Amanda Russell’s new book, The Influencer Code – How to Unlock the Power of Influencer Marketing, is out now. You can find it on Amazon. She wrote the book because as a college professor at the University of Texas, and before that at UCLA, she felt like a college text on the topic was missing.
The book give good advice to businesses and brands and is well worth the read. Amanda and I share a lot in the way of philosophical groundings in influence marketing. You’ll hear that in our chat.
Amanda is another hybrid expert to talk to about this. She’s a fitness influencer in her own right, building her brand at fitstrongandsexy.com. Her fitness videos help her 80,000-plus YouTube subscribers, as well as others who follow her around the social web and on her site.
She also consults with companies who need help with influence strategies. Give the talk a listen and share it with someone who could use the information!
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This tool saves you time which makes you more efficient and profitable. Check out my full review of Mighty Scout which includes a video walk through of me using it. Then, go to mightyscout.com/falls to sign up. Billing is month-to-month and you get a 30-day, money back satisfaction guarantee.
Winfluence Podcast – Amanda Russell Transcript
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Jason Falls
Want Instagramers and YouTubers to mention your brand or do you want to influence an audience to buy your product? I’m Jason Falls author of the book Winfluence – Reframing Influencer Marketing to Ignite Your Brand. In this podcast we explore the people, companies, campaigns and stories that illustrate the difference between using influencers and actually influencing. Welcome to Winfluence – The Influence Marketing Podcast.
Jason Falls
Hello again friends thanks for listening to Winfluence – The Influence Marketing Podcast. It should be obvious by now this podcast exists as a companion piece to my new book also called Winfluence which comes out in early 2021. But if you’ve been listening regularly, you know that there are other influence marketing books, there are other influence marketing authors and even podcasts out there. I don’t pretend to be the authority on anything really. And I love nothing more than bringing other smart thinkers in the industry here to you. Amanda Russell is one of them. her new book the influencer code how to unlock the power of influencer marketing is out now. You can find it on Amazon. She wrote the book because as a college professor at the University of Texas and before that at UCLA, she felt like a college text on the topic was missing. It’s far more than a college text. I’ve read the book it’s well worth the read good advice for businesses and brands. And Amanda and I share a lot in the way of philosophical groundings and influence marketing. You’ll hear that in our chat. Amanda is another hybrid expert to talk about this. She’s a fitness influencer in her own right, she built her brand at fitstrongandsexy.com. Her fitness videos help her 80,000 plus YouTube subscribers, as well as the others who follow her around the social web and on her website. She also consults with companies who need help with influence strategies. And other smart one to learn from Amanda Russell coming up on Winluence.
Jason Falls
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Jason Falls
So Amanda, what was your goal when you sat out to write this? What what gap are you trying to fill?
Amanda Russell
The first step of the first step I want in the book is the goal. So the goal was really to provide to be very simple it was to have a textbook, not a textbook, a text, I should say for the my curriculum. And I didn’t ever set out to write a book. And never never thought I would it was never even it was never actually a goal in itself. But when I started teaching, I saw a major gap in terms of like, first of all, there was no curriculum talking about influencer marketing in the way that I saw influencer marketing and and then when I went to teach it, I had to sort of create this curriculum out of like, you know, there’s no template, no charted territory. And then for the book, you know, there was nothing published. And then anything that was published or a lot of what I found was a lot of articles and news stuff was a lot of like agency biased either, you know, either felt like it was biased or it was talking about influencer marketing in a way that was very transactional and equating with equating it with basically new technology with social media that it was that it came from. Social media or if it was like influencer, marketing our campaigns, and I believe it’s so much more than that. And that by thinking that way, we’re doing ourselves a disservice. So I wanted to create a book that went with that. And the book actually became kind of now for people that teach it. It goes with the curriculum, so you could actually pick up the book as a professor. And it’s actually structured in a way that every chapter is a is a lecture.
