Mediaboss Marketing

Influencers with small but loyal followings may market your brand better than the social media giants. Learn why these micro-influencers are game-changers.

Influencer marketing is a strategy in which businesses from all around the internet are competing. Creating a brand campaign around someone with a celebrity-status following has been a great first step in the evolution of influencer marketing in social media.

Micro-influencers, who have smaller audiences, are sliding up the scale. According to Abtin Masseratagah, CEO of Northrn, they are impacting the marketing industry at the highest rate. In today's world of marketing, every brand across the internet has the opportunity to work with someone who has invested time with a target audience the company may not have known it had.

To learn more about how micro-influencers are taking social media by storm and why they will change the way the influencer marketing game is played, read the three points below:

Micro-influencers are effective at marketing strategy because they are more invested in what they are doing on their social media channels of choice.

In fact, Adweek published an article saying these micro-influencers are personally more involved in their channels than mega-influencers. They have everything invested in what they are doing, which brings more personality, style and flair.

Masseratagah mentioned a report from Markerlythat studied Instagram engagement, with surprising findings:

Markerly recommends that brands pursue accounts with 1,000 to 10,000 followers in the micro-influencer category, as they receive more engagement than users with more followers.

Based on this fact alone, we can see the impact micro-influencers have on marketing as a whole. Someone who dedicates their marketing to one social channel and puts everything they've got into this channel will come out with better results than others trying to juggle every social channel.

One of the downsides of an influencer who has millions of followers is the connection theory of being relevant to an individual who has certain wants or needs for their life.

Micro-influencers have built loyal followings because they tap into a smaller, more targeted user base. This way, everything they do or say is relevant and useful to their particular audience.

Take two influencers who are huge in the social space today, the Kardashian sisters, who were given an assignment from a brand. Micro-influencers were given the same assignment. Digidayreported that the micro-influencers received a higher conversion rate.

A survey by Experticity showed 82 percent of customers would rather be sold to by a micro-influencer anyway. That's loyalty.

Micro-influencers are becoming the go-to source of big brands. These small influencers pack a huge wallop because of their connectivity, personality and relativity to their audience.

Don't think about social media in terms of followers. This is just a number and isn't relevant to the power someone can bring to a social marketing campaign. Think about the impact they have with so few followers. This is the key to bringing more advanced social marketing strategies to your business.

One of the reasons so many brands reach out to these micro-influencers is because their followers value their opinion. For some women, it's simply going to Instagram to get ideas about what type of dress they should wear on a night out.

Everyone has a person in some niche where you look forward to reading or watching what they're going to put up next. You keep up with them because they are serving up their own brand of "regular" and connecting with you on this level. Masseratagah said he jumps over to a certain micro-influencer's account whenever he needs some handyman ideas for around the house. Watching or reading about their experiences doing things you want to do builds trust and respect for them.

Authenticity is what users of social media want from every brand. It develops the relationship and creates a more advanced sales process further down the road.

So if you're trying to become an influencer and you thought the only thing preventing this from happening was your number of followers, think again. Maybe you own a company and are thinking about taking the plunge into influencer marketing. If either of these things are true, take a closer look at the micro-influencers in your niche, and you will find that not only is their audience reliable and trustworthy, but their results are real. This is why they are the unsung heroes of so many accomplished brands online.

Nathan Resnick

Read more:
3 Ways Micro-Influencers Are Impacting Social Media Marketing - Business.com

The Herald

Winthrop athletics announces communications/marketing personnel moves The Herald Lane comes from the University of South Carolina where she led the athletic department's digital and social media efforts and held key roles in strategic communication, content planning and marketing. During her seven-year tenure, she led the Gamecocks ... and more »

Originally posted here:
Winthrop athletics announces communications/marketing personnel moves - The Herald

Missy Krasner. (Photo via Twitter)

Amazon has hired health technology executive Missy Krasner, the VP and managing director of healthcare and life sciences at cloud content management company Box, according to a report Thursday by CNBC.

The report cited anonymous sources close to the hiring, which hasnt yet been announced. GeekWire has reached out to Amazon for comment and will update this story when we hear back.

