Influencer Marketing

Summary

The Digital Marketing Podcast – Episode Summary

Episode Theme: Influencer Marketing
Hosts: Daniel Rowles & Ciaran Rogers
Date: May 19, 2018

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Overview

In this episode, Daniel and Ciaran delve deep into the world of influencer marketing, dissecting its myths, realities, and best practices. With a candid blend of enthusiasm and skepticism, they draw on their vast experience to discuss what makes influencer marketing effective, the pitfalls brands must avoid, and how to identify the right advocates for your brand. The conversation is peppered with practical advice, personal anecdotes, and thoughtful reflection on the changing landscape of digital influence.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Initial Thoughts & Skepticism Toward Influencer Marketing

• Ciaran’s experience: Having worked with influencers, Ciaran is candid about his frustrations, particularly with “large-scale” influencers who often provide minimal effort for high compensation.

  • "When you start dealing with large scale influencers, anybody in PR will tell you they can be really hard work and really kind of give the minimum amount of effort for quite a lot of cost." – Ciaran (01:22)

• Daniel’s perspective: He frames influencer marketing as amplification—reaching a desired audience by working with those who already have their attention. However, he quickly differentiates between influencers and advocates, placing more long-term value on advocates.

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2. Defining Influencers vs. Advocates

• Influencers: Those with access to the audience you want.
• Advocates: Those who naturally say positive things about your brand, regardless of their “reach.”
• Strategic distinction: Both need separate outreach plans—one focused on audience leverage, the other on nurturing loyalty and reciprocity.
  • "Influencers are those people that have access to the audience you want. Advocates are the people that say nice stuff about you. ... In both cases you need a plan…" – Daniel (03:10)

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3. The Pitfalls of Paid Influencer Marketing

• Paying influencers often blurs the line between authentic endorsement and pure advertising.

  • "If you're having to pay someone to talk about your stuff, you're basically doing advertising and it kind of isn't in line with what social media really is." – Daniel (03:38)

• Legal implications: It's essential to be transparent about paid endorsements per advertising laws (e.g., #ad, gifting disclosures).

  • "You have to be really careful, because there are laws that guard against this. If you're paying somebody, you need to state that." – Ciaran (03:46)

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4. The Power of Micro-influencers and Authentic Advocacy

• Advocacy over reach: For better ROI, brands should seek collaborators who are genuinely enthusiastic—even if their followings are smaller.

  • Real examples: Hosting intimate events, providing value to up-and-coming bloggers, and crafting genuine invite messages.

• Building relationships matters: Success comes from ongoing engagement and understanding the influencer’s audience and values.

  • "You can't buy friends." – Daniel (08:16)
  • "There's a type of influencer that I think is fabulous, and that's an advocate influencer—someone that has a genuine passion for what you're doing or your brand." – Ciaran (05:28)

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5. Social Scoring Platforms: The Demise of Klout

• Klout, a once-prominent social influence scoring platform, is shutting down—coincidentally on the day GDPR takes effect. Both hosts reminisce about its usefulness and limitations.

  • Memorable Anecdote: Ciaran was once recognized by Klout as a world expert in SpongeBob SquarePants for reasons even he doesn’t understand. (09:06)

• Data privacy and compliance complexities are likely contributors to Klout’s closure.

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6. Exploring Alternatives to Klout

• Klear.com is recommended as a powerful, insight-rich influencer analysis tool. Unlike Klout, it goes beyond simple scores, providing data on audience demographics, content performance, and engagement levels.

  • "It will give you a social score... but also what their audience demographic looks like, what their audience is interested in..." – Daniel (10:24)

• Brief mentions of other tools: Kred, PeerIndex (now part of Brandwatch), and CRED (relaunched in 2018).

• Reminder: Use social scores only as indicators—dig deeper for true influence.

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7. Best Practices for Influencer Outreach & Content

• Integrate influencer and advocate engagement into content planning.

  • "For every piece of content you create, [add] a column for which are the influencers we should get this in front of, and which are the advocates..." – Daniel (13:08)

• Employ targeted, personalized outreach rather than blanket messaging.

