We’ve talked about a handful of books on influencer marketing here on Winfluence. While we await the publishing of Winfluence (the book) in early 2021, I couldn’t help having more great discussions with smart people in the space, even other authors.
Justin Blaney is a professor at the University of Washington and the chief innovation officer at Principal Advantage, a lead-generation firm based in Seattle. He and his co-author, Kate Fleming, who is a skin care influencer as well as a digital analyst, have written a great book called Will Post for Profit. Unlike a lot of other influencer marketing books, Justin and Kate actually divide the advice in theirs between influencers and brands. Most books focus on one or other.
That being one of the strengths of the book, I talked to Justin about what aspiring influencers could do to launch, build and be successful, then dove deeper into the brand side to discuss what insights he has for them. There’s a little something in this episode for everyone in the influencer marketing space.
You can get your copy of Will Post for Profit on Amazon. Be sure to leave a review. And do share this episode with a friend or colleague who might find it useful as well.
Winfluence Transcript – Justin Blaney – Will Post for Profit
Jason Falls
Hello again friends thanks for listening to Winfluence – The influence Marketing Podcast. We’ve talked about a handful of books on influencer marketing here on the show, which of course has me itching for my new book also called influence to hit the shelves that will happen in early 2021. And nothing I can do will make it happen any faster. But that wait is indeed why we’re here. I couldn’t help continuing to have great discussions with smart people in the space, even other authors. Justin Blaney is a professor at the University of Washington and the Chief Innovation Officer at Principal Advantage, a lead generation firm based in Seattle. He and his co author Kate Fleming, who is a skincare influencer as well as a digital analyst have written a great book called Will Post for Profit. Unlike a lot of other influencer marketing books Justin and Kate actually divide the advice in there’s between influencers and brands, most books focus on one or the other. That being one of the strengths of the book, I talked to Justin about what aspiring influencers could do to launch, build and be successful. Then we dove deeper into the brand side to discuss what insights he has for them. There’s a little something in this episode for everyone in the influencer marketing space. Justin Blaney, co author of Will Post for Profit joins me next on Winfluence
Jason Falls
So Justin, your book walks an interesting balance between advice for people who want to be influencers and for brands who want to work with them. I wonder why you went at it at both directions. Most books are one or the other.
Justin Blaney
Yeah, that’s a good point. I mean, I think that that was what I saw as a hole in the marketplace. In fact, most books are primarily what I found is for the influencer side, how do you become an influencer? But it’s important for influencers to know how brands are thinking to if they want to do business with brands that they want to attract them or build relationships. Me and my co author thought it would be helpful to show both sides of the coin same thing for the brands, we want brands to be thinking about, what is it like to be an influencer? How hard is it? What do they think about what motivates them? And so by including both sides of it, I think we give a bigger picture to everybody whether they’re wanting to hire an influencer, or whether they’re looking to be one themselves and profit from that.
Jason Falls
So let’s talk to the potential influencers out there in a world where there’s, you know, far too much noise and not nearly enough signal. Why would someone want to try and be an influencer? And why would you make the argument they should?
Justin Blaney
Well, I think influencer marketing and just influence in general on social media is the future of a lot of different things that have been changing quickly in the past, like you look at news organizations, there’s really only a couple left that do high quality reporting, that really have the big budget and staff to do that, like the New York Times and The Washington Post’s and more and more of that’s getting taken over by influencers, I have a lot of friends in the PR industry. And more and more they’re pitching their pitching their content, there are articles to people who have blogs and podcasts like you, and people who run Instagram or LinkedIn. And, and so I think that it’s the future. I think that getting in now is still early. And I’ve seen people get in, you know it anytime it’s I don’t think it’s ever too late to come in and do something well and get traction. People, you know, you could say, every business that’s that’s ever needed to be created is already created, it’s too late. I can’t get into business, you know, but it’s, it’s not true you can always get in is you need to do it. Well, you need to do it better than the other people. If you’re going to attract attention, you said it right. There’s a lot of noise. And in order to cut through that, I just, you know, I tell people, you have to do this one simple thing. And that’s check all the boxes, whatever boxes are necessary to achieve success in that. Don’t skimp Don’t you know, don’t skip any and say, Well, I can’t do that one. You just got to go through and figure out what is everything necessary and then get in there and do it. And I think that it’s very possible. I’ve seen that happen and people could jump in today they could decide that they want to do it. But the reason that they should do that is because they love it. So that’s the most important thing. If they if they’re doing what they love, then it won’t matter if they end up making money from it. Or they’re, you know, you can’t fail if you’re doing what you love. Because it doesn’t really doesn’t really matter. And so and so the people that don’t need the money from it, ironically ended up getting more money from it. Because they stuck with it through that time when it was difficult when nothing was coming from it. And so I think that that’s really important, you know, similar advice you’d offer a musician or painter, it’s very difficult to get in here and to break through the noise, even if you’re very good. And so I think the motivation should come from within for your own personal enjoyment and edification, and then do it, do it as well as you can. And, you know, you’ve got a good shot at breaking out at some point if you stick with it.
