ThinkEnergy: The Power of Influence (2024)

Jun 22, 2020

Brands are struggling to find a new way to authentically connectto their customers and we are witnessing major communicationdisruptions. In an article that appeared in Adweek, Twitter saidthat users now trust influencers like YouTubers, almost as much astheir friends. This is the age of influencer marketing. So here'stoday's big question. Should brands consider adding influencermarketing to their everyday marketing mix and is there a right way,and a wrong way to do it. Neal Schaffer, author of ‘The Age ofInfluence” gives us the scoop.

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Transcript:

Dan Seguin 0:02
Hey everyone! I'm Dan Segin from Hydro Ottawa. And I'll be hostingthe ThinkEnergy podcast.

PewDiePie, Dude Perfect, Hola Soy German, Whindersson Nunes, andEl Rubius. While perhaps not household names to you and I, they arepowerful influencers to Gen Z's audiences aged 13 to 18. In fact,these youtubers combined have 262 million subscribers, and are moreinfluential to this generation than movie stars and politicians.It's not surprising that today's consumers are increasingly moresavvy and critical of branded advertising. Gone are the days whereadvertising messages and propositions were trusted and taken atface value. In an online world where advertising is seen as moreintrusive than valuable.

Brands are struggling to find a new way to authentically connectto their customers, we are witnessing major communicationdisruptions. This includes declining television viewership,continued growth of social media audiences, an increase in adblocking technology media Fasting, and a significant rise of noiseclutter on all channels. It's becoming increasingly more difficultfor brands, particularly energy brands to keep up with the digitallandscape, as consumers take extreme measures to avoid beingadvertised to. With demand for attention on the rise andoverwhelming product options on the market, consumers are beginningto lose sight of who they can trust. Is the energy industry facinga Kodak moment? In an article that appeared in Adweek, Twitter saidthat users now trust influencers like YouTubers, almost as much astheir friends. This is the age of influencer marketing. So here'stoday's big question. Should brands consider adding influencermarketing to their everyday marketing mix and is there a right way,and a wrong way to do it. Our guest is no stranger to social mediaand the marketing world. He's the author of three books, teachesdigital media to executives at New Jersey Business School, has apodcast called maximize your social influence, orchestrates digitaltransformation for leading businesses and is fluent in Japanese andMandarin Chinese. Dear listeners, please welcome Neal Schaffer. HeyNeil, how would you define influencer marketing? And can you giveus some examples of brands doing it well?

