engaging a hell of a lot of [creator] individuals."

• “You have to earn the attention you seek on social; you can't just pay for it. Users can smell an ad a mile away, and if your ad disrupts their scroll, it could drive them away from your brand.” -David Kavanaugh, VP of Marketing Operations & Planning at Hootsuite

• "It's all about cultural impact - creating meaningful connections with consumers, at scale." (Adweek Day 2)

• While the markets overall have been down, don't expect brands to give up on Non-fungible tokens (NFTs). Well, at least Pepsi won't be. According to Tod Kaplan, CMO of PepsiCo, their first NFT drop generated $10M on secondary markets.

• "Leverage data, insights, and culture to create incredible social campaigns." - Beverly Jackson., Twitter Global VP of Brand and Consumer Marketing

• "Safe spaces are interesting, but brave spaces are transformative".” - Maggie Lower, Hootsuite CMO

• When it comes to brands dealing with a crisis effectively, the same day model and influencer Remi Bader, criticized Revolve for not being size-inclusive; they contacted her to consult with them to create a collection that will be launching later this fall.

• Finally, I have officially become a fan of Glossier's CMO Alexandra for her take on measurement regarding influencer marketing. Specifically, "Know your goals and set them upfront: Sometimes influencer campaigns are all about reach and impressions. Other times it's about launching a specific product and focusing on conversions."

Did you attend or follow along with online? If so, what were your favorite takeaways from the Social Media Week conference? Let me know in the comments below.

Social Media Tips: Continued

Following my first blog post covering platform-specific social media tips, I want to touch on an aspect of social media that a lot of my professional and consulting clients ask about, influencer marketing.

Like most marketing activities, working with influencers can be very beneficial for a brand when done correctly. From helping spread word-of-mouth through a blog or social content to driving an increase of overall awareness for a brand. Influencer marketing enables a company to insert itself authentically through the interests of its target audience.

Let me guess when you think of influencer marketing, you think of well-known brands like Nordstrom, Crown Royal, and Target, but that shouldn't scare you, and I'll tell you why.

One of my content shoots from 5411 Empanadas, a Chicago restaurant with multiple locations.

One of my former consulting clients is a co-owner of a multi-location, quick-service restaurant in Chicago, 5411 Empanadas, and was interested in influencer partnerships to promote a new product launch. But it needed to happen with a limited budget in mind. With some determination and social listening, I was able to do just that for my client.

I did it by identifying and reaching out to up and coming food and beverage influencers in Chicago with smaller follower counts; we're talking less than 3,000 on Instagram, similar to a micro-influencer.

In exchange for a free meal and the opportunity to capture some photo and video content at one of the restaurant's locations, my client received User-Generated Content (UGC) to share on their restaurant's social channels, and we earned additional reach through the influencers' social channels as well.

To wrap up this section on influencer marketing, I wanted to share a more tactical approach to building brand advocates for small businesses.

Brand Advocates

Like user-generated content, brand advocates are low-cost, and if you're lucky, a free marketing tool can help your business. Brand advocates are your most faithful and intense customers, who will take action if asked. The customers leaving positive feedback on a brand's comments or the Amazon review section are brand advocates.

Most small to midsize businesses lack the resources to either hire a large client success team or pay for chatbots to handle the heavy lifting. An absence of either can result in lost leads and lost sales, but you can level the playing field by utilizing brand advocates. They can be vital to the success of businesses, especially those with limited marketing budgets. Here's how:

Unlike influencers or brand ambassadors, brand advocates engage with a brand because they genuinely love it. These brand advocates can have a sphere of influence themselves but on a much more micro level.

A Fireball Whisky brand advocate, excited about our “Surprise & Delight” kit we sent him.

Like this Fireball Whisky fan above, brand advocates are people who find a way to talk about their experiences and satisfaction with your brand, no matter the scenario. Brand advocates often lead to new customers through word of mouth marketing (WOMM).

They can help build brand affinity, increase overall awareness, and assist in supporting new product launches.

So let's talk about the benefits of a brand advocacy program in the real world and how it can benefit your business. I think a brand that does a great job at building brand advocacy is the shoe company Toms. Those who don't know the company, Toms started in California with both a unique style of shoes and a great category differentiator.

How Toms continues to do social good, even during COVID-19.

Tom's will donate another pair of their shoes to a person in a developing country for every pair of Toms shoes purchased on their site. Even now, during COVID-19, Toms is finding ways to take their profits and turn it into a social good by purchasing personal-protective equipment (PPE).

When thinking about what "reward" your customer could receive for buying your product, it can be something tangible like a coupon for a future visit or points towards a loyalty program. But it can also be something intangible, something that evokes an emotional feeling.

For Toms, the reward is knowing that your purchase will help someone in need with every shoe you purchase. Toms’ brand advocates then take that brand story about why this particular shoe brand is such a great company, and they tell everyone they can, their friends, family, co-workers, and even the person they sit next to on the plane.

Those individuals happen to be potential customers for Toms. Now in an ideal world, those potential customers will go out and purchase a pair of shoes as soon as they hear about how great Toms is as a company, creating new revenue streams.