• Reciprocity is key: Help promote their content too.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• "You can't buy friends." (08:16, Daniel)
• "There's a type of influencer that I think is fabulous, and that's an advocate influencer—someone that has a genuine passion for what you're doing or your brand." (05:28, Ciaran)
• "If you're having to pay someone to talk about your stuff, you're basically doing advertising and it kind of isn't in line with what social media really is." (03:38, Daniel)
• Ciaran’s SpongeBob SquarePants anecdote about Klout:
  • "I was a leading world expert for a short last summer in SpongeBob SquarePants and we don't quite know why." (08:55, Ciaran)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• 01:18 – Ciaran’s influencer marketing frustrations
• 03:10 – Influencers vs. advocates explained
• 03:38 – Pitfalls of paying influencers
• 05:28 – The value of advocate influencers
• 08:16 – Building authentic relationships
• 08:39 – Klout shutting down
• 10:24 – Introduction to Klear.com and alternative tools
• 13:08 – Integrating influencer outreach in content planning

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Tone & Style

The conversation is frank, knowledgeable, and practical, mixing the hosts’ humor (“You can’t buy friends… they tend to be a bit unfaithful”) with clearly actionable advice. The overall message: Build genuine, two-way relationships with people passionate about your brand, and beware the pitfalls of superficial or purely transactional influencer marketing.

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Key Takeaways

• Prioritize authentic advocacy over pure reach or celebrity endorsements.
• Use social scoring tools as a starting point, not a definitive guide.
• Integrate influencer and advocate outreach into your marketing content planning.
• Nurture relationships and offer real value—for the influencer and their audience.
• Stay transparent about paid relationships to comply with regulations.

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For more resources, the hosts reference a free content calendar template (with influencer and advocate columns) available at TargetInternet.com.

Transcript

[A]

Hi everybody, it's Daniel and Kieran here and just before we get going properly, we want to ask a quick favor.

[B]

So we know that literally thousands of you download the podcast every week and it's actually massively helpful for us if you can leave us some feedback. Just kind of write a quick review in itunes and let us know what you think of the shows. It's really useful for us to get an insight into, you know, what you like about the podcast and what you find good. It's also hugely useful for, you know, helping other people gain, get a flavor for what we're about and what we do.

[A]

So for an itunes, leave an itunes review. If you're using any other platform, leave a review there and we would really appreciate it. So on with the show.

[B]

Welcome to the Digital Marketing Podcast brought to you by targetinternet.com hello and welcome back to the Digital Marketing Podcast. My name is Kieran Rogers.

[A]

And I'm Daniel Rawls.

[B]

And today, Daniel, we are going to be talking about influencer marketing.

[A]

We are, and I'm surprised Kieran said that in a really positive, upbeat tone of voice because if there's one thing that will get Kieran going on a negative way, it will be influencer marketing. Just give, give us your background experience of this, I'm sure, and then we'll talk about. You have.

[B]

But I ranted.

[A]

Yeah, but just a quick run and then we'll move into the practicalities.

[B]

Okay, I've had my coffee this morning. I'm relatively calm, so I'll keep this brief. I think what annoys me about influencer marketing, if I'm honest, is the influencers only because when you start dealing with large scale influencers, anybody in PR tell you they can be really hard work and really kind of give the minimum amount of effort for quite a lot of cost.

[A]

So where you see this a lot is in fashion and retail based stuff and kind of travel and so on. And you have these people with these Instagram followings of millions of and they say, oh, I mention your product and my followers will see it. And my, my problem with that is what actual level of engagement are you getting with that influencer? They don't really care. What they care about is the money. Now this isn't all this is, this is horrible because there's lots of nice influencer marketers out there.

[B]

There are, there are good eggs, but they're not necessarily top of the pile, top of the game. Because I think the more serious it gets, the more money exchanges hands for these things. The Bigger the influencer, the less naturally, the less time they have to look and care about this or in some cases even take note of what it is that they're promoting.

