If you’re a brand looking for some additional promotion and social media buzz for your product, service, restaurant, hotel or destination, chances are you've been told to hop on the "influencer marketing" bandwagon and "create content". But where do you even begin with navigating this wild west of an industry? And what do all these buzz words like 'content creation' and 'influencer marketing' even mean?

There's more confusion than ever among brands who are overwhelmed with the sheer amount of 'influencers' flooding their inboxes, who each promise, and can deliver, different things, and bring different skillsets to the table when it comes to social media partnerships. And while 'influencer' is a sexy word right now, the over-used and over-generalized word encompasses several different types of influencers.

So let's break it down a little more.

Basically, what type of influencer you should use for your brand comes down to whether you want to leverage someone's creativity, reach, or influence. Sometimes, it's a combination of any or all of the three goals in one campaign, but it's important to remember that while someone may be able to do all three, every social media creator or influencer has their strengths. It's vital that a brand knows which of those three categories is their strength to create a successful campaign and hit KPIs.

Content Creators

Who they were before social media: Your photographers/models

A content creator, to put it simply, is an artist who creates visually compelling marketing content for a brand. This is usually photography, videography, or a combination of the two.

No alt text provided for this image

When you need to hire a content creator: If you don’t know what to post on your Instagram or social media channels and need help expressing your brand's image or message in an effective way. If your goal is outsourcing someone to create photography of your product, service, or destination.

Influencers

Who they were before social media: Your billboards

An influencer is defined by someone with the ability to influence potential buyers of a product or service by promoting or recommending the items on their social media channels. The quality of an influencer is driven by a combination of their reach, engagement, and community. They are a distribution channel for brands to reach a large audience through a different voice. In short, influencers bring more eyeballs to your account, which translates into more sales for your company, if it's the right kind of audience.

When you need to hire an influencer: If your goal is brand awareness, and you are most interested in top of funnel marketing, casting a wide net to generate potential leads, and getting your message out to a large audience.



Bloggers

Who they were before social media: Your sales team

A blogger is someone who has built an entire online community surrounding their niche of interest. A successful blogger's audience is usually very tailored and engaged. A blogger is a trustworthy voice and opinion for both their consistent readers and new ones finding their articles through Google search, Pinterest, and other outlets. Much of the value in hiring a blogger comes from the longevity of written articles online, which, if they have good SEO favorability, can continue to drive quality leads for months and years to come.

When you need to hire a blogger: If your goal is to drive conversions, not just awareness, and tell more of a story around your product or service. When you are most interested in reaching and converting warm leads, or edging out your competition during the decision-making phase of the marketing funnel.

No alt text provided for this image
No alt text provided for this image

Why do I need to outsource for marketing these days, anyway?

Because, ICYMI, advertising looks a LOT different than it used to. Whereas brands of the past spent their entire marketing budget on running large-scale advertising campaigns across billboards, TV commercials, and print, the best brands today are pivoting from traditional media and investing heavily in the use of individuals (Content Creators, Influencers, and Bloggers) who can present their brand message in beautiful, compelling ways, and bring their products out to market.

Why is this, you ask?

Influencers, bloggers, and content creators are still extremely undervalued marketing channels

How much would you as a brand have paid in 1990 to have 100,000 people walk by your storefront?

Influencer marketing campaigns are giving brands the chance to reach hundreds of thousands, or millions, of potential customers every day, at an extremely reasonable price, where and when they're most likely to convert. This has led to a huge surge of ecommerce, and a complete pivot in the marketing industry as a whole.

I like to call this Carrot vs Stick Marketing. In the past, brands used to try to get you to buy their product by poking you with a stick (ie billboards, commercials, print ads, ads everywhere and anywhere, in your face). These days, the most successful brands are encouraging us with a carrot instead, in native and exciting ways that actually add value to our everyday lives. Think: an instagram ad that's a pretty picture we would have already loved to see on our instagram feed, or a photo of an outfit we never would have been able to find searching on our own, a google ad that helps us get what we were searching for, a restaurant recommendation in the city we live in, or a hot tip for a luxe resort that we're dying to stay at in Positano.

Enter: Influencers.

