Besides the common tips of a blogger, I want to have a more educative approach and share with you my knowledge about influencer marketing with the purpose of offering insights to both brands and individuals.

Influencer marketing platforms

Once you have followed rigorously the steps mentioned in the other articles, you might be curious of knowing on which platforms you can exploit your work and be rewarded for that, whether it involves cash or products/ services.

First of all, let’s outline that there are 2 types of collaborations: barter and paid. But which one is more suitable?

Since the beginning of trading, barter has been used by people in order to exchange good or services with one another. The advantage with barter projects is that the number of followers does not have a big influence on the decision making, so if you are fresh on the market, then it might be a great stepping stone. At the beginning, it is obviously exciting to get PRODUCTS FOR FREE, but you have to consider the worth and functionality of the product, consequently the fame of the brand, which can bring you more exposure. Usually, on barter collaborations you have free hands to do whatever you want with the product, but in case you want a long-term collaboration with the brand, the best will be to make a post and or stories to introduce it to your audience. However, there are contrary opinions regarding barter collaborations, which cuts the chances of a real content creator to get paid for its efforts. Below, I will list one of the most popular influencer marketing platforms where you can collaborate with brands. A shorter version of this text can be found here, otherwise if you want to discover in depth every platform, then keep on reading!

  • Brandbassador is a brand-building community app, which helps in identifying affiliates, influencers, and brands you want to collaborate with, in order to drive sales and complete missions that will propel your influencer journey. There you can find lifestyle brands such as DESENIO, Ideal of Sweden, One Piece, etc.
  • ReachBird has the largest site in Munich, followed by Ruggel in Liechtenstein, so they can keep track on the Swiss partners and customers and Budapest, where high technology allowes to control campaigns from brands such as The Body Shop, Lindt, Movenpick,etc.
  • Hivency was founded in 2017 and is a platform aimed to micro-influencers with interests such as Fashion, Travel and Lifestyle. When a company wants to launch a campaign, they describe the product or service along with the ideal promoter profile, so that the algorithm finds the best match.
  • BrandHeroes was founded in Denmark, Aarhus and they match local micro-influencers with lifestyle brands ( H&M, The Body Shop, Boozt, Vero Moda, Dyson ) for authentic collaborations, with the purpose of becoming Brandheroes by sharing the love for the brands they genuinely adore on social media.
  • Octoly accepts the accounts ( Youtube, Instagram) with over 1K from mostly Germany, US, France, Spain and Italy, but from time to time there are campaigns running in other countries too. You get products for free from beauty brands such as Sephora, Estee Lauder, but as well lifestyle brands, before their official launch in favor of your honest review.

But what does every platform have in common? Besides a collaborative transparent community managed through Influencer Relationship Management. there’s Artificial Intelligence to collect first party data across social media channels. Nevertheless, the audience and ‘fame’ are analyzed, so the plaform can meet their client’s requirements, in terms of targeting.

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Failed influencer marketing campaigns

The title says it all. Both brands and influencers have an obligation of behaving responsibly to their potential customers, but no one is perfect and mistakes are sometimes unavoidable. The internet has made distances shorter and information quicker to be accessed, therefore when these mistakes happen, the price paid often involves lawsuits, decreases in sales, ruining careers, brands etc.

The Italian luxury fashion house, Dolce & Gabbana used a famous Chinese model, Zuo Ye to be the face of the campaign #DGlovesChina and shoot in 3 videos how she is trying to behave like an Italian by eating cannoli and pizza with chopsticks. Nevertheless, after the bad reactions appeared straightforward, the post was removed after 24 hours. The entire campaign was accused of trivialising Chinese culture and promoting unflattering stereotypes and lead to the cancelation of the fashion show in Shanghai by the Chinese government and some Chinese online retailers removed their products. Was this measure necessary or the Chinese overreacted?

There are many products being advertised , especially beauty ones that promise miracles. You probably remember the outrageous scandal between James Charles and Tati Westbrook . The promotion of Sugar Bear Hair broke Tati’s heart who is producing Halo Beauty and is in direct competition with the previous brand. However, the dispute got a lot of attention, subscribers went up and down, but the 100% truth is known by the protagonists.

