SHOW TRANSCRIPT

Jeff Sieh: [00:00:00] Welcome to social media news live. I’m Jeff Sieh and you’re not 

[00:00:04] Grace Duffy: [00:00:04] I’m Grace Duffy. And this is the show that keeps you up to date on what’s happening in the world of social media.

[00:00:10] And today’s show is brought to you by Restream everything you need to go live with your own professional show and podcasts right in your browser. So you can find out more about that at socialmedianewslive.com/restream

[00:00:25] Jeff Sieh: [00:00:25] yeah. And today we’re joined by Neil Schaffer and we’re going to get an expert.

[00:00:29] Insider’s look into creating an influencer marketing strategy. You’re going to find out what are the biggest issues facing influencer marketers today? How can brands navigate the influencer landscape and how brands and influencers create fruitful and ROI, positive relationships together. And also we want to give a shout out to another one of our sponsors.

[00:00:51] Ecamm the way we’re switching all these screens, doing all this cool graphics. It’s e-comm you can find out more about Ecamm. If you go tosocialmedianewslive.com/ecamm that’s socialmedianewslive.com/ecamm. So if you don’t know who Neil Schaffer is, you probably should.

[00:01:11] He’s. He’s one of my favorite people on the planet. In fact, little known fact here, I actually wrote for Neil when I first got started. I don’t know if you even remember that deal, but I was one of your bloggers back in the day, but he is the author of four social media books. His fourth book, the age of influence is the definite definite book to help guide businesses of all sizes and industries to leverage influencers as a part of their marketing efforts.

[00:01:37] He’s president of the social media agency, PDCA social he’s a leading authority in helping businesses develop and execute social media marketing strategy. Influencer marketing and social selling initiatives. He offers hundreds of free blog posts and other resources on his site. Neil schaffer.com. He’s got two podcasts maximize your social influence and the school of influence podcast with Amanda wrestle.

[00:02:02] Neil man, I am so excited to hear, welcome to the show. 

[00:02:06] Neal Schaffer: [00:02:06] Hey, thank you, Jeff grace. It’s really an honor to be here. Just happy to, to, you know, I think a lot of marketers and business owners, when they think about influencer marketing some people cringe at the word. Others think it’s just a bunch of fake people.

[00:02:19]But there are others that are really doing a lot of it and generating a lot of revenue from doing it. So hopefully we’ll get some light bulbs lit out there in the audience and, and have a productive morning together. Awesome. 

[00:02:31] Jeff Sieh: [00:02:31] Well, first we got a comment from somebody in one of our groups, cause I can’t tell because we don’t have permission, but it says, whoo.

[00:02:37] I’m so interested in influencer marketing. Can’t wait to learn more. Well you are into the right place. Mr. Mrs. Facebook user. So Neil before we get started, let’s establish what we mean. When we talk about influencer marketing, what exactly is influencer marketing? 

[00:02:56] Neal Schaffer: [00:02:56] So, this is where, when I wrote this book, I realized that there are a lot of different definitions of influence marketing that are out there, but really the easiest way to look at it is companies that are leveraging other social media users to promote them.

[00:03:13] And what this means is that in social media, you have a business account and then you have personal accounts. So as a business account, as you know, your organic reach on most platforms goes down over time and you want to tap into other people who often are content creators who have built communities through their content.

[00:03:31] And you want. Their help at influencing their community to be interested in your product. And that’s really the heart of it. And with that definition, it’s not just B to C it’s B2B, it’s nonprofit. You really tapping into other social media users. So we then get to ask, well, who is an influencer? Who’s not an influencer.

[00:03:50] And even in the influencer marketing industry, it started out with celebrities. Right? Right. But over time, they’ve defined someone. That’s having an influence as having fewer and fewer followers to the point where, when I was writing the book and now we talk about it a lot. We have a nano influencer, which has between one to 10,000 followers on a given social network.

[00:04:11] So, you know, look around you at the people that have more than a thousand followers. There’s a lot more people with a lot more influence. And now you begin to say, huh, I don’t need to tap into, you know, collaborate with someone that I’ve never met before, because they have 10,000 followers. I have actual customers that have 2000 followers.

[00:04:29] I have actual employees. Then I have a thousand followers. We have resellers or affiliates that have 3000 followers and you begin to see that there’s a lot of people around you that you can tap into. And it really sort of, from my perspective, it wasn’t my intent. But looking back at the book, it sort of redefines what brands should be doing on social media.

[00:04:49] Because if organic social media is dead, then really collaborating with other people is the only way to organically insight word of mouth. And that’s really what this is all about. When, when we started with Facebook back in 2012, 2013, it was so viral, right. But they re virality is gone. And unfortunately, when you do paid media like Facebook ads, they’re, they’re not going to go viral, right?

[00:05:09] It’s paid media. So really, if you want to leverage what social media was for, which is word of mouth, you got to tap into the voices of other people. And that is really the heart of what I would define as influencer marketing. 

[00:05:21] Jeff Sieh: [00:05:21] Awesome. Awesome. So that’s, that’s probably it’s the best. I mean, the guy wrote the book on it folks, so yeah.

[00:05:27] He knows what he’s talking about. Like let’s do it. So, very, very good. So yeah. Great. She had another question for Neil. 

[00:05:32] Grace Duffy: [00:05:32] Wow. So you, you touched on this very briefly and it’s that influencer marketing kind of gets a bad rap and is met with some hesitation out there, right? So it takes a lot of time, a lot of money.

[00:05:44] There’s a huge risk to your brand if it goes wrong, right? So it’s risky and it’s somewhat difficult to measure. And we’re going to talk about all those things as we go along in the show, but a recent study from advertiser perceptions. And this was a study that came out in November, 2020 noted that branded content and influencer marketing together stands up for 20% of digital advertising budgets going into 2021.

[00:06:10] And that even supplanted things like paid search, paid social and even video, which you touched on some of those things and now companies are. Preferring to invest in these native options, connecting with their audience, connecting with the people that are already their super fans to reach target customers.

[00:06:28] But what are some of the pros and cons of influencer marketing? So what are some of the things that, you know, that we should be looking forward to as brands and what should we be focusing on instead of this? Like, you know, hesitation. 

[00:06:43] Neal Schaffer: [00:06:43] Yeah. So I think the problem that brands have had is they don’t know how to find the right people to work with.

[00:06:52] And when they found someone, they don’t know how real their influence is or how relevant their influences. And in some cases who, who are these people? Right? So that’s why, you know, in my book and because I’m an outsider, I’m not, I’m not part of the influencer marketing industry. I’m, I’m a consultant.

[00:07:07] That’s, you know, that, that works with a lot of different companies, a lot of different industries. What have you? So the problem is that yes, there are people that have influence, but they are people. And if they have a lot of influence and you don’t have a relationship with them, it turns out to be the type of influence of marketing that we’ve all heard about.

