The second month of 2016 is almost over and here we are with a bunch of useful bits of information from top influencers.
We have reached out to these up and coming influencers December of last year and asked them one question: “What is your influencer marketing prediction for 2016?”
What they have to say is compelling and a great food for thought.
Now, this list isn’t arranged in alphabetical order or in the order of what we think is more important and informational.
We have arranged this list randomly using =rand() function on Googlesheet (this is where the form logs the answers). We think this is a good idea because it eliminates any bias and makes us more transparent when coming up with posts like this one here.
So, without further delay, here goes our table of contents:
- Ana Hoffman – Runs a No-nonsense Traffic Generation Café
- Rohan Chaubey – Founder, Author and Blogger at “Be Rohanlicious”
- Brandon Schaefer – CEO of MyVirtualSalesForce
- David Leonhardt – Freelance Writer and Content Marketer (Guy Behind THGMwriters)
- Maddy Osman – Digital Marketer and Blogger @ ChicagoCheapAss
- Matt Banner – Creator and Writer for On Blast Blog
- Tor Refsland – Man Behind timemanagementchef.com
- Lisa Sicard – Social Media Marketer, Blogger and SEO Specialist
- Sue Anne Dunlevie – Runs SuccessfulBlogging.com
- Scott Eddy – Ex-stockbroker and Influencer
- Charli Day – British Writer and Social Media Manager
- Eddie Gear – Entrepreneur, Author and Blogger
- Moosa Hemani – SEO Consultant, Blogger, and Link Builder
- Roxana Nasoi – Digital Marketing and Data Analytics Professional
- Tim Soulo – Head of Marketing at Ahrefs, Founder of BloggerJet.com
- Mike Allton – Content Marketing Practitioner, Blogger and Author
- Ted Rubin – Social Marketing Strategist and Acting CMO of Brand Innovators
- Ron Sela – Profit-driven Marketer at RonSela.com
- Rick Ramos – CMO of HealthJoy.com
- Shane Barker – Digital Marketing Consultant
- David Hartshorne – Guy behind Byte Of Data
- Kevin J. Duncan – Runs Be A Better Blogger
- Andréa Jones – Social Media Manager, Blogger & Community Builder
- Nirmala Santhakumar – Founder of Mymagicfundas
- Dave Schneider – Cofounder of Ninjaoutreach
Ana Hoffman
Now that influencer marketing is all the buzz, you’ll have to be even more unique and creative when cutting through the noise and connecting with your favorite influencers.
However, I think there’s a blessing in that as well. Sincerity never goes out of style. Be yourself, get to the point quickly, and for goodness sake, DO learn everything you can about the influencers you approach – there’s nothing worse than pretending to be a ‘longtime reader’ when everything you say in fact shows that you haven’t read a thing on my blog (yes, speaking from experience here!)
To see real-life examples of influencer marketing that works, checked out the following posts at TrafficGenerationCafe.com:
Be Memorable: 10 Practical Ways to Successfully Get Influencers’ Attention
Influencer Marketing: 11 Memorable Ways To Gain An Influencer’s Attention
Ana Hoffman runs a no-nonsense Traffic Generation Café, where she freely shares advice on getting more web traffic by all free means possible, like SEO, social media, and blog promotion, as well as converting that traffic into email subscribers and paying customers.
Rohan Chaubey
Marketing through influencers has become a lot more popular than ever before. Social media stars are now no less than real life celebrities.
Here are my top five influencer marketing trend predictions for 2016:
1. Finding the right influencers will be difficult.
So many people are just reaching out to random influencers that do not even fit their industry; such influence marketing drives no results because this type of marketing is not at all compelling or authentic.
To identify the right influencers, marketers must employ services or tools like klear.com or Ninja Outreach that greatly helps in influencer selection.
2. Quality (Engagement) over quantity (Reach).
Credible influencers will win the race in 2016. While the quantity matters, the quality of the followers is important for driving engagement.
Having a large list will not do any good unless followers actually get influenced and take action.
If gaining popularity and increasing brand awareness is the main marketing objective then the followers strength matters the most.