Krasners addition is yet another example of Amazon edging towards the health technology market. Amazon Web Services is beefing up its HIPAA compliant offerings for use by health tech companies that must take extra safety precautions because they work with sensitive patient data.

Just last month, AWS hired Nicole Bell, founder of Seattle health care startup hub Cambia Grove, as a liaison to the healthcare industry.

Although Krasners new role at Amazon isnt clear, she has an expertise in a wide array of health technologies and specifically cloud technology. Before Box, she advised Silicon Valley venture group Canvas Ventures on health technology investments and formerly spent five years at Google, two of which she spent designing and launching Googlesonline medical records and wellness platform.

At Box, Krasner led the healthcare and live sciences industry teem, overseeing sales, marketing, product and business development in that area. Box is the largest HIPAA compliant file-sharing solution in the world.

B2B marketing analytics platform Bizible announced a dream come true for its founder and CEO, Aaron Bird: The company has added entrepreneurBrewster Stanislawto its leadership team as VP of product and strategy.

Ive been trying to work with Brewster for about 7 years now, Bizible Founder and CEOAaron Bird explained to GeekWire in an email. Back in 2010, before I left Microsoft to start Bizible, I came very close to joining Brewster as their founding CTO in what eventually become Inside Social.

Stanislaw founded Inside Social in 2012 along withJoey Kotkins andAlan Balasundaram. The company provided social media data for marketing teams, helping prove return on investment for social marketing campaigns.

The company was acquired by Simply Measured in 2015 and Stanislaw served as Simply Measureds Head of Product until he joined Bizible in March. But Bird said that, in a different world, things might not have worked out that way.

[W]e came pretty close to acquiring Inside Social (but Simply Measured bought them instead). Apparently, the third times a charm and Brewster and I are now working together, he said.

In his new role at Bizible, Stanislaw will head product direction and strategic technology partnerships.

Seattle-based Ranku, an ed tech startup that helps online degree programs reach more students, made headlines when it was acquired by publishing giant Wiley in September. Now the companys founder and CEO, Kim Taylor, is leaving Wiley to return to her native San Francisco, where she first started Ranku.

Wiley told GeekWire in an email that she is making the move to be closer to family and friends. Shes also going to take a break from working for a while.

After spending 10 years in the online degree space Im going to be taking some time off to travel and get married, she said. Im also advising and investing in education companies before starting a new project.

Taylor moved Ranku to Seattle in 2014 after taking the company through theTechStars education accelerator in New York City.

Social media analytics company Simply Measured announced the addition of former Expedia finance leader Cecilia Cayetano as the companys new VP of Finance and Operations.

Cayetano joins Simply Measured from legal tech startup Avvo, where she served as the companys corporate controller. She previously held senior finance positions at travel giant Expedia and also spent seven years as the senior manager of risk advisory services for global business consultant Ernst and Young.

I am inspired by Simply Measureds leadership in data-driven social marketing, passionate customer base, and talented (fun!) people, Cayetano said in a press release. I look forward to working with the Simply Measured team to support our companys continued success.

Workflow and content automation company Nintex announced the promotion of VPJosh Waldo to be the companys first Chief Customer Officer.

Waldo first joined Nintex in 2014 and served as the companys VP of channels and strategy until taking on the CCO role. He formerly spent eight years at Microsoft, most recently working as the senior director of cloud partner strategy for the companys Azure cloud computing platform. He also held roles at Oracle and Seibel Systems.

As CCO, Waldo will lead the companysglobal customer support organization and also take charge of external partnerships.

During his three years at Nintex, Josh has developed a best-in-class partner program and channels organization and a product marketing team that is driving our market success and technology advances, Nintex CEOJohn Burton said in a press release. Joshs experience and skills enabling the ongoing success of our 7,400-plus customers and partners worldwide provide an excellent background to assume this new role and to bring Nintex to the next level of providing a superior customer journey and heightened success.

Link:
Tech Moves: Amazon reportedly hires Box health tech exec; Bizible adds Inside Social founder as VP; and more - GeekWire

Kate Mara in "Megan Leavey."