Neal Schaffer 3:48
Thanks Daniel. So influencer marketing is something that I think alot of people are mystifying or they're mis educated on or they'vebeen misinformed about. You know, when I look at influencermarketing, I look at Who has online influence? Who has digitalinfluence? So, yes, celebrities have digital influence. But there'sa lot of other people that I've influenced because there's so manyof us that use social media that build communities, in the hundredsin the thousands in the 10s of thousands, but even those peoplethat have communities in the thousands are still able to influenceothers, right. And even in the influencer marketing industry, wherethey have gone smaller and smaller, you know, with each year wethey used to talk about macro influencers, then mid tierinfluencers, and then micro influencers, which are people that havebetween, you know, 50 to maybe 500,000 followers. And then over thelast year or two, we talked about nano influencers, people with oneto 10,000 followers. And if you think about, you know, I don't knowabout Canada, I'm assuming it's pretty similar demographic wise,but in the United States, the majority of the workforce aremillennials. So these are digital natives that have been doingsocial media since it began. And they've built up communities overtime, right. And so when you start to look around you realize thatthere's a lot of people that already know like and trust us thatalready may have some influence. These might be employees, thesemight be your customers, your followers online people thatmentioned your brand online that have some brand affinity for you.So, you know, when when so many people immediate influences becomeso democratized anybody can really have influence. And that's whereI tell, you know, the companies that I work with, don't just lookat number of followers, but also look at that brand affinity andyour chances of success of working with nano influencers thatactually are your customers are going to be much greater thanworking with a celebrity who just sees working with you as a onetime transaction, you really want to develop long termrelationships. So, you know, there is as far as brands, I mean,there are so many consumer brands that are doing influencermarketing, it's crazy. In fact, Estee Lauder is an example of abrand that they announced that 75% of their marketing budget isgoing to influencer marketing. There's one brand that I like tobring up as sort of a case study they're called Rose Field and theyare a watch company. So they, you know, there's a bunch of these,like watch brands that, that you've never heard of them, but all ofa sudden they pop up on Instagram, and everyone's talking aboutthem. And now they're a huge company. So they're actually, Ibelieve they're originally a Dutch company, they also have aheadquarters in New York City. And they basically have createdreally the ideal type of program that I talked about in the age ofinfluence, which is really, you know, the build a long term programof people that already know like, and trust you. So how do theybuild the program? Well, they went into their email list, they wentinto their customer, you know, database, and they looked at theirfollowers, and just by doing this exercise, they found Wow, there'sa lot of people of influence that that already know, like, andtrust us and from there, you know, some of them were better contentcreators, so let's use those to do you know, those people, maybe wework more on the content side. Some were really great, you know,amplifiers, they weren't the best content creators are aligned witha brand but they create a lot of great conversations, they canamplify. And then there are others that might refer us to othermembers. And they made it open anyone and everyone, I mean, anyonecan apply. And from that program, they've just developed atremendous amount of benefits, you know, increases all around theboard in terms of KPIs, and all they've given to everyone that'sjoined is either exclusive access to, you know, products beforethey go on sale, or basically shop points that they can shop forfree. So there's no monetary transaction. And when I tell this topeople blows them away, there's so used to this, pay someone $100or $1,000, on Instagram, and we don't know where that money'sgoing, or if they're, if the influence is real, or so there's a lotof different ways of doing it. And, you know, I tell brands, youknow, really think holistically about who has influence. It's notjust the celebrities, there's a lot more influence a lot morepeople with influence out there. And if we go back to the modelthat, you know, more than almost 20 years ago, this model that saysthe top 1% of online users or content creators, you then have 9%that are sort of engagers/commenters, and they have 90% that arelurkers? Well the top 1% of any social network is a lot of people.I mean, if LinkedIn is 500 million users, that's 5 million peoplethat you can engage with, right? If Instagram has 1 billion that'sstill you know, 10 million people. So there's a lot of people outthere don't just think celebrities really think holistically andfind people that you can align with and collaborate with for mutualbenefit.

Dan Seguin 8:23
What was the driving force behind your book on influencermarketing?

Neal Schaffer 8:28
So I you know, in classic sort of, you know, content marketing ormarketing we want to serve our customer. We want to serve ourcommunity. And it's interesting because with Coronavirus, this ismy advice for every company. How can you serve your community? Ifyou can't serve them physically? How do you serve them virtually,there are restaurants here in Orange County, California where Ilive that you know, you can order like a box family meal andthey'll include facemask. They'll include toilet paper, right? It'sone way of serving their community, even above and beyond your ownproduct. So with that in mind you exist you know business exists toserve society, this actually a quote from an executive at Walmart,believe it or not that I like to share, and with Coronavirus, weall sort of tap into that. So, because of that I am the exact sameway. I'm an educator, I'm an author. I'm a consultant. I'm aspeaker. So it's all about what are the needs in the market? And Ireally found about two to three years ago, this was a question thatI kept getting a lot about, not just influencer marketing, but alot of marketers that are saying, you know, my friend is making$1,000 every time they post on Instagram, how do I become aninfluencer? So this concept of digital influence, I thought therewas something to it and the more research I did Daniel, the more Irealized all this miseducation in that it had a lot more power thanmost people in businesses knew about. And that's why I decided towrite the book and the book actually was a test market on acrowdfunding platform, but it did so well that I'm gonna write thebook and then you know, HarperCollins leadership reaches out to meand, and the rest is history. So, and I still think you know, whenwe look at marketing, communications, right, you have a website youhave content for search engines, right? You have you have contentmarketing, you have email, you have social media and I believe thatsort of, you know, collaborating with others through influencermarketing, whether it's employees or customers or, or outsidepeople becomes another sort of pillar of marketing communicationthat I think every company should have a budget for. So I thinkit's going to really have long term value. It's definitely not justa trend, but it's going to serve companies that read the book andlisten to this podcast well,

Dan Seguin 10:28
Neil, let me ask you this: If the goal is to plug into thecommunities and connect energy brands to new audiences through thevoice and trusted relationships of an influencer, how do brandsensure a proper fit?