[00:07:26] That a company is paying a lot of money to people they don’t know much about. Maybe it’s like one post that goes up. Maybe it gets some vanity metrics, but there’s no real long lasting impact to it. It becomes a one night stand or the closest thing we have to a one night stand in social media marketing.

[00:07:43] And I think that is the problem is because in the early days of influencer marketing, not as the way it operated and what happens then is you have influencer marketing agencies that rise up. You have talent agencies that now rebranded themselves as influencer marketing agencies. And it’s almost like Bitcoin.

[00:08:01] You know, the more followers you have, the more you can sell these people for the more they make, the more the agency makes. It’s all good. And then you can buy fake engagement to support the fake followers. So, you know, what I write about in my book is, and maybe it’s because I’ve been influenced by all these other companies outside of B2C, but why don’t you start, if we can define influence at that nano level.

[00:08:21] Right. And let’s say you have, I mean, I’ll put this up, not to brag or anything, but I’ll get more engagement on Instagram with like a 15,000 follower account that I have then, you know, media brands that have 70, 80,000 followers, right. On average. So you don’t have to work with a huge influencer to have a lot of impact.

[00:08:40] And now it’s funny after COVID brands are finally saying, when they reach out to influencers, have you heard of our brand, have you ever used our product? Right. So think about it. If you want to work with someone and they they’re actually a customer, you don’t need to sell them on your brand. There’s much less risk.

[00:08:57] Cause they already, they’re already a user. And it’s going to sound, guess what more authentic? The buzzword of 20, 20, 20, 21. So that’s why I redefined the same look. Why don’t you start, if you want to work with influencers as you should, why don’t you start by looking at people that are brand affinity for your brand, like no interest, right?

[00:09:16] These are we, we begin with your employees and if it’s B2B, it’s even more important, but even for B to C, I’d say it can be done. We look at your customers, we look at your followers, you know, people that engage with you on social media. There’s a lot of people out there that if you think of them as influencers, right, you can begin to collaborate with them.

[00:09:36] So the risks I believe are when you connect and collaborate with people outside of your brand affinity, and that’s where a lot of brands go wrong. So when you’re in your brand affinity, like I said, these people already know you, the content is going to be. On average is going to be better, more authentic, less risk.

[00:09:53] So that’s been my recommendation. And if you get to the point where maybe you’re a startup and like you don’t have any customers yet, you don’t have any employees. Well, then you need to incite word of mouth, not by paying someone to post something for you, but actually getting people to try your product, right.

[00:10:09] Gifting is a great way to get started. And that begins the cycle of sort of inciting word of mouth. Like I said, with social media is all about, and then you go from there, but at the end of the day where people, everybody operates differently, Jeff, I mean, you’re, you’re an influencer grace, you’re an influencer, you know, and grace, especially working with influences a resume, you know, that every buddy in social media, every social media user is looking for something a little bit different, somewhat money, somewhat experienced, somewhat product, but want support.

[00:10:38] So it’s not always just about the money. 

[00:10:41] Jeff Sieh: [00:10:41] Gotcha. Well, we have some questions I want to bring up this, this there’s a study from you know, there’s a study from advertiser perceptions asked to describe which digital advertising options were becoming more important in 2021 paid influencers tied for second with video with 41% saying it was growing in importance over this year.

[00:11:00] So, you know, this is a question for like Rhonda had in the comments she was as a state, more, she goes, I agree. Most brands don’t understand what it takes time to build real relationships, to result in conversations with an influencer’s audience. So Neil. You mentioned all these, these great things to do.

[00:11:18] And there’s, there’s ways that brands can, can do that with influencers. Where, where should they start? Should they start with the relationship side first? And like, like look and say, okay, you know, like grace and Neil, those are they, they talk about kind of the same areas I am. I need to go in and kind of start liking their posts or, you know, making comments on other things.

[00:11:38] What should brands do first when they first want to start building a relationship with influencers? 

[00:11:44] Neal Schaffer: [00:11:44] Well, there’s a few different approaches. Definitely. You know, first of all, just mapping out, right? Who are the influencers? And for those of you that are listening, that are business owners that run an e-commerce shop at that, that run on Shopify, there is a great free tool available for you called Kara, which is get carol.com CRO.

[00:12:05] And this does exactly what I’m talking about. It will bring in your Instagram followers. It will look at your Shopify shopping cart history, and it will integrate with your email marketing. And it’ll basically analyze all these people and find influencers amongst people that already know like, and trust you.

[00:12:22] So, this and more, you know, kero is actually growing and they’re going to start to support more platforms. What have you, but you know, this is not something that just one crazy guy is talking about. This is a way you know, this, this is becoming more of an industry standard for the smart companies.

[00:12:36] And I know one of my clients e-commerce company. You know, they were working with an agency to do influence marketing. It wasn’t very effective. And they found amongst their customer base, they were verified Instagram users that had followers in the six figures. Right? So this, there are hidden influences lurking out there amongst your followers, your customers.

[00:12:54] That is where I would start. And, you know, even an email list, there are tools out there that if you have an email address, you can find their social media profile. I use a tool called voila, Norbert. I know it’s a funny name, but just look for email, you know, email, social media, enrichment, something of that sort.

[00:13:12] It’s all GDPR compliant. It’s all legit. But I would really start with the hat and do a little research as to, you know, who’s our customer, where are they on social media? Who’s engaging with us. Take a look at your followers. I have a case study my book about a hotel that found influencers just among their followers on Instagram.

[00:13:26] When they reached out, they were able to work together in a very fruitful relationship. So, you know, begins with sort of mapping out. But the next thing is, okay, we know who these people are now, what do we want to do together with them? And I believe another way in which influencer marketing has really changed since I wrote the book over the last year is it’s not just about the content amplification.

[00:13:46] It’s about the content itself. So think how hard it is now for social media marketers to make tick talks, to make reels, to make videos you know, Instagram photography. These are things that brands with the exception of a very few have excelled out right in these areas. It’s the content creators. That are building up large followings that create way better way engaging content.

[00:14:09] So I believe that the first part is really sourcing content is if they’re already talking about you and posting it saying, Hey, we’d love to post your content right on our channels. And maybe instead of hiring an expensive content creation agency to create content for you, you actually begin to hire these people to create content for you.

[00:14:28] And, you know, whenever I talked to brands, I said, look, you don’t need to create your own content. If you have a lot of fans out there, if you have a lot of customers that are talking about you on social media, you can have a 100% user generated content, organic social media strategy. And we know that user generated content performs better.

[00:14:45] It performs better in social, it performs better on ads. It performs better on websites, on shopping cards. That is what I believe the future of organic social is it’s through these relationships, not just with influencers and expanding inciting word of mouth, but also the sourcing of content. That’s going to be way better than your own content.