Jason Falls
Very nice. So I and we, it’s funny, because when I read the book, I kept thinking, Wow, it’s it’s amazing how kind of aligned we are on how we think about influence marketing. I mean, there are a lot of the things that you talk about in the book with building relationships and whatnot, are all of the same sort of things that, that I’ll end up talking about in my book as well. Slightly different ways, of course. But I wonder, you know, when you say that, you know, brands and agencies and whatnot. In your, you know, preliminary research for this, you know, we’re saying that influence marketing comes from social media. Where do you think influence marketing comes from? How long has it been around? What Where did we start to call it that? And and was it a new thing? Or has it always been been there?
Amanda Russell
I’m glad that you said that. Because the reason I connect I want to connect with you so badly was when I first heard you talk about influencer marketing on your podcast. And I was I know exactly where I was, because I was like talking out loud. I was like, Yes, yes. Where is this person?
Amanda Russell
So it’s over, I cannot wait to read your book, and use it as a supplement as well. So in order to I think it comes back to the you know, the statement that in order to understand influencer marketing, we have to first understand influence, influence is not new. It’s been around since you know, I think the beginning of human communication. And it’s what it’s what drives our our actions, our decision making, like what influences our, our choices, our behavior, whether it’s conscious or subconscious. And to say that it’s to say I think influencer marketing has been around since what I actually think Neal talks, Neal Schaffer talks about this in his book, he goes back to like, the history of it. When was, was it I think it was him, or maybe it was something else, I read this, the when, way back, I think it was a china company. The first one of the very first like, China was branded in England, and it was branded because this guy got the queen to endorse it. And this was like before advertising before television before radio. And because the Queen put her name on it, then people automatically thought it was like, you know, a legitimate piece of China. Right? So influence is not new. It’s it even even back when I was starting, I was in business school at the time. And I was doing a thesis type of project in which I was using YouTube back before YouTube had any sort of respect or faith or order. And I was calling it collaboration. And no one called it influencer marketing then, and but I could call it a collaboration, collaboration. But the all of these terms, it doesn’t matter what the term is, it’s the same thing. And I think the at the end of the day, the best way to think about it is that influence is an outcome, not a profession. So to say somebody is a fake influencer by definition of influence, that that can’t be
Jason Falls
Well, and I would I would actually add to what you said that, you know, in my mind, you know, what, while you were calling them collaboration, and, and then sort of, you know, I go back to the the blogger relations days, when we called, we called them bloggers or we call them, mavens was a word that got tossed around quite a bit in the early to mid 2000s. But then I would even argue that the influencer marketing or influence marketing goes back even further, because I’ve been a public relations professional, most of my professional career, you know, since probably the early 1990s. And that’s all public relations is is influenced marketing, it’s finding people who have influential voices now in in the old school, it was the traditional media and trying to connect your ideas, your your, your product, your brand, your services, your message talking points to people who could help you amplify that and then earned you know, fashion and and therefore, you know, PR is influencer marketing, kind of by definition of the practice, would you think?
Amanda Russell
Yeah, absolutely. And I sorry, not to miss miss miss talk. I called a collaboration back then. But I think I was going back to the idea that it’s been around since been in communication with with the Wedgwood, China and the Queen back in like the very beginning of of human communication. So I do agree a lot of the practices of peep. I mean, that was that that’s kind of the initial Purpose of PR was not is to get to get whether it’s, you know, I see it and influencers and necessarily a person it’s whoever holds the influence whether that’s you know the World Health Organization saying you can’t eat meat tomorrow, or Oprah putting her book club sticker on a book. That was the whole reason for why think why PR came about as an industry.
Jason Falls
That’s true. What Why do you think brands? Don’t get that? Why do you think they think of this as something new and something different and something weird? And is it new, different? and weird? Do they need to adjust to how the technology in the marketplace has changed?
Amanda Russell
Yeah, that’s such a great question. Because at the end of the day, the way we’re talking about it, it’s such a simple concept. And it’s really not novel at all, it’s just that our communication channels have changed. And so it reminds me a lot of having having been an athlete and in fitness for so long. And you see one of the industries where you see the most fads and the most trends and the most different ways of packaging things and talking about things, I kind of think that that is a big piece of it. It’s like the shiny new object is social media, communication channels. And it’s given us this, like everybody the ability to produce and reach a bigger audience. And so it came about that everyday people are having these bigger audiences. And so brands started then reaching out to these everyday people that had a little bit of a bigger audience and asking them if they can, you know, send product or whatever. And we have to give that new shiny object name. And so I think he got I think it started getting confused with this entirely new method, which is really not a new method, the communication channels are new.