Jason Falls
So let’s, let’s check some boxes for those influencers out there, because or the potential influencers out there. I think I hear what you say. And I get it, I understand it. I think many people would, too. I think the one sort of gray area for someone who has an interest wants to do this, and just heard your advices Okay, what what do you define as good, what separates the wheat from the chaff chaff, as it were, in this, you know, signal to noise ratio marketplace, what do I have to do to be a good influencer in your determination?
Justin Blaney
The number one thing is authenticity. You know, the difference between social media and other forms of communicating is authenticity. And I think people forget that social media is just another medium by which we are communicating and having relationships with other human beings. It’s still human to human contact. And it’s still satisfying the same instincts that we’ve had, you know, that were, that were ingrained in us over hundreds of thousands of years, as we became a human species, we needed to get along with our tribe, in order to survive. And today, we are using social media is a way to communicate with our tribe and be a part and feel accepted. And we’re looking for authenticity. When you hire a celebrity to promote your brand, people understand that on that superbowl commercial, that that person doesn’t necessarily care about the product that they were paid to say it. And even then it’s still effective, because we respect that person or we recognize their face. But with influencing you, you must feel like you know that person, you follow them, you hear about their daily lives. And so that, that builds up more trust. And trust is the currency of exchange when we’re talking about marketing and influencer marketing. And so authenticity is key. And people could smell it, they could sniff out if if a person is just being fake. And the people that I’ve seen that are successful, there’s live, eat and breathe this, they love it, they do it because they love it. And they can’t help but be authentic, because it’s so natural to them. And if a person isn’t those things naturally, it’s very, very much harder to, to break into this and do well, unless you can learn to do that. And you can learn to. But that’s a more difficult road than the people that I’ve seen that are successful, just natural to them. They just, they just naturally are that way. Right?
Jason Falls
So let’s look at this from a slightly different perspective, one one primary motivator, I would think for influencers or potential influencers is money. should someone get into this racket? If that’s their primary goal, their goal is to get paid to just post on social media and and if they should? or shouldn’t, why or why not?
