Our guest this week is one of the leading experts when it comes to influencer marketing. Jason Falls has been working in the influencer marketing industry for more than 10 years - back when influencer marketing campaigns were called "blogger outreach"! Jason has a wealth of knowledge that he shared with Kristen and Rob and we guarantee you will walk away with actionable items that you can implement - whether you're an influencer or a brand!
Jason touches on topics such as:
You can follow Jason in the following places:
Web
LinkedIn
YouTube
Twitter
Facebook
Instagram
You can find all the details for the upcoming "Foundations" virtual summit happening on January 16, 2021, on our site www.contentcreatorsconference.com!
Our guest this week is one of the leading experts when it comes to influencer marketing. Jason Falls has been working in the influencer marketing industry for more than 10 years - back when influencer marketing campaigns were called "blogger outreach"! Jason has a wealth of knowledge that he shared with Kristen and Rob and we guarantee you will walk away with actionable items that you can implement - whether you're an influencer or a brand!
Jason touches on topics such as:
You can follow Jason in the following places:
Web
LinkedIn
YouTube
Twitter
Facebook
Instagram
You can find all the details for the upcoming "Foundations" virtual summit happening on January 16, 2021, on our site www.contentcreatorsconference.com!
Rob Ainbinder 0:04
Welcome to the content creators chat show where we invite you to join us in a chat about content creation and influencer marketing. I'm Rob Ainbinder. And I'm Kristen Daukas. Today we have the pleasure to welcome Jason Falls to the Content Creators Chat. Welcome, Jason,
Jason Falls 0:12
thank you both. It's great to be here. Hopefully I can be useful or something.
Kristen Daukas 0:27
Well, obviously, all of us go back as we that's where Rob's gonna smack me if I say this phrase one more time, and I'm gonna say it one more time. We're all OG we're all old-school content creators and influencers. So but for some of those that may or may not or that may not know you, Jason, please introduce yourself and tell everybody about what you do. Well, sure. Jason falls I'm based in Kentucky, I work at an agency called cornet in Lexington. Live in Louisville. I've been in and out of the agency space, I was a cafe press for a while, you know from a day job perspective, I've been in a couple different places couple different angles. But probably most people in the in the influencer content creator space probably know me from building my own blog, social media Explorer, years ago, which I sold to a business partner years years back, I don't have that anymore. But at one point, it was one of the top marketing blogs in the world. And I helped businesses and brands figure out social media for about six or eight years, wrote a couple of books. You know, I was one of the early social media influencers, I guess we didn't call ourselves influencers then. And I don't necessarily call myself an influencer. Now, let other people call me that. But I was one of the early adopters on Twitter had a lot of followers on that platform when it was much more relevant and engaging than it is these days. But yeah, I've spoken at a bunch of conference and just try to help people figure out how to do social media and digital marketing, and then influence marketing as a byproduct of that. And I'm an old PR guy by trade, which I consider influence marketing, too. So it's kind of one of my specialties.
Jason Falls 2:03
What what are some of the biggest challenges that you've seen in the past five years? I can't I mean, and that five years seems like a lifetime. But in the you know, here, if, within the past five years, as it relates to influencer marketing, because it is vastly different. And this is conversation, Rob, and I've had vastly different than when any of us began in it. Yeah, when we started in this space, we probably call it blogger outreach, or, you know, something like that we didn't call them influencers, then, you know, I think I even remember the days when we call people mavens. So I mean, that was, that was a long time ago, too. But but but essentially, you know, the democratization, social media has democratized media, right? Anybody can now publish. And unfortunately, that means everybody does publish, and most of its crap, but it's fanned out for as signal from the noise, you know, create an audience for themselves away from other traditional media, you know, outlets and ways to build audience. And so they become little media publishing houses with an impact and influence in their own right. And so that might be that you have a lot of followers on Twitter, or you have a certain amount of impact or influence with a small number of followers on Twitter. But that might also extend to YouTube, or Instagram or your blog, or you just have an active Reddit account. There's lots of ways to kind of quantify it, and qualify it. And so I think the biggest challenge in the last five years for brands and businesses working with people who have influence is understanding who they are, how impactful they are, are they going to lead to business metrics? Are they going to be you know, good to work with cooperatives, all that good stuff. And the biggest challenge, I think, for the content creators out there has been being able to connect with brands in a relevant way. Who will, who will want to use them for that type of thing. And so I think that's been the biggest challenge. Is that that math of which influencers are going to be useful and powerful for us, and which brands can I prove that I'm useful and powerful for? So I have a question for you. That's, I'm going off script.
