When someone says they run an influencer marketing agency, what comes to mind? I’ve asked a few brand-side folks I know that question in the last week or two and have received a number of different responses. Some people say they think of an ad agency only that only focuses on influencers. Others say a consultant or small shop that handles all that busy work for you. Another contact said they think of the team at the software company they use, like CIPIO.ai for instance, which does the cat herding as it were. The truth is none of those answers are wrong. The third party that handles some degre ..read more

We’ve had a couple of episodes and conversations in the past that talk about gamers. The online video game industry is worth billions of dollars. Its content creators have some of the most captive audiences in any medium. Twitch is one of the biggest and most impactful social networks and it is dominated by video gamers who live stream themselves playing video games. And yet, this behemoth of a segment is still a mystery to most of us in the influence marketing space. Some consumer brands have played on Twitch and sponsored various gamers to some degree of success. But the businesses and agenc ..read more

Do you know what this show is about? If you said “influencer marketing,” you’re close, but not necessarily wrong. If you said “influence marketing” you’re more right. And if you said, the exploration of how brands can apply influence in all its shapes and forms, to aide it their marketing, you’re spot-on. But if you weren’t spot-on, that’s my fault, not yours. It’s an example of my marketing and communications with you failing to deliver the point. It’s an exercise in clarity. And Steve Woodruff is probably the person on the planet with the most expertise and focus on helping business, brands ..read more

We’ve been talking to some talent managers of late. They play an important role for many creators, managing the business of their influencer status while the creator, well creates. Many of them add another perspective to the creative process, contribute ideas to shape partnerships into something more than they would be otherwise and are valuable to the brands and agencies in the equation as well. But allow me a moment to be rather frank. Those are exceptions to the rule. Most talent managers are in it for one thing: maximizing the take so they maximize their commission. Too many managers ask f ..read more

There’s another “State of the Industry” report out this month. It actually came last week from Linqia, which is one of the enterprise influencer marketing software companies out there. These reports are always useful, so I like to report on them here on the show.  If you want to read the full report for yourself, which I encourage you to do, you go to their website and sign up and trade your email address for their research. You become a lead in their platform … that’s how B2B marketing often works. But it’s a fair trade and, who knows? Linqia might be just what your company needs. So, go ..read more

Depending on where you are at the table in the influencer marketing space, your meal is slightly different. Creators can range from nano-influencers who barely consider themselves influencers or creators at all … to those who achieve true celebrity status and have full production teams they employ to create all that content while they live off their personality and audience connection. For brands, you can be super nimble with your budget and work with the former of those. You can go big and work with the latter. But most find themselves somewhere in the middle jockeying around a mix of small a ..read more

What would you do if you didn’t have access to social media for a day? How about a week? What about three and a half months? How would that change your daily habits? How would it change where you turned for information. How would it affect your business?  Now, certainly for you social media content creators and brands that rely heavily on social media creators and content to drive customers, I’m sure if could be catastrophic. But really? Are there no other alternatives? Don’t get me wrong. I’m not here to advocate for a social media shut down, but someone did it recently and lived to tell ..read more

If you’ve been paying attention to the goings on in the influencer marketing world, you know by now that there was a major acquisition announced recently. Sprout Social, long known as one of the top social media management solutions in the space, acquired Tagger Media. Its main product, Tagger, is one of the leading influencer marketing software solutions on the market. It was once a regular sponsor of this program as well. Tagger was actually also responsible for bringing me to the Influencer Marketing Show a couple of years ago. Pete Kennedy, its founder and I became friends with a shared vi ..read more

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