Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

This week I moderated another Social Media Today webinar as part of their Best Thinker webinar series, this time on the topic of The ROI of Influencer Marketing.  This webinar featured Eric T. Tung (@EricTTung) Brand Ambassador for companies like Ford, Microsoft, Verizon and MasterCard, Kathleen Hessert (@KathleenHessert) CEO of Sports Media Challenge and Eric Berkowitz (@tracx) SVP of Global Services at Tracx. This webinar was sponsored by Tracx.  We discussed ideas and tips from finding influencers for your brand to calculating ROI on your program.

Here are three key takeaways from the webinar:
-  Not all influencers are created equal – Brands should look beyond social metrics into psychographics and contextual intelligence to determine the ideal candidates
-  Bigger doesn’t mean better – A large following or readership does not inherently make a person influential
-  The ROI of Influence – True influence drives action, not just awareness...

Consumers trust recommendations from other consumers far more than they do branded content. With that in mind, businesses are jumping in head first. Unfortunately, the process can get out of hand pretty quick, but here’s the good news: As businesses start to see the importance of working with bloggers, more tools are becoming available to empower marketers to run seriously smart campaigns.

From finding the right bloggers to managing outreach to tracking campaigns, here are some of the best tools to manage blogger campaigns from start to finish....

What’s the first thing that comes to mind when you think about laptops? The tactile sensation beneath your fingertips as they gracefully jump around the keyboard from home position? The calming ohm sound that seems to emanate from the machine when you turn it on? That alluring hard drive capacity? What about included software? Number of auxiliary outputs? Ooh la la. No matter how you spin it, it’s difficult to make laptops seem…well… sexy. That is until HP had the ingenious idea to take laptops completely out of the tech vertical and see how their product floats with other viewers.

Not to be rude, but HP isn’t exactly everyone’s idea of a luxury tech device. This generation tends to live, breathe, and generally go gaga over Apple’s sleek designs. It oozes fashion, vogue, and lifestyle, honey! However, just because HP is perhaps a more affordable option doesn’t mean it isn’t chic. And to prove it, HP tapped into trendsetters in a completely unique way. Before we go deeper into the big reveal, please allow a brief intermission in which we applaud, bow down, and shower HP’s marketing team with endless pastel colored macarons. Okay, we are done....

The Evolution of Influencer Marketing and The 5 Influencer Insights That Matter Most provides an overview of how consumer influence has changed in recent years due to the increased use of social media, as well as a breakdown of the five influencer attributes that matter most to today's audiences. It's time to leverage your influencers for the greater good. Let Tracx show you how.