Kristen Daukas 4:14
Just made me think of it when the when you're working with companies and brands to do influencer marketing campaigns, do you find that they are? Whether they use go through an agency, do you find that they are getting more of their influencers by their own accord? Are they using some of the influencer marketing agencies? Well, there's, there's there's, I mean, there's half a dozen ways to do this. I work at an agency that has some very large clients that devote a large amount of money to influence marketing, and various smaller clients who don't devote any money at all to influence marketing, and everything in between. And so, because I work in an agency, I see it from a bunch of different perspectives. For instance, I've got one person
Jason Falls 5:00
And he's like, we want to devote a certain amount of budget to influencer marketing, we would like to find enough influencers to reach a certain number of people. And so with that brand that has a little bit of a budget, I'm going to go to an izea, or a maverick or an influencer marketing platform, a managed service where I've got resources within that company that are going to help me identify the right people, they're going to put paid spin behind certain influencer posts to, you know, be able to reach impression goals and things like that. So it's pretty high level of influence marketing, engagement management. But then there's other brands that say, Hey, we don't have a big budget, we don't have money to pay influencers, but we want to do something to engage influencers, let's say on a local level. So then I am like, literally manually going through Instagram, trying to find people within a geographic region or within a certain topic area, and say, you know, hey, this person has 4000 followers, which is not a whole lot in the grand scheme of things. But they have 4000 followers, and they only write about Lexington, Kentucky. So that's who I'm trying to, you know, connect with. So then I'm reaching out to them manually and saying, Hey, I work at Cornell, we work this client, and we're doing something here locally, and hey, can we you know, trade some product for you know, you to engage with us? Or how can we do a partnership where, you know, you learn more about us, and then, you know, share that with your audience. And so we try to find relevant ways to do it that way. So I think the majority of bigger brands are using the tools and the platforms and the sometimes there's influencer marketing agencies, but I really like to just call them manage services and say, there, there's managed services out there where you can say, here's some money, here's what I want, go do it, you'll find it and they do it for you. And then an agency like mine is kind of sort of a strategic consultant that can do a little bit of both, we can manage it and manage the age, the engagement services for you the managed services for you. Or we can actually manually roll up our sleeves and go do it. I think the majority of brands with any amount of budget are using some of those tools and platforms to do it. But then I think there's a lot of them that are just doing it themselves just internally trying to find the right people to build a longer term relationship with. Yeah, that's interesting, you kind of when you talk about you handle it yourself, for some smaller brands, I had an experience where someone reached out to me just based on hashtags I used on Instagram, that just happened to align with what the business was trying to do. And,
Rob Ainbinder 7:30
and they engage me in an interview and paid me for my time, and it's was really efficient for them. And it was very targeted. Yeah, I mean, if you're a business or a brand, and you're trying to do it manually searching for relevant hashtags, you know, searching, you know, just googling, you know, who are influencers in this topic, or in this space, or, you know, looking for, you know, blogs, I like to look for blogs, because I love the SEO value of someone who has a blog writing about a product or service, linking to the website and whatnot, I tried to find the bloggers who also have nice social footprints, that that always means more to me, personally, just because I get the SEO angle of it. I wish more and more of my clients thought that way. But at the same time, there's some people who they just get excited about someone on Instagram, and they don't have to have that too. So it works both ways. One of the topics that I insisted on that we have, and actually, it's my oldest daughter, her best friend is working with me and Rob on, you know, she's Gen Z. And so we're putting so she's I'm like, Courtney, you've got all the Tiktok. But is why is she we recorded some of them last weekend, and it was, why you need why five goes, I think her thing was like five reasons why everyone needs a blog or a website. And she went through and I gave her all of those five reasons. And you know, that generation, they just want to jump on the platform and have at it. And that whole thing we see where we're, you know, you get engaged on a particular platform, and then for whatever reason you get banned. Yeah, that own piece that you had is gone. Yeah. And we're gonna take your audience next. It's not just the band. I mean, it's it's, you know, for instance, I know that a lot of people back in the day, you guys will remember this invested a lot of time and energy and building really nice networks on MySpace. Where's that now? Right? That all got taken down and destroyed. I don't know what Justin Timberlake is doing with it. But it's not, it's not, you know, it's not relevant anymore. So you're putting your eggs in somebody else's basket, and they have control the basket. That's it. So having that website, that blog that hubs somewhere where you can tie your social content together and give people a place to go find it. But then something you own that you can build that you can curate, I mean, if I have a relationship with a brand over time as a content creator, and I have that archive of that relationship and those inbound links and outbound links, you know, to and from them on my way