We all know that advertising beauty products is as much as exciting, as also problematic. A product can react differently depending on the type of skin and in general skincare. Kylie Cosmetics owned by Kylie Jenner is a brand that got itself into hot water multiple times due to the defective products, not respecting the delivery dates and not including the exact order in a package. Despite all these problems, the brand used a very smart content strategy by creating real urgency based on scarcity ( when she launches a product, there is a small number of products on stock, so the next time this product is back again people will feel the urge of buying it) You can inform yourself about this brand here.

Does Fyre Festival tell you something? There is even a Netflix documentary that brings to the surface the issues caused by the organizers and promoters of the festivals to the attendants. It was expected to be a revolutionary festival on a private island, much better than Coachella aimed to filthy rich people, especially young ones ready to pay up to 12,000$ for a complete package. The 25 year old organizer had the brilliant idea of inviting influencers and models to shoot a promo video, faking the festival atmosphere, without knowing that they were getting themselves in a big lie.

Fyre festival, failed influencer marketing campaigns

The Swedish influencer Johanna Eolsson faked her fancy trip to Paris by posting many photos in hyped French locations, while wearing branded clothes. As soon as her photos were carefully analyzed (you didn’t even need to be an expert for that) , the negative exposure didn’t stop her as she persued with forging her holidays to Switzerland and Dubai. Some of the photos can still be found on her profile, which makes you even doubt about which ones are for real.

A different example, but in this case a positive one is Natalia Taylor who pretented to be on a luxury trip in Bali, when in fact she went to IKEA. However, some price tags were left intentionally to be seen, in order to check her audience’s attention. After she posted the photos, she did a behind the scenes Youtube video, where she explained every concept.

If we are talking about influencers on local level, Antonella Patitucci staged being stalked for almost a month and obviously many people were worried about her, because everything seemed real and that it was getting worse. She was explaining the uncomfortable situation in tears and showed how she had received threatening messages both on DM and mail box. Fortunately, this was done for a group of students from the Zurich University of the Arts who did a research regarding cybersecurity and launched a petition as there is no criminal offense for that in Switzerland. The situation however escalated and haters didn’t cease to appear.

As an advice, don’t let influencers blindfold you with whatever they promote. When a brand choses to work with a shady influencer and the other way around can damage what you have been trying to build for years, therefore keep looking for multiple sources of information. So these are a couple of examples that went wrong, but as the Influencer Marketing world is huge, did you come across other interesting cases? I would be delighted to hear that and generally, your opinion.

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Successful influencer marketing campaigns

Which criterias must be met in order to consider an influencer marketing campaign successful?

Do you remember the traditional 4P’s which later transformed into 7P’s – Product, Place, Price, Positioning, Process, People and Packaging? Those are old news. Now think about the 4 E’s- Engagement, Exclusivity, Emotion and Experience. Besides a high ROI, which is quite challenging to asses, creativity places an important role. When the product or service is not sexy, then many advertisers/influencers tend to put on some bikini and pose, but I believe that you can do better than that, am I right? It’s indeed a tricky strategy, but that would attract more attention towards you rather to the product or service, so think twice! Telling a story with emotional appeal or offering some knowledge is recommended because INFORMATION IS POWER.

Below, I will list a few brands that managed to maximize their branding through Social Media by bringing several influencers on board.