[A]

Yeah, I mean, the thing is, you go to a celebrity, like a real world big celebrity and pay them, it's going to be a similar thing. There'll be a contract involved, they'll only do certain things and so on. And you want someone, if you want someone to promote your product or service and this is. We need to go back what we actually. What is influencer marketing about? It's about getting people to amplify your efforts to some extent and that you go to someone that has an audience and it's the audience you want and you're getting them to talk about your product or your service or your thing to change their mind, whatever it may be. So it's really about amplification and reaching audiences through these people. Now, I would always split it into two influencers and advocates. So influencers are those people that have access to the audience you want. Advocates are the people that say nice stuff about you. And it doesn't really matter if they're particularly influential because they are the kind of people that can leave online reviews, respond to negative reviews and all those kind of things. So in both cases you need a plan and you have an influencer outreach kind of plan and an advocate plan. And it's really saying, what are you going to do for these people? That they might do something for you. And in a lot of influencer marketing, it's paying them. I'm going to give you some cash and you're going to talk about my product or service. And I think you've already, it's already gone wrong at that point.

[B]

You've lost.

[A]

Yeah. Because if you're having to pay to someone to talk about your stuff, you're basically doing advertising and it kind of isn't in line with what social media really is.

[B]

And you have to be really careful actually, because there are laws that guard against this. If you're paying somebody, you need to state that. It needs to be very clear what the relationship is. And you know, the fact that they're commenting and have been paid or even if you're just giving the product for free so they can review it. That does need to be stated.

[A]

Yes. I mean, if you're. So if you're a big fashion brand or an automotive brand and I can get really big, well known person online kind of using my stuff yet, maybe that will work. Okay, we've done that. You know, product placement in movies and all those kind of things for a long time. And that's a long game of branding. So I'm not saying it doesn't work, but actually for most organizations, for better return on investment, general recommendation is go for a lower level of influencer, but you can provide real value, too. So we're going to talk about social scoring and there's quite a lot to talk about that in a moment, actually. But, you know, if I use a tool to identify someone's level of influence and I go for the people with like scores of 90, 99 out of 100, they're going to, I have to pay them most of the time. Whereas actually, if I go down a few tiers and go people scores of like 50, 60, 70, the likelihood is that if I can find real value in it for them, I won't necessarily need to pay them. I can provide value in other ways. So if we, for example, we do the podcast and we can go through and look at, you know, who's listening to podcast, who's sharing the podcast, and we work out those people that are, you know, reasonably influential, have good followings online, and then we invite them all to an event and we say, we'd love you to come along to an event. There's going to be some great speakers, all this kind of thing. Please come along. They are likely to share that content. Probably not now get to meet Daniel.

[B]

Kieran will also be there.

[A]

But don't worry. But it's that whole thing of just look, give something that's actually useful, build a real community, people that actually, you know, there is a connection there that's a lot more likely to get me shares and build relationships.

[B]

Do you know what? I think you hit the nail on the head. There is a connection. So the thing I always try and look for with these things, there is a type of influencer that I think is fabulous and that's an advocate influencer. Do you know someone that actually they have a genuine passion for what you're doing for your brand? If they also happen to be influential, then great, absolutely nothing.

[A]

That is the sweet spot of all this.

[B]

Well, it is because it's genuine. Right? And we all know that mega celebrities just say they like things because they've been paid money. I regularly see endorsements that I think, really do I really think she would use that product? I don't think.

[A]

Well, that's it. And we were all quite cynical of that whole thing. Whereas actually, I mean, I would say most of the people that are what we'd refer to as our influencers and our advocates are people we actually know that we have met or we've spoken online repeatedly or we've interviewed or whatever else it may be and you've taken the time to build the relationships. Now if you think about what we've done in PR, in public relations for the last 50 years, it's influenced the influencers. But if you wanted a newspaper editor or a journalist to write about your stuff, you generally aren't going to go up to them. Can I give you some cash? Write about my stuff? No, thank you. Ruin my journalistic integrity. We just don't seem to have a lot of integrity in social, unfortunately. But actually if I go, what's your publishing schedule? What are you trying to write about? Oh, I've got some really good insights on this topic. Would that be. And that's what it's really about, providing value, one form or another.