Two days before the June release of Kate Maras latest film Megan Leavey, the House of Cards actress was promoting the movie at an event in Washington.

But Mara wasnt attending a premiere or a promotional junket for the biopic about marine Megan Leavey and the bond she formed with Rex, her military dog, while serving in Iraq. Instead, she was speaking at a rally calling for the restoration of online animal welfare records held outside the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The rally was broadcast live on Mail Online, and an accompanying Care2 petition calling for the release of animal welfare records attracted 160,000 signatures. Megan Leavey, meanwhile, ended up a modest indie hit, grossing nearly $13 million.

That a rally held outside a government building may have been among the films most effective promotions highlights the increasing coordination between movie marketing and political and social advocacy. The boundaries between films and social causes are blurring in todays on-demand, streaming-centered cultural landscape.

Movie studios are now aligning with good causes to support the release of films in ways that they never used to, says Cynthia Parsons McDaniel, a former Head of Marketing and PR at three different film studios, who says Twentieth Century Fox FOXA, +0.18% which partnered with the Teenage Cancer Trust with 2014 teen romantic drama The Fault in Our Stars.

Whether its by doing a film or working with charities or doing certain docuseries, what Im trying to do is spread positive messages, actress Cara Delevingne, star of the new film Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets, recently told WWD.

Hollywood has always been purpose-oriented, both on the screen and off with prominent actor-activists ranging from Ronald Reagan to Angelina Jolie. But now causes are gaining in prominence and priority.

Take Sonys The Emoji Movie, to be released July 28. While the movie is on one hand typical family oriented summer fare, a key component of its marketing is an antibullying campaign.

Sony and the I Am a Witness campaign, run by nonprofit organization The Ad Council, released a trailer showcasing footage from the movie that relates to confronting oppression.

Emoji! I thought the conversation just got dumber, exclaims a green troll in the trailer. Internet trolls just ignore them! replies Hi-5, the hand emoji, voiced by James Corden.

The campaign aims to give the movie a layer of social worthiness the comedy might otherwise have lacked. You wouldnt have seen something like The Emoji Movies antibullying trailer accompanying the release of a family movie a decade ago, said Parsons McDaniel.

The biggest blockbusters now associate themselves with the worthiest missions. The Star Wars: Force for Change program, a charity launched by Lucasfilm and Disney in 2014, harnesses the power of Star Wars to empower and improve the lives of children around the world, according to its website.

The Force for Change program might not exactly be in danger of eclipsing Han Solo in minds of Star Wars fans, but it is by no means an insubstantial part of the galaxy.

A recent fundraising campaign, held to coincide with Star Wars 40th anniversary, raised $3.4 million with proceeds benefiting Unicef and Starlight Childrens Foundation. (Rival sci-fi franchise Star Trek also runs a number of charities overseen by its distributor Paramount.)

Investing in good deeds amounts to loose change for a Disney DIS, -0.25% or VIA, +0.74% franchise. For some films, however, an association with a cause can carry significant risk.

The Promise, a drama starring Christian Bale and Oscar Isaac set against the backdrop of the mass killings of Armenians by Ottoman Turks that began in 1915, was released in 2016. The films budget, reportedly just under $100 million, was funded by late Armenian-American businessman Kirk Kerkorian.

Despite wide distribution and a release coinciding with a movement for Congress to promote a bill requesting that the U.S. government highlight the killings, The Promise attracted mediocre reviews and grossed just $8.2 million in the U.S. Its mission was further derailed by a vociferous social media campaign in which Turkish websites flooded popular film database IMBD with one-star reviews.

The renewed emphasis on philanthropy is changing how filmmakers view their creative projects. Yet some movie industry creatives think the emphasis on messaging can go too far.

Causes are at the forefront of movies more than ever and the activism among actors, suppressed for a long time by the studios, is now considered a positive, says Emmy-winning screenwriter Jake Jacobson. But its getting to be product placement for ideology. I dont see what benefit it is for a film to do that other than preach to the choir.

Twenty years ago, you could have just told a story and people would have read into it what they wanted, said Ernest Thompson, who won an Oscar for writing 1981 tear-jerker On Golden Pond and directed 1969, a 1988 Vietnam War drama. Now audiences are hungry for guidance and inspiration to step outside of the norm.