Jason Falls 10:00
website, then I've got something that I'm always going to be able to own as long as I keep paying my server fees and, and my domain feed, and I'm good. And that doesn't cost a lot of money. I guess we, we take that to a logical extension to give some advice to an influencer either new or seasoned. What's one piece of advice you'd give them? What would it be? create great content, it doesn't matter how many brands you work with, it doesn't matter. If you ever make money doing this, if you're not creating really good compelling content, you're not going to build an audience. So you're not going to be successful. The content and and and the value that you deliver to the audience you want to try to deliver it to, has always got to come first. If you're not doing that, and doing it right and doing it well. Nothing else is going to work for you. The dominoes will not fall in the right direction. The brands, if I if I'm looking at you, as a content creator, for one of my clients, I'm gonna look for, do you could create content consistently? Is that content consistently good? Do you consistently get good engagement in interactions with your audience? If you can nail those three things, I don't care how many followers you have. Because I can always take some paid money and amplify your posts, if you'll let me.
I want someone who can create really good engaging content and do it consistently. If you do that everything else will take care of itself. Well, you know, let's go back to something you were just saying, you know, talking about back in the day, the number of pageviews your page views was a super, super important piece of the criteria in order to be in you know, after a while, just I didn't I wasn't producing content on my blog for a while. So I didn't even bother applying for many things. How important is that now considering how many people are, you know, going more using other platforms, like let's say, an Instagram, so you've got somebody that has, you know, 150,000 followers that are decently engaged, but they've got, you know, their pageviews on their blog, if they have one are really low. Right? I think you know, pay, it depends. Because if the the the goal of the influence relationship is to create that long form content on a blog or a website, and not necessarily on a social network, like if you're doing a really in depth product review, or, you know, you've gone on a trip with this brand, or this company, and you're trying to tell a big long narrative about the trip and all the things you learned, then the primary piece of content is going to be a page or a post on your on your website. And that is going to require page views is going to be relevant there. But I would say that page views then and now just like impressions on Instagram, then and now is not as important to brands anymore. Because again, I go back to if the content is really good. If you have two pageviews in a given month, but the content is really good. I can take a few thousand dollars, a few hundred dollars out of my budget. And I can put paid spin behind driving more page views to that good content, like content comes first the page views you can manufacture the impressions on Instagram and crap you can manufacture. It's having the good content that's really engaging. That's important. And so that's why you hear micro influencer and nano influencer thrown around a lot these days, because it's going to cost me an arm and a leg to go out and get someone who's got two or 3 million followers as an influencer, or even 500,000 followers as an influencer to you know, talk about my product or do a partnership with me, if I've got someone who's got 2000 followers, but the content is good. And it's gonna resonate with people I want it to resonate with, I can put, I can take a third of what I would have spent on the 500,000 follower person in paid spin behind that 2000 follower person and get what I need out of it in terms of impressions and whatnot. And it's more authentic. Yeah, very much more authentic, especially, again, that the content is is ultimately the key. We've said content is king for a long time. And it really is if you know how to create that really good content. Everything else is going to fall in line for you to be in good shape. And you're stewarding your clients resources much more much better. Way more targeted touch I actually had a recently did a campaign from the influencer perspective. So my little humble you know, marketing niche. I've got a few followers and and it just so happens because I'm in Kentucky and I was an early adopter. I've got a lot of followers in Kentucky. So for Kentucky based thing, sometimes these companies will reach out to me and say, Hey, we're working with a brand that's targeting Kentucky consumers would you be interested in it and if it falls in line with something that I believe in, and then I'm doing I'll do it even if it's outside of the marketing space. I recently did one of those campaigns. And my Instagram feed I mean, I only have about three or 4000 followers on Instagram and a lot of it. It's just the different Bourbons that I taste. I don't really do a whole lot of marketing stuff there. It's more bourbon and booze related stuff. And sometimes sounds like
Car kind of plays. Yeah, sometimes pictures of my kids, it's me at the bar at the end of the day. That's what that is.