The campaign ran even in Switzerland, being managed by https://ebpr.ch/, where influencers had to follow 6 steps each coming together with a PR package and later they invited their audience to join a quiz with different questions, which will prove or not their status as a ‘Cremaholic’ with the chance of winning a set of skincare. I was luckily part of this campaign and it made more familiar with the brand.
Launched in June 2018 and as part of a new approach to collaborating with influencers, FOREO invited its most musically-minded influencer friends to some of the world’s coolest festivals this summer on a mission to #DiscoverBrighterMusic, showing how FOREO products are the perfect travel-friendly festival companion. Source: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/discoverbrightermusic-foreo-steps-up-its-influencer-ana-marija/
Ideal of Sweden does an amazing job by focusing on great aesthetic, picking famous influencers with whom to launch new products, so that they achieved the second place on Social Bakers’ list of most-mentioned brands using the #ad hashtag. Every influencer/ Instagrammer who receives a PR product, has to share a code which offers 15% off.
Gym Shark launched on 8th of March a 66 Days Challenge to encourage Tik Tok users to set personal (ideally fitness related goals) for themselves and continually post their progress under the hashtag #gymshark66. The incentive: whoever wins gets a year’s supply of Gymshark goodies. The account gathered 1.8 M Followers thanks to this challenge.
Dyson is another great example which is offering their newly launched products to influencers such as: Air Wrap, Dyson V11 Vacuum Cleaner, Pure Humidify + Cool machine, etc.
Here is an #ad from a food blogger for La Redoute regarding the Easter brunch and kitchen decorations.
Surprisingly or not, Snapchat is not dead and brands seeking to launch their Snapchat account mostly follow the “Takeovers” strategy, which can be a great way to reach untapped and vast audiences. Victoria’s Secret, Sephora, Nike, Gucci, Cosmopolitan are some of the brands who tried this method. However, the Snapchat app is much less popular among the others.

Pinterest is as well a marketers paradise, with 250 million active users and brands such as IKEA, GUESS, Levi’s understood that and collaborated with interior designer and model influencers. It is amazing how much diversity a marketing campaign can encompass and I believe this is just the beginning, having in mind the 4 E’s mentioned in this article.

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Typical beginner influencer mistakes

If you have been reading the other posts, then CONGRATULATIONS, you are halfaway done, in what your transformation of becoming an influencer is concerned. Before falling in the trap of obtaining unreal engagement and furthermore using the ‘Follow-Unfollow strategy’, thus not being able to create a community, you would better be aware of avoiding the following mistakes:

  1. The gravest error is buying likes and followers. There are 2 types of fake followers: in the first category, there is the follower who accepted to be on a Fake Follower list in exchange for a sum of money, but who will never have a look on your content. The second category are bots, who are actually a piece of code pretending to be a follower and according to their algorithm they have been programmed to do- some bots they engage, but that involves automated, often nonsense comments. Besides that bots are banned by Instagram, I guess you hate talking to walls in real life , so what is the meaning of having such followers when they aren’t social? To work properly, the bot would need to use machine learning and deep learning algorithms. While machine learning algorithms allow the bot to recognize text patterns, like captions and direct messages, deep learning — a form of machine learning — would allow it to analyze objects in photos and videos. This could allow the bot to comment appropriately on photos, or surf the web for photos that it could post.  -click on the paragraph to read more about an experiment too.

Depending on your number of followers, there is a certain percentage of engagement and buying power expected from brands, but if you have fake followers, then the numbers will differ as they drag down your engagement. I know that spotting profiles with over 10K on Instagram with poor quality content is getting on your nerves, but trust me : you don’t lose anything! They might attract a brand once or twice, but they will never manage to get long-term collaborations and build a real community.

Trick: If you want to be responsive on Instagram, then by clicking the Life Saver tip that I found out the other days by using the ‘ Quick Reply’ option. It works like charm for attracting potential followers.

You can apply almost the same trick on Facebook, but for people who write you a message.

  1. Organic or paid reach: We all aim to have an organic reach, but sometimes it simply doesn’t work and it’s time consuming. Sponsored posts are done through the ads system, which gives you more range, cross-platform reach if you choose, and targeting capabilities, and you still can add an actionable button and a URL. The most effective ads are the ones of Instagram accounts on the Facebook platform. They make sense when you have something to sell, otherwise they have a pitfall too: once you start investing in sponsored posts, Instagram will make less and less the others visible, so you decide to add more money with the hope of higher reach.
  1. Unoriginality :taking credits for something you didn’t even think of, while some content creators are squeezing their brains out to find something unique might hit you very hard in the end, because the way I perceive Instagram is that it relies on empowerment!
  2. Too much edit : changing the contrast, ambiance is ok but who has such a dirty mind to edit their bodies? I agree with the fairytale look alike edits, but I am strongly against of changing so much that you can barely recognize the place/product/person .
  3. Saying yes to everything: Check twice if the brand alligns with your beliefs and niche, because one size doesn’t fit them all.
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Content planning: tips and apps for an influencer