Jason Falls
Right. You know, I went I’ve had somebody asked me recently, actually, I can’t remember who it was they asked me recently, what the difference between influencer marketing and public relations, you know, good old school PR is I’d love to hear? Well, my answer to that is, the difference is, is the media members are not trained. So you basically, you know, when I was dealing with, with, you know, newspaper editors and beat writers, and, you know, news producers and whatnot, and reporters, I was dealing with people who went to school and learned how to be a journalist and learn how to write, and there was an ethics, you know, class that you had to take, and there was a division between church and state, it’s not an advertising channel, it’s a public relations channel. If you’re, you know, working with media, doing Media Relations, and trying to get that message that’s relevant to their audience out to them, you’re dealing with people who understand what PR is, and understand its value. In the mid 2000s, as bloggers started to pop up, and the democratization of the social media happened with social media, and everybody could be a publisher. And then all of a sudden, everybody was now the people who have influenced the people who have built audiences out there and create content, didn’t go to journalism school. And so there’s a big gap. And that’s where things I think, started to blur, where you would reach out to someone who has an influential audience. And for the first time in history, for the most part, you would get a response with Well, how much will you pay me for that? Whereas when you’re dealing with traditional media, there’s such a division of church and state, or there used to be that you didn’t get that response? It was like, I’m either interested in your story, or I’m not interested in your story. And now it’s all I’m not really interested in your story. But if you pay me enough, I’ll do it. And I think that’s been the biggest separation in in between traditional PR, and influence marketing, would you? What, what are your thoughts on on my definition?
Amanda Russell
Yeah, no, I think that I have actually, I think it’s a really good perspective. And I’m not I’m not in PR at all. And so that what that’s but I know that PR gets kind of it comes to the subsidiary, and it gets all it almost becomes um, what’s the word for it, like, PR, social media, marketing, advertising, all these terms are getting confused thing. And, you know, I come from a very marketing background, where we never like PR was never even a part of that. So it’s interesting to hear your PR perspective on it. I always thought of PR as almost like the the Earned or paid media portion of advertising, really, advertising, marketing. And advertising is different than marketing. Whereas I think influencer marketing to me is an overall business strategy for how you’re going to grow your bottom line. And it doesn’t just include media, and it includes like, overall bigger partnerships, so that might may or may not reach the bigger media. So for example, Like, if I when I was looking to grow my, my fitness brand from a YouTube channel, which is something that you don’t own to something that I owned and really scale the company, I knew that to get the capital for it, and then all the production, the production, and the customer service and all of that I needed a bigger partner. And I didn’t necessarily want to go about raising money, I wanted more of a strategic investor. And so for me, the influencer was to have to get a big name production company or like a big, deep seated production company. And so who are my influencers? For me, they were okay, who can help me get this done. Those were, those were intelligent production companies. I then, you know, narrowed down the ones I want, I really, really wanted one called trim entertainment, who were the creators, producers behind The Biggest Loser, Amazing Race, like everything was fitness meets entertainment, but they had done 20 years of television, they were experts in television production. They were not experts in digital production. But they knew that they needed to get into digital, and I knew that I needed production. And so we were influencers for each other. So I pitched it to them as that we part of we were a business partnership together, we were able to achieve our goals, it was a win win for both sides. That wasn’t that was more of a business strat overall business strategy. And all the intangibles of the relationships that they had, that I had that us working together had were what helped scale that company. So to me, it’s it’s not just the media piece, or the like product placement or the getting mentions or hits. It’s how can we grow our bottom line via partnerships?
