• A Quick Guide to Effectively Using Influencers

    A Quick Guide to Effectively Using Influencers

    As many brands know, influencers are a necessary part of any consumer PR and digital marketing program and an effective way to amplify a product or services launch. However, the landscape has changed dramatically over the years and continues to shift on a regular basis.

    When influencers first came on the scene, many of the relationships could be nurtured on an organic basis. Free product sampling or access to a company and its executives were enough to garner posts and establish a partnership. But, while some organic influencer content still does happen, it’s the exception and not the rule.

    To best incorporate influencers into a launch strategy, it’s not only important to think about who to target but also what to spend. When budgeting, it’s imperative to set aside the right funds. That number can vary drastically depending on your goal and what mix of influencers you choose.

    The good news is: it’s not always expensive as one may think. The world of influencers is vast and the term covers many different kinds. Who may be best for your launch may not always be the most expensive. There are mega influencers and micro influencers and everything in between.

    It’s about finding the right influencers for your brand, the launch campaign theme and being able to adjust those influencers, and your content, based on real-time data.

     

    Here are a few tips to get started:

    • Know your goal: Understanding which channels your audience favors is crucial and will help determine what influencers you select. The content needs to be tailored to those channels and remain authentic to the influencer as well.
    • Consistency is key: Tying together content with a campaign theme and appropriate hashtags helps to create a surround sound effect consumers can remember. While the content can be more fluid and customized to each influencer, it also has to have an identifiable thread piecing it all together.
    • Content is king: Nail the messaging and nail the accompanying visuals. Consumers are inundated with ads and content every day – from their favorite brands and from their friends and networks. What makes your content different? How can it capture the eye and attention? Don’t overcomplicate the message or the idea.
    • Not all influencers are the same: Authenticity, follower numbers, reach and engagement rates are all good benchmarks but, you often don’t know until you’re live how the campaign will perform. Be open to tweaks and be able to move quickly.
    • ROI and measurement: As stated above, there are benchmarks to look at in vetting influencers, but also benchmarks for success. Whether it’s click through rates, sales or impressions, there are many data points to measure and not every campaign can be measured the same.

    Matter

    ,

  • Employees vs. Influencers: Are They Really That Different?

    Employees vs. Influencers: Are They Really That Different?

    Leveraging social influencers is a common strategy to help boost brand awareness. Using their social platforms, influencers help spread the word about a particular product or brand campaign via photos, videos and personal anecdotes. As a result, brands reach a new audience in hopes to garner more brand fans.

    Though influencer programs are commonly associated with consumer clients, business to business (B2B) companies shouldn’t rule out the strategy. In fact, B2B companies would be surprised to learn that they need to look no further than their own employees to help catapult their brand in their respective industry.

    Employees as Brand Advocates

    Our B2B clients have employees who are widely known as thought leaders and innovators in the spaces they operate in. Through the many conferences and tradeshows they attend and speak at, executives are able to organically build their professional network and make connections with similar leaders. By meeting in a professional setting, the majority of the connections executives make via their personal social channels are probably similar to the connections the company is striving to reach on their corporate channels.

    However, with their busy schedules, it’s likely (and justifiably so) that the last thing on executives’ minds is their LinkedIn profile. Sure, they accept connection requests every so often, but are they sharing company news or industry trends? Businesses must view their employees’ social presence (or lack thereof) as an opportunity to grow brand awareness, and an excellent starting platform is LinkedIn.

    Leveraging LinkedIn to Increase Brand Awareness

    As of April 2017, LinkedIn now claims 500 million registered users, with two new members joining the site every second. While the platform used to be thought of as primarily a job recruitment network, it’s now more widely used amongst company leaders and executives to drive conversation with others in their respective industry around trends they’re seeing, new industry data or to share opinion pieces, just to name a few uses. As a company, it’s important to demonstrate to your employees how they can join the conversations and also start their own. By developing personal content and engaging with like-minded professionals on LinkedIn, your employees can amplify their profiles and help boost overall brand awareness.

    Before beginning content discussions, it’s important to make sure that executive profiles are streamlined and appeal to the correct audience. Particularly, the headline and summary need to be rich with keywords specific to their profession as they’re the first two sections LinkedIn members read. For the headline, instead of the executive’s current title, they should highlight key areas of interest and expertise to quickly catch the eye of potential new connections.

    Because LinkedIn works like a search engine, including SEO keywords in the headline also makes it easier for executives to be found in relevant searches. Then, their summary should provide a high-level overview of their unique specialties to help paint the picture of their successful career path. The summary can also highlight personal interests, especially if those interests happen to connect with their career of choice. For example, a Chief Marketing Officer might be inclined to share that they’re passionate about storytelling and digging into market research.

    Not every executive performs the same job or has the same interests in the industry, so setting personalized content objectives is important. This not only helps the executive reach connections on a more personal level, but with each executive generating different content, the company is also able to show off its wide range of skills. Content can range from sharing articles about the company to future-thinking industry articles, such as autonomous vehicle predictions or where artificial intelligence will be in twenty years, depending on their line of work.