In my opinion, reaching a wider audience is easy, but reaching targeted audience requires real work and patience.
3. Brands are likely to start treating influencers as real celebrities.
Brands might want to maintain good relationships with the influencers and compensate well for their services.
If the influencer is getting paid, a proper contract between the influencer and businesses is necessary that defines marketing objectives explicitly.
4. Influencers producing video content will be in demand.
Major social media platforms like Periscope, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Vine, YouTube, etc. are increasingly getting popular for their high quality video content.
Therefore, social influencers good at producing video content will drive more results maybe.
5. More Transparency.
Influencers are digital celebrities. Like real celebrities, some of us get paid or compensated for promoting other brands.
Audiences are smart to differentiate between a sponsored (influencer) social media update and an organic update.
So, it is necessary that influencers disclose about compensation and sponsorship to their audiences to gain unshakable trust and more influence.
Rohan Chaubey is the Founder, Author and Blogger at “Be Rohanlicious”
Often called as relationship strategist, social media enthusiast, programming geek, and a young technology blogger with a penchant for personal development.
Brandon Schaefer
My key marketing prediction for 2016 is that big corporate enterprise clients will invest heavily in “predictive intelligence” technology, and by implementing these new types of “predictive intelligence” solutions, they’ll deliver unprecedented, ultra-personalized online website visitor experiences, like we’ve never seen before!
Brandon Schaefer is the CEO of MyVirtualSalesForce and he writes information for startups, SaaS companies, and entrepreneurs.
David Leonhardt
By the end of 2016, all influencers other than Neil Patel (and me) will have gone into hiding. You’ll find them in caves in the hills of Morocco and Mexico, where marketers can’t harrass them.
Already, we have the first rumblings is this “Great Escape”. Increasingly in various Skype chat rooms, I am seeing colleagues venting at how often they are being approached to guest blog, promote products and participate in roundup posts.
This post by Miranda Marquit is a pretty good representation of the attitude I am increasing hearing in private, although it covers only some of the things being discussed.
Several influencers have already gone into hiding, ignoring all requests from anybody they don’t already know well. Neil Patel remains the contrarian; even my cat “Strypes” plans to ask Neil to contribute to his upcoming “meowcast”. What do you say, Neil? Just you and me? #LastFoolsStanding?
David Leonhardt is a freelance writer and content marketer. He writes blog posts, non-fiction books and best man speeches, and coordinates a team of writers who also write books, screenplays, articles and more.
Maddy Osman
More and more brands are connecting with influencers to get their products and services in front of highly-relevant and targeted potential customers. My prediction for influencer marketing trends in 2016 is that brands will start trusting influencers more to take the reins in terms of customizing how they present a brand’s products to their audience.
It will be more seamless and less “salesy” when brands allow influencers to weave a story together using their own experience and knowledge of their audience.
Maddy Osman is the blogger behind ChicagoCheapAss.com and a Digital Marketer who helps businesses use blogging and social media to accomplish business objectives. You can find more related articles at her website, The Blogsmith.
Matt Banner
My first, and largest prediction, is that 2016 will be the year that social media advertising will become an absolute mandatory cog in your holistic marketing efforts.
With top advertising platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram & Pinterest growing by the day, more and more hungry customers are waiting to be found on these platforms.
Brands will connect with consumers, influencers and bloggers via social media and in turn use their influence to grow their own presence in 2016. The power of promotion and reach is undeniable now that these platforms have matured into advertising services with billions of users.
Finally, traditional blogging as a means of growing one’s brand and attracting influencers will become a focus again. Influencers are looking now to conversion data and analytics that can only be bolstered by a traditional blog.
It’s back to basics in 2016, but it’s also important to jump on the social media advertising bandwagon, because that’s where your influencers & customers are waiting.
Matt Banner is the creator and writer for On Blast Blog, an online resource built to educate the world about the wonders and power of blogging. He welcomes bloggers both new and old to visit and expand their skills and knowledge about this amazing craft.
Tor Refsland
What are your Influencer Marketing trend predictions for 2016?
Using the power of influencers to market your products has probably existed since the dawn of time. I am quite sure that the person who created the sandals for Socrates was sure to tell everyone about it. The word of mouth probably made him the go to guy for awesome sandals.