Jason Falls
Yeah, I would, I would say that what you just described is is sort of a version of kind of what I’ve been sort of circling around for a while, which is, influencer marketing is a term that is sort of comes with some baggage, and people hear that word, and they think Instagramers, and they think YouTubers, and they put it over in the corner, and it’s in this little bucket in marketing, and it’s there. But when you talk about just what you’re trying to accomplish with a marketing strategy is influencing an audience to you know, try buy, like, think differently, whatever. And and influence is a strategy, influence marketing, or influencer marketing is a little piece of a much bigger puzzle. And I think what you’re describing to me is, how do we influence? Or how do we persuade, if you want to use another term, an audience to think differently to try to buy to consider? And I think that’s kind of what you’re describing? Or at least that’s my interpretation of it. Does that jive with where you are? It does,
Amanda Russell
Yeah, and it’s a paradigm shift a little bit and how to think about building your brand, I say, and so I call it influencer marketing. Because to me, marketing is not a silo of a division of a company. It is a it is the way that you grow a company. It’s it’s whether you the company is a person, or whether it’s a brand or a team of people. It’s how you how you grow. Because a business only grow a business does not grow in isolation, it grows because it has to hit a certain audience in order to make money.
Jason Falls
So you’ve got a nice section in the book, the influencer code about delineating between the influencers, your book explains four types, can you take us through your four types of influencers and kind of describe each of them briefly for us?
Amanda Russell
You know, there are many different ways to classify influencers. And I think, you know, the main way that people think of is by the size of one’s audience, which is when you hear the terms macro, micro mega nano, you know, all these terms. And that’s really a very narrow tunnel vision view of how to classify an influencer. Because, you know, you can have a million zillion you know, whatever followers on a social platform, or however you want to define a follower, or you could have, you might have a podcast that has two listeners, but if you’re a certain business, and those two listeners are like, the key decision makers and something you you know, want to move the needle on, that’s really important, or if, you know, if Warren Buffett is your listener, and you’re in finance, that might be a really big deal. So I defined the other type is defining them by like, in what ways are they influential, and the, you know, there’s people spun out a bunch of different ways. I like the I like using these four, and you can be in one category and another category. So celebrity is obviously by mainstream household name, fame. And I think you can be a celebrity and be an influencer. But celebrity does not equal influence. Fair. So for example, you know, you’ve got like somebody like a Scott disick, who was like, you know, that that classic, like case study for every PR class Is the the cohesive Kardashian boyfriend husband, I don’t know what he is. But he’s, he’s in the he’s in that clan. And so he’s got a zillion followers, he’s very famous. And he, he has a very famous post because went wrong. And it’s the PR agency that tells him at x, you know, 10am, post this. And he does that he actually posts what they tell him to post, like at 10am post this in, in the caption, which in itself is like, Okay, this is terrible. But the fact of the matter is that if he is what is he known for, he’s known for kind of being a bit of a train wreck in and out of rehab, drugs, alcohol. And he’s he’s, he’s posting about like, how a healthy living product. So he doesn’t hold influence, even though people are following Him, they might be commenting on his he might be quote, unquote, getting all of this engagement, whoever you want to define that by comments or shares or whatever. But it doesn’t all that doesn’t matter if it doesn’t convert, he doesn’t have influence in that category. So celebrity, a celebrity can be influential, but doesn’t equate to influence. Authority is like by position or title. So when you hear a siren, when this is this is how I spent half my life when I drive is I my heart skips a beat every time I hear a siren, because half the time I’m speeding, and I’m really hoping,
Jason Falls
Oh, so we’re alike, in another way?