I can’t state enough why content planning, mentioned as consistency and furthermore authenticity play key roles in becoming a successful influencer. I know that planning what you should post might give you a headache, but consistently showing up in your audience’s feed is the key to engaging them on the social platforms.

content planning tips and apps, why you should plan your content

No matter on which platform you decide to promote your content, you better plan it ahead for the sake of a good mental health, as this process can intensify and to meet the brands’ needs you are working with. There are 3 types of content: static, dynamic and interactive.

The first type of content involves social media profiles (not feeds), eBooks, whitepapers, emails, landing pages, PPC and social media ads, banner ads, one-way webinars. The dynamic ones include Blogs, RSS feeds, social media feeds, syndicated sites, A/B-tested landing pages and emails, smart website content (post-conversion content personalized for a lead). Some ideas for the dynamic content would be: 5 themes for dynamic: key events and dates (e.g International day of Pancakes/ Pizza), Influencers (shotouts, etc) launches and campaigns and key brand messages. Part of the interactive content are blog comments, social media sharing and liking buttons, social media follow buttons, social media updates and shares (likes, retweets, comments), customer reviews, online surveys and polls. Source: KunoCreative.com

TIPS:

  • Prepare a set of hashtags in ‘Notes‘ or even better in an Excel file and copy paste them whenever you want to upload a photo. Attention! You are allowed to post 30 hashtags in a post and 10 in a story. Read more here about the hashtags strategy.
  • No clue what you should post next? Check BuzzSumo , which is a tool that shows you which are the most popular topics in your niche. You might as well choose to share bits about yourself, but be aware that makes you vulnerable. For example: what movies/ TV shows you like, who inspires you, memories from childhood, your fears, polls etc.
  • Presets, which are a configuration of settings for your photos with just one click away. You can either make your own or buy a set of presets and follow the same color scheme, which I personally find it quite dull, but obviously that depends.
  • Sometimes inspiration comes when you least expect it, therefore whenever you have some ideas write them down- don’t let them slip and apply them asap, so that someone else won’t steal them.
  • 1 day shooting: Prepare a suitcase with versatile elements ( books, mirror, glasses, hats, flowers, etc), clothes in order to shoot different perspectives, in several backgrounds, colors so you can use your time efficiently and have plenty of material for later. Make sure you have both photos and videos.

Apps for Instagram Feed

As first impression matters, the first 8 photos shown in your feed will give an idea to your potential followers of what they can expect from you. A curated feed tells a lot about who you are, and an app will ease your work. Basically, they all have the same function, but it’s a matter of design, lack of errors and customer service.

Preview is an easy and powerful tool for businesses, influencers and creators to plan, schedule, edit their posts. There is also a premium version at a price of 12.50 $ per month for unlimited accounts and which offers unlimited filter packs and hashtags analytics.

Unum When I firstly heard about this app, I thought that it will enable you to change the order of photos previously posted. Hehe, that would have been a dream, right?

Planoly

Later

Do you use any of these or have considered others? Write me bellow what you are going to take away from this post and how you will implement it.

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The importance of a media kit and how to do it

I have been mentioning about the importance of having media kit to every person who asked me ‘How can I collaborate with brands?’ , but I never thought of writing it down. Let’s suppose that you have in mind what is needed to become an influencer (niche, visuals, which I suggested in this article or in a more funny version on Tik Tok), but attracting brands still remains your weakest point.

When you apply to a job, you need a CV and a Cover Letter, so the employer is aware of your experience, personality and skills, so that he sees you as a potential candidate The same thing goes with a Media Kit, which has the purpose of showcasing your previous works, present your interests and additionaly your statistics and expectations, no matter your size.

What is a media kit?

According to Investopedia:

A media kit is a package of information, assembled by a company, to provide basic information about itself to reporters. The media kit is a promotional public relations tool that can serve several functions, including promoting the launch of a new company, promoting the launch of a new product or service by an existing company, giving a company a way to present itself as it would like to be seen, and/or saving time, by eliminating the need for a company’s employees to repeatedly answer the same questions.