[B]

It is. And the best campaigns always come out of, you know, really good two way conversations with the people that you want to work with. But I'd say the key thing is you want to find people that really want to work with you. And very often, you know, even there's quite a big, I work for a big fashion, fashion brand. It was the lower level, you know, start out bloggers who would absolutely jump at the chance to just be involved, see behind the scenes, you know, all sorts of things you could do to involve them and to give them, you know, something, something extra that, that wasn't run of the mill. It wasn't just pushed out via an email that's been sent around to hundreds of people, you know, is very much crafted based to them. And actually a lot of this goes wrong when you know, PR firms just reach out to influencers on lists without really taking a look at what do what, what do they craft for their audience, who is their audience. You know, those things really, really matter. But, but is that that sweet spot of people actually have, have the same kind of passion for, for what you do, can see the real value in what you do as a, as a brand or as an organization because they will get that across to, to people who are just discovering your audience and that's what it's all about, right?

[A]

That's it. And I think if we go back to the basics of it being convincing as well, if someone is actually passionate, it's going to come across that way. So try and think about how you build those kind of relationships and you have to put the effort in. It's not Just something you can just do, you know, with just putting them on a list and using a tool. Quite often it's, you've got to just build those relationship takes time.

[B]

Can't buy friends.

[A]

Yeah, that's, that's a very good point. So you can, but they tend to be a bit unfaithful and not very easy. No, exactly. So that moves us on because we're talking about social scoring and it's quite sad news. So Clout was a social scoring platform and it's been around for a long time. It's had its naysayers for a long time as well. But they have announced that they are closing down.

[B]

I'm sad about that.

[A]

I am actually as well. I found it quite a useful tool. So if you're not familiar, Clout would very simply for most social accounts, it was particularly reliant on Twitter, but it would basically give you a score of 100 to say how influential you are. Lots of people didn't like it because they said the algorithm was flawed. The algorithm wasn't updated enough.

[B]

It was slightly flawed, but there were aspects of that that I love too. For example, I was a leading world expert for a short last summer in SpongeBob SquarePants and we don't quite know why. It's never really been explained.

[A]

So you say this, but I've seen you share.

[B]

No, but you know what, because of that, because my expert status dropped and I thought it's a shame. I was kind of quite proud of that because it just added a bit more interest to an otherwise dumb middle aged man.

[A]

So it wasn't, it wasn't perfect, it had its flaws, but it was kind of useful. It is shutting down, but the date it's shutting down on is very interesting.

[B]

I think so. So they're shutting down the same day.

[A]

That GDPR become the general Data Protection regulations, which most of you working marketing will be acutely aware of at the moment. If you're listening to this at a later date, it's already launched. The world might have already ended by then, but essentially they were storing a lot of data and it was probably a big headache to go off and try and make everything GDPR compliant, I would imagine.

[B]

Well, it's an interesting platform, isn't it? Because actually you don't have to sign up to it to have your, your Clout score publicized. And that was one of the things that I liked about it because actually you could always see within, you know, any Twitter stream or feed that you were looking, you know, what kind of rough level of influence or activity, the different people taking part in conversations. Well, it definitely wasn't the be all and end all. You definitely took it with a pinch of salt. But just quite a handy little key performance indicator I've. I've always felt. But actually if you haven't got permission from people to do that, is that, is that fair game? I don't know. Maybe. I do wonder if that's not why they, they pick.

[A]

Who knows, I mean we don't know how they store their data and all that kind of stuff, but there's definitely, there's a bit of, a, bit of a surprise there if that's not the case. So what are the alternatives? Well, one I've been using for ages and we promoted a few times before, which I think is fantastic, is clear.com K L E A R.com a long time ago used to be Twitterland. We interviewed the CEO a long time ago. But it is a phenomenally useful tool. You log in the free account with one of your social accounts and it will give you a social score. It will give you a lot more than that though. It's well beyond just a social scoring platform. Tell you things like what that person's most popular content were, what their audience demographic looks like, what their audience is interested in. It will give you some key insights into how much they share and the kind of things like how regularly they're sharing. So I love Clear. Big, big fan of Clear. There are others out there as well. I mean CRED was around for a while, which is another social scoring platform. They're re releasing cred, I think in June this year.