But but so this this thing was not bourbon related necessarily, it was actually more of a social awareness kind of thing with masking and making sure you're, you know, masking up for to prevent COVID. And so I'm like, yeah, I'm all behind. I'll do that all day. So my typical, like, impressions on Instagram is like, you know, maybe 1200 1500, I was driving 2700, I drew on this one post that are 2700 engagements, not impressions, engagements. But it was because they knew the content was good, it delivered the message, it was engaging, they knew I was going to actively engage in the comments as well, which is going to drive the engagement numbers up. So what they did is they paid me a little bit of money to do the post. And then they took a couple grand and put paid spin behind it to amplify it. And so, unfortunately, because that particular issue is a little on the political spectrum, for some people, there's a lot of back and forth in the comments that are not too fun to deal with and a little bit negative, but the engagement numbers are through the roof. Because I mean, they're engaging with it, and they put it in front of a lot more people. So what platform Are you seeing influencers have the most success in right now?
Oh, man, that again, it depends. In the b2b space, LinkedIn, by far, is just much more relevant.
I would also say that, that in the b2b space, you're looking at a lot of blog, and and then doing partnerships, like webinars and seminars and things like that. So there's a lot of different ways to look at how you divide things in the b2b space. In terms of effectiveness of platforms. If you're looking for impressions, and just getting people to see your stuff, Instagram and tick tock do really, really well. If you're looking to drive people to convert to click on a link and come to your website and do something, then I'm going to go a little bit more Facebook or Twitter, maybe even LinkedIn for that too. Because those platforms are much more naturally geared to a share links and content. And B, the audience is more conditioned to actually take action and click on things. If they find them interesting. YouTube is becoming more and more successful for lots of reasons, primarily because so many of these platforms are prioritizing video content and what they're doing because videos more engaging. But I think if I were to say, hey, I want to drive conversions on my website, I'm probably going to do an influencer campaign on Twitter and Facebook, and I'm probably going to put paid spin behind it on Facebook as well, Instagram, not so much because they can't really share links very well there.
unless you happen to be working with somebody who has a swipe up feature, which means you're going to be spending a lot of money because you have to have so many followers in order. So you can technically you can do links in the stories too. So and stories are I think stories are engaging. I think they're fun. I haven't seen a whole lot of great conversion numbers out of Instagram Stories yet though. So we're talking to Jason falls influencer marketing extraordinaire about influencer marketing.
Rob Ainbinder 18:09
For our next question, what can brands do a better job at with their influencer marketing efforts?