Justin Blaney
You know, I think I think the really quick and most honest answer to that is probably no, I hate to tell anybody, no, I think people should do whatever they want, whatever makes them happy. But if you’re just setting yourself up for for a difficult situation, if you get into something, it’s a little bit more clear, you know, again, with music, if you go into music, and your primary goal is to make money. I just think that you’re setting yourself up for failure. Because even fantastic musician, I used to write music in Nashville. And I go around to the different bars. And every single bar you go to, they got to cook just to cover band plan or whatever, like you’d normally see at a bar. But this is like the best musical group I’ve ever heard in my life in terms of talent. They’re doing the song like off the top of their head, they can play anything. They’re amazing musicians, and yet probably still one in 100 of those has a chance. So it’s like, if you go into music, and you’re saying I want to be famous and rich from this, or I’ve failed, then you’re basically saying I’m going to go do something and set myself in such a way that I’m giving myself a 99% chance of failing. And I just don’t think that tends to lead to the most happiness and then it also causes this pressure so that if in the short term, so you’ve been doing it for two, three years and you haven’t gotten that goal, you’re not yet making money from it, but you might quit because your goal was to make money. But what if it took you one more year and then it would have finally taken off? Well, if you We’re doing it for the Julian, the love of it, and it’s just something that you like to do, you’re probably going to keep doing it. And eventually you’re going to find that success. But when you’re doing it for money, and that’s your primary goal, and you might find that you’re, you know, you’re not meeting that goal quick enough, and then you’re gonna give up and go do something else. And it’s just not, it’s not like the easiest, fastest way to make money. There’s other easier and faster ways. So I just don’t think it’s If a person’s goal is making money, I don’t think this is like the most proven, easy path, I would say, go be a banker, you know, go go into sales, there’s a lot of really easy ways to make money in life. It just people don’t want to do that they want to do their art, or they want to do with their love and make money. Now you’re creating these qualifiers that make it more difficult, it can be done. And I’ve seen it done. I know somebody started a year and a half ago with nothing, and is living full time really good off of influencer marketing. So it definitely can be done. I’m not saying that. I’m just saying that setting yourself you’re setting yourself up for a more difficult path. I think if that’s your primary motivation.
Jason Falls
Well, and if that’s your primary motivation, I think too, it also speaks to your your other sort of requirement there is authenticity is the most important thing. And if, if you’re truly authentic, you’re going to say, Well, I’m here to make money. And so therefore, you’re going to, you know, stockpile load all your posts with promotional items, and affiliate deals and all that good stuff, which kind of tears away from the effectiveness of your influence in the first place. So you’re going to kind of soil the audience when you think
Justin Blaney
That’s brilliantly put. I mean, there’s a lot of there’s a lot of reasons why I think it’s less effective. And I think you’re right, it might cost you to take a brand deal that you you know, influencer marketing, you shouldn’t be doing a brand deal unless you love that product or service. And that it’s a product or service, you might use whether or not you’re getting paid. But if you’re doing it to make money, you know, somebody, maybe you love Mac, and you’ve been using Mac your whole life, but Microsoft comes to you and says, Hey, we want to do a brand deal with you. And then all of a sudden you’re posting about your PC like you love it. And then people are like, wait a minute, I thought you liked Mac, you’ve been talking about Mac, you know, why did you switch? Oh, because he got paid by them. And then you’ve kind of lost that edge, I think as an influencer.
Jason Falls
Yeah. Yeah, the trust factor comes in there and can spoil that pretty quickly. So a couple more questions here. And again, I really, I really appreciate your book, because it does walk that balance between giving advice to influencers, but also talking to brands about the influence perspective and what they need to understand about the influencers, they engage. And, you know, you’ve got really good information in there about measurement and all sorts of other things. But I want to touch on a couple more influencer points, because on this show, we typically interview a lot of brand managers and agency folks and people on the the you know, the the other side of the aisle, I want to make sure that we’re providing some good information for influencers in your book is really full of really good stuff. So a couple more questions there. So when an influencer starts to get some traction, and they start to have some opportunities to collaborate with brands, how does how does someone know that it’s time to start approaching brands? And if they don’t have a contact if they don’t know how to pitch themselves to a potential sponsor? What’s your best advice? And what have you seen in the research you’ve done from other influencers that have been able to kind of stick their flag in the ground, raise their hand and say, Hey, I’m open for this. And I have an audience that you might want to get to what what do you think influencers should be doing in that situation?