[00:15:03] Jeff Sieh: [00:15:03] Awesome. Well, that ties right into this first segment that grace is going to talk about because there’s this report that talks about this, influencing some, some new approaches to that. So grace, why don’t you kind of break this down for us? Cause I thought this was really interesting. 

[00:15:18] Grace Duffy: [00:15:18] Absolutely. So marketing tech company Linka recently surveyed a bunch of enterprise marketers and agency professionals from a variety of industries.

[00:15:27] So B to C, B to B all of them. And they wanted to learn more about their work with influencers and how they’ve been evolving the strategy, especially coming into this year where a lot of influencer marketing budgets are. Increasing following very positive, really experiences from last year, many for many reasons that you’ve already outlined early.

[00:15:51] You know, when you’re describing all this, because, so they’re suggesting that they’re seeing better results from this user generated content from people that actually love and use and have an affinity for the brand. And they’re seeing this is doing a lot better than, than their branded, their original, the brand originated efforts.

[00:16:13] So things that the brand is putting out their ads, paid posts, all that stuff. And so this is something that you highlighted in your book, and I love this quote it’s people trust people more than ads and social media is made for people, not businesses. So how are experienced brands looking at their influencer marketing budgets is here.

[00:16:34] What are the initiatives and what are some of the programs that you’re seeing. 

[00:16:40] Neal Schaffer: [00:16:40] Yeah. So, I mean, it’s really interesting grace that we’re talking. And the last time I saw Jeff was at pod fast in Orlando, Florida, literally in March of 2020, just before all this started. And everybody in airplanes wearing masks, I’m like, what’s going on here?

[00:16:52] Right? What weird world we’re living in. But anyway, that’s the norm today, but so over time, you know, I published the age of influence in March of 2020. And. And, you know, things I talk about in the book, I think I’ve continued to evolve. And one of the biggest things that evolved is that brands now are saying, well, you know, instead of working with agencies, let’s take more of this stuff in house, but also let’s build our own little armies of influencers.

[00:17:19] So I’ve talked to a few different agencies that have that talk about their clients that used to reach out to them for, Hey, we need influencers for this campaign. Now they’re building their own little internal army of influencers. Like, you know, you could call it a brand ambassador program. I think that word and like brand advocacy.

[00:17:35] These are terms that have been around before, but it’s not really reframing it as influencer. So their own little network of people that they can tap into their own little community, that they can keep them up to date when they have new products that can facilitate easily sending out to them, you know, a loyalty rewards, maybe, you know, affiliate marketing, depending on the company and the product.

[00:17:54] What have you. That’s really, I believe the way the future is not thinking of influencer marketing as a campaign or a series of campaigns, but as an ongoing, you know, effort in your marketing and integral part of your marketing and through this community, it’s not just the fact that you’ll get content amplification or content creation, but you also get a sounding board, right?

[00:18:14] People that really understand what, what the trends are. You, you almost get your own little advisory council for social media. And it, there’s just a lot of benefits when you bring people together that are that active creating content in social media that understand your product. There’s just a lot of different benefits, right?

[00:18:29] Your product marketers are going to benefit your R and D team is going to benefit. So that is really the latest trend of trying to create this sort of network. And I would say this is where I sort of bridged together. You know, brand advocacy and employee advocacy and one incident. I, I believe I wrote about it in the age of influence.

[00:18:47] Maybe not was when I had a chance to meet a consumer packaged goods brand in Singapore, it was their APAC headquarters of this multinational brand and they were, they were doing this right. They said, Neil, we have a bunch of nano influencers that we’re working with and we want to help them create better photography.

[00:19:05] What we want to help them create better videos. We want to help them to become better. Copywriters. What do you think of the idea? Of actually bringing in other influencers that are really good at this and teaching and actually training our nano influencers. And, and to me that is a logical thing to do.

[00:19:22] So if you have some sort of training program for employees and social media, why wouldn’t you also share that with your, your, you know, your brand ambassadors room, your influencers, and vice versa. If you’re going to train your influencers on those things, why wouldn’t you also train your employees to help them with their personal branding to help them with your employee advocacy program?

[00:19:42] So it’s really about creating this inclusive, you know, it’s, it’s really at the end of the day, instead of investing in, in Zuckerberg and Facebook, it’s about investing in people, right? And that, you know, that comment that we had before that longterm ROI, where they may have worked together with you on one campaign.

[00:19:58] But if they’re part of this ongoing network, They’re going to be talking about you, you know, without your having to ask them to talk about you. And that’s where you begin to see the long-term gains, where they bring you up here and there, they post about you, even though you don’t really ask them to they feel part of you.

[00:20:13] They, they, they feel like they belong to you and you, you begin to have this very inclusive approach that I think is very much in tune with the way younger generations want to work with brands. And, and one of you’re part of something bigger. 

[00:20:23] Jeff Sieh: [00:20:23] Awesome. Well, I wanted to bring up this comment, cause I thought this is great.

[00:20:26] This is from our friend, Andy lions. She goes, when Neil Shaffer speaks, I listen, then implement, invest in people. So she loved that. So thanks Sandy for that. 

[00:20:33] Neal Schaffer: [00:20:33] And I like to share, you know, Jeff, when, when my book came out, conveniently located next to me here you know, so what am I going to do to get the word out about my book?

[00:20:42] Right? Am I going to spend thousands of dollars on Facebook ads? Or knowing that Amazon is the most influential place to influence book sales. Am I going to start going into Amazon reviews of similar books, finding people that have reviewed them and seen, well, I know a, I know B we’re already connected on LinkedIn, we’re friends on Instagram.

[00:21:03] Right? Right. And, and trying to really reach out to people that they’ve reviewed similar books. They might be interested in my book as well. And that is not as a better way to incite word of mouth than to do the knee jerk marketer reaction, which is let’s just throw money at it. So we’re now progressive influenced the market in the early days.

[00:21:19] That’s what it was. We’re now progressing to being a little bit more intelligent. And as the more intelligent we get with it, the higher, the ROI. Yeah. 

[00:21:26] Jeff Sieh: [00:21:26] And I wanted to mention also that if you are interested in Neil’s book and you’re watching over on Amazon live, it is highlighted right now, right below me in the carousel.

[00:21:36] So I thought that’s very, very cool. But the question I have also is like in your book, you mentioned 16 different ways to work with social media influencers, which is really, really cool. So have any of those change since COVID and I also wanted to kind of tie it into like, how is AI affecting influencer marketing?

[00:21:54] Because I figured that some of us being locked down and not being able to like collaborate or go and have influencers come in to our office space or whatever, are people relying more on AI? I just I’d love to know your thoughts on this. 

[00:22:08] Neal Schaffer: [00:22:08] Yeah. So as far as the types of campaigns, I, you know, as I was doing the research, I realized there was all these case studies out there and that’s where I’m like, well, let’s, let’s make like, let’s dumb this down and make a process around it saying, Hey, here’s like a directory of the different things you can do with influencers.

