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#NYFWONFIFTH X Nefatari Draw Influencers and Designers

A New York Fashion Week Panel on the impact of influencers on fashion and music, featured five influencers and drew a crowd of over 100 guests attending NYFW.

WHO:Top Influencer Panelists: Nefatari Cooper,Jessica Markowski, Nyakim Gatwech,Bri Wilburn,Alexandra Dieckaka Lex

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DesignersByron Lars, Yeohlee Teng, CFDA 2021 honoreeModel CocoStylistsFreddie Leiba,Mykel C. Smith,Debra GinyardSingerFelycia Pendergrass,Teddy Pendergrass IIModeratorDarlene Gillard-Jones

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WHAT#NYFWOnFifth presented a panel discussion on the impact of influencers on fashion and music.

Discussion followed by mixer with 100 plus guests from fashion and music.

Cooper, Gatwech, Markowski, Dieck and Wilburn, all millennials who represent a range of races and backgrounds, were part of a panel presented during NYFW to discuss their work as influencers in fashion and music.

Cooper, who is also a recording artist, convened the discussion. I realized there was a need for influencers voices to be heard more clearly and also educate business leaders on the impact of influencers in fashion and music, said Cooper.

There was a disconnect in the fashion and music industries about the role influencers play, said Cooper. Coopers song Bring Yuh Body is gaining spins onNew Yorkstop radio station Power 105.1.

Marketing Technology News: MarTech Interview with Hannah Stewart, VP Marketing at Zeotap

Excerpt from:
The Impact of Influencers Continues to Grow as Consumers Authenticity - MarTech Series

YouTube has published a new overview of how its content recommendations system works, which is one of the central drivers of video reach and views on the platform, and may help YouTube marketers get a better understanding of what guides optimal response.

YouTube actually published a similar overview earlier in the year, as part of its ongoing effort to maximize transparency, with this new explainer giving a little more historical insight as to how its systems have evolved, and how its working to improve its processes.

As explained by YouTube:

Our recommendation system is built on the simple principle of helping people find the videos they want to watch and that will give them value.

Of course, value is a fairly vague term in social media metrics, and especially in measurement, but the idea, according to YouTube, is to show people more of what they like, based on not only their own behaviors, but other, similar users as well.

You can find recommendations at work in two main places: your homepage and the Up Next panel. Your homepage is what you see when you first open YouTube - it displays a mixture of personalized recommendations, subscriptions, and the latest news and information. The Up Next panel appears when youre watching a video and suggests additional content based on what youre currently watching, alongside other videos that we think you may be interested in.

The Up Next panel has been one of the more scrutinized elements of the platform in recent years, with some users saying that these recommendations can lead them down conspiracy-fueled rabbit holes, and even radicalize them based on the content they find.

So how might that happen?

Here are some of the key notes on exactly how YouTubes recommendations process works.

Foundationally, YouTubes recommendations are based on four key elements:

All of these elements you likely could have guessed would be factored in, so theres no major insight, necessarily. Though it is also interesting to note that YouTube additionally seeks to help you find content that you might not even know exists, based on the content that other people with similar viewing profiles to you watch.

So if you like tennis videos and our system notices that others who like the same tennis videos as you also enjoy jazz videos, you may be recommended jazz videos,even if youve never watched a single one before.

Thats likely how people come across those conspiracy theory trails you look up one video on a topic that youre interested in, then YouTube hits you with a range of related viewing that other people have watched as a result. If you fall into the wrong viewer profile, that could lead to a host of questionable stuff though YouTube does also note that it is working to address such recommendations, and limit exposure to what it identifies low quality content.

So what qualifies as low quality in this context?

Weve used recommendations to limit low-quality content from being widely viewed since 2011, when we built classifiers to identify videos that were racy or violent and prevented them from being recommended. Then in 2015, we noticed that sensationalistic tabloid content was appearing on homepages and took steps to demote it. A year later, we started to predict the likelihood of a video to include minors in risky situations and removed those from recommendations. And in 2017, to ensure that our recommendation system was fair to marginalized communities, we began evaluating the machine learning that powers our system for fairness across protected groups - such as the LGBTQ+ community.

In addition to these, YouTube also bans content that includes false health claims (like COVID conspiracy clips), while its also taking more steps to address political misinformation. Some of this type of material still gets through, of course, but YouTube is working to improve its systems to ensure that such material is not recommended via its discovery tools.

A key consideration in this element relates to authoritative or borderline content.

In seeking to limit the reach of borderline clips those that dont necessarily break the platforms rules, but do present potentially harmful material YouTube uses human evaluators to assess the quality of information in each channel or video.

These evaluators hail from around the world and are trained through a set of detailed,publicly available rating guidelines. We also rely on certified experts, such as medical doctors when content involves health information.

To determine authoritativeness, YouTube says that its evaluators answer a few key questions:

YouTubes evaluators assess the reputation of a channel/creator based on a range of qualifiers, including online reviews, recommendations by experts, news articles and Wikipedia entries (you can check out the full listing of potential qualifiers here).