Jason Falls 18:12
Oh, wow, that's a good question. I think that brands can do a much better job of selecting what I would call the right influencers. I think brands still are too fascinated with follower counts. And not taking that content quality, you know, an engagement quality into the into into consideration when they're picking their influencers, they look more at potential reach as opposed to actual reach. And so potential reaches, hey, the number of followers added up, we could potentially reach 19 million people with this. But again, that 19 million people if you're looking at impressions and awareness, you're looking at a number that you can manufacture, you can take budget and put behind someone that doesn't have a big following, but creates really good content. So I think being more selective and creating relationships with better quality content creators is the first thing they could probably do. And then I think if I had to choose a second thing that brands could do better with influencer marketing, I think it's it's it's really kind of holding the influencers accountable. For you know, the the business metrics that they want to drive, the influence influencers, the content creators out there are only going to be as good as you want them to be. If you say, look, in order to work with us, you've got to share your analytics with us, you've got to help us drive leads, you've got to find creative ways to get people to click on that link and go to that website. And if you do that, this isn't going to be the last time we work with you. And that's what ultimately the creators want and so I think the brands need to try to hold them to that
Kristen Daukas 19:52
to that standard. Frankly, you know, all of us have been doing this for a really long time and I really would just like to know when it ever going to have to stop begging companies and brands to stop looking at numbers? I mean, we've all been educating these people for over 10 years on, it's not about the number of followers. Well, you got to remember we're talking to, you know, entrepreneurs and CEOs and people at companies whose entire life is I want to be Jeff Bezos, right? They want you to know, to have $18 billion in their bank account, the world we live in is one of those. If you have more than the next person, you're successful. And if you don't, then you're not, which is stupid thinking and short-sighted. But it's going to be hard to get people out of the fascination with the number of followers and fashion fascination with more is better, just because of the dynamics of the business world in the capitalist society that we live in. I think if we just keep showing them that, hey, instead of worrying about followers and look about at the quality of content, and showing them the business metrics, and the success that you get with the, maybe the not so big impressions, but you are not so big follower counts, but a lot of impressions, you can drive in other ways. I think we continue to educate them, and hopefully, they'll get a little bit better, but I don't think it's ever going to go away. Bigger is always going to be better for some people.
Rob Ainbinder 21:14
Yeah, they're coming from that old media mentality. A lot of them. Yeah, very true. radio, TV, and it's hard for them to shake it.
Kristen Daukas 21:25
Come on, Rob, read your question. Hurry up. Top job. Well, no, I asked the last question you see, now because I came up with a rhetorical one afterward. Okay. So let's so well.
So Jason, what are you reading? Or what are some of the books and courses, magazines, sites, etc, that you recommend or that, you know, is kind of your go to? Wow, so I'm currently reading Hells Angels butter as Thompson. But that's just because I was on vacation last week and finished.
Jason Falls 21:56
The last let's see, here's, first of all, I got to this talk triggers by Jay Baer. I've read this three or four times great word of mouth marketing book, I definitely recommend that one.
I've got there's a couple of influence marketing books that have come out recently that I've read, you know, hosting influence Marketing Podcast. So I keep up with a lot of the thought leaders in that space to try to understand what's happening. And then and I'm working on my own book, which comes out early next year, which should be good for everybody. But I have found myself more recently, depending on podcasts more for the you know, sort of news and information. I listen to a handful of marketing podcasts some pretty selective about it. But you can always you can't go wrong with marketing over coffee. You can't really go wrong with you know, Jay Bear's series of podcasts. He's got a bunch of them. I really love on brand from Nick Westergaard has a really good podcast as well. And then Lee Odin has some some good stuff up top ranked marketing so the kind of the influencers in the marketing space that have been doing it for a long time, I tend to listen to the same folks because they keep feeding me good stuff.
Kristen Daukas 23:09
That's always important. Yeah. So we'll we'll definitely be putting the we've got about five minutes left and we will put all of your contact information in there as far as getting in touch with you but you're like me and Rod you're by your branded by your name. So why don't you let everybody know where you are? And again, like I said, I'll be putting them in the show notes but sure, and also let me interrupt And now's your time to tell everybody about the book. Oh yeah. So I'm actually easier to find than remembering my name because I have Jason dot online so if you just go to Jason dot online that takes you to Jason falls calm which is where you can find all my stuff getting ready to relaunch that website here in a while so that'll be new soon. But I'm Jason falls everywhere. There's a republican county commissioner in North Carolina who hates me because we have the same name and I've been doing this a long time and he can't get past Page Six of a Google search and he won't send me a yard sign so health that guy anyway so I'm Jason falls everywhere very easy to find the book is going to be called when Fluence re framing influencer marketing to ignite your brand. It's due out in February from entrepreneur press. So if you just go to Jason dot online, you'll be able to you know, subscribe to the stuff you need to subscribe to, to know when that's coming out. It's all there. Alright, ready to close this up Mr. ain binder. Absolutely. Thanks for joining us, Jason. And don't forget to get online to content creators conference calm and grab your ticket. And you'll happen to hear more from Jason falls and other influencer marketing experts experts that will up your influencer marketability. Thanks for joining us. Have a great week, everybody. Thanks