why influencers are key to your content marketing

by Holly Hamann, Co-Founder & CMO at TapInfluence
WHY INFLUENCERS
ARE KEY TO YOUR CONTENT
MARKETING STRATEGY
FEATURED ON
I
t’s no secret that one of the business areas most
impacted by the digital age is marketing. For every
plugged-in marketer excited that part of their role now
includes posting on Facebook and reading blogs, there
are two others struggling to get their heads around the
pace and volume of digital information, both how to
consume and create it.
In his Harvard Business Review article, Gartner analyst
Jake Sorofman talks about The Rise of the Digital CMO
and the aggressiveness with which these leaders must
approach customer engagement, experimentation, and
measurement. While CIOs and CTOs are building and
supplying technology applications that transform how
companies operate, CMOs are buying them. Gartner
predicts that by 2017, the CMO’s technology budget
will exceed the CIOs. And most of this budget will go to
the creation, distribution and measurement of contentrelated strategies.
With the increased focus on content, some marketers
make the mistake of thinking the answer is to build a
content-making-machine and then blast that content
out to as many digital platforms as possible. But that
approach is simply a shortsighted attempt to take the
old advertising paradigm and feed it long-form content
instead of ads.
Content marketing strategies must serve the customer
first, not the marketer. In order to do that, content
has to actually engage people with useful information,
not lecture them. One powerful way to do that is to
partner with the digital influencers consumers are
engaging with way before they land on a brand website.
“Content marketing strategies
must serve the customer first, not
the marketer.”
Influencers are those with key audiences on blogs,
Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and YouTube who are
sharing their experiences, including those that involve
brands and products they use. They aren’t just creating
content, they are starting conversations, which is the
most powerful way to influence. So why are these digital
influencers so vital to a brand’s overall content strategy?
It’s About Trust
With the rise of social media, consumers demand
compelling, relevant content, developed internally or
through a community of key influencers. While they
appreciate product information from brands, what
influences their purchase decisions the most are
opinions from people just like them. New moms want
to know what products other new moms prefer and
marathon runners want product feedback from people
familiar the pains of racing. Socially savvy influencers
represent something a brand cannot—the perspective
of another consumer. to know what products other
new moms prefer and marathon runners want product
feedback from people familiar the pains of racing.
Socially savvy influencers represent something a brand
cannot—the perspective of another consumer.
Marketers can authentically tap this trust by partnering
with influencers who show a natural affinity for their
product and brand values. For instance, Udi’s, a
national provider of gluten-free food products, works
with dozens of bloggers who specifically create and
share content about gluten-free recipes and products.
Their readers trust their opinions and the products
covered and a partnership is win-win-win for the Udi’s,
the bloggers and their readers.
Influencers Represent the Power of the Middle
Finding, engaging and collaborating with influencers
used to be a very manual process and only allowed
marketers to coordinate and manage the efforts and
content of a handful of influencers. That, combined with
the assumption that big numbers meant big influence,
motivated marketers to just want to work with bloggers
and influencers who had high monthly unique visitors
or millions of followers on Twitter or YouTube. This
meant that the same bloggers ended up working on
programs over and over. Those top 5% might represent
big numbers, but they don’t necessarily represent the
millions of consumers who have targeted needs and
therefore follow niche influencers who produce very
targeted content. These include marathon runners, cat
lovers, military families, cancer survivors and those with
allergies or special diets. Collectively, the millions of
influencers who cater to these audiences are impacting
exponentially more consumers than the top 5%. This is
the power of the middle, also known as the “long tail.”
Influencers Are Your Content Distribution Army
Relevant, meaningful content is wasted if it doesn’t
reach or engage a scalable audience. Social media
influencers represent a powerful way for marketers
to distribute three valuable types of media—paid,
earned and owned. Paid media is the coverage you
get when you paid for your message to be included
or incorporated into published content. Sponsored
content that is written by a blogger and paid for by a
marketer falls into this category. Earned media is the
coverage you get when viewers authentically share
brand content and are not compensated. A sponsored
post or tweet that is shared by a reader falls into
this category. Owned media is the content that lives
on a brand’s own digital assets like their corporate
blog. There is a dollar value associated with each
one of these distribution channels and working with
influencers allows marketers to capitalize on all three.
As an example, ABC News worked with hundreds
of bloggers on a campaign to help raise awareness
about issues that affected women and babies
around the globe. Their mission was to connect a
million mothers in the U.S. with a million moms in
developing countries to draw attention to issues like
vaccines, prenatal care and the value of quick access
to medical care. They worked with a select group of
women bloggers who shared their birth and adoption
stories and were compensated for their stories (paid
media). Thousands of unpaid readers and followers
on social sites like Facebook and Twitter shared the
stories and commented about their own experiences
(earned media). ABC News then curated the stories
and hosted them on their own community website,
driving even more engagement (owned media). The
campaign and its viral distribution created a world-wide
social movement that reached millions, resulted in a
rally in Times Square that brought together hundreds
of NGOs and women from around the world, and
won Forrester’s coveted Groundswell Award for its
contribution to social good. This was only possible
because of the distribution power of influencers and
their ability to organically engage a relevant audience.
Incorporating influencer marketing should be a critical
component to any brand’s content marketing strategy.
It is the key to scaling the creation and distribution of
stories that are trusted and shared by the consumers
they are meant to reach.
Want to learn more about how leading
brands are influencing their audiences? A
TapInfluence brand strategist can help you
determine if influencers are a good fit for your
content strategy.
For more information on finding and utilizing
sources for influencer marketing, connect with
us online at:
www.tapInfluence.com/contact
or contact us directly at:
[email protected]
(720) 726-4074