Leveraging Word Of Mouth Marketing (WOMM)

As a marketer and consumer, there's often some lag time between when someone hears about an exciting product or company and acts on it. We’re talking about multiple touchpoints before a consumer becomes a customer. Sometimes you may not get a direct sale through your brand advocates, but you will gain word of mouth and hopefully convert later.

If you dedicate time to building a brand advocacy program, you also can provide a baseline of customer support without adding to your bottom line, requiring additional resources. For one of my previous agency clients, when we'd see a customer leave a negative comment about issues with their products on Facebook, other users, aka brand advocates, would come out of the woodwork and provide advice or tips to remedy the situation.

One example of a successful brand advocacy program that sticks out in my mind to this day was from a book I read when I was first starting in advertising called "Fizz: Harness the Power of Word of Mouth Marketing to Drive Brand Growth" by Ted Wright.

Fizz: Harness the Power of Word of Mouth Marketing to Drive Brand Growth by Ted Wright

In his book, Ted talks about how his marketing agency in Atlanta, Fizz, helped the U.S. Dairy Association through brand advocates and word of mouth marketing. One of their goals was to get pre-teens and teens to keep drinking milk through high school. And to do that, they needed a story worth telling. That story was a research study concluding that chocolate milk was the best drink following strenuous activity for recovery. Better than Gatorade, water, and everything in between.

Now they needed to change how their potential audience, pre-teens, and teens think about chocolate milk. And who leaves a more significant impression on middle schoolers more than anyone? High school kids. So now, Ted and his team needed to identify and partner with brand advocates who have an authoritative voice on this particular subject, fitness. When it comes to fitness and playing your best in high school, most students look to the football coach for guidance.

Through direct mail, leveraging the study and benefits of chocolate milk, and partnering with professional athletes, the agency convinced coaches in Ohio that chocolate milk should be their players' post-workout drink of choice. Over time, more and more coaches started recommending chocolate milk to their players. Those players then asked their moms for it at home, driving purchase intent at the grocery store. And before long, that local Ohio story gained national coverage, increasing overall sales of chocolate milk.

Takeaways

What are some takeaways from a brand advocacy program, albeit at a much larger scale, that applies to marketers, regardless of skill:

1) Identify your existing brand advocates; they're the people talking about your brand constantly on social or online. You probably already know a couple and could identify more easily with just a little bit of time

2) Establish your goal for partnering with these brand advocates. Is it direct referral, is it app downloads, is it product reviews?

3) What is the creative way to reach those goals? For example, for direct referrals, what can you offer more exciting than a basic "Earn $5 for each referral?"

4) Monitor test and learn. Regarding reporting and analyzing content, we're fortunate to be in an industry where trial and error are not only accepted; and championed when done correctly.

Follow these four takeaways, and as a bonus, you'll be able to build an emotional connection with these potential brand advocates, while also establishing a trusting relationship with your brand or your client's.

With these takeaways, you can create a brand advocacy program with the ability to scale up or down as necessary, that can assist from a content creation standpoint and help you receive product feedback or reviews if your business requires that.

Looking Ahead

We've gone over a lot in the past few weeks, and yet, we've only scratched the surface of the current social media ecosystem. Social media is ever-changing and requires a mixture of both art and science. You need to understand both the qualitative and the quantitative when reviewing content and understanding performance.

And even as social media continues to evolve, we still know that consumers across all of the major social media platforms want to share aspects of their lives and engage with the brands that make it possible for them to do that. So how can your business or your clients engage with its consumers in a natural and non-invasive way? ‘

In my career, we typically mine for insights across the Internet and in the real world, discovering how a brand's products live in everyday consumers' lives. We do this to ground our social strategy in actionable insights.

From a cultural standpoint, what culturally-relevant moments can my brand show up authentically? When thinking about our business category, are we seeing any trends that seem to separate some businesses from others within the category?

Next, we look from a consumer perspective. Can we do social listening to uncover any insights relevant to our brand?

And from a company standpoint, what's truly different about our brand, and how can we maximize that advantage across every relevant media?

During my time at The Escape Pod Group, we took a four-step approach to our social media process. That involves listening to our community, our target audience, and the competitive set for any insights.

1) We look to create original branded content per an editorial calendar.

2) To help supplement that content, we curate and share user-generated content and 3rd party testimonials.

3) We then look to connect with influencers, micro, and macro, to help grow our social following and raise overall awareness.

4) Finally, we take a look back to measure and analyze our results to optimize future content. Like any campaign or activation, review how your content is performing throughout the campaign for better success.

That includes everything from an A/B test using the same creative but different post copy on two paid social posts, all the way to flighting several pieces of content over a more extended period and having them compete against each other.

This A/B testing is sometimes known as race tracking, where you're using the performance of those paid ads to determine which has the best creative to run long-term.

Next week, we're going to continue looking at the organic and paid social content.

Can’t wait and want to learn more about organic and paid social media? Check out my “Organic vs. Paid Social Media: Part 01” blog post.