[00:22:23] You know, pick one or two and run with it. And that was the idea behind that chapter. I don’t think the types of campaigns have changed instead of, for instance, in person speaking events, these in our webinars, right. Obviously with the emergence of tick talk and reels, that the type of content, the medium might’ve changed a little bit, or the notion that you want to have your own song and that you want everyone to do a remix dance to, you know, the details might’ve changed.

[00:22:45] But I think the framework for how to work together with influencers really has not changed that much since publishing the book. So as far as AI goes, I think where we’re seeing AI and it’s not available to everybody, but there are more and more tools that are emerging to really help you find out how influential influencers are.

[00:23:05] There are tools that are, they’re tapping into, you know, whatever information that Instagram and Facebook and all the other social networks, whatever information they can get and tying that together with artificial intelligence to really do analysis. And we’re seeing this a lot is in the visual world, right?

[00:23:21] What are the elements of, you know, we want to work with an influencer. On one post, they got 10,000 likes on the others. The average is 1000. What is it in that post that got 10,000 likes? Is there anything that we can analyze from their followers, the comments, the engagers, the actual elements that are inside the, the photo or the video?

[00:23:40]Is there any way we can try to understand what was it that made people engage with that? So that if we want to work with that influencer, we can try to get those same results. So this is not for, you know, a lot of small businesses. This is more for like the enterprise level that can invest in working with companies with these tools.

[00:23:59] They are getting a little bit cheaper, but but yeah, those are things that we can use. But once again, if we’re working with our customers and, and with people that already know, like, and trust us, I think the need for that AI is a little bit less. Because it’s a little bit less of an unknown, right. But yeah, those tools all are available and what’s really cool about the tools is they use a lot of photo recognition software.

[00:24:18] So if you’re a brand, not everybody tags your brand in a photo, but sometimes they’ll feature your product in the photo. And the image recognition software will actually go out there and try to find where your brand was visually mentioned, right? When nobody talked about it. And I think a lot of brands miss out on that, and that’s, that’s AI used more like in social listening tools.

[00:24:37] I think that Talkwalker is the first social listening to the actually brought that to the market. But that is a really killer feature. It’s a visual, social listening, you know, using the same visual recognition AI tool that some influencer marketing tools are using as well. So those are the sort of cool things that are happening with AI and influencer marketing.

[00:24:55] Jeff Sieh: [00:24:55] Very awesome. So another thing you kind of, highlighted in your book is supported in a study by Linky I think is how you pronounce it. They also found that micro-influencers those with, between 5k and a hundred K followers are the most common focuses focus for brand campaigns. So, and in your book, you kind of define micro influencers as like 10 K to 50 K.

[00:25:17] So can you talk a little bit about what the appeal of these micro influencers are and, you know, like, why not just get the Kardashians to tweet your product? I mean, you throw all your marketing budget, like a Superbowl or whatever. So talk about these, like those, these micro influencers that these smaller audiences, you know, that you kind of mentioned, or maybe a little bit more cost-effective and may have even a better communication to their communities.

[00:25:42] Neal Schaffer: [00:25:42] Yeah. You know, when I was first writing my book and, and when I was writing it, that micro was the rage. And whether it’s like, you know, five to 50, 10 to a hundred, there’s no one definition. Right. I say tend to tend to 50 because we’ve had the emergence of nano influencers that I’ve said one to 10. But when, you know, when thinking about it in the early days, When I talked to some agencies, they were like, Oh my gosh, it’s so hard just to work with a few mega influencers.

[00:26:05] Now you want to work with 20, 30, 40 micro nano influencers. That’s a lot of work. Right. So there is a little bit more work for the brands to do, but what we’re finding is. That’s smaller as sexy. I’m going to repeat that smaller is sexy because people at smaller numbers, there’s less of a chance that they bought fake followers.

[00:26:25] Right? Meaning also in parallel that their content, their vibe seems to be more authentic. Their community seems to be tighter. And what you find with influencers is at the beginning, their engagement rates are high. The more followers they get, and there’s a number of studies. There’s one in the book that I referenced, the average engagement rate actually goes down.

[00:26:47] And I think what you see. You know, we, we look at Charlie tamale on, on tech talk. You know, now she’s talking Dunkin donuts, she’s on Disney TV. You at the beginning, you start with your core fans, but as you get bigger and as more opportunities go your way, you end up niching yourself and you start talking about broader things.

[00:27:03] You begin to get fans from other types of areas and, and, and no more people just following you for one thing, they’re following you for a lot of things. And I think this explains this sort of dissipation of, of engagement that it sort of goes down. But when you work with someone small, they’re much more tied into that niche, the community authentic.

[00:27:21] And that’s where brands are really seeing. And you know what the content might even be better. I mean, the, the content creation skills. I mean, Jeff, you’ve seen people like an Instagram and just a few hundred followers that make incredible videos, right. Or incredible photography. It’s not about the number of followers.

[00:27:37] So therefore, when we look at the value of influences from a content creation perspective, we may find that those nano influencers create way better content or that content better resonates with audiences. Then these mega influencers who buy these days, they’re probably not even doing their own content.

[00:27:53] Jeff Sieh: [00:27:53] Yeah. We have another great question from Andy and in this, on the subject, she goes, Neil love that. Smaller is sexy. What’s it? Number range for smaller for context. Thank you. 

[00:28:04] Neal Schaffer: [00:28:04] Well, thank you, Andy. So I mentioned earlier, the industry has this term nano influencer, which is, you know, a minimum of 1000 followers.

[00:28:12] And I think it really depends on the network, but you know, it can be someone with even fewer followers. It really depends on your niche and the type of community that you want to engage with. So at the end of the day, you know, if you have a thousand followers. You’ll want to work with someone that has more followers.

[00:28:28] I think that’s really the easiest way to look at it. Assuming that they have more influence look at they’re not just followers. But look at their actual engagement. Right. And I know that on some networks, engagement’s hard to see on a network like Twitter or even LinkedIn. Sometimes there’s a lot of clicks going on that you can’t see, you don’t see URL clicks.

[00:28:45] Right. Right. So even though they’re only getting like, you know, one or two likes they might be getting dozens of clicks on tweets. For example, this is something that I experienced. So sometimes it’s really hard to gauge that, but it really comes down to. You know, there’s a lot of people out there that you can collaborate with that can help your brand.

[00:29:04] It’s really about, you know, finding who they are, who wants to engage with you. If you were to, you know, identify a hundred different influencers and reach out to all a hundred of them, not everyone’s going to respond to you anyway. So I think it’s less about saying I need to find people yeah. At a minimum of this and more of just starting the process of reaching out to people and developing relationships.

[00:29:22] And I think from there, you know, that number will naturally fall into place. But the interesting thing is, you know, from a brand perspective, the more influence you have, the more that brands want to work with you. So I would actually work on increasing your own influence in social media. And the more influence you have, these influences that go, huh, I want to work with you.