In shorter words, a media kit is a document that describes you and your activity and it is used when you want to reach out to brands and PR agencies

What should a media kit contain?

  1. About me: write 4-5 lines about you that will awake the interest of the brand or PR agency of working with you.
  2. Include your Social Medias and Statistics including the number of followers, so there is a short overview of your traffic and used platforms. Be careful to update your statistics constantly.
  3. Describe your blog/ IG Account Here you mention your niche and why did you chose it.
  4. Services offered: include your collaboration options such as product placement, product reviews, attending events, giveaways, vlogs, IG video, interview, photo shoot, etc.
  5. Rates: it is not mandatory to include how much you charge as you can, as well, discuss about this matter personally with the brand and be more flexible.
  6. Contact info: including your address.
  7. Cool photos – avoid selfies, though and in case you have, add samples and testimonials in your media kit which build more credibility.

Where to do a media kit?

Canva is an exceptional tool which allows you to edit cool templates for creating a CV, Media Kit, posters, flyers, business cards or even stories and much more. Some templates, stock images and graphics are not free of charge but you can do your job with the free version- see the example below.

Photoshop if you have experience and patience. You might want to check this tutorial.

As well, just by simply google-ing I found this blog which offers free media kit templates .

I am looking forward to seeing your media kits, considering that now you have some free time to do it!

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Types of influencers on Instagram

 According to Adweek, social media influencer market set to be worth more than $10 billion by 2020 due to the existence of Celebrities, Mega, Macro, Mid-tier, Micro and Nano. But what does each type of influencer involve? To understand this better, I will list below some accounts, which have potential to increase brand awareness, customer loyalty, brand ownership and much more.

Types of influencers, influencer tiers

Celebrities-influencers have more than 5 million followers and are often perceived as A-list celebrities on social and in real life. If we look at Emma Watson, she uses social media not for showing off her glamourous lifestyle, but in contrary to set an example for sustainable fashion, promote women’s rights and gender equality as part of her HeForShe campaign.
A mega influencer is Aimee Song, who is a fashion blogger, designer and was a pioneer in the blogging world by writing her first blog in 2008 with … Song’s blog shares her travels, interior design work and personal style choices. She is featured in Forbes under 30 and is the author of the New York Times bestselling Capture Your Style (Abrams Image, 2016).
Xenia, as a macro-influencer is a Russian-Swiss beautiful model, self-made entrepreneur encompassing subjects such as fashion, self-development, feminism and had several TEDx talks.
influencer tiers
Cristina Gheiceanu is a Moldavian mid-tier influencer, designer, based in Switzerland, who shares her classy looks worn in dreamy places. The key to success when it comes to these posts is that they are showing authenticity in a well planned content, which makes it difficult to assess whether it is an organic or paid action. Working with Mid-tiers offers the possibility to amplify the campaign impact on loyal followers.

An example of a micro-influencer is Girlinbasel, Switzerland based expat. She once followed her heart to Switzerland and then fell in love with the country. Micro-influencers are often the most informed about their niche and they have personal connections with their audience, reason why they have a great engagement.
Nano influencer example
As a nano-influencer, A_modern_look is a dedicated mother and passionate about visuals, beauty and proposing creative flatlays. She is considered a friend by most of her followers, because she chooses well what type of content to promote,so the trust will not be lost.

Obviously there are many other influencers worth following, but these were the ones that came through my mind. Reason why I shared these accounts is to get an overview of the influencers market and understand where you want to aim if you want to become an influencer or who you should approach as a brand. To sum up, Mega Influencers have a wider reach, but at the same time they come at a bigger cost, while Micro and Nano Influencers exist in greater number than the ones above and have a strong connection with the brand and their audience.

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The secret recipe of an influencer

Whether you are a small brand or an ‘influencer wanna be’, I will share the main ingredients for the secret recipe of becoming an influencer, a term that has gained throughout the steady growth over the past 5-10 years, positive and negative conotations.