Thompson is now developing a movie entitled Allegiance Farm about child abuse. My intention is for the girl I cast to become a spokesperson for other children to have the courage to speak out, he said, using her stardom and social media to boost advocacy on the issue something he says wasnt possible three decades ago.

Now the girl who gets cast [in Allegiance Farm] can get peoples attention and tell other [abused] children where they can get help and give them ideas, Thompson said. The implications for this are limitless.

Yet Thompson still believes subtlety is key for entertaining, rather than just educating, an audience. If a movie is advertised as a message, youve got a problem, he said. If you can make an audience laugh and think, youre accomplishing your goals more effectively.

Excerpt from:
Hollywood is using social causes to sell movie tickets - MarketWatch

SEATTLE--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Simply Measured, the pioneer in social analytics, today announced the release of its third annual State of Social Marketing report. This comprehensive piece of primary research expands on prior reports by providing insights from more than 2,700 social media professionals in 111 countrieswith the perspectives of both brands and agencies.

At the end of the day, your job as a marketerany kind of marketeris to sell. This is true even if you are tasked with increasing brand awareness and cultivating a community on social, as three-quarters of our survey respondents are, said Scott Fallon, vice president of Marketing, Simply Measured. It just means that your target market is closer to the top of the funnel. As more budget is devoted to socialsocial spending is expected to rise to 17.3 billion by 2019 social marketers will be pressed to make the link between engagement and conversions. Social marketers wont stop paying attention to engagement and amplification metrics, but they will be asked to set and meet conversion goals, too.

There is a severe gap here today: 90 percent of marketers surveyed struggle to measure ROI and/or tie social to business goals. The report positions 2017 as the year of contradictions, with social ad investment increasing, but a lack of industry-wide goal-setting, and more than half of brands saying that influencers are vital to the success of their social programs, but over 76 percent of brands saying they have no dedicated budget for influencer marketing. Brands are saying one thing and doing the opposite in multiple categories covered in this report, whether due to unsubstantial resources, lack of expertise, or both.

Agencies, however, are pushing for results from social more than brands: 73 percent of agencies set goals for either web traffic or conversion goals, while only 57 percent of brand marketers do. This indicates that social marketers at agencies have stronger goal-setting (and achieving) baselines than social marketers within the brand environment.

Whether brand or agency, social media is a foundational marketing strategy thatif properly tracked and analyzedhas the ability to impact the buyers journey at all stages in the funnel, explained report author Lucy Hitz, head of Marketing Communications, Simply Measured. However, marketers still find difficulty quantifying the impact of social media and are unsure of how to distribute resources to generate the most value from their social campaigns.

In-house marketing teams and agency professionals experience unique challenges and are offered different opportunities. If youre an in-house marketing team, youre focused on a long-term, constantly evolving brand. If youre an agency, youre brought on to achieve specific goals and have to show your value in a specific amount of time or your clients will go elsewhere, Hitz commented. We wanted this report to reflect both sides.

The third annual report highlights findings to pinpoint how marketers can fully leverage the power of social media.

Key Report Findings

The report compares the results of brands and agencies to gain perspective on the unique experiences of these two sectors, and the challenges and successes that accompany different sectors of the marketing industry. 64.8 percent of respondents were brands and 35.2 percent of respondents identified themselves as agencies.

Summary of report findings:

The report was expanded this year to include the global marketing community. Responses were collected from marketers in the US, the UK, Australia, Canada, China, Denmark, France, India, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, Netherlands, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Africa, Sweden, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, Venezuela, Vietnam, and more.

The report findings reflect a global perspective about changes in social marketing staffing, the universality of budget constraints, and how social marketings role is evolving in the minds of business leaders, commented Fallon.

Download the full report here.

About Simply Measured

Simply Measured is the worlds leading social analytics provider, offering the industrys only full-funnel social analytics platform. Simply Measured helps marketers measure everything from conversations to conversions, so you can prove socials impact and improve performance.

Read more from the original source:
Simply Measured Research Finds Increase in Social Marketing's ... - Business Wire (press release)