Neal Schaffer 10:46
Yeah, that's a great question. And that's an area where I think alot of brands that just chase that number of followers model,there's a relevance in a few different ways that there has to becontent relevance, right. So if they are, you know, people outthere that maybe once they talked about solar energy, right, somaybe you have a Solar Energy Initiative and you want to align withthem. But when you do further analysis, they talked about solarenergy once in their last 100 posts. And really, they don't talkabout solar energy at all. It's just something that came up. Sothis is a mistake, you use an analytic tool, oh, they've talkedabout solar energy, you immediately contact them, and it's nottheir main thing. So that's one area where you may havemisalignment is on the content side, you're working with the wrongperson. And if you throw money out, I'm sure they'll take it,right. I mean, some influencers really are in it for the money, noteverybody, right? Those are the ones you don't want to work with.But then there's the brand alignment. And this comes down to youknow, the tone of their content that the visuals they use, andreally, you know, if you can imagine if your content appeared intheir feed, just from a philosophical perspective, would it bealigned with your brand. would it look right, would it look rightin their feed and would it look right to you as well, but it lookslike a good representation. You can't really control how it's goingto look. But if it's something similar in look and feel, what'sthat alignment look like and this is why, Daniel, you know,marketing is sort of this one to many approach. But I believe thatinfluencer marketing is almost we can almost call it influencerrelations. And it's almost more geared towards public relationsthan marketing because it really is a one to one you really need todo analysis, you may find a few hundred people through a tool orthrough analysis, but you really got to dig deep into each one tomake sure that there is alignment on those different areas that Italked about.

Dan Seguin 12:37
What kind of return on investment does influencer marketing offercompared to other marketing channels?

Neal Schaffer 12:45
So there's already been a lot of data that says that you know, forevery dollar spent in influencer marketing, you get $7 ROI or, youknow, you get double the ROI after six months compared totraditional ad spend. So if you were to do a search for influencermarketing ROI statistics. There's a lot of studies out there. So Ithink that obviously, there's no one Golden Rule. But there aremany ways to leverage influencers. So obviously there is that brandpartnership brand sponsorship sort of content sponsorship, contentamplification, right? Where if you were to work with an influencer,who agreed to amplify your content, you know, what, what would thatlook like in terms of the engagement they get or the clicks theyget compared to what you're doing? compared to like paid media, forinstance, that's a really, really good way to compare it. Butthere's other ways of looking at it. Daniel, what if you're asmart, small brand, who nobody is talking about online? You know,part of social media is about inciting word of mouth marketing. Andthe easiest way to do that is to really, you know, collaborate withinfluencers, send them product, get them talking about yourcompany. And that's a really high ROI just in terms of brandawareness that it's hard for you as a brand to create, if nobodyknows you, because you're gonna have to create it throughadvertising. And that trust factor is just very, very different,right? But we can go further, well, we're creating our own visualsand our own videos. But you know, these influencers are creatingreally, really good looking videos really, really good lookingphotos doing drone footage, but, man, we just can't do it the sameway that this content creator does. So, you know, why don't weinstead of doing it ourselves or hiring an agency, why don't wejust directly work with the influencer? So this is an area ofworking with content creators to actually lower your expensessometimes and maybe get the additional benefit that they're gonnapublish that on social media as well. And then you get into Well,we really want to create a community of people we can tap into tounderstand what people are interested in like a focus group, right?And this is another way you can leverage influencers so the ROIlike anything else in in social media, I mean, there's so manydifferent ways to measure it, but there's also these intangiblebenefits that, you know, invariably, you're going to get when youdo it right.

Dan Seguin 14:53
Can you share with us what are the most effective forms ofinfluencer marketing? What are your thoughts on the value ofsponsored content?