Influencer Marketing Hub defined an influencer as someone who has:

  • the power to affect the purchasing decisions of others because of his or her authority, knowledge, position, or relationship with his or her audience.
  • a following in a distinct niche, with whom he or she actively engages. The size of the following depends on the size of his/her topic of the niche.

There are 6 different types of influencers- Mega, Macro, Micro, Advocates, Referrers, and Loyalists, which will be discussed in detail in the next post.

To break this down, firstly ask yourself: Why do I want to be an influencer? Am I hungry for money? Am I creative and able to differentiate myself on the market? Can my knowledge feed others and further have a small contribution in the world? Answering to these questions, will help you understand how much time and effort is needed to become an influencer because in the end everyone can be one. What I mean is that you don’t have to be a celebrity, because it is enough to be a customer or partner.

Maybe you are none of these and you just want to keep a diary, so that you can recall all memorable events in your life or get to know yourself and your passions, but if you want to do it well, then what you need is:

  1. VEGETABLES: choose the vegetables you know how to cook and you enjoy the most, which in other words means finding your niche stick to it as long as your stomach (brain and heart) is digesting it. Health and fitness, Beauty, Travel, Business, Fashion, Lifestyle, Animals, Relationships, Psychology, Interior Design are the most trendy niches.
  2. PAN: platform. Here you have 6 options: the well-known Instagram, Youtube, Tik Tok, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. You can obviously be on all of these platforms, but you will mostly spend your energy on the one generating more traffic.

While Instagram is the most effective social media platform for businesses and life changing tool for individuals due to the ease of usage, diversity, market penetration, but as well market penetration, Youtube attracts highly skilled experts willing to run introductory, maintenance, hashtag, contest or branding campaigns.

Besides, Tik Tok is the platform with the fastest user growth -500 million and it might just be one of the most sophisticated artificial intelligence endeavours in the world. According to Oberlo, Tik Tok’s mission is to capture and present the world’s creativity, knowledge, and precious life moments, directly from the mobile phone.

If you want to position yourself as a business-oriented influencer, then LinkedIn may well be the best choice for you. At the moment, Linkedin has over 50 million users and they aim for 3 billion users in the future, so the potential of the platform is still unexploited. Acting as a key opinion leader in your niche, it will give you the authority to analyze and promote clients on LinkedIn through influencer posts.

3. QUALITY or AUTHENTICITY call it how you want. No one wants to be you Photographers, creative directors, writers or videographers are focused on creating high quality content, rather than influencing and are often called ‘content creators‘. Choose wisely the brands you want to work with, as your audience might feel when you are promoting a product mismatching your values and beliefs and the same applies to brands looking to gain online presence through influencers. Don’t use bots or other shady methods such as buying followers, because the growth you achive is not authentic and moreover, nowadays there are tools (check this one ) to track down thesse people.

4. SPICES the hashtag game is still strong. For instance, a post with at least one Instagram hashtag averages 12.6% more engagement than posts without a hashtag, therefore prepare a strategy for that.

5. CONSISTENCY. Scheduling the content is both benefic for you and your audience as you gain trust for brands and their audience alike, which will maximise the potential of your influencer marketing.

6. KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE/ EATERS. There are many tools, which enable you to ask questions, create opinion polls, and answer users’ comments in order to strengthen the bond with your audience.

7. ENGAGEMENT -see if your food aka content is boiling. If it’s not, then be open to rethink your recipe and take into consideration a constructive feedback. A tasty recipe requires to build a community around the message and high conversion rates, which involve the percent of people who visit your site, follow you, make a purchase or filling out a lead generation form. Also, once your food is being served or better said your post is published have straightaway that 1 hour golden rule of replying to comments, because a new content has potential to reach new people.In some cases, 30% represents the content creation and 70% is how you promote it, therefore making use of the other platforms and network will widden your audience.

8. EXPAND YOUR NETWORK & KNOWLEDGE Go to events, read blogs, e-Books, listen to Youtube videos and engage with likeminded people.

To finish your recipe, sprinkle with some editing and visuals as first impression does matter, but don’t over do it unless you are a very talented Photoshopper.

Is there a particular topic do you want me to dig into? Let me know below about what you are curious of and feel free to share your knowledge about this stubject.

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