29March2024

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Impact of the Decision To Leave the EU

It is now clear that the British people have made the choice to leave the European Union. The countr...


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Social Media Influencers – The Right One for your Brand

Helena1

A study conducted by Nielsen in 2013 highlighted that word-of-mouth recommendations from family and friends, often referred to as earned advertising, are still the most influential according to 84% of global respondents. Social media has been a platform where many people have been offering their opinion on products or services that they are passionate about, influencing people around them, therefore, now being called an influencer. Warc defines influencers as individuals who disproportionately affect the purchasing and behavior of others by virtue of their real or perceived knowledge, authority, position or history.

Michelle Goodall, who spoke at DMX Dublin on Wednesday 8th March, lists social media influencers into 7 categories:

  1. Celebrity
  2. Professional Top tier
  3. Professional Power Middle
  4. Mid-tier
  5. Micro influencers
  6. Customer Advocates
  7. Staff Advocates

Michelle also developed a framework for social media influencer marketing. She has 11 golden rules when choosing a social media influencer:

1. Clarity
Define which blend of influencers that could work best for your brand. Do you use an agency or build a direct relationship with the influencer? Michelle advises focusing on creating mutual value for all three parties: the advertiser; the influencer; and the audience.

2. Reality
Organizational and departmental objectives your activity supports need to be defined. Specific objectives and KPIs will need to be set for the campaign. Influencers can support a brand in many ways, such as increasing sales, product development, increase brand awareness and so on.

3. Parity
It is important to pair your brand with an influencer that shares the similar values. It is not always about the bottom line, reputation is always a factor so due diligence is often required.

4. Integration
Ensure that there is consistently messaging through all of your communication platforms. This ensures that the messages reach different audiences.

5. Nuance and Niche
It is important to know who your influencer is influencing, they need to be able to reach an audience that is important to your brand.

6. State its worth
Revisit your objective and consider the costs that are involved. Consider revising equivalent media spend to reach the same audience, what would it cost to achieve the same objectives via other channels and will there be costs to create new content? Michelle advises to set budgets and plan with this in mind – don’t undervalue (or overvalue) influencers.

7. What’s In It For Me?
Michelle advises that most influencers provide a guided rate, but most are open to discussion and negotiation. Explore different types of value, such as commission, providing experiences or even discounts.

8. Relinquish
Work with influencers on ideas, they know what type of content their audience will engage with.

9. Regulate
Understand the laws of payment and control and ensure that you and your influencers adhere to it. The ASAI have developed a code of standards for all advertising and marketing communications regardless of the medium.

10. Measure
Align your objectives and use a combination of measurement tools that measure both qualitatively and quantitatively.

11. Iterate, Iterate, Iterate
As platforms and influence evolve, so should you. Embed tracking pixels and use insights available to you on site. Retarget with the display, facebook and twitter ads. Ensure you are sharing their articles across multiple platforms and repurpose snippets of influencers content on social media platforms.

In Bord Bia’s most recent promotional campaign on Mussels, the aim was to ignite conversation across social media that mussels are in fact a tasty, easy-to-prepare and good value ingredient. Key social media influencers, who varied from celebrity to micro-influencer, were identified and were then challenged to #flexyourmussels and to document their culinary adventures on their blogs and across their social media platforms. The engagement was extremely high for this campaign and potential audience reach can be seen in the table below.

Helena2

In order to seek the perfect influencer, Michelle Goodall concludes that an influencer should be creative, credible, can add value and be honest.

For more information contact helena.collins@bordbia.ie

Source: Bord Bia - Social Media Influencers – The Right One for your Brand