    Additionally, executives have the option to create articles themselves around any topic that is of interest to them, rather than only sharing external links. These articles are similar to blog posts and appear on LinkedIn Pulse where others have the option to begin following that person to view future stories. Alongside posting on their own pages, it’s important for executives to make new connections – whether that’s with other people in the industry or with relevant LinkedIn groups. Of course, posting regular content and executing new relationships is time consuming, so there are platforms that can help guide your employees to post the most appropriate content for your brand.

    Employee Advocacy Platforms

    To ensure all employees can become brand advocates, there are tools that make it easier for employees to share content on an ongoing basis.For example, Bambu is an employee advocacy platform that businesses can instate for their employees to make it easier for them to amplify their brand’s reach across social networks. Bambu allows any employee with access to the platform to draft suggested posts for sharing across LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter to then be shared by their colleagues.

    While Bambu gives employees the option to draft content, with other content readily available, it cuts out creation time and encourages employees to post more frequently. Other platforms, such as Sociabble and Trapit, offer similar services to help make brand advocacy a company-wide initiative.

    A Comprehensive Social Media Approach = Business Success

    Overall, initiating employees as brand advocates ends up benefiting the business as well as the employee. By providing social counsel, businesses have the opportunity to reach a wider audience through employees’ channels and employees may also grow their professional network and skillset.

    Keeping up with industry trends and maintaining a social presence is just as important for businesses as it is for their employees, and a cohesive business approach to utilizing social media can help everyone increase their awareness and become more engaged.

    Want to talk more social? Get in touch.

    Matter

    ,
    , ,

  • Health Tech Influencers Worth Watching

    Health Tech Influencers Worth Watching

    Healthcare is in the midst of a major transformation, and technology promises to factor significantly into how this pillar of our society and economy comes out the other side. As the industry continues to evolve and shift further toward a value-based model, emerging technologies, such as the Internet of Things, Augmented Reality / Virtual Reality, Predictive Analytics, Big Data and Artificial Intelligence will be key. With that said, these technologies are nothing without the innovators and influencers behind their creation, adoption and utilization.

    Here are a few to keep an eye on in the coming months and years, if you want to stay abreast of what’s happening in health tech

     

    Shahid Shah

     

    width=

    Shahid is an internationally recognized and influential healthcare IT thought leader who is known as “The Healthcare IT Guy” across the Internet. Shahid has architected and built multiple clinical solutions over his almost 22 year career. Notably, he helped design and deploy the American Red Cross’s electronic health record solution across thousands of sites. Shahid also serves as a senior technology strategy advisor to NIH’s and TATRC’s SBIR/STTR program helping small businesses commercialize their healthcare applications.

    Shahid is an exceptional and inspiring speaker. I was fortunate enough to hear him speak at this year’s HITMC conference, where I particularly enjoyed his session “The No BS Guide to Innovation in Healthcare and when it should matter to marketers. Shahid also writes a number of blogs that are worth checking out. You can join his army of health techies by following him at @ShahidNShah

    Mandi Bishop

    Founder of her own consultancy, Lifely Insights, and the former Health Plan Analytics Innovation and Consulting Practice Lead at Dell, Mandi has been a leading voice in health IT for some time now. She is a Twitter powerhouse and continues to be a major advocate for positive change through health tech and policy. Mandi has also dedicated much time and effort to the advancement of women in health tech.

    According to her own LinkedIn bio: “Through my work with industry leaders, from executives and policy-makers to advocacy and activist groups, I am helping to shape the future of healthcare innovation and transformation.”

    Join over 20,000 others, and follow Mandi on Twitter at @MandiBPro — you’ll be smarter for it.

    John Lynn

    width=

    John was one of the earliest bloggers to the health tech table. He is the Editor and Founder of the nationally renowned blog network HealthcareScene.com, which consists of 15 blogs containing almost 7,000 articles, which have been viewed over 13 million times. Plus, John is the Founder of 10 other blogs including the Pure TV Network and Vegas Startups. John’s 25+ blogs have published over 15,000 posts, garnered over 30 million views and had over 122,000 comments.

    Over the last decade, I and a number of the companies I’ve supported, have been lucky enough to work with John on events, interviews, content and speaking, and it has always been a pleasure. John is highly involved in social media, and is followed by almost 14,000 people at @techguy

    Daniel Cane

    width=

    As one of the co-founders of higher education software giant Blackboard, Dan didn’t start his career in healthcare, but some people transcend industries – Dan is one of them. After Blackboard, Dan moved on to become the CEO of Modernizing Medicine, which he cofounded with his dermatologist, Dr. Michael Sherling. After transforming education and making Blackboard all but ubiquitous in American colleges and universities, Dan saw healthcare as the next pillar of our society that could and should be improved through technological innovation.