Neal Schaffer 15:05
So sponsored content is really interesting. You know, when we talkabout sponsored content, it sort of taps into that, you know,transactional relationship. You know, we create the content, youpublish it, and probably we're going to pay you money or somethingof that sort. So, I think there's still role that sponsored contentcan play. But you know, it's always going to be more authentic andmore trustworthy when it comes from the influencer themselves,right? And that's an ideal scenario. But we don't all have thebrand affinity with every influencer, we may not have therelationships with each influencer. So that is a way to start arelationship, right? If you want to collaborate with someone, maybespend a little money for sponsored content for distribution, so atleast your content gets out to their network. There's obviouslyvalue there. And really, you know, Daniel, in the age of influencehas a chapter of like, you know, the 15 different ways you can youcan work with influencers, so that definitely is one. And it's onethat's been around for a while. But you know, based off that whatif, in addition not sponsored content, you were going to do agiveaway, and said, Hey, we're going to give you one year of freesoftware, or we're going to give away 100 products. And thenimagine that influencer, it makes him or her look good, becausethey are indirectly sponsoring this giveaway where they're givingaway free stuff to their community, right? And then they're gonnawant to promote that even more. So then you get to this win win.And then what if, hey, as part of this, we'd love if you could, youknow, create another post actually reviewing the product that'spart of the giveaway, would you be interested in that? And then youbegin to tap into that authentic voice of that person even thoughyou gave them the product, hey, this company, you know, sent me theproduct, but all my opinions are personal, their mind. And then youget into a deeper relationship that I think, you know, the more theinfluencer wins, the more it's in their best interest tocollaborate with you and share your content. The higher the ROI isgoing to be right where you want to get to a point where they'rewhere they're an advocate, they're going to talk about you withoutYou're even having to ask. So as an initial entryway sponsoredcontent does have a role. And if you're working with big players,obviously sponsored content has a role there. But I would only usethat as an initial strategy, not the final strategy.

Dan Seguin 17:14
Influence isn't necessarily tied to popularity. A large followingis not necessarily a predictor of success in influencer marketing.What are your thoughts on working with influencers that areintegrated and prolific on a variety of channels, as opposed tothose who limit themselves to predominantly one platform ormedium?

Neal Schaffer 17:39
That's a really, really good question. And I think that, you know,marketing is all about getting in front of your customer. So youfirst got to ask yourself, where are my customers? If you are a b2borganization, you're probably not going to be focusing on tik tok,for instance, right? That's probably not where your customer is. Soyou definitely want to have those channels where your customersare, you definitely want to be working with influencers that havecoverage on those platforms. Now what you'll find, generallyspeaking, it's hard to be good at every platform. The only personthat can do it is Gary Vaynerchuk. And he has a staff of, I don'tknow, 15-20-25 people that allow him to do that. So, for individualinfluencers, you'll find that they usually have one strong network.You know, when we think about tik tok, we think about Charlie, this15 year old who, who's made it big in no time, so her she's tiktok,there's Instagram people, there's YouTube people, right. And Iwould almost argue that, you know, find people that are reallygood, you know, if you could find a mix of people, that some ofthem are really good at one thing, some are good at another, butthey have your platforms covered. I almost think that that's goingto be in terms of reach a better strategy, and it's more natural,because it's impossible to be as good in all these platforms. It'sjust there's just not enough time in the day to be able to do thateven for really really good content creators and and where peopleso we're, you know, we tend to be passionate, you know, Dan, I'msure you have like a favorite social network or to I have afavorite social network or to where we tend to spend more time andthey're no different. So to expect them to be good at everything. Ithink it's unrealistic. And I don't think it's going to serve youwell at the end.

Dan Seguin 19:11
Knowing that a critical component of an effective influencermarketing campaign is establishing a trusted relationship with arelevant influencer, when who's in tune with your audience's needsand desires? and whom your audience will look to when they'remaking purchase decisions? Is there a checklist for companies whenaligning themselves with an influencer?