[00:29:42] You actually get better terms and you have more inbound traffic, more inbound leads from influencers who say, you know, love your brand would love to do a collaboration. Here are my ideas. So I’m just throwing that out there. It’s something that a lot of brands forget about, but it’s something that they should be working on as well.

[00:29:57] Jeff Sieh: [00:29:57] So let’s take this from the opposite way. So I’m a micro-influencer but no one has approached me yet. What am I doing wrong, Neil, why am I not attractive to these brands that are needing these? I have what they want. Come on deal. What’s what am I doing wrong? 

[00:30:11] Neal Schaffer: [00:30:11] Oh, you’re doing nothing wrong, Jeff. We’re doing awesome.

[00:30:13]So if you’re an influencer, here’s the thing. Most influencers will practically pitch brands. So it begins with your content and it begins with your bio. And are you targeted on something? So look at it this way. If you’re like Tiffany or Cartier and you want to reach out to jewelry influencers, you want to reach out to people.

[00:30:33] All they post them on is jewelry, for instance. Right? So if, if you think you’re a jewelry influencer, but only one of your past a hundred posts have been about jewelry, a brand is going to look very differently at you. So your, your profile and your content has to speak the speak and talk the talk. And this is why the most successful, and we’re talking specifically about Instagram, but it, it, you know, we can talk about any social network, the same way when you have a niche in all of your bio and all of your content feeds that niche.

[00:31:01] You’re more likely to attract brands from that niche. So my first question would be, well, you know, from a brand’s perspective, what is your profile? What is your content look like? Right. So, you know, if on the other hand you are doing everything I’m talking about, you’re not getting those offers. I think you really need to reach out to brands.

[00:31:17] What’s interesting is that, you know, there are brands that look for influencers that are working with, with other brands. So they’ll do searches for hashtag ad and knowing that these other influencers are working with other brands, it gives them a peace of mind that, okay, other brands think they’re influential as well.

[00:31:31] So it’s sort of a chicken and egg thing, but it’s something I’d really strive to do, you know, try to get. Some brand collaborations going so that you have a track record so that you show that, Hey, you know, I work with brands too, and I will say there are some influences and try to game the system, even though they’re not working with brands, they’ll use hashtag ad so that it looks like they’re working with brands and I’m not saying you should do that at all, but but yeah, start pitching brands.

[00:31:55] And if, you know, if you’re looking for your first deal, I wouldn’t be overly aggressive, but just saying, Hey, I mean, there are loads of brands we’re looking for people to work with. You just got to find the right ones. Very cool. 

[00:32:06] Grace Duffy: [00:32:06] So we have some questions for you in the comments, Neil, they’ve been popping up.

[00:32:09] So, this one is from our friend, Chuck Moran. Hello, Chuck. He says, Neil, do you recommend hyper H Y P R hyper brands.com to locate influencers. And I want to piggyback on that question as well about if you are a brand and you’re looking to work with one of these influencer agencies. And as you mentioned, there are a lot of the, how do you assess which agency is actually.

[00:32:33] Going to be a fit for your brand. 

[00:32:35] Neal Schaffer: [00:32:35] Yeah. So Chuck, I don’t know if you actually worked for hyper or not, because whenever I see a comment in social media mentioning a brand that’s my, my knee-jerk reaction, but there are a number of tools out there like hyper and what they are, are influencer search engines.

[00:32:49] So I’m, I’m familiar with the hyper tool. I’ve used them in presentations before. And really what it’s doing is it is a, a directory and it’s using some technology to help you find influencers. So if I want to look for a fashion influencer in Brazil who speaks English, who most of their audience are female 25 to 34.

[00:33:10] That’s the type of thing where that type of tool will expose you to people. Now, the tools are not perfect because they’re not owned by the social networks. So they’re deciding who to put in that tool. Right? Some tools out there are, opt-in only, especially when you look at marketplaces, so you’re not getting the whole view other tools.

[00:33:32] I know when I was writing the book, they’d say, well, if they don’t have 10,000 followers, we’re not, we’re not adding them to the tool. So in that way, it sort of arbitrary. You’re not really getting anyone and everyone. So as a way to begin to sort of delve into who are potential influences out there, I think it’s a time-saving tool, but when it comes to brand affinity, that’s something that, that tool can not tell you.

[00:33:52] You need to do the homework yourself. So they do serve a purpose. If you started internally and you’ve already talked to all your customers and employees, and there’s nobody else out there. Yeah. You know, if you want to expand outside of that, that could be another way of doing it. But you know, there’s a lot of ways to do an I, I tell every brand.

[00:34:10] Begin with, if you were to look for an influencer, how would you look for them in social media, without any tool, just using the native tools out there, like twitter.com and Instagram, and what have you. And if you can create a process, then try to find a tool that replicates that process. And, and when you work with an agency, the problem then becomes that they have experienced working with even a smaller set of influencers.

[00:34:32] Right. Right. And you know, a lot of the agencies I know are using those same tools, like hyper to find influencers that you can do on your own. And they’re asking you, well, what should the pitch letter look like? What should the landing page look like at the end of the day, if you don’t have enough resources, do it yourself, but you know what you’re doing?

[00:34:49] Hiring an agency to do that for you, as long as you own the strategy. It is a wise decision and I have clients that do that for that very reason. But you know, I also know that one of my clients, a few years ago was working with an agency that was doing their Facebook and Twitter ads. And the agency was pushing influencers that were completely irrelevant to my client.

[00:35:08] Right? So remember, it’s a money game and these companies, whether it be a tool, whether it be an agency they’re in the business of making money, right? So to me, there’s a little bit of a conflict of interest. That’s why I want you to own the, you know, the IP, the IQ, the process, the strategy, and then find things that work for that rather than the other way around where people are blindly throwing money at agencies and tools and trusting them when it may not, they may not get the best results.

[00:35:36] Jeff Sieh: [00:35:36] Gotcha. We have a great question from our friend, Danny, and she goes, does your book talk about very small local businesses, say a family coffee shop connecting with influencers. Is there data on that? 

[00:35:49]Neal Schaffer: [00:35:49] Well thank you for that question, Daniel. I don’t think that there’s data on every industry possible.

[00:35:54]But when I wrote the book, I tried to make it very industry agnostic of covering lots of things, including I think there is a dedicated little section there on how small businesses can leverage influencers. So regardless of whether you buy the book or not, I think if you’re a local entity like a local coffee shop, I’ve been doing a lot of work with real estate agents recently, which is very, very similar to local approach.

[00:36:15] So what I’d recommend to you is, you know, a mixture of community networking of actually, you know, Getting people on your feed, collaborating with them. A lot of realtors will do like local business spotlights, where they’ll go out to other businesses and they’ll do live stream interviews with them on a weekly basis.