Amanda Russell
Yeah, heavy foot, man. And so every you know, I when that siren comes and you What do I do? Well, it doesn’t matter who have no idea who is behind that wheel, it has nothing to do with that person. It’s by authority by title by position, I have I automatically my action is to pull over. Those are people like, you know, doctors and which are also experts can also fall into the expert category. Was your boss, a teacher, you know, telling a kindergarten teacher telling a kindergartener that they have to stand in line by position or authority by title. And then expert is somebody that is known. You’re following them because of their expertise on a specific subject matter or topic. So that could range and, and this one is actually very interesting with social media, because many of you use the term Maven before but I love Maven, your self proclaimed gurus, expert, I mean, now, it doesn’t necessarily mean you have to have credentials, or anything, actually. Like there are people that self turn themselves, which is wonderful, which is very, very interesting. But hey, whatever works for you, like a life coach, Mm hmm. Based on, you know, there are life coaching programs and whatnot, I gather. But there are also, you know, these people that have become famous by posting photos of themselves on, you know, platform of the day, and then start monetizing it by offering life coaching services, or in the fitness world. They become fitness fitness coaches, with programs with zero credentials. But they hold influence, because people follow them for a reason that they believe that they know what they’re doing in that category. And then they’re and you know what, I don’t knock that at all. Because there are, are, yes, I think with caution, proceed with caution, and do your homework. But there are, there are, you know, experts, like I talked to my brother about this a lot, who’s had more schooling than anyone I’ve ever met. And he’s, you know, he’s a physician in a few different categories. And he drives it, he’s not on any social media, and he can’t stand it. And he’s perplexed by people giving medical advice and like life programming and whatever, and how they’re making so much money off of it. And I’m like, well, you can, I apologize, brother, but you can’t really knock them too much because they’ve managed to build an audience who resonates with them, and they’ve packaged themselves in a way that sells
Amanda Russell
So so they do have expertise in something. So I don’t I’m not I’m not I’m not knocking that either. I’ve it’s just a different it’s just a different style of expertise. And then affinity which is I think, the most under tapped form of influence and yet the most powerful and that is the decisions that people make are most most influenced usually by the people around them. So friends and family or like hyper if you look if you look at the decision making process for any, you know, product or Service, what are the who are the factors at the very life end of that tunnel or, you know, funnel or whatever you want to call it, that makes those decisions. And yeah, they can be like really high purchase decisions or like high thought purchase decisions like, but you know, choosing a university to go to or choosing a surgeon to perform surgery on you. But they could also be like, as simple as, you know, last time you went to a dinner party, and you didn’t really know, or a cocktail party, you didn’t really know the host that well, and you you go to the wine store, and you’re in the wine store, and who becomes the influencer for what you’re going to buy, right? You ask the wine person working there, and you describe a little bit about whatever what the price point what you want to spend, who this person is, and they become this influencer for you. So if I was coming out with a new, you know, label of wine, rather than going on, you know, some social media platform, I would probably start in my local area and start gifting all of the wines stores, clerks, with my wine. So those are the four celebrity expert affine, authority and affinity.
Jason Falls
So I don’t know if you saw on olynyk, his recent re categorization of influence, they do these top 10 lists, or top 20 lists of the most influential people when given categories, mostly b2b categories, and they’re based in London. So it’s, they tend to be European focused, but they have done away with those top 10 lists, because instead of ranking, you know, everybody in one category of influence, they’ve decided, hey, there’s different categories of influential people. So you’ve got social influencers, which is the type of influencers that we typically think of people who have big online followings, who you can engage with, and they might, you know, be a good partner for your brand, then you’ve got content creators who may or may not have a big following, but they’re really good at creating content, and you may value their photography, or their videography, or their music, or their art, or whatever it is they do. They’re just really good content creators. So you could hire them to create content for you, you could collaborate with them to create content on their channels as well. Then they say the third category is event speakers, so people who are noted within their industry, and they go around and speak at conferences and whatnot. But again, they don’t necessarily have to be great content creators, they don’t necessarily have to be social influencers. And then there are other three categories, I think, are particularly interesting Industry analysts, which I think falls into your, you know, expert category. So someone had a gardener or a forest or something like that. Brand employees, which I really like that’s another that’s an authority think category for you, because someone who is the Vice President at, you know, Dell computers is going to be authoritative and influential, because they are a vice president at Dell computers, not necessarily because of who they are, although those two things could go hand in hand. And then the last one I love, because I’m an old PR guy, and they say the last category of influencers is brands and publications. So whereas, you know, men’s journal is a magazine, it’s also influential as an online media source and an online channel with social channels, as well as our other news organizations and whatnot. So I like the fact that we are in the industry starting to break influencers down in different categories. I wonder if, if you’re for, if you feel like your four are broad enough? Or if you feel like they could be broken down even further?