Neal Schaffer 19:37
Here's the thing. So I consider you know, you're trying to developrelationships with a lot of people. So let's say you come from thePR world, there's 100 different you know, newspaper reporters,media relations, you want to create relationships with all thesehundred people. You might do the same outreach to all of them, butnot everybody responds. So I think it's less of a checklist. Imean, yes, there are things you Want to analyze to make surethey're the right fit. At the end of the day, you're going to reachout to a lot of people, and not all of them are going to convert.And what I mean by that is not not everyone's gonna respond to you.Some will respond the first time. And then sometimes you have anautoresponder that kicks in a second email and some respond tothat. Some if you go on a Twitter, they're going to respond to aDM, but everybody's different. But at the end of the day, noteverybody is going to respond to your request for collaboration oryour outreach. So you're only going to be working with a subset tobegin with those that actually responded. So from there, I mean,the only checklist is to have an open ended conversation, right?What is it? You know, first of all, how do you normally work withcompanies? Have you ever worked with companies what is what are theways in which you work with them? What is your, you know? How canwe help you? Oh, you know, you're looking for speakingopportunities every month we have, you know, we have monthly townhalls, you know, here in Ottawa or wherever You know, we can putyou on a panel next time, right? For instance, I'm just thinkingout loud here. So, you know, the only checklist is to be human. Andto listen, instead of saying, we, we want you, we're going to shipyour product, we want you to post, you know, once on Instagramthree Instagram stories all on different days of the week. And thenover the weekend, we want you to post once on Facebook once inTwitter, and we're going to send you a $25 amazon gift card. Andthis is the mistake that so many brands make because they don'tunderstand what are the needs of the influence of what do they wantto do. And if you offer that without asking, you could never youcould come to a situation where the influencer is so angry that youthat you know $25 amazon gift card would be worth their time thatthey're never going to respond to you again. Maybe they put youremail in spam filter or they block you and you're never gonna havea chance to work with that influencer. So it's always about themost important checklist item is having that open endedconversation from there. Sure. You know, what are you going to dotogether, make sure you Follow up. They're people too sometimesthey're they're late on things. How are you doing? How can we helpyou? But I don't think there's one standard, you know that there'sa checklist for the process that I went through, right? which endsin then publishing content, you're analyzing that content. And thenover time, you know, looking into the program, who are our bestperformers, maybe do more with them? Maybe try to bring some newpeople in maybe the least performing people maybe you don't allowin next year. You know, you have these annual contract type ofrelationships. But there's no as you can imagine, becauseeverybody's so different. And their needs are so different. It'sreally hard to have that one standard checklist I think everymarketer would love to have.

Dan Seguin 22:34
Why has influencer marketing grown to become one of the mostpowerful form of marketing, in social media? And in general?

Neal Schaffer 22:45
Yes, I think there's a few trends that have driven the growth andhave increased the power of influencer marketing. And once again,we take a holistic perspective, we take a step back, and we look athow you know from a digital first mentality, how to We get the wordout about our company. So we have a website check. We're doing SEOcheck. We're doing email marketing, marketing, automation check.We're doing content marketing, and we have a blog, we're doingcontent, various forms, check. We're doing social media check.Well, where else you're gonna spend your money. Right? And thoseare the main ones. But specifically within social media, there's aproblem. Because social media organically just does not does notmatter anymore. It's impossible for companies to get a lot of reachorganically, because social networks are truly become pay to play.So this pushes a lot of companies into using their social mediabudget for performance marketing or paid social, but then it's anadvertisement. It's not the same. It's not organic. Some peopledon't trust ads, some people come to me blockout ads, right. Sothat is one major trend. That is pushing people from organic topaid but paid is really not the solution on the other hand, Socialmedia was made for people, not businesses, and who do social media?Who do users relate to? They relate to people just like them.That's why all these people have become have built these bigcommunities. They're like us, they're not celebrities. Theseinfluences not start out as celebrities, right? They started out aspeople like us. They're authentic, they're transparent. And it'svery, very hard for brands to do that, to compete with that.They're not humans, we talk about humanizing the brand. But at theend of the day, they're not humans, humans are humans, they have anadvantage. So that's the other. That's this relatability factor,you know, any brand, could it become a talker? Could it become aYouTuber? Could they didn't write, they had the opportunity, butthey failed to do that because it you know, for many reasons thatwe can have another podcast episode just on that. But people havegained people have seized the opportunity and they have gained thatinfluence. So you know, these are the trends even with Coronavirus,it's no different the trends are still there. And you know withsocial media This notion of sort of, you know, viral word of mouthmarketing, if you really want to get that going, it's not going tohappen through paid advertisement. And it's not going to happenthrough your own organic social, it's going to happen toinfluencers, when other people that people relate to and trust,start talking about your brand. So those are sort of the trendsthat push influencer marketing. That's why you have a lot of brandsand Instagram just don't even publish their own content. It's 100%,UGC, or user generated content, in recognition of that fact theycan't compete, and this content is probably going to outperform. Sowhen you take that concept and you apply it to everything you do inmarketing, you begin to see the power that influencers can bring.Neal,

Dan Seguin 25:40
is it fair to say that conventional marketing approaches don'tstand much of a chance against the benefit content marketingprovides? Where should energy brands be focusing their attention interms of influencer marketing? Any recommendations and thoughts onleveraging user generated content from influencers and repurposingthat content?