[00:36:37] Or they’ll talk about the restaurants locally, where they had dinner. So, you know, as a coffee shop, you want to encourage more people to do that where you are. So I think part of it is, is your coffee shop Instagrammable, right? And hopefully you’ve already worked on that part. You want to create areas where people coming in would naturally want to take the photo and post on Instagram.

[00:36:55] So that, that I think is one of the most important things that you can do. But secondly is, you know, offer things. I do believe that one of the case studies that I talked about here was in the book was well, maybe not, but it’s one that I bring up a lot when I speak as Barney’s, Beanery there a sports sports bar here in Southern California.

[00:37:12] And when they did, they did loyalty campaigns, like, Hey, you know, check in, tag us on social. And when you get to a certain number of times, we’re going to send you a. $10 gift card, a $20 gift card. I thought that was really, really intelligent way of spreading the word. And often when people got these gift cards, they were taking a picture of that and posting it to social media as well.

[00:37:33] So it’s really about, you may not have that many influencers in your community or in your city, but it’s really about if you have social media users that are very active in social, how do we attract them to come to our coffee shop once they’re inside? How do we engage them to post about us? And then once, you know, they’ve posted with us, how do we continue that relationship to continue to get them to post about us through a loyalty campaign like that?

[00:37:54] So those are just some ideas. Hey, anybody listening, if you have any questions that I don’t answer in the limited time we have feel free to, I mean, you can find me on social media, Neil shaffer.com, just go to my contact form and let me know. But hopefully. That, that gives you some ideas to work on.

[00:38:08] Jeff Sieh: [00:38:08] So, Danny, I do want to say one thing. And so I, Neil gave me his book when we were at the podcast in Orlando when we saw each other last, but I went ahead and went out and bought it on Kindle because that’s where I like to take notes. That it’s really easy. So I’m just going to say Neil’s being very, very humble, but it’s a really good book.

[00:38:24] I got tons of ideas from it, even if it is, there’s a case study that has to do with a big business, there’s a lot of stuff that you can take from that and apply it to your own just by being doing creative. So there’s a ton of stuff in there. So I would highly recommend it even, you know, if you think it’s all for about big brands, but there’s some really great stuff in 

[00:38:41] Neal Schaffer: [00:38:41] there.

[00:38:42] Yeah. And I just wanted to say one more thing and thank you for that, Jeff. But my mindset is always, I hate going to conferences and seeing all these presentations about big grants talking to each other in social media, I would say small business. What is their learn from the, how do you replicate that?

[00:38:57] So I always have the mindset. Even when I have big business case studies and I try to find smaller businesses is how can the smallest businesses replicate that it, you know, without just throwing money at it to look good in social media you know, how can you get down and dirty and, and anybody can do this.

[00:39:12] And I’ve really tried to do that for every one of those case studies. So I appreciate you mentioning that. Yeah. 

[00:39:16] Jeff Sieh: [00:39:16] Awesome. So we got, before we get started, you know, we’re talking about Instagram, well things and things that we really like, well, I can not go in any further without talking about Ecamm which we are using to put all this stuff out here, switching cameras, all the cool stuff that you see going on.

[00:39:30] It’s from our sponsor. They are amazing, great group of people. I actually use it because they have a virtual camera. I actually use it for my zoom calls and all sorts of things. So it’s not just for broadcasting live. You can use it for if you’re making presentations, Guy Kawasaki, who I produce his podcast.

[00:39:45] He uses it when he records things that he’s sending to companies. So it’s a really, really robust tool. You can find out more at socialmedianewslive.com/ecamm go over there and check them out. I would really appreciate so Grace. Oh yeah. That’s right. Go ahead. Sorry. 

[00:40:01] Grace Duffy: [00:40:01] Yeah, I said, and the way we’re going to live to all the socials to Facebook, YouTube, usually LinkedIn, except not this week for some reason.

[00:40:09] And Amazon live is with the power of Restream. And I have some really awesome news. We just launched the Restream community on Facebook. So you can find that at. On Facebook Restream Community and join it’s growing. We just launched it about a week ago. It is growing. So if you are wanting to collaborate with other content creators, if you want to work with or find out what our influencers that our agency or our company is doing to to Talk about restraint or what they’re doing with their own their own partners and then their own business, join this community.

[00:40:43] So you can find that at Facebook Restream Community. 

[00:40:47] Jeff Sieh: [00:40:47] So I wanted to bring up some other comments too, while we’re going. And we’re going to go to this next segment that grace is going to talk about in a bit, but our friend Randall says I highly recommend his book, so that’s awesome. Thank you Randall for letting me.

[00:41:02] Yeah. And Andy, a good says just bought a copy of the age of influence way to go, Andy. I know you’re going to love it. So very, very cool. And I did get it working. We are on LinkedIn. See, that’s what’s cool about restream is even when you have a hiccup because I can go in and, and kind of play with things.

[00:41:17] I got it working behind the scenes. 

[00:41:20] Grace Duffy: [00:41:20] Well, there you go. Yeah. Jeff messaged me this morning and it was just like, we can’t get on LinkedIn and I’m like, Okay. And then he got to work. So magic of magic, 

[00:41:28] Jeff Sieh: [00:41:28] right? Yeah. And, and Rhonda says this too. So I wanted to pull that up too. Thank you, Rhonda. Appreciate you being here.

[00:41:33]Great questions. And we’re gonna get to yours in the next segment. So grace, talk about this this influencer programs we’re going to be talking about. 

[00:41:41] Grace Duffy: [00:41:41] Yeah. So Neil, on his blog, Neil shaffer.com. He wrote this post called how to create a rock solid influencer contract plus nine influencer agreement templates.

[00:41:53] So in this, in this blog post, he creates this, this comprehensive overview of influencer contracts. What needs to be taken into consideration for all parties involved the brand and the content creator, the influencer, and he breaks it down. He breaks out all the considerations, including the scope of work, the requirements and all of the legal obligations.

[00:42:16] And he also provides links to social media, influencer contracts in, in the forms and templates. So. This got me thinking about Ronda’s question here, which is she asks what is the best way to give valuation to your influence when brands reach out so that you are not giving away your influence or conversely overcharging and potentially losing the deal.

[00:42:37] So when it comes to creating these agreements, how do you find something that benefits both parties and both both the needs of both 

[00:42:45] Neal Schaffer: [00:42:45] parties? Yeah, that’s a great question. So we’ve talked mainly about, you know, influencer marketing, how brands can tap into influencers, but it’s natural. That, and one of the reasons I wrote the book is I was getting lots of questions, asked to me not just about how to leverage influencers, but a lot of marketers were saying, Hey, I see a lot of my friends that are getting paid to post an Instagram, how do I become an influencer?

[00:43:07] So it’s almost like they’re naturally entwined. I think that at the end of the day, it is a sale, right? The brand wants to get as the most out of you for the least amount of money. And you want to get the most out of brand for the most amount of money. It’s a negotiation. So, you know, how do you price yourself for a sponsored blog post?