Amanda Russell
Oh, absolutely. I think those are, those are four very, very broad categories. And my, you know, my book was really more or less kind of, to, first of all, talk about the ways to look at influence. So it doesn’t really get really nitty gritty into like, okay, here are the different all the different, you know, possible types and all the different ways to social platforms on which to, you know, define influencers, per se, but yes, I do. I think there’s a million of one different ways to determine you could even go by industry to right, you could go by like, you know, blockchain influencers and the doctor, you know, medical, and then you could even break that down further. So, I think there are infinite ways and I think it then even then, it’s then Okay, well, then do you want it is it? Is it by geography? Is it by platform? Is it by how about, okay, well, within that within that category, is it are you doing with social platforms? If so, which one is it? You know, local geography. So I think there’s just so many different ways and I think that’s why that’s why I think marketing is so fascinating in that every situation. Every project, every company, Different, it’s very, you know, that’s the beauty and you know, of being a great marketer or a great, you know, you know, anything in that category in the advertising communications PR is to be great, I think you have to be continuously curious and continuously able to test and try and ask questions. And know that there is no two situations the same, and there is no template. So you know, we are not performing surgery surgery, you have to, you know, it’s got to be the exact same every you have to know that there is a, there’s a such a hard science, it’s not a hard science. And by by trying to force a hard science, you’re going to do a disservice. Because it’s like every company wants to recreate the Ice Bucket Challenge. Why can’t we just even the Ice Bucket Challenge even even als could recreate Why? Because there are so many factors that change. So in order to be great, you have to really be a bit almost a detective and a researcher, and looking at what you have in front of you and all of the factors and what’s going to work and what’s not going to work. And it’s a lot of trial and error. But it’s it’s a lot of ability to see the context and the situation.
Jason Falls
I wonder what types of influencer campaigns or influence campaigns if you want to drop the ER, do you tend to think are particularly effective, engaging, creative? What what are there any types of approaches or any brands that stick out in your mind that have done things that you get excited about?
Amanda Russell
Yeah, you know, it’s fun. It’s my lecture. I have a lecture tomorrow on brand ambassadors and employee advocates. And you said, you had a really interesting answer for which it resonated with me on the difference between PR and influencer marketing, you know, influencer advertising and have one, it’s just formalizing it really. And I think that brand ambassador programs and employee because everyone’s like, what’s the difference? And if you go online, you’ll see a million different ways of trying to describe the difference, there is no difference. It’s a way of formalizing an influencer relationship. And I think that some of the most creative, most powerful ways are a long term Ambassador style relationship, which cannot be mandated. You have to, like, it’s not something that can be forced, it is something that has to happen organically. And how does that happen? It happens because the company has put an infrastructure and a culture in place that allows it to they built the foundation. So for example, companies that have done this, and everybody had people try to copy them, it doesn’t work because they haven’t built the infrastructure is companies like Lulu Lemon. A companies like you know, I’ve worked a lot with Lamborghini, they do an incredible job with this, I’m trying to think of Red Bull I work with I work with Zico, coconut water, who did a really great job of this. And how did they do it? They did it. The difference is, is that they put so much behind their partnerships, they found people that really already like a lot of these companies, I have never I had never worked with I had never, it wasn’t that I was already a customer. But they knew that that was it, I would resonate with the product. And rather than pushing product on me or talent asking me to post or talk about it, they they became a partner and sort of in my life. And there was there was no all the ones that worked the best had zero requirements on my part, zero. And that sounds crazy, because everything you’ll look up will say, and these are the requirements that you need, and blah, blah, blah. But you know, we need to have this X number of posts, and you have to have this number of you know, sound bites, you end up sounding like an infomercial. But the cool part is that it actually is not a hashtag add or hashtag sponsored. And some of these companies had done so much and work with them so much that it it is, you almost feel like you do become part of this like family, and you become so invested in the brand that you want to do. You know, you want to talk about them. You want people to know
Jason Falls
About them? Yeah. I think you know, it struck me as you were explaining all that, that there’s I think there’s a fine line here between what you’re talking about, and what I think most people think of in terms of influence marketing, because it’s one thing to have influence and influence marketing effort that we’re trying to engage people who have established audiences. I think what you’re talking about and correct me if I’m wrong, is broadening your definition of who is influential to be basically anyone because anyone can have influence with a certain number of people. And if you broaden it that far, I think now you’re talking about word of mouth marketing programs. I don’t necessarily think you’re talking about specifically influencer stuff, although there’s a big gray area between the two because they do go hand in hand.