The same applies to our society now. The most effective marketing campaigns often include the use of celebrities / influencers. You probably know that Pepsi did team up with Britney Spears, right?
If you haven`t been living offline in a cave for the last decades, you have at least heard about Britney and Pepsi. In the last few years, there has been a change when it comes to who is a celebrity. Britney Spears (celebrity) might be more known than an Internet marketing expert (influencer).
However, if a brand that sells email-marketing software, like Aweber, wants to use an influencer to increase trust and brand authority, which will lead to more sales, they would be better of to use one of the biggest Internet marketers of all time, Frank Kern, than Britney Spears.
Why? Because when you buy a product / service for your business, you have certain requirements, right? You want to have the social proof that industry experts are vouching for it. That makes you think: “Hey, if that software is good enough from Frank Kern, then it`s good enough for me”.
My predictions for Influencer Marketing trend predictions for 2016:
Big brands will cooperate more closely with influencers within a target niche to reach a specific group of people. This will increase their kudos with that group of people and it will increase conversions compared to using a general celebrity with fake blond hear, who isn`t really that good at singing. In other words: big brands will reach out to the tribe leaders of the tribes they want to reach.
Anyone can become an influencer. Thanks to the Internet, social media and blogging anybody can become an influencer within a target niche if you build your online brand strategically.
You don’t need to be really good at sport or best selling artist anymore to become a celebrity. You can do it with the help of an Internet connection and a Mac. If you are able to provide awesome content that helps a specific group of people solve a specific problem that keeps them up at night, then being able connect with influencers through blogger outreach and promote the heck out of your stuff, you will build your brand FAST.
I know what you are thinking: “Hey, Tor. Blogger outreach and connecting with influencers is important. I get it. But does that really help you to build your brand FAST?” – Great question indeed.
Judge for yourself.
I achieved the following in my first year of blogging:
- Got 2000 targeted Twitter followers in 38 days (free traffic) – I now have about 12 300 followers
- Wrote a post that generated 20 231 page views in 6 days, 1500+ social shares and 80 comments
- Won “Most Epic blog post” on Jon Morrow`s blog Boost Blog Traffic
- Became a moderator for Serious Bloggers Only (Jon Morrow`s mastermind group)
- Became a case study for Jon Morrow`s Guest Blogging course
- Was asked to go through and give feedback on Jon Morrow`s Blog Launch Formula course
- Increased my email list in 779 subscribers in 60 days (by working 40 days)
- Included among the top 100 personal development blogs on 99 Smart Ideas
- Got 28 guest posts published on big websites, including Pick The Brain, Addicted 2 Success, Jeff Bullas, Tiny Buddha, Lifehack, etc.
- Got featured as a productivity expert on Inc.
- Got featured as an expert on 44 blogs, including Ahrefs, SEM Rush, Post Planner, Monster, etc.
- Added 347 subscribers to my list in one day by using what I call “The Banking Technique”
- Connected with hundreds of influencers by using what I call “The Thanks For The Party Technique”
- Created several digital products
- Have 3 blog posts ranking on the first page of Google, and several on page 2 and 3 (still climbing)
I got featured on 85 blogs within my first year of blogging
Nothing of that would have been possible if it wasn’t for my blogger outreach strategy.
In 2016 I am launching a new free course called How To Blogger Outreach Like A Boss, where I will be revealing some of my best tactics that no one else uses. Limited spots (seriously). Secure your spot here.
Tor Refsland helps online entrepreneurs to SKYROCKET their productivity so they can INCREASE their profits.
Lisa Sicard
I think that influencer marketing in 2016 will become more targeted. It will be by people that have the knowledge in specific areas without having to have thousands or millions of followers. Their credability will the most important part of the influence.
Customers of products will also become influencers and no longer will athletes be a sponsor of a product just because of their name / image. It will be more REAL.
Lisa loves helping others to thrive online through Social Media, Blogging and SEO. What good is knowledge if you cannot share it with others?