Neal Schaffer 26:07
Yeah, so actually, you know, Daniel, it brings up something thatI've yet to bring up. But one of my early clients was actually oneof the utilities companies out here in California. And and so Ihad, I had a chance to work with their team. And they originallyreached out to me, because they were looking for a consultant thatdealt with social media crisis communications. And what I taughtthem was that the best way to manage crises is to do it proactivelyis to build goodwill. And do it. And this is actually they ended uphaving a major crisis A few years ago, but before that, they didn'teven have a crisis they wanted to prepare for, right. So byproactively building goodwill with your community, you're nowbuilding an army of people that will support you. Right? Hopefully,when, when it's not a matter of if when things happen, becausethings in the utilities there's always going to be these thingsright. So then we start to look at Well, you know, who are the whoare influencers, we're not talking about influence I look at who isactive in social media as a content creator, locally. And forutilities companies, it's gonna come down to the region where youlive, who are the local influencers, some of them may talk aboutfood. Some of them may talk about passion, some of them may talkabout local tourism, but there's these lifestyle categories thatyou can choose from where you can find people, right to collaboratewith. Now, when I work with this utilities company, I realized atleast the laws the United States are, if you share content fromother sources, you're indirectly sponsoring them and there areregulations regarding that. So that's what makes leveraging usergenerated content for public utilities a little bit tricky. Now,this was several years ago. I don't know if the regulations havechanged, right? So you at the end of the day, may not be able toleverage their content, your platform, but it doesn't mean youcan't create a relationship with them, where maybe you interviewthem. Then it is your content. And probably interviews aresomething where you're not sponsoring them. you're reaching out,you're reaching out, you know, every maybe one day a week, you havea live stream featuring a local influencer, man, you know, if apublic utility company was to reach out to an influencer, sayingwe'd like to feature you on our channel, can you imagine how exoticmost people would be the exposure they get? So this is what I tellbrands. And you know, I've talked about brands very generally here,but it applies to utilities as well. There are a lot of things thatyou can offer influencers as part of a collaboration outside ofmoney. And if you offer money, it may get tricky because of thesame regulations. For instance, do you have an audio studio? Do youhave a video studio? You could rent that out? Hey, you know, I knowyou create a lot of videos, we have a video studio, you know, justwhenever you want to use it, let us know we'll let you use it. Imean, that that is a unique benefit that you can offer, or if youever need a meeting room. I mean, these are these are littlethings, especially utilities because you have to Big infrastructurethat you can offer. And you do, you know, it's funny, this utilityreached out to me because they had a small business event and wherethey you know, part of utilities, you have a b2c, but you have theb2b right? So for the b2b, they do these small business events, letus help educate you on you know, accounting, finance, sales,marketing, and so I was one of the speakers. So this is anotherarea in which obviously, if you do events where you can reach outto, to influencers. So, there's a lot of different ways to do it.And I don't know why if I was a utility company, you know, in yourI would be proactively doing this because that is really going torelate yourself to the community, then the people in your communitysee you as a partner, as a collaborator, that you're talking to allthese people that a lot of people think are cool, right? It justindirectly it's going to shine on you, your brand, and it's goingto make you I believe, a more trustworthy entity because there'sseen someone from the company interview someone that I relate to Ithink that's a huge, powerful, really, really easy way that utilitycompanies can can begin. Now, if the regulations allow you toleverage user generated content. That's awesome. So, you know, whenI work with this utility company on content strategy, you know,obviously, there's some content that's that's education. Right?Please make sure you know, if you see a down a power line, pleasecontact, you know, 911 there's certain things that as a publicutility you need to put out there, you know, once a week, once amonth, whatever it is. And then there's always at the time, hey,make sure you sign up for e-bill service, right? There are manybenefits for utility companies. When people sign up online and dothings electronically, it makes it much more efficient, right? Sothere's also these initiatives you have it, maybe you have like newrates, or public hearings, so that there's some public affairsthings need to have, but what are you going to talk about everyday? The other stuff are community stuff right? Now, if your suretycompany is very active in the community, as you probably are,there's a lot of stuff that you can be publishing about, whichisn't directly related to energy per se, but it's indirectlyrelated. Do what you're doing in the community. So with that bucketof content similarly, these are these are you know communityheroes, hashtag community heroes where every week you bring in adifferent influencer and how they're contributing to the communityand how by you know this foodie influencer has helped tons of smallbusinesses generate you know income during COVID-19 what, you know,thank you for your service to our community. Tell us you know,what, what are some of your favorite restaurants locally? This is Imean utility company because we serve people that you should becomesort of the local voice, local cultural voice of your community andinfluencers are the key to help you do that.

