Good morning! Today is Wednesday, March 4, 2020, and this is a WEB EXTRA of The Charlotte Ledger, an e-newsletter with local business-y news and insights for Charlotte, N.C. Subscribe now so you don’t miss an issue: The Ledger’s 40 Over 40 needed some publicity. Would paying an influencer help?
Hey Tony, great article. I'm a local real estate agent and actually tried to hire an influencer a few months back. I had about the same amount of pushback that you received. I never did hire one, but this article makes me want to give it another shot. I firmly believe that social media marketing is in its infancy and will be a must in the near future for small business. Thanks for sharing.
Hi Tony - I'm the CEO of influence.co. We're thrilled you used the platform to a positive end. Thanks for mentioning us in this article. I'll share it with our community!
At the risk of a passé “ok Boomer” (Gen X, thank you very much) I think social media metrics are often ethereal at best.
In Twitter’s infancy I ran a 500 person Twitter account for Democratic State senators in California. The 500+ followers were reporters, lobbyists, etc. Basically, real people, with a real interest in our work.
We used the account to effectively distribute short press statements, infographics or links to “deeper dive” informational websites about policy changes/initiatives being worked on by our Caucus. Those “real people” then took that information and shared it with their clients, added our point of view to their traditional media stories or (hopefully) amplified the content to their own followers.
A party leader came along who was envious of the Governor’s million account following, and directed us to do a paid “friend and follow” campaign, growing our following to 45,000+. While the “number” impressed the leader, it was largely garbage: a lot of bots, non-relevant followers in far flung corners of the globe, not to mention the vile anti-government, anti-vaxx, or otherwise deranged trolls. Seriously, garbage.
Bottomline: growing your audience organically is the best. And that takes time, authenticity and commitment to regular posting. How many “influencers” keep that up? How valid is the metric of their audience? How interesting is your piece of “news” that you’re trying to promote (authenticity)?
Social is one channel of outreach. There’s this “shiny new toy” aspect of it that drives a lot of marketing eagerness for numbers, a “let me hand my CEO a list of numbers that satisfies his or her short-term, shallow dive interest in being ’on social,’” but there’s a very real shake out that needs to take place before any single person can point to some marketing strategy that guarantees results.
For me, the Ledger offers better content (although not as much at this stage) than the Business Journal. That why I follow and enjoy. If I wasn’t moving back to Sacramento in one month, I’d subscribe. Good luck!
Hey Tony, great article. I'm a local real estate agent and actually tried to hire an influencer a few months back. I had about the same amount of pushback that you received. I never did hire one, but this article makes me want to give it another shot. I firmly believe that social media marketing is in its infancy and will be a must in the near future for small business. Thanks for sharing.
Hi Tony - I'm the CEO of influence.co. We're thrilled you used the platform to a positive end. Thanks for mentioning us in this article. I'll share it with our community!
At the risk of a passé “ok Boomer” (Gen X, thank you very much) I think social media metrics are often ethereal at best.
In Twitter’s infancy I ran a 500 person Twitter account for Democratic State senators in California. The 500+ followers were reporters, lobbyists, etc. Basically, real people, with a real interest in our work.
We used the account to effectively distribute short press statements, infographics or links to “deeper dive” informational websites about policy changes/initiatives being worked on by our Caucus. Those “real people” then took that information and shared it with their clients, added our point of view to their traditional media stories or (hopefully) amplified the content to their own followers.
A party leader came along who was envious of the Governor’s million account following, and directed us to do a paid “friend and follow” campaign, growing our following to 45,000+. While the “number” impressed the leader, it was largely garbage: a lot of bots, non-relevant followers in far flung corners of the globe, not to mention the vile anti-government, anti-vaxx, or otherwise deranged trolls. Seriously, garbage.
Bottomline: growing your audience organically is the best. And that takes time, authenticity and commitment to regular posting. How many “influencers” keep that up? How valid is the metric of their audience? How interesting is your piece of “news” that you’re trying to promote (authenticity)?
Social is one channel of outreach. There’s this “shiny new toy” aspect of it that drives a lot of marketing eagerness for numbers, a “let me hand my CEO a list of numbers that satisfies his or her short-term, shallow dive interest in being ’on social,’” but there’s a very real shake out that needs to take place before any single person can point to some marketing strategy that guarantees results.
For me, the Ledger offers better content (although not as much at this stage) than the Business Journal. That why I follow and enjoy. If I wasn’t moving back to Sacramento in one month, I’d subscribe. Good luck!
So how did I do? What would you have done differently? Has anybody out there hired an influencer? What was your experience?
"I'm 37"...that made me laugh. Interesting article.