She has 20+ years experience in marketing/advertising with 5 years experience blogging, social media and SEO. Get her new eBook Tweeting Like It’s 2nd Nature Today!
Sue Anne Dunlevie
In 2016, Influence isn’t just about having a lot of followers. It’s about the relationship built between the influencer and their followers.That relationship is driven by the credibility and knowledge level of the influencer.
The strength of this influencer/follower relationship is the key. So doing relationship building marketing will accelerate success.in 2016.
Sue helps bloggers who want to make more money with their blogs so they can work at home doing exactly what they love to do.
Scott Eddy
I think there will be a couple factors that play heavily in 2016, as far as influencer marketing. The measurement will become more targeted, rather than just looking at impressions, engagement will be the focus. Also I feel influencer campaigns will cost more, brands are starting to see how essential these are (and so are the influencers), costs will rise across the board.
Scott Eddy is from Miami, ex-stockbroker now and influencer for the luxury travel world.
Charli Day
I predict an increase in brand storytelling from industry influencers which I believe will begin to pull the reins away from traditional paid advertising methods. As a digital content manager I am interested in where and how my target demographics are being influenced and more and more this is through influencer touch points.
With more and more clients using adblocker and hitting back hard at salesy adverts on their social media networks, a solid influencer marketing strategy has never been more necessary.
Charli Day is a British writer and social media manager specializing in dynamic branding, campaign strategy and content engagement. Responsible for a number of high profile brands
Eddie Gear
My best bet for 2016 in the field of Influencer marketing comes with the emergence of interactive content/media. This will transform the way readers/customers engage and interact with influencers.
My second bet is social media overtaking all other forms of information providers (search, blogs, news networks and more). McKinsey recently conducted a study on social media’s influence on business, and what they found was there is an upward trend of influencer marketing for years to come.
Last but not least, this one is a long shot and may become a trend in 2017 if it misses 2016. Its called POV Marketing where videos are created using go pro, google glass and what ever gadget that comes out next year. Its going to be big when everything is first person POV.
Some know me as an entrepreneur, author and blogger, others know me as the guy who is crazy enough to do the things I do. I share strategies that helps bloggers and small businesses build their presence online.
Moosa Hemani
No channel in the marketing world is more powerful than word-of-mouth. According to McKinsey’s study, marketing inspired word-of-mouth generated more than twice the sales of paid advertisement and had 35 per cent higher retention rate.
This clearly means that in 2016, influencer marketing is going to be much more important. If you ask me the few things that I see coming in 2016 when it comes to influencer marketing trend, I will list these.
Brands will collaborate more with bloggers
I see few intelligent brands have already started doing this in 2015. This is going to be much more important in the coming year.
The point is people are sick of looking at “buy me!” ads. They are not convinced with the whole idea of it rather they tend to trust on people who are more close to them and one of those are bloggers.
I believe in 2016, brands will be spending less on buy me ads and focus more on bloggers who are influential to the brand’s targeted audience.
Instagrammers and Youtubers
2015 was more about text and short messages so power was more in the hands or twitter folks I see this changing and it will change to a good extent in 2016. Videos and Images will replace text and short messages.
If you see internet is getting more and more stable around the world and videos and images are more easily accessible to the audience.
Remember why infographics become more influential as compare to text blogs? Because images and videos can easily and quickly deliver their messages to the audience.
Engagement will be more scalable
At the moment engagement refers to as how many RTs you get on twitter or likes you get on facebook page. I believe in 2016, this will be a little more in-depth and real. I mean brands will be willing to send more money on influencer program when they will be able to see the engagement in terms of reach, customer acquisition, ROI and more.
There must be more but these are the three trends I think will be more prominent in 2016 when it comes to influencer outreach programs.
By profession and by hobby I am a SEO Consultant, a search blogger and a link builder, all in one. I am writing across websites all the time, I love working with people from all over the world.
Roxana Nasoi
I truly believe 2016 will shift to a more personal approach on marketing. More than just numbers, brands need names. We already see business models emerging from connecting influencers to brands and vice-versa. The next step: get influencers to become your brand’s digital evangelists and build your community around them.
Community members want more than just an image or a brand, they want to connect with their mentors and their role models.