[00:43:27] How do you price yourself for an Instagram post? And there are, you know, different ways of thinking about it. I have always been the, you know, the type of the market price right. Of every time I’m going to try to charge a little bit more, but the other way of looking at it is, Hey, what’s your budget, right?

[00:43:45] There’s and the more things that you can do, the more channels that you have, I got a YouTube channel. I got, you know, I got a podcast, I got a blog I’m on Instagram. You know, what are the ways in which you want me to collaborate and based on your budget, then we put together the most cost-effective solution.

[00:43:59] That would be an even better way and approach that I’m taking more of these days. And, and that is exactly what they teach you to do in sales, by the way, my background is B2B sales. So Hey, you know, what sort of budget do you have? And from that, you’re going to learn a lot. And from that, if you think that the budget is too low, I recommend that you just turn them away, unless you’re really desperate for money, right.

[00:44:19] That you should have this minimum, but there are also brands that you want to work with so that you can say, Hey, I’ve worked with Coca-Cola, I’ve worked with Amazon where you may want to go a little bit less in order to get that experience. So there’s a lot of different things to consider. But at the end of the day, there is no one standard market price.

[00:44:38] And I know a lot of people, even in the book I talk about, well, 10,000 followers, a hundred dollars. That’s not necessarily the case. Right. I’ve made more than that. I’ve made less than that. So at the end of the day, you only know the market rate when you get the actual business and you only know the actual business when you have a price and therefore asking the budget, and if they don’t give the budget you know, starting with, well, if they were going to post this, if they were going to post an ad and spend a hundred dollars or spend $500, I spent a thousand dollars.

[00:45:06] Can I give them better results? I think that that at the end of the day is the ultimate thing. So how much would content costs and therefore, you know, a video is going to be worth more than a blog post, which is going to be worth more and Instagram post, right? So it’s also understanding the medium and the different values.

[00:45:23] And by the way, you know, YouTube videos, blogs, they will, and podcasts, they last forever in search engines, whereas an Instagram post, a tweet, a LinkedIn post, those have a very, very short life span. So you should be getting more for those other things. So yeah, there, there’s no one solid way of, of looking at it, but that would be my advice to try to get the most from, you know, what you’re trying to get out of a relationship with a 

[00:45:45] Jeff Sieh: [00:45:45] brand.

[00:45:46] So w Rhonda, who, I just love to death and thank you, my friend for all these great comments, she goes, yes. I have switched to that type of negotiation because I wasted a lot of time putting presentations and campaign ideas in front of folks that they couldn’t even begin to afford. So one of my questions is, you know, one of the cons when it comes to influencer marketing is making that wrong investment.

[00:46:08] Like, Oh my gosh, I picked the wrong influencer. I feel like I’m throwing money. I don’t know what I’m doing. So how can a brand measure ROI for an influencer marketing campaign? I mean, I know a lot of the ones that I’ve worked for is that’s really specific. Like you need to drive this much. You know, sign-ups, which I understand, but do you have recommendations or measurement tools or services that can support influencer marketing and maybe, you know, cause a lot of it isn’t, isn’t just like signups is also getting the word out.

[00:46:36] It’s like creating a video, just like you said. So what, what kind of services or, you know, things that we could do both as brands and as influencers that we can make kind of that job of reporting a little bit easier, I guess. 

[00:46:48] Neal Schaffer: [00:46:48] Yeah. Well that’s why I like the content approach, right? So you don’t know how viral this influencer’s content is going to go, but if you have the rights to source that content and use it, you’ve just saved yourself from money of having to create your own content.

[00:47:02] Right. And there’s ROI from that. So, you know, ROI is measurable on a lot of different ways. On the other hand, this, this like brand awareness, I mean, outside of influencer marketing, how are you measuring that? And if you’re measuring that in terms of impressions and views, then obviously you can piece together the same thing, working with influencers and getting their reports on impressions and views.

[00:47:24] So every company defines that a little bit differently. I think if you’re looking more at like, you know, this cost per conversion, then you need to equip your influencers with coupon codes so that you can track them, or with affiliate links using an affiliate marketing platform, or get creative with UTM parameters, you know, in Google so that when they share the link, it is completely trackable.

[00:47:46] And then you can see what sort of activity each separate influencer hat. So depending on your objective, I think that there is a way to do this. I think a lot of brands also just look at. You know, let’s not do influencer marketing in October, let’s do it in November. And then let’s see in December how that impacted sales.

[00:48:04] So there are ways of looking at over time data correlation between these sort of programs and sales, especially let’s just focus on one of our 10 products and only do influencers with that product for a month. And then we can see what impact that might have on sales compared to, you know, a sales lift compared to other products.

[00:48:22] So, you know, I think at the end of the day, Jeff, it it’s very similar to the conversation that we were having a decade ago, when brands were saying, what’s the ROI from social media? Why should I invest in social media? And I know a lot of social media marketers that spend a lot of time trying to evangelize social media and convince people.

[00:48:39] I think those, there are still people doing with clubhouse today, right? But over time as the industry matures, that’s less and less of a question. Of like, what’s the ROI. The more of it is what are our objectives? What are we trying to get out of it? What can we track? What will we track? And, you know, if we don’t work with influencers, it’s going to become a hundred percent paid media and social media.

[00:49:00] So what’s the alternative. And I think that companies do become more rational about it. And there’s less of that question as time goes on, especially as more and more companies get started with the first campaigns. 

[00:49:10] Jeff Sieh: [00:49:10] Yeah. And I was like to go, like, what’s the ROI of a billboard, you know? And that’s kind of hard to track sometimes, you know?

[00:49:16] Well 

[00:49:16] Neal Schaffer: [00:49:16] the magazine ad that you have, or the TV ad. Yeah. I mean, yeah. We go back to Gary V. He has to be mentioned in every, every episode. Right? What’s the ROI, your mom. 

[00:49:25] Jeff Sieh: [00:49:25] Oh, we all go there. Oh man. I get in trouble. So Rhonda asks this question. I think it’s a great followup. She goes an influencer.

[00:49:32] Can’t always control the ROI. If the brand doesn’t have a landing page that will convert, there are so many things that are outside of your control when it comes to ROI. I think this is a great point. And Ron and I have had offline conversations about just this, because it is frustrating if you were an influencer.

[00:49:48] So let’s, let’s take it from the info influencers thing is, do you have to do a lot of training for maybe a brand you’re working with for the first time, like, Hey, I need a landing page. Hey, and if we need to track it, this landing page is converting or not because you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink.

[00:50:03] And I, a lot of times it’s not the fault of the influencer. So how can brands do a better job 

[00:50:07] Neal Schaffer: [00:50:07] with that? Yeah. So I think that, and I also have taken more and more of this approach when I find just a lot of maybe their junior people or maybe the brands don’t understand it, but they reach out to me for things that are irrelevant to my brand, or they want to do it in a way where I don’t think it will be as effective.