All in all, the system is designed to utilize explicit and implicit signals to highlight more of what each person wants to see, while also filtering out the worst kinds of content, in order to limit potential harm. The actual specifics of harm are a factor in this calculation, and limiting that reach -but again, YouTube says that it is working to update its recommendation tools to ensure higher quality content, based on these qualifiers at least, ends up getting more exposure in the app.

YouTube has also shared this overview of how its recommendations algorithms have evolved over time.

In assessing the various measures from a marketing and performance perspective, the key consideration is audience response, and creating content that appeals to your target viewers.

You can measure this in your YouTube analytics, and with users able to directly subscribe to your channel, there are some strong, key indicators that you can use to assess your performance, and ensure youre aligning with viewer interests. That will then see your content also shown to other people with similar audience traits, while ensuring that you have a good website reputation, and a strong general web presence, will also limit potential penalties in YouTube moderators assessment.

Its also worth checking your content against the above listing of authoritativeness as a quick measure that youre adhering to YouTubes goals.

None of these elements will guarantee ultimate reach success, but failing to tick the right boxes will limit your potential. Its worth noting these keys, and considering each aspect in your marketing effort.

Read the original:
YouTube Shares Overview of its Content Recommendation Systems, and the Key Factors that Define Reach - Social Media Today

As platforms become more creative, establishing whole new ecosystems and new artistic movements of their own, it also becomes harder for brands to tap into the next big thing, and showcase their products and services in busy social feeds.

TikTok is a great example on TikTok, if you want your promotions to stand out, you cant simply re-purpose your latest TV commercial or blast a blatant promotion across peoples mobile screens. The key to TikTok advertising is aligning with user trends, and making your content look as organic as possible, so that it fits into the broader platform experience.

The same goes for Instagram or Snapchat Stories, or promotions on Reddit. Over time, as platforms become more defined in their audiences, the best way to reach them is to learn user trends and habits, and communicate with them in the language that they prefer, whatever that may be.

Which takes time, and investment on various fronts. Which is also why more brands are now leaning into influencer marketing, as means to utilize the creative skills, communication styles and audience reach of people who already speak the right language, and can get your brand in front of an engaged, active audience in each app.

It can be a great way to maximize reach, and boost brand awareness.To provide more insight on this, the team from AmericaNoize has put together this overview of the key benefits of influencer marketing. Worth considering in your process.

Follow this link:
12 Benefits of Influencer Marketing that Every Brand Should Know [Infographic] - Social Media Today

The playbook is changing for some small businesses and digitally native brands looking to get in front of shoppers via social media platforms.

Apples iOS14 data privacy crackdown impacted mobile advertising, making targeting capabilities more difficult because of the update. Now, users are notified of which apps are tracking them, meaning they can opt out and thus shrinking the data pool for advertisers.

Knowing that, some newly launched brands say theyre hesitant to spend big on paid social media ads, and are diversifying media spend sooner than planned. Instead, theyre relying on organic strategy, leveraging brand partnerships and content creators to acquire customers and build brand awareness.

Without the data being fed back, its more challenging to identify customers and leverage digital marketing to scale brand awareness, said Elaine Choi, president of haircare brand Crown Affair via email.

Crown Affair launched last January, relying on organic strategy by way of digital word of mouth and influencers to build its core digital community and online shopper base, layering in some paid ads on Facebook and Instagram soon after. With the iOS 14 update, weve lost the paid efficiency wed been working towards, which we had planned to leverage to scale across paid channels, said Choi.

Had iOS14 not impacted targeting capabilities, Choi said Crown Affairs paid ad strategy would have sooner become a bigger piece of the media budget pie. For now, organic strategy will continue to be a priority as the haircare brand looks for alternative ways to measure performance, like revenue against spend.

With the update, Facebook and Instagram are no longer primary marketing channels for sustainable toilet paper and paper towel brand Cloud Paper, said co-founder Ryan Fritsch. The new data privacy updates have hindered our ability to have insights into new customers which has led to lack of attribution, Fritsch said in an email, noting that the changes have led to an inability to optimize ad content and an increase in cost-per metrics across the board.

With a shrinking data pool, these small advertisers are turning toward newsletters, in-house digital content platforms, influencers, brand partnerships and other organic strategies to build brand affinity and re-target online shoppers.

At present, at least half of beauty brand Kulfis marketing dollars goes toward content creators and influencer relationships with the other half dedicated to in-house content creation and public relations. To scale, theyll double down on their efforts like their in-house digital content platform Bite, hoping to layer in paid ads on Instagram next year after, said Priyanka Ganjoo, founder and CEO of Kulfi.

[iOS14] means when we do get into paid, we just have to have a lot more of our own data, said Ganjoo. When we do, well build that attribution because its going to be harder than it was before.