[B]

Slightly ashamed, I haven't looked at it for years. And a lot of these social scoring platforms, there was a big fuss about them back in what, 2012, 2013 and a lot of people got heavily into gaming them and building their credit scores. Do you know there were even, and I do think this is wrong, but there were even hotels that would up people based on their, their social media scoring influencer which just like.

[A]

Well, if you've watched any Dark Mirror episodes, you know. Yeah, if you, if I could use facial recognition, match you up to your social score and then decide if you can come to my party or not and things like that. Wow. So look, there's, there's good and bad things about these. I think at a high level what they were useful for is you could scan through your feed, you could see when influencers were mentioning things or influential people were mentioning things. But as I said, we also want an advocate audience which is people that say nice stuff about us. And I don't care if your score's zero, if you say nice things about us and you leave nice reviews or F feedback, that's still really valuable from that point of view. So they aren't the be all and end all, but they can be useful from that point of view. You've got other ones. Peer Index was another one and that was then bought by brandwatch, the really good social media monitoring tool. And they've brought that into their audiences tool as well. So they are out there in different formats and they're built in some of the best social media monitoring tools. Not quite in a kind of scoring way the same. But should you be using them? As long as you. You take it at high level as an indicator and then you dig into it and look at the detail a lot more afterwards, I think they're absolutely fine from that point of view.

[B]

We were playing around with the. The Clear plugin.

[A]

Yeah, this is great.

[B]

Yeah, it's good. So basically similar to, to the Clout plugin really. But rather than giving you a number from 1 to 100 for each person within the. The feed. Twitter feed that you're looking at, it will give you overall areas that they tend to focus on. And then if you click on that, then you can drill down and get a lot more like insights and metrics on their social media activity. I thought it's really cool, it's a.

[A]

Great tool and I think it does make the whole kind of digging into things a little bit easier. So this whole influencer marketing piece, yes, it can be valuable. Don't waste money on just trying to do it quick and easy. You need to really think a little bit more carefully. And what I would do is I would build into your content calendar. For every piece of content you create a column for. Which are the influencers we should get this in front of and which are the advocates we should get this in front of? And actually our content calendar, you can download for free, has got that built in. So we'll put that back into the show notes so you can download that one again as well. Because then you're thinking, who's this piece of content useful for? And when we talk about content promotion. So it's not just about creating the content, it's not just about putting it onto social. One of the things you need to be doing is outreach to influencers and advocates. And maybe if you're advocates, it's just going out to them, you know, a week before you really publicize it and say, have this a week before everyone else. You know, we really appreciate all your input and for the influencers you've got to work out why would they be interested? What is it about the content that's relevant? How could you encourage them to share it? And so on as well. And a lot of that actually comes from the fact that if you built a relationship, they're going to share your stuff anyway. Or you might go off and interview.

[B]

Someone or if you got to know them, as we all do with, you know, people we're very much engaged with on online, you really can tailor the angle and you know, rather than blanket hit everybody up for every piece of our content that you have, you know, pick and choose, mix it up a little bit, make it a bit more interesting, think about the angle for them. It might even be something you can do jointly together. And don't forget, you know, are you helping push to push and promote their stuff as well? This stuff cuts both ways, right?

[A]

That's absolutely it. So let us know how you're getting with influence marketing. Any horror stories, we'd love to hear those as well because it's always quite interesting to learn from those. And we'll speak to you again on the Digital Marketing Podcast. Foreign thanks very much for listening to the Digital Marketing Podcast. If you want to continue your learning in digital marketing, get over to Targetinternet.com and sign up for the free trial of our digital marketing elearning platform. There's over 140 bite sized courses for you to try and lots of other learning resources as well. So get on there and sign up for the free trial. Sam.