Because we're actively choosing the content we follow, engage with, and subscribe to, the consumer now has all the power in marketing. The brand's role is no longer to poke its customer in the face, it's to find authentic ways to get their message out to customers in a way that resonates with them - and enhances their lifestyle. That means getting through to their biggest lifestyle influences - the instagram influencers, content creators, and bloggers that have their attention.

And while you hear about them all the time, and influencers may seem like they're everywhere, believe it or not, statistics show only 0.018% of Instagram accounts have over 100K followers.

Good quality influencers are rare, and powerful.You do your research. Google them. Check out their website. Look up the Alexa ranking for their blog compared to competitor blogs (it's free). Read their writing. Ask to see their analytics. Ask what makes them different from other influencers. Don't be afraid to ask for more information. Ask for their unique users on the blog. Ask how many people clicked, swiped up, booked or bought off of their last campaign. Ask for a demographic breakdown of their audience. It's important to know before you work with them if a female influencer is being followed by 75% men (presumably interested in her for other reasons than her skincare, beauty, travel, or clothing recommendations...), or followed by mostly people in a different country or demographic than the one you hope to reach. Check out their instagram and study it.

With all of this information, a faux 'influencer' can be spotted very easily. Their blog won't have many views. On instagram, their engagement will be off (not many comments, so as to suggest fake likes or followers). They don't have reach. They don't drive swipe ups. Their comments will seem shallow, fake, or unrelated.

When you do decide to hire an influencer, know that the best ones don't come cheap. But they are worth their weight in gold. Explain your goals but then sit back and let them do what they do best. The best brands won’t tell an influencer what to do, they'll trust them to connect with their audience in a way that resonates best.


So what are your campaign goals?

Is it beautiful photography? Then you’ll want to hire a content creator. Is it purchases and awareness? You’ll want an influencer or blogger whose audience and content matches or enhances your brand. (I can’t tell you how many hotels I’ve worked with who have told me that my partnership was a breath of fresh air after working with “influencers” who focus their content around overly-sexualized photos of themselves versus showcasing the experience of the property they're working with.)

Why I know so much about influencers, bloggers, and content creators

My blog http://abbrothers2007.blogspot.com/ is one of the top luxury travel blogs in the world, and my instagram abbrothers is ranked #1 on Travel & Leisure's Top Luxury Travel Instagrams to Follow, and has been featured as one of the top Instagrams in the world by Forbes, CondeNast Traveler, IZEA, Oprah Magazine and more. I've worked on international paid influencer marketing campaigns with brands like Expedia, Sony, RXBar, Marriott International, and the New York Times. I am at times an influencer, at times a content creator, and at times a blogger for the brands I work with, but I believe my largest strength for any brand that cares about the ROI is as an influencer and blogger, where I am able to tell a story and bring my audience into my experience, rather than as a content creator where it is so much more about getting an instagram photo than anything else.

My thoughts on the best social media strategy for travel & tourism brands

I've chatted long and hard about this subject with PR agencies, general managers for luxury resorts, and influencer colleagues, and I can say without a doubt that everyone is trying to figure this whole influencer marketing thing out, with very few brands taking advantage of its potential. Some brands have had success building entire businesses from social media influencers, while other brands have started shying away from it, citing a lack of proof that influencer marketing works.

So does influencer marketing actually work?

In the travel and tourism industry that I'm a part of, I know that influencer marketing works. Through affiliate links on my blog, I can see each hotel, flight, tour and activity bookings that come through every hour, and every day, as well as the retail and product purchases people make from recommendations when they're packing for each trip.

While I love a good instagram photo and caption, I, like many of the brands out there, struggle to see the ROI. Sure, it gets a ton of saves, and some likes and comments, but an instagram post would be nothing without the blog posts to back it up and tell more of the story. After all, pretty photos aren't the end goal - it's bookings. Good, informative, blog posts on  constantly converthttp://abbrothers2007.blogspot.com/ travelers (and show off pretty pictures, too).

And, not only are these travelers taking my recommendations, they're writing to me after their trip telling me all about their time and how they can't wait to use JSC to plan their next vacation. I even ran into a honeymooning couple at the Four Seasons Sayan in Bali, who came up to me at the pool telling me that I was the reason they were staying there, and they planned their entire honeymoon from my blog.

Trust me when I say that influencer marketing works - if you do it right.http://abbrothers2007.blogspot.com/