Amanda Russell
We’ll see. I think that’s, that’s it. My argument, though, is that that this term influencer is not necessarily by definition, everyone is an influencer in some way. So it’s fine if depending on what your goals and objectives are for your brand or your product, or you know, you as a brand, that’s going to be different. So by limiting yourself to saying, Oh, it’s gonna be somebody with X number of a following or on a social platform, I think that you’re, you’re missing out on massive opportunities, because anyone can be the influencer, it’s going to be diff influence is not universal. It’s like I said, influence as an outcome.
Jason Falls
So the the last part of your book is kind of the the meat of it with the influencer code, which is the title of the book. And you’ve got sort of a three step, sort of code that you talk about in the book, walk us through the three steps and explain to us what the influencer code really is.
Amanda Russell
Well, you have to read the book. It’s … the three step code is very, very simple. But simple doesn’t mean easy, either. And, and it’s it basically is it It forces brands and companies and people to number one, start step one with the goal. And it defines a goal because people get goals and objectives confused. And we do this thing where we get so excited about buzz, especially in advertising and PR, we are defining goals and objectives by by by buzz. And I talked a little bit about this three B’s model in the book, which basically is brand buzz and behavior. And if we’re focused on buzz, which is everything from like clicks to likes to shares to, you know, event attendance, and we’re losing track of either the brand, is it aligned with the brand message and the behavior, what is the bottom line behavior we need to achieve in order to increase our bottom line, because at the end of the day, the goal of any business in business is market share, increasing your bottom line. And, and everything else is an objective that has to tie back to the goal. And so that’s step one, the goals so when you set your sights on that, it’s got to start there, because we jump too much into the objectives and the tactics and the strategies before we before we go number one, okay, what do we want to achieve? And then number two is the phase of observe and observe as a two step and it’s the meat of any influencer marketing. And it’s two steps, because it’s phase one is understanding number one, who is your audience? Not looking for an influencer? We start when we start with the influencer, we’re starting backwards, we’re putting the cart before the horse. We need to start number one with who’s our audience and who is who are what are they looking to that are influencing their decisions? And then that by nature ties back to what you’ve talked about, what would you ask me about why Okay, well as an influencer, your top influencer could be anyone. Yeah. Because if you know, if I’m a car company, I like say Kia. And I want a lot of you know, young girls or my audience, young young girls in college, okay, they’re getting their first car and so if I think that if my audience is young girls getting their first car and I’m looking for influencers for young I’m looking at who young girls are following well that doesn’t really help me because when I pull my students when I asked them okay, well who was actually influencing your decision and 99% of them are going dad So who am I really trying to influence as key I should be trying to influence dad right? So I think it’s number one start with your audience and then phase two and observe Okay, who is my audience and who and what are their are they actually looking to to solve their problems in this category? And then from there it tells you who those influencers are. And then the phase two is okay. So what matters to those influencers? How do I get to know those influencers to then three, make the connection because we overlook you know, the fact of just being able to listen to those influencers might be and then be able to create a genuine relationship and connection are two totally different things. And the quality of the relationship is really going to be driven by how much you can really make this a win win for that influencer,
Jason Falls
Amanda the book is The Influencer Code – How to Unlock the Power of Influencer Marketing. Tell people where they can find you and it online.
Amanda Russell
Awesome. Thank you. Yes, so it is just Amanda Russell, two s’s and two L’s dot co, not com. Dot c-o (AmandaRussell.co). Or you can also find it at theinfluencercode.com and on Amazon. And then also my book. I don’t know when this is airing but my book launch party is on virtual. This is so exciting. I know everybody wants to be on another zoo. But it is exciting. I’ve got it is November 4, and it’s an interview style zoom. And it’s exciting because we have Mr. Andy Roddick who is hosting it.
Jason Falls
Wow. That’s impressive.
Amanda Russell
Very exciting. Yes. Speaking of influencer, he is a mass influencer. Well, you know, not and he’s a great example. And the reason I use him is he is somebody who’s used his fame and celebrity to make real impact in the space of education for for kids across the world, or nation I should say.
Transcribed by otter.ai
The Winfluence theme music is “One More Look” featuring Jacquire King and Stephan Sharp by The K Club found on Facebook Sound Collection.