Voice and video are the closest to a real “face to face” experience, so expect more online conferences and “blabs”.
Influencer marketing is not just about being a voice: it’s more about being The Voice of the industry. Expect new influencers to arise and the already esteemed ones to grow even more. The dynamics of this industry are spinning every second.
Expect to hear more about tools such as Instagram, SnapChat and WhatsApp as marketing potential. Even greater than 2015’s.
Plus special mobile versions of every service and product available out there from your influencer of choice: desktop and laptops aren’t enough, we need to design more products available mobile.
Quick. Easy. Local. Mobile. Interaction. This is what 2016 will look like. Fewer words, more visuals, more audios, more videos on spot, live, raw.
Roxana is an independent international marketing professional with 7 years of experience in Digital Marketing and Data Analytics for SMEs and Fortune 500 companies. In her free time, she enjoys coaching freelancers on how to get more clients and work online, and startups on how to work with remote teams.
Tim Soulo
I see a huge trend towards adopting mobile apps and my prediction is that in 2016 its going to develop even further.
I’m talking about things like Instagram or Periscope. We used to consider them silly apps that kids use to post selfies and pictures of their food, but what I see today is that many famous names are very active on Instagram.
Even Elon Musk, who’s one of the busiest people of our planet has a very “professional” Instagram profile/
Talking about trends – check how the search term “mark zuckerberg instagram” grows over time:
So when doing influencer marketing in 2016, don’t forget about the growing popularity of mobile apps.
Tim Soulo is the head of marketing at Ahrefs and you can read more from him on his personal blog – BloggerJet.com
Mike Allton
2015 was a very formative year for Influencer Marketing, in that it began to become more mainstream in strategy and discussion of tactics. Of course, the idea of wooing influencers is not new, but in the context of social media, and the ease of which people can be accessed – not to mention the ease in which one can become an influencer – development was required.
I expect to see that development continue and blossom in the coming year. Rather than being the exception, we’ll find Influencer Marketing and Outreach to be a natural part of most business’s marketing plans.
As a corollary, I believe we’ll also see even more people and businesses “doing it wrong” and trying to find more and more shortcuts to influencer access. Which means we must barricade ourselves against even more emails and direct messages and ‘asks’ than ever before.
Fortunately, unlike previous technological waves (email marketing, social media marketing), massive brute force attempts at influencer marketing will fail due to the target’s awareness. In other words, it is much harder to email 1,000 influencers and get a response, than it is to spam 1,000 consumers with a product and get a sale.
It’s harder and more expensive to collect influencer contact information, and a much harder sell. The result being, by the end of 2016, most practitioners will be of the more genuine variety.
Mike is a Content Marketing Practitioner, Blogger and Author in St. Louis, and the Chief Marketing Officer at SiteSell. He has been working with websites and the Internet since the early ’90’s, and is active on all of the major social networks. Mike teaches a holistic approach to content marketing that leverages blog content, social media and SEO to drive traffic, generate leads, and convert those leads into sales.
Ted Rubin
For marketers thinking about approaching content marketing from a networking and community building aspect rather than a marketing and sales aspect can be very difficult. Brands need to attract customers, but breaking through the clutter is challenging.
Every day brands and marketers are spending millions trying to get you to use, keep using, and share that you love their brands. But why aren’t they doing everything they can, and using some of those millions to do it (probably way less that they are spending on those marketing campaigns), making experiences with their brand remarkable.
Opportunities to do this are given to brands each and every day and they simply, turn their heads, rave about their latest and great “campaign’ as if it were a military conquest, and pass up ways to really create customers for life.
2016 needs to be the year of doing what I call… Looking People in the Eye Digitally. The last few decades of marketing tactics have made us lazy communicators and I’ve had just about enough. Most often we don’t even pay attention to who we are talking to other than via the data we collect (and even that’s a maybe).
In order to fix this and really start to benefit from the content we produce (both as individuals and as companies), we need to start get to know who our customers really, are, engaging with them, and building community. A Network gives you Reach… A Community gives you Power.
Brands, in 2016, and going forward… Standout by “LIKING” them BEFORE they “LIKE” you. #RonR… #NoLetUp!
