Category: Influence

  • You Ask, I Answer: How To Spot Fake Social Media Influencers

    Amanda asks, “How can you spot a fake social media influencer from a real one?” There are four metrics and one qualitative test that will help you identify low-quality influencers from high-quality influencers and spot fake influencers from a mile away. Watch this video to learn more. The five tests: – Are virtually all of

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  • You Ask, I Answer: How To Become an Instagram Food Influencer

    Stacy asks, “How do I become a more influential personality on Instagram? I don’t want to go the automated route, but I don’t have much of an audience. My goal is to be a food influencer.” As with all things, we tackle – in order – strategy, tactics, execution, and measurement. First, strategy. Does the

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  • You Ask, I Answer: Growth Tips for Stealth Startups

    Peter asks, “Do you know any good case studies, examples how to promote a company when it’s still in a stealth mode and is preparing to launch (for promoting it as soon as it’s out of the stealth mode)?” The key to a successful launch is all about audience. Learn what I did to help

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  • You Ask, I Answer: How to Identify Fake Influencers

    Grace asks, “There’s been a lot of news about people who fake being an influencer by buying followers and colluding with groups of influencers. How do you identify fake influencers?” Great question.  Let’s first discuss what brands actually want, even if they can’t measure it effectively. Awareness Engagement Action Second, let’s identify the ways someone

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  • You Ask, I Answer: The Fourth Influencer Archetype

    Mark Schaefer commented on my recent episode about influencers: “You are rolling old tapes here Chris. You’re viewing the world from a very narrow (B2B tech) perspective. Here’s the fact, influencers sell stuff. A lot of stuff. For many companies this is the most cost-effective sales and marketing efforts they have ever seen. The case

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  • #FridayFeeling: Why Influencer Marketing Fails, According to Aristotle

    Over the past week, I’ve been doing a ton of market research for a client around social media marketing, and THE topic du jour is influencer marketing. One of the most critical flaws I’ve seen in influencer marketing programs, including some I participate in, is a failure to capture the four main dimensions of influence.

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  • You Ask, I Answer: Influencer Marketing Tips for Companies

    Genevieve asks, “What are some of your best influencer marketing tips?” What a great, complex question. Influencer marketing is done so poorly today. Generally speaking, we want three different outcomes: Improved reach Improved connection to decision-makers Improved reputation These outcomes require three different kinds of influencers. Learn who each kind is, how to identify them,

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  • Social Influence Network Graphs Improve Social Media Marketing

    Madalyn Sklar asked how the various network graphs I make work. They’re based on a few different components and ideas, but the big idea is using a centrality algorithm to determine influence. What is Centrality? Centrality is a way to calculate how one node – like a Twitter handle – interacts with other nodes. The

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  • Marketing At Mega-Events Without Mega-Budgets

    Major conferences such as CES, DreamForce, and IBM THINK have hundreds of thousands of attendees, hundreds of announcements, thousands of vendors and partners, and millions of articles, social media posts, and emails. Against this exceptionally noisy backdrop, how could we possibly stand out if we don’t have multimillion dollar budgets? To stand a chance of

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  • Most Social Media Influencers Have No Influence

    When we speak of influence, particularly in marketing, what are we talking about? Do we even know what influence is? If we don’t, then we’re chasing something we may not understand; in turn, we may be paying for results that make no sense or are ineffective. What is influence? Let’s say we have a prospective

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