Dan Seguin 31:36
How important are social listening tools as it relates toinfluencer marketing any recommendations?

Neal Schaffer 31:44
Yes, a social listening tools have you know, the earliest type ofsocial media for business tool was the listening tool becausesocial media for business began with PR. If people say bad thingsabout us we want to know right reputation management is where allthis started back in 2007 / 2008. Now listening tools can stillserve that purpose and you shouldn't be listening to, if people arecomplaining you want to, you know, you want to proactively reachout to those people. But listening tools also give us the abilityto find out who's talking about us. And if people are talking aboutus, and you know, this is where we get back to finding people thatalready have brand affinity, there may be fans as a utility,everyone's your customer, but some people like your brand more thanothers. So instead of listening to social listening, to find thenegative, you search for the positive, and you start to make a listof people, for instance, I was at a conference right beforelockdown started. And it is a pharmaceutical company that actuallymakes something like these, these lozenges that you take thatreduce the chance of your cold going on for longer than expectedand someone at the CDC here recommended that you take that as partof an effort to reduce Coronavirus. So they were sold out. Theywere sold out for months. But the marketing director was you know,Neal, I want to how do i do leverage this situation, I said, Look,use your social listening tool to talk about who's saying positivethings about you, and start to develop those relationships. Even ifyou can't do any advertising. Now, you can still developrelationships over the next few months, and then activate them.When you can, you know, when you do have factory capacity, you canstart talking to people. Same thing with utilities companies, whois talking about who are the who are the positive people talkingabout you, and start to make a list, right. And then you mightnotice some patterns. Some of these people have a larger followingthan others. Some might be specialized in food or travel. And some,you know, might be mentioning you more often than others, andtherefore, they have deeper brand affinity with you. So sociallistening tool is really great way to begin to sort of figure outwhat are people saying about you from a reputation managementperspective from a sentiment analysis perspective, but also who,you know, might be fans out there who might have said, Oh, my gosh,I signed up to email and now I say, 5% of my bills for the next 12months. Did you even know the service existed? Or are you know,Hey, I just want To this event sponsored by, you know, the powercompany, it was really cool. Have you ever heard of it? I mean, youjust never know. Right? So that's where I'd use social listeningtools to really, you know, you can proactively reach out to people,like I talked about there. But when people are already talkingabout you, it makes it really easy to join the conversation. Itmakes it really easy. I was gonna say, slide into the DM to beginthat conversation with them with a thank you, or we're listening.And that can make I mean, they're human right, that can make aworld of difference in breaking the ice and beginning thatcollaborative relationship.

Dan Seguin 34:32
You know, step one of effective influencer marketing starts whenidentifying relevant influencers for our brand. Once we embark inthis adventure, how do we manage those types of relationships? Doyou recommend taking a campaign based approach when working withinfluencers? Or is it better to test the waters with only atemporary commitment to see how they resonate with our audiences?On a related topic, what should be considered for programmanagement and metrics? What needs to be understood from executivesand influencers alike?