Ted Rubin is a leading Social Marketing Strategist, Keynote Speaker, Brand Evangelist, and Acting CMO of Brand Innovators. In March 2009 he started using and evangelizing the term ROR, Return on Relationship, hashtag #RonR. Ted left his position as Chief Social Marketing Officer of Collective Bias on August 31, 2013. He remains a shareholder.
In the words of Collective Bias Co-Founder John Andrews… “Ted, you were the vision, heartbeat and soul of Collective Bias, thank you for building a great company. From innovations like cbSocially to the amazing relationships you built with the blogger community, clients and employees, you drove the epic growth. You will be missed!”
Many people in the social media world know Ted for his enthusiastic, energetic and undeniably personal connection to people. Ted is the most followed CMO on Twitter according to Social Media Marketing Magazine; one of the most interesting CMOs on Twitter according to Say Media, #13 on Forbes Top 50 Social Media Power Influencers, and number #2 on the Leadtail list of Top 25 People Most Mentioned by digital marketers.
Return on Relationship, ROR, #RonR, is the basis of his philosophy… It’s All About Relationships! His book, Return on Relationship was released January 2013. His new book, How To Look People in the Eye Digitally, was released January 2015.
Ron Sela
With the coming of the new year, marketers are beginning to turn to employee and brand advocacy in addition to traditional social media campaigns. Many consumers are ignoring traditional advertising and companies are feeling a hard hit from the loss of traditional newspaper subscriptions and consumers ignoring banner ads through the use of pop-up and other ad-blocking computer applications. Also, there seems to be an expanding trend with “ad-blindness” as more and more consumers pay less attention to ads and more attention to web content.
Customers argue that they are searching for more ways to locate their information and web content. Some firms are studying the psychology behind why consumers no longer remember what ads they’ve been shown, but the truth is, consumers are simply being bombarded with too many ads at once.
Firms that turn to employee and brand advocacy for marketing have seen a significant growth in profit and the strengthening of brand identity. The companies that chose to utilize social media to promote brand identity have seen an increase in web traffic, improved rankings in search engines, more content downloads, and an overall decrease in marketing costs.
Ron Sela is a profit-driven marketer at RonSela.com
Rick Ramos
The Rise of Live Streaming Video
Yes, live streaming video was launched in 2015 but 2016 will be the year that brands learn to use it as a marketing tool. Brands will continue to work with influencers to get their marketing message out. Do to the real time nature of live streaming video, brands will have to learn to give up more control over their brands when working with influencers.
Live streaming video, due to its real time nature, is an amazing platform to reach Millennials. It feels truly authentic and less contrived than scripted and edited video like YouTube.
Rick Ramos is the CMO of HealthJoy.com and Author of “Content Marketing” available at Amazon.
Shane Barker
This will be the year for Instagrammers, Demand of Influencers will increase as people realize the potential profit from influencer marketing, but key success can be only driven by engagement metrics instead of no. of social followers. Last but not the least, high demand will make the process costly and personalized mails will have a high response rate from the influencers.
I predict that 2016 is going to be a huge year for Influencer Marketing! Many of the big brands have been using leveraging influencers over the years to promote their products and services, however, I see this as the year when the playing field will be leveled. We will see more of the small to medium size business reaching out to influencers in order to build customized promotional campaigns that fit the demographic of their following.
Shane Barker is a digital marketing consultant, named the #1 social media consultant in the nation by PROskore Power Rankings. He has expertise in business development, online marketing and is an SEO specialist who has consulted with Fortune 500 companies, government agencies, and a number of A-list celebrities.
David Hartshorne
I believe that Influencer Marketing will continue its upward trend in 2016. It has become immensely popular over the past 12 months, and one could argue that it has become the most effective long-term marketing strategy.
I think the key is long-term relationships. As somebody who has just completed his first-year online I recently wrote that building long-term relationships was a key objective for me in 2015…and will continue to be in 2016 too.
For me, 2015 was all about establishing my online presence and building relationships. And I’m happy with what I achieved. In 2016 I want to continue that trend and build on the foundation that I’ve laid with better posts and engagement with the community.”
