business leads Grow your business with influencer marketing

“Engage Your Engagers” – Influencer’s First Commandment?

Indeed, and this is not only the First Commandment for any social media-ist. Every time engagers are going out of their way from their daily activities and bothering to engage with you on your social media account, engage back. Such attention is so appreciated in today’s world and is really the essence of building lasting relationships on social media.

engage your engagers - example — engage your engagers – example from YouTube

We all have at least one engager on social media, and those people are so important. But wait…

Are Influencers and Brands Pirates?

Many good marketers were and are pirates. Brands and social media influencers are no different. They “pirate” by introducing various ideas to relevant their audience and see what bites.

As you must know by now, I’m a big favor of testing until perfecting, and testing the story-telling of your brand in particular. Some go to the extreme of pirating, and that’s (sometimes) ok too:

The Amazon Pirating Way

How about Amazon as an example of a pirate? Are they successful enough by now to use as an authoritative example 🙂 ?

Brands: DM is the new ‘phone number’ for social media!

Brands: So we know by now that not having a presence on social media is like you… do not exist, since that’s where your audience is. Your social media account is your business card, your face, your talking point, your front-line, your border, your mom and pop, your puppy too.

Once you choose the right social media platform for the audience you want to reach, and you activate it, it’s…YOU. Make sure that from then on it reflects … YOU indeed.

Your communication with your audience should now be via social media. And so – for example – if someone sends you a DM instead of calling your phone, it means that they want a response via DM (= direct messages) and they most definitely do not want to call you. So make sure you address that.

Brands: create an Instagram account only if you can handle it – use direct messaging as your new phone.

Or alternatively:

Mega-influencers don’t help? Think again.

We – the SMI (social-media influencer) teachers – I admit – were wrong. It is not true that the mega-influencers lost their influence. It is not true that micro-influencers took over. Or it’s not the whole story at least. Let me explain:

First –

Does the Website on my Insta Bio Need to Be Mine?

No, the website you list on your bio doesn’t need to be yours! You can enter your Amazon affiliate (or store) page, your linktr.ee (eg linktr.ee/dopecandi), your YouTube/Tiktok URL, GoodRead, or even your IMDB page (eg imdb.me/christicawley).

Bio - IMDB instead of a "website" — Bio – IMDB instead of a “website”

And btw do you know that you can also enter a website address (such as a website of an org you support, such as RedCross), in two places on your Instagram bio, see the example below:

If It’s Not Too Transactional, As You Said, Then What Am I Getting from Influencer Marketing at All?

Working with SMI* on social media cannot be too transactional. Social media software and UX were simply not built for it, and we cannot get around that basic fact. So instead, focus on getting leads and acquiring SMI followers.

*SMI = Social Media influencers. Source: Who is an influencer?

Yes, it’s all about leads and acquiring SMI followers.

True, top software platform strategists and architects of platforms such as Instagram and Twitter are now trying to change that – they are trying to re-engineer their system flows to promote and execute product buying, as if you’re interacting with a TV or eCommerce website. They are working on it.

Turn your Pinterest success into Instagram brand deals

So you’ve found your Pinterest audience, you’ve built high quality Pinterest boards (such as my influencer boards 😊?), you’ve often added content to those awesome boards (rich pins too, whatever it takes), and as for regular pins – you’ve made sure they are very thoughtful, resonate with your audience, are visual, and vertical in a perfect way — just perfect for your audience. Your Pinterest audience grew, and they re-pinned, and they saved, some of them even commented, and you even got Google traffic.

And yet your business still makes no money 💁🏽!!.

Perhaps this is the time for you to look into adding Instagram to your business assets, and get some money from brand deals, so you can bring more bread from your side hustle? Many do that, many even make a living (and some even get very wealthy) from doing brand deals on Instagram.

Social Media Engagement – 23 Ideas that Convert!

By now we know – social media algorithms change often and by doing so the platforms make us confused, baffled, and worried about our social media success.

However, there is something we can always double down on, and will never change – our Instagram/Tiktok/etc. posts will always be more likely to be shown on followers’ feeds (and in search) if they generate comments and engagement. Now you might not have great engagement, and you might already be doing great and wondering “how can I maintain my high engagement?”– either way, read on — this article is for you!

Bringing engagement is a science in and of itself though. By popular demand, I’m going to share some tried and true ideas and methods to bring social media engagement.

Test these. Tell me what you think.

‘Stretchable’ words your social – test if they can lead to MORE #engagement

If you haven’t read “Hahahahaha, Duuuuude, Yeeessss!: A two-parameter characterization of stretchable words and the dynamics of mistypings and misspellings,” I highly recommend doing so – it’s amusing, it’s intellectual, it’s inspiring and energizing. We sure need more analysis like that!

Interviews with Dog Brands: How They Work with Influencers

During March 2020 I spoke with over a dozen representatives of brands that sell products for dogs, selected from those that registered for a booth at the recent Global Pet Expo show. My goal was to get a sense of how they feel about SMI (social media influencers). I learned some interesting things!

TL;DR. Instagram and Facebook, unpaid Ambassadors micro-Influencers, no KPIs, giveaway, contests and feedback giving wins.