Our Latest & Greatest:

Image from Joe the Goat Farmer used under CC license.

Earlier this month at ad:tech NY, comedian/Vine star and social influencer Ry Doon — as well as speakers from Absolut, L’Oreal Paris Haircare and Crowdtap — took the stage to discuss how brands can “earn love” from social influencers. Brands often see social influencers as the gateway to reaching potential customers in a genuine way, but before they earn their love, they first need to earn their trust. Here are the steps the panelists suggested to “earn the love from social influencers”:

1. Respect the craft

Image from Keith Hoffart used under CC license.

92 percent of people trust strangers over brands. How can that be? Why are people turning to strangers to give them information about a product over the brand that created the product? Are strangers more knowledgeable than brands? As both a consumer and a marketer, it is important to understand both sides of this statistic.

As a consumer, I can certainly recall various times when I have trusted strangers over brands. Before I make an online purchase, I almost always read the reviews that strangers give the product I intend to buy. Why? Well, to me the answer is seemingly obvious; I want to know the truth about the product. If I’m going to spend money on something, I don’t want to just read the product description given by the brand – the brand would never point out any possible flaws the product may have! Strangers, on the other hand, have no problem giving the honest truth about the product. In this sense, I bestow more trust in strangers than I do in the brand that created the product.

There is a lot Scott Vaughan, CMO at Integrate, can share about the importance of building an effective influencer relations strategy that results in a significant increase in meaningful social engagements and one-on-one discussions. So it was a no brainer that he would lead PAN’s latest session of PANU, a knowledge-sharing training and development program that PAN holds each week for its employees.

Scott works closely with customers and partners on a daily basis – he recognizes the power of real-time integrated marketing and leveraging mutually beneficial relationships. Each small engagement creates a personal touch point that can strengthen into a deeper relationship and benefit an organization in a huge way, whether it be placement in a great feature article, a new speaking opportunity at a topnotch conference or even transform into a new customer opportunity. 

It takes a true partnership to effectively pull off influencer relations, Scott explained, and we at PAN agree. It is a critical element to any PR program, especially when working with high growth companies trying to establish themselves or if there is a need to pivot positioning and transform an organization’s story. Here are some of the main takeaways from Scott’s session and how you can make the most out of each influencer relations program.

Blogger engagement has huge public relations value for many agency clients; in fact, the majority of our public relations plans include a significant blogger outreach component. According to blog tech provider WordPress and Blogging.org, as of 2012 there were more than 42 million blogs in the world, 31 million here in the United States alone. More than 60 percent of all businesses have a blog. And more than 500,000 posts a day are seen by 25 billion viewers each month.

Influencer relations are all about giving back to the community.