Neal Schaffer 35:16
yeah, I'd say the first step in an influencer strategy is not youknow, influencer identification, it really starts with what's theobjective? What are you trying to do here? So, my voice forexecutives is, you know, look we're going to work with, we're goingto try to find people to work with. And we are going to vet them tomake sure that they're aligned with our brand, we'll, we'll contactlegal to make sure they're on board. If you want to review everyone of these profiles before we collaborate with them. That'sgreat. You have the right to do it. It's it's everybody's program.You know, we're just helping the company. And we are not even goingto increase spend. We're just going to take we're going to divertmoney from paid media to fund this and we're going to to try out,and we're going to report back to you on how we did from from a KPIperspective. And these are our objectives, you know, paid socialnot as effective. We want to get more word of mouth and social, wewant to get more mentions. We want to get more, you know, trafficto our website, we want to create more content, and they're goingto help us do that. So really what are, you know, when you asked methat second question, Daniel about, you know, what are the KPIs?What are the metrics? Well, that that is not unique to influencers.This is marketing, communications in general, what are your KPIs?If it's Media Relations, it's you know, number of number ofpublications, you know, number of clips, whatever it is, I mean,it's no different here. It's the same KPIs that you would have forcontent marketing, or for paid social media, as you have workingwith influencers, right. So, you know, these are the things I thinkyou need to keep in mind. And, you know, when creating this sort ofprogram, it is very much going to be based on one to onerelationship. So I think it's totally okay to say, Hey, we're justbeginning a program. We Want To make a long term program, but rightnow we're just, we're just sort of testing the waters. And, youknow, we think you'd make a great fit. And we just want to see howwe might be able to work with each other. And maybe, you know, youdo start a little small, we'd like a pilot run of, you know, a fewor a dozen or however many. And you have them do one action, right,whether we go back to that sponsor content, whether it is aninterview, whether it is content, co-creation, I mean, whatever itis, you know, one action, and from that action, what were theresults? And we have to remember that there are positive KPIs, butthere's also how did it help us reduce things like reduce costs, sowe use an agency to record our video. Well, you know, instead ofhaving an executive, go to our agency's Video Studio, and record avideo interview that got 10 views on YouTube over the last week, weworked with an influencer and did a live stream which they sharedwith their fans, and we got 1000 visitors and when we archive thison YouTube, We're probably going to get a lot more than 10 viewsover the course of a week. And we didn't have to pay the agencymoney to do this, because the influencer agreed to do it for freefor exposure. So you really got to look holistically, you know,executive speak the language of Excel, right? What helped us boostthings, but also, was there anything to help us reduce costs? Andyou'll be surprised with influencers, especially with contentcreation, you may find that to be the case. So, you know, yes,start small. At the end of the day, you want long termrelationships. So, you know, start with one activation, onecampaign and then see how it goes. And you know, some you're goingto invite to the next one. Others, you may say, hey, it was greatworking together. We have a long term approach. We don't have any,you know, openings in our program now, but we'll definitely reachout in the future when we do and leave it at that because you don'twant any burnt bridges here. These people may end up you know,increasing their influence over the course of a few months and youmay want to bring them back in and test them again. Right. Butthat's sort of the the effort. You know, it is something I thinkone person can do, but it's like PR You almost need to have someonethat's dedicated to really managing those relationships because itis going to take time and influencers are busy people, they're notgoing to return your calls right away. They're working with a lotof other entities sometimes and, and you want to be top of mind, soit's going to take time invested to work well with them.

Dan Seguin 39:16
Okay, what are some of the barriers and risks to working withinfluencers? Does it revolve around choosing who? How to engage?And the lack of control over messaging?

Neal Schaffer 39:29
Well, yeah, there's definitely lack of control of messaging. Andbut when you think about it, Daniel, I don't think that brands arein control of their messaging. Because at the end of the day,people are going to say what they want about the brand, and they'regoing to share that in social anyway. So if you realize you neverhad control in the first place, you can try to influence people.But once again, it's coming from a brand, not a person so andpeople believe people like themselves way more than they believe.advertising agencies are people that work in PR and marketing. Sothe writing's on the wall there. you know, we have seen someinfluencer campaigns that ended up sort of tarnishing the brand.And a lot of the that happened because it was transactional, pleasemake sure you copy and paste this message at exactly this time. Andyou have you've had some of your influences literally copy andpaste the message, including that copy and paste this message bar.And then it went out the social media, right? Or, you know, thankyou xX xX for drafting me, you know, in the NBA draft and theyforgot to fill in the name of the team that drafted them, right. Sothose are full positive happen because influencers are are treatedas programmable ad units, right. And it's transactional in nature.That's not what I'm recommending you do here. So when you work longterm, you don't have control, but I think it is totally okay to sayhey, before you publish, we just like to have a chance to reviewit, and maybe offer suggestions on how to improve it. And that'syour quality control that is totally okay to do. Most influencerswould say sure, you know, no problem. So that would give you theability to mitigate risk, but I think The biggest way to mitigaterisks is to do it up front is choosing the right influencer to workwith.

ThinkEnergy: The Power of Influence (2024)

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