Having established myself online I know that I will need to leverage influencers in order to build my audience and promote my products and services. Of course, I could go down the paid advertising route, but I prefer to find influencers to work with and build a long-term relationship.
Here’s to 2016 and Influencer Marketing!
David Hartshorne is the guy behind Byte Of Data where he helps bloggers and entrepreneurs with ‘byte‐sized’ easy‐to‐follow tips and strategies that demystify the technical aspect of building an online presence.
Kevin J. Duncan
I hate to say it, but my 2016 prediction for influencer marketing is “the influencers” are going to start spending less time on Twitter and more time on Blab, Periscope, and the like.
From the removal of share counts to the rumor it’ll soon be allowing 10k-character tweets, Twitter is becoming the Jim Carrey of social media platforms. Dissatisfied with being a hugely-successful comedic actor, Carrey wanted to be a respected thespian. He tried to change who he was, and his career suffered for it.
Be you, Twitter. Stick with what’s been working. Otherwise, influencers, as well as those of us who follow said influencers, will start avoiding you the same way cinephiles avoided Carrey’s horror flick “The Number 23.”
Kevin J. Duncan runs Be A Better Blogger, where he uses his very particular set of skills to help people become the best bloggers they can be.
Andréa Jones
We saw a massive increase in the validity of influencer marketing and I think that the ball is going to keep moving rapidly for 2016.
1.) Influencers are going to branch out from blogging and use their social following to their advantage. Simply posting a blog post won’t be enough for campaign managers who want as much reach as possible for their marketing goals.
2.) Instead of measuring *number* of followers, campaign managers and businesses will focus in on active engagement… perhaps even becoming stricter on number of sales, virtual chatter, and website visits accrued during partnerships.
3. ) Lastly, I think that influencers are going to push harder for partnership compensation. Because of this push, the content produced is going to be of higher quality and value for both parties involved.
I’m happy to say influencer marketing isn’t going anywhere in 2016 and will only become bigger and better!
Andréa is a Social Media Manager, Blogger & Community Builder who creates engaging and beautiful content for lifestyle brands, startups, and small businesses in the fashion, wellness, and ecommerce industries.
Nirmala Santhakumar
People trust influencers more than the brands and thus Influencer marketing has started to play a vital role in the business marketing. It can generate the impressive results like brand credibility, strong ROI and SEO boost. It is not only an effective, long-term marketing strategy, but also an inexpensive advertising tactic for the brand marketers.
To reap the benefits of influencer marketing, the business marketers will begin to
- Use the tools to identify the niche experts and calculate the influence score.
- List, follow and engage with them on multiple channels.
- Craft content with their interview/experience/story.
- Make creative campaigns to ignite them and their community to take part.
- Feature them through expert round ups and get mentions & social shares.
- Meet them in events and offer gifts.
- Ask them to review, recommend, or just give a positive talk.
These activities would lead to the meaningful participation that in-turn boost the sales/conversion rate of a business.
Even though, the influencer marketing isn’t an overnight success for a brand exposure, if the digital marketers are not utilising the niche influencers, then they will certainly miss a great opportunity in reaching and engaging the target audience.
To build a good a relationship with the experts, I have recently contributed a guest post on a lively blog, ShoutMeLoud, How to Connect with Influencers?
This is Nirmala, a friendly person who would like to help others. I am based out of Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India. I started blogging in the year 2009 as a hobby and now for the past two years it has become the passion.
Initially, I blog about online money making, health and beauty niches but I got inspired by tech bloggers and have been encouraged to found a self-hosted blog.
Dave Schneider
One thing that is always changing year to year is the definition of an influencer.
For example, in the past more traditional social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter were strongly considered to gauge influencer – but now advertisers are looking at the new up and coming platforms like Periscope. We are definitely seeing a shift towards video as well, and naturally as a result video is becoming more important.
I also predict a general growth in influencer marketing, which seems to be the trend as more businesses gravitate towards online marketing and naturally are looking for ways to stand out and grow their audience. Traditionally this is done through content, and I think it will remain that way throughout 2016.