    Over the last five years, Dan has grown Modernizing Medicine from a fledgling startup in a crowded space to a top tier EHR and market leader. In fact, the company just closed a $231 million dollar round of funding to support its growth and innovation. Dan has gone totally against the grain by bucking legacy practices. He has actually taught working physicians to code software, and has created a solution that physicians and patients actually like. He is a passionate speaker and inspirational leader, and someone worth watching in the coming months and years.

    You can follow Dan on Twitter at @dancane or @modmed.  

    *Full disclosure: Modernizing Medicine is a client of Matter’s that I am lucky enough to work with, so I am predisposed to being a pretty big fan.

    Brian Ahier 

    width=

    Our heaviest hitter on Twitter with a following of over 44,000, Brian Ahier is a nationally recognized expert on health information technology with a focus on health data exchange and analytics. He is the Director of Standards and Government Affairs at Medicity, which is a Healthagen business subsidiary of Aetna. Brian has worked on numerous workgroups, committees, and task forces over the years in the areas of standards and interoperability.

    Brian has written numerous articles for a wide variety of industry leading publications including Healthcare IT News, Health Data Management, Executive Insights, and O’Reilly media. You should check him out if you haven’t already and follow him on Twitter at @ahier.

    Health tech is rich with influencers, and ambitious and passionate people are picking up the torch every day. There are many more out there that are worth keeping an eye on, however, for my money you’d be hard pressed to start with a better five than those outlined in this post. Whether they serve as creators, curators or outright thought leaders, all are influencing real and meaningful change in an industry that could use all the advocates it can get.

    Who would be on the top of your health tech influencer list?

    Ryan Lilly

    , ,

  • A Manifesto for PR Agencies

    A Manifesto for PR Agencies

    I believe any PR agency in 2013 that is not obsessed with the inherent value of Search Engine Optimization should immediately sell to a conglomerate for pennies on the dollar or declare bankruptcy to protect what assets remain. You’re over.

    I believe that PR agencies who don’t understand how to actually engage with “influencers” ought to acknowledge this distressing fact candidly when pitching prospects, rather than raise false expectations and invariably besmirch the industry by clumsily spamming anyone with a high Klout score. You know what gives PR people a bad name? Bull-shitters like you.

    I believe that PR agencies who don’t have their own creative resources in-house will give up huge dollars to help outside vendors who don’t care to understand the client narrative. PR firms who pretend they “do all of that video and stuff” will not only lose money, but clients, and further besmirch an industry still trying to tamp down discussions about “bait and switch.”

    I believe PR firms who practice Bait and Switch – that is, trotting out principals and veeps for the big pitch, and then staffing the account with account coordinators and interns – should be publicly exposed and ridiculed by their upstanding peers. When we’re talking about monthly retainers from $10K to $50K per month, clients damn well better be getting senior counsel. If you’re a PR agency that relies entirely – not occasionally, not sometimes, but ENTIRELY – on junior staff, you’re a pox on the industry. Do the right thing and close your shop, since you obviously have zero business savvy.

    I believe that PR agencies which bill on a Time and Materials model are perhaps too business-savvy, since they sap a client of resources by performing “make work” and then cajole them into throwing more cash on the table for services they should reasonably expect as part of the initial agreement. I don’t begrudge anyone for making money. But I’m opposed to rigging a system that rewards PR people for draining budgets and essentially handcuffing a client until more green hits the table.

    I believe the three most important words a PR person can utter to a client are “I respectfully disagree” – not for the sake of being disagreeable, but rather as a barometer of trust. If a client puts forth a hair-brained idea, any credible PR pro should be empowered by his agency to have the moxie to say: “I respectfully disagree,” and then offer up a different solution based on years of in-the-trenches expertise.  Good ideas will win the day. Bad ideas, given a chance, destroy everything.

    I believe that a mountain of “hits” or “clips” or “impressions” amassed by a PR firm on behalf of a client are utterly worthless unless they drive revenue, increase brand awareness and help to create a halo effect for the client. They’re nice and important metrics, but I’ve never – not once – heard about a deal closing based on the number of click-throughs an article got or the “Share of Voice” in a particular piece. What do the client’s analytics say? Where is the traffic coming from, and from which source are the most deals coming from? If a PR agency isn’t asking these questions, they’re asking for it.

    I believe the PR industry is wasting its time trying to come up with “standardized measurement” or “universal metrics” upon with PR firms should be judged. That’s utter hogwash. I believe those who perpetuate this foolhardy exercise are simply looking for cover, to be “doing what everyone else is doing” as to dismiss concerns that they don’t know what metrics to capture. It’s pack mentality, and it’s wrong-headed. Explain to me how a Cloud Storage company and a Burger King and a digital photography client should be measuring the same outcomes. Please.

    I believe, because it’s essential to believe it, that a PR firm’s greatest assets are its people – not its clients. Clients will stay on board if an agency’s people consistently perform over the long-term. I believe a firm that puts its clients ahead of its people will quickly, and irreparably, find itself with fewer of both.

    That’s what I believe. What do you believe?

    Matter

    ,
    , , , , , ,