Its a similar story at clean beauty brand Ami Col. Ahead of its launch in May, the beauty brand built up a newsletter with 6,000 subscribers, building its online community via email in hopes to sidestep iOS14 changes, said founder Diarrha NDiaye. Still, the brand spends on social, especially Instagram, regularly tweaking ad spend to maintain its presence on the platform.

Id be lying to you if [I said we] think we have the answer just yet, NDiaye said. Right now, were just trying to figure out what is actually working.

And that is the million-dollar question, marketers say, as its getting harder to justify customer acquisition costs on social media platforms with limited targeting capabilities. Youre talking about locking in like $10,000 a month for multiple months without knowing what the return [on ad spend] would be, said Kulfis Ganjoo. For a small brand, thats a huge commitment.

Theres more crackdown on the horizon with iOS 15 expected to impact email marketing by way of mail privacy protection and Hide My Email features, meaning advertisers will need to continue to diversify their media mix sooner rather than later. Advertisers will need to broaden their target audience and find alternative ways to monitor social performance as new audiences replace the lookalike and retargeting audiences of pre-iOS14 days, said Phil Lewicki, media supervisor at full-service creative agency Dagger.

Agencies and advertisers who have taken a proactive approach to these privacy changes will be on the forefront of creating new segments and strategies to develop or maintain high conversion and engagement rates, he said.

How small, digitally native brands are navigating iOS14 changes across the paid social media landscape

Excerpt from:
How small, digitally native brands are navigating iOS14 changes across the paid social media landscape - Digiday

Just like other forms of marketing, the social media landscape is changing at a quick pace, and in the last three years; it has been revealed that the number of Google searches on influencer marketing has increased by 1500 per cent.

This also indicates that social media influencing is already becoming an industry of its own with stiff competition among its industry players.

It is said to have made over $10 billion in 2020 globally, so ideally there has been a huge investment in the space.

Musa Kacheche, the president of Rotaract Club of Kigali Institute of Education (KIE), says this industry is dominated by people under or in their late 30s, its clear that it could become a key source of income for youth start-ups.

With the acceleration in the use of digital platforms and emerging new digital trends globally, he believes that we are bound to see more and more investments from youth in this industry.

And the youth are the future; so ideally, influencer marketing is definitely going to be key for all industries in the marketing arena, he says.

Kacheche goes on to note that influencer marketing has become popular on social media very quickly. It has even beaten print marketing in terms of popularity on Google Trends, as people with thousands of followers can leverage their audiences and collaborate with brands.

This is because as modern consumers become more and more averse to traditional advertising, influencer marketing emerges as a promising advertising channel, he adds.

Enock Momanyi, an entrepreneur and marketer in Kigali, says influencers can deliver multiple benefits to brands in the form of enhanced visibility, engagement, credibility, and revenue.

Also, he says, it is now known that these influencers also turn out to be more cost-effective than paid advertising, trade shows, and exhibitions.

According to different studies, as the influencer industry becomes more regulated and streamlined, more brands are making it the mainstay of their marketing by formulating always-on campaigns.

Momanyi says the influencer marketing industry is new with opportunities for those who are ready to adapt quickly to the evolving industry trends.

Prince Aime Murara, the deputy secretary-general, Education for Nations and Humanitarian Africa (ENHA)-Girubuntu, says through social media influencers, brands can boost their visibility, reputation, and credibility by collaborating with relevant influencers in their niche.

He also believes that these social media influencers can drive sales by writing product reviews, recommending products, and sharing discounts with their fans and followers.

In a nutshell, he says social media influencer marketing is an advertising strategy for brands of all sizes and scopes.

What to look into

Kacheche says social influencers are quite cost-effective compared to traditional advertising, trade fairs, and exhibitions.

However, he is of the view that the real question to companies using social media influencers to market their products and services will be around ROI (Return on investment).

For instance, he notes that this could be on how do they measure it, where do they capture such data, and how can they use such data to make decisions?

Another thing to look at that may come into play, he says, is regulation.

Like most industries, the influencer market will at some require regulation. One thing about regulation is that it can frustrate innovation and start-ups or it can be a driver of these two, he says.

However, Nkeeto says finding reliable influencers can be quite a challenge given the number of fake accounts on social media.

For this reason, he advises that there is a need to thoroughly analyse each profile and figure out if its genuine or not.

This, according to Nkeeto, can be done by using influencer discovery platforms, as they can make the entire process of finding an influencer simpler.

With the rise of influencer marketing, Nkeeto says, there have been many fake influencers too, as most of them fake partnerships with brands to promote themselves and become real influencers.

Analysing influencers to figure out their authenticity is important. Meanwhile, in a time when it can become difficult to trust influencers, employee advocacy will rise, he says.

Its also ideal for organisations to encourage their employees to talk about the companys brand on social media to promote it among their own groups.

editor@newtimesrwanda.com

Read the original here:
Are social media influencers the future of marketing? - The New Times