[00:50:25] So I go back and say, okay, what, how, what does success look like? A month from now, if we’re successful working together, what would it look like in the report? And let me give you ideas about how we can get there rather than you trying to figure out, should Neil do two stories or three stories, right? What are we trying to get at?

[00:50:44] And that’s the approach that I think every influencers have and every brand, instead of having this really detailed, you are going to stand, you know, at the, in front of a Folgers coffee can in Walmart holding, you know, a thing of Elmer’s glue, and you’re going to post three slides, you know, three stories of, of, you know, 10.5 seconds of BS.

[00:51:05] I mean, stop that and just say, Hey, Mr. And Mrs. Influencer, you know, we love your content. We, we love your community. We’d love to work together to offer them value. This is what we’re tracking. This is what my boss says. We need to do. You know, how can you help us achieve that? What are your ideas? You know, it’s funny because brands want to treat influencers as if they’re programmable ad units, but influencers are better at social media.

[00:51:29] Marketing and brands are why wouldn’t you want to tap into that? Not just from a content creation perspective, but also in terms of that ROI calculation, that’s where things need to change. The smart brands are listening and the smart influencers are teaching. 

[00:51:43] Jeff Sieh: [00:51:43] Awesome. That’s great stuff. So we have this comment that you know, grace and I talk offline like, well, this is going on.

[00:51:50] So she said, you got to ask this question, so I’ll bring this up and you can, you can ask it cause you thought this was 

[00:51:55] Grace Duffy: [00:51:55] a great one. So she’s asked this twice it’s Kimi and she is saying what metrics interest brands I’ve been using a product for two years. And in another comment, she says that she grew, her, grew her followers from two K to 4k, which is significant, right?

[00:52:10] And so, and she’s reached out to this brand and they haven’t gotten back to her. And so her question is what, what metrics and what things are our brunch and re looking for that you can go that you as a content creator and influencer can go to them and say, look, I’m I’m successful. 

[00:52:28] Neal Schaffer: [00:52:28] Well, first of all, it’s not you it’s them.

[00:52:30] So don’t, don’t be hard on yourself because brands have different aesthetics. And maybe they just don’t like looking at your content for whatever it be. Just doesn’t give them the vibe that they want to see. Maybe they’re targeting a different audience. Maybe if you overly tag, they think that you’re just tagging them and showing the product because you want to get an influencer collaboration.

[00:52:51] There, there are some brands, you know, you, you could call it influencer fatigue, but they have so many influences reaching out to them. Maybe they already have a program where they already have their influencers not looking to expand it. So, you know, I, I, first of all, I wouldn’t, you know, tag and post about a brand in order to work with them.

[00:53:07]I would post things that are, that serve my community. Right. And that’s really the most important thing here is if you’re overly promoting one brand and it doesn’t seem authentic, they may think you’re trying to game the system. Now, I don’t think that’s the case with you with your content. I don’t know, but you know what, there’s other brands out there and it’s like early in my social media days and I still curated a lot of content, but I’d be sharing content from these influencers and they’d never, like, they’d never acknowledged it.

[00:53:35] They’d never follow me. And I’m like, you know what? I’m going to share more content of people that actually follow me or people that share my content. Right. And I still have that mindset today where even when someone that doesn’t have many followers, you know, talks to me in social media, I’ll respond back because I don’t want to be that person that didn’t respond back to others.

[00:53:52] So maybe that brand just doesn’t get it with influencers. Right. And if you are really offering value to your community and there’s other products that you’d like, maybe talk more about them would be my advice. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. 

[00:54:05] Jeff Sieh: [00:54:05] I think that’s great. And you know what, you guys, we, we had a whole nother segment about the incident Instagram is actually having these branded content marketplace and developing these creative shops.

[00:54:16] But you know what, that ain’t as important as what we’ve been bringing up your comments today. And so we’re going to have to have Neil back sometime for a part two, because I love bringing up your comments. You guys ask so many great questions today, and this time has just flown by. I love listening to Neil.

[00:54:34] I’ve followed his stuff forever and I’m, I was so excited to have him on that. I may have fanboyed a little bit and ask him like my own questions, but you know what, that’s the way it is when you have your own show. So, yeah. So I appreciate all of you guys for being here. We, I appreciate all of your questions.

[00:54:50]But Neil, we want to let people, well, no, first of all, we’ve talked about your book a lot this time, but where’s some other places are the best places for other people to find about you, your services, what you’re up to, all that stuff. 

[00:55:02] Neal Schaffer: [00:55:02] Yeah, well, my I am the real Neal, so it’s any AAL Schaffer, S C H JFF area right here.

[00:55:08] So it’s, it’s neilschaffer.com. It’s Neil Schaffer, everywhere in social media. The age of influence is available on Amazon or wherever you buy books. I have two podcasts maximize your social influence and the school of influence. And yet on my website I actually just launched my first digital product, which is a membership community called digital first, which is actually the next book I’m working on, which is going to tie together, influencer marketing with content marketing and SEO and email and everything we’ve talked about that I’m really excited about.

[00:55:37] So yeah. Hit me up on any one of those platforms. 

[00:55:39] Jeff Sieh: [00:55:39] Awesome. And don’t forget about our awesome sponsors. Make sure you go to figure out how we’re doing all these cool graphics. Switching cameras over at cam, go to socialmedianewslive.com/ecamm. We are going live everywhere even to LinkedIn and Amazon, which who knew, but we made it so you can go find out more about socialmedianewslive.com/restream that’s socialmedianewslive.com/restream and as always great stuffy helps.

[00:56:05] I mean, she puts the show together. I just walk in the door. She’s amazing. So grace, talk about what, where people can find you and where you’re at. 

[00:56:13] Grace Duffy: [00:56:13] Well, you can find me over at restrooms, new community on Facebook of that’s at restream.community. If you go over to Facebook, you can also find me on their YouTube channel for restream.

[00:56:25] We work with a phenomenal lineup of digital digital marketing experts, video marketing experts, and streaming experts. And so check out us and all of our shows over on the restraint YouTube channel. 

[00:56:41] Jeff Sieh: [00:56:41] Awesome. And don’t forget that Neil has like two podcasts. We only have one, but we would love for you guys to go over there and give us a rating review.

[00:56:48] It really helps us out. You can just go to Apple podcasts and search social media news live. We’d love it. If you guys was described to that. And I always, we have our next show is actually. Next week. We’ve got an exciting one. We’ll be talking about podcasting. We’ve got Jay Acunzo and Eric Fisher coming on and you can find all about that.

[00:57:05] If you it’s next Friday at seven May 7th at 11:00 AM 10:00 AM central, and you can always find us on Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Amazon live. Thanks so much for watching. Bye now. 

[00:57:16] Grace Duffy: [00:57:16] Thank you everyone. Bye. 

[00:57:18]