My definition of an influencer is anyone who can motivate an audience to take action. Now, that’s a very broad definition. In fact, anyone can be an influencer (or more accurately, influential) under those criteria.  But when it comes to differentiating between influencers, we have to split hairs. And one category where my hair-splitting axe comes out is the category of celebrities. I think there are two categories of celebrity influencers: Those who are celebrities and also have social media followings. And celebrities who are such because of their social media followings. Regardless of ..read more

In the context of influencer marketing, there’s a big difference between an influencer and a celebrity. My definition of that difference has always been that an influencer is someone who built an audience on social media by creating content on social media. A celebrity is someone who built an audience on social media because of something else. They’re an actor. Or singer. Or politician. Or athlete.  Social media content is not their primary thing.  Now, before I go further, let me circle back to the very premise of this show and my approach to influence marketing. An influencer, broa ..read more

The primary reason I like to interview people about this wild, wonderful world we work in is that I know I don’t know everything. Even though we talk about a lot of the topics that I consider myself fairly well schooled or experienced with, someone else always brings a different perspective to the table. It’s the accumulation of those different perspectives that I feel makes me, and I suppose, you, smarter. We’re better at our jobs because we listen to someone else’s perspective, even if it’s about something we fell comfortable that we know well. I had the great pleasure of being a guest on La ..read more

If you’ve listened to Winfluence for any length of time, you know that for the influencers and content creators out there, I’m bullish on building and growing your owned content channels. Blogs, websites, email newsletters, podcasts … the properties where you own the content and the audience. As opposed to social networks where your content is on someone else’s website and the audience is not yours but theirs. So I typical recommend content creators consider starting a podcast. It’s a great way to have a deeper, more personal and long-form connection with your audience. It’s also a great way t ..read more

You're starting to hear a theme emerge in a lot of influencer marketing industry predictions and trends talk, it's been there but seems to be getting louder. The word or phrase I'm referring to is "data-driven." Most of your influencer marketing platforms have that verbiage in their marketing literature because marketing decision makers like you respond to it. Data means more insights, more predictive decision making, better chance of success without us humans mucking it up. But to understand the data of any marketing channel is a level of expertise few have. That's why we rely on the software ..read more

The world of content creators is deep and wide. There exists literally at least one creator for almost every interest or niche out there. Part of what I love about being an influence marketing strategist is discovering new, interesting, creative people who connect with audiences in fun ways. If they make sense to work with a client I’m helping, I get super excited. In addition to the diversity of topics the world of content creation offers is the diversity of business models, sizes and scopes of a creator’s per view. What I mean by that is some creators focus on one channel or another and do t ..read more

Many of you are small business owners. Some of you might also work in marketing teams or even at agencies where influencer marketing budgets are thin. So when you hear people rattling on about the software platforms they use for their influencer marketing efforts, you probably think, “Yeah … wouldn’t that be nice.” The soup-to-nuts platforms are expensive. Or at least they are for small businesses. When you’re spending millions of dollars on marketing and hundreds of thousands on influencer marketing, $2-3 grand per month for software isn’t concerning. So the “expensive” label is relative. But ..read more

There's no question the pandemic had and is still having a tremendous impact on the restaurant industry. In fact, as today’s guest points out, when you look at the history of how and why people use restaurants, the experience has changed.  Rev Ciancio is a food and hospitality industry influencer. Yep … in the B2B space. He speaks at food and beverage industry conferences. He is a marketing and tech evangelist for the food business. He’s often engaged to consult with restaurants on developing their tech stack and customer acquisition approach.  But Rev is also quite the b2c influence ..read more

This is a special episode of Winfluence. I’m going to step aside and let you hear someone else guide a discussion about influence marketing. There’s another great show on the Marketing Podcast Network called The Endless Coffee Cup. Matt Bailey of Site Logic is the host of that show. He welcomes expert guests from all around the world on a variety of marketing and business topics. Matt and I have known each other since an event called Blogger Social back in 2008. He comes from the SEO segment of the marketing space, but he is an agency owner, an entrepreneur and all-around brilliant guy.  ..read more