Justin Blaney
Yeah, I think that there’s best practices to follow, a person should have a really well created press kit. They want to look like they’ve done this before, you know, and so when it most influencers, I know, the primary method that they use for getting deals is brands are coming to that. So they’re out there talking about, Hey, I went to Warby Parker and I’ve had a great experience there and I got these glasses and then they tag Warby Parker, and they and maybe they’ve done some research on LinkedIn of who is in charge of influencer marketing at Warby Parker, and they, they tag that person, and then maybe they, they take that post and they forward it on they say, Hey, I just had a great shopping experience at Warby. Just wanted to let you know that I was pumping your brand online, thank you so much. And and oftentimes when somebody’s like, hey, well, this is great, we’d actually like to pay you to come back and do this again. And so a lot of times, it’s that brands are reaching out because again, you look at how if think about how authentic that is, someone is going in and talking about something that they enjoy doing. And that’s the kind of thing that you know, a lot of these brands are really looking for. So when that brand does reach out, you want to have your press kit ready. You want to have somebody you know, this is what I charged for, for prices. Now, that doesn’t mean that you can’t negotiate that down. Maybe you want to take a pay cut to get a couple of deals under your belt so you can start to talk about that and build your resume. Uh, you know, I think all of that’s necessary. And I think that there is you can reach out, I think you just, you know, look around your house, look in your closet, what are all the things that you have? What do you like? Are you when you’re flying somewhere? What airline Do you like, start talking about those things and in promoting them, and then and make sure you’re tagging and doing, you know, the best practices. And, and I think it’s a good idea to you know, one time I just walked in I was I had a big party I was going to, and there’s gonna be a bunch of people there and I was going to get to be up in front of them with a mic. So I went into scotch and soda and just told the manager I said, Hey, I’m going to this party, there’s gonna be a couple of hundred people there that influencers in the Seattle area, what do you think about you know, just pick out an outfit, and take it with me, I’ll wear it. And I’ll, I’ll talk about you guys. Cuz and I, and I’m like, I shopped here anyway. So I like I’ve been like a nice clothes. And that worked out. They said, Yeah, pick out an outfit, you can have up to a certain amount. And we’ll write it off. And just post about it on Instagram. And so I did that and ended up doing a couple of more of those things with them. So I think that’s, I think that it’s like networking. And it’s the same thing as many other aspects of life, it’s about finding some way to create a personal connection with someone.
Jason Falls
Nice. that’s a that’s a that’s an interesting, interesting approach. I wish there were I wish I was open to non social media marketing tools, in terms of my own influencer stuff, because there’s, it’s a big plus size men’s fashion brands out there. I’m open, you know.
Justin Blaney
If they’re listening, Give them the number to call.
Jason Falls
That’s, that’s true. So I wonder do do you think influencers You know, when they again, when they get to the point to where they are working with brands, they’re doing collabs, as they call them these days? I’m old enough to not have called them first started. So as the kids say, but do you think they there’s a tipping point? And what is the tipping point of doing too much with brands so that you start to lose that authenticity, you start to lose that the sort of the reason that people are following you, I think a lot of new influencers starting out probably don’t know what that level is, where’s the tipping point where you’ve got to watch and think, and maybe I’m doing a little too much here.
Justin Blaney
Mm hmm. I think that that’s a subjective number. I mean, I’ve heard people say, or I might say, you know, don’t do any more than one out of five posts is promotional. And you could say, you know, I only do one out of 10, some people might do one out of out of three, but you wouldn’t want it to ever be the majority of your content. Right now, the one thing you can do to, to have more promotional content without offending your user base is if you build it into your content library, like, you know, like a talk show hosts, one of those brilliant things about the talk shows is that they figured out how to turn promotion into entertainment. So I’m sure you and your audience have noticed that most of the guests that come on these talk shows happen to have a movie coming out that week, you know, or a book coming out. And so they’ve, they come on, and they joke about it, and they show a clip of the movie, and they, you know, they have this whole deal, and the audience is getting entertained. But what’s really happening is the audience is getting exposed to this new movie that’s coming out. And so you see a kind of similar thing with a lot of influencers. If your brand is, I’m going to tell you about great, affordable, cute women’s clothing. And I’m going to you know, that’s just that’s what I do on my Instagram. And so you got a girl who goes and she’s showing her outfits. And every time she goes on buy things, she talks about it. Well, she could probably have links on every single post to the clothes that she’s wearing, and be making money on every single post that she does. Because that’s part of it, people are going there to find a cute outfit. And when they find one, you’re actually helping them by putting the link right there because it’s making it convenient for them. So that would be you know, you could I know people to do links and almost every one of their posts now maybe every once in a while they need to do taking my family out to the park and not not have a link, you know, at least every once in a while. But that kind of allows you to do more promotion. If you’ve set up your brand to be in a way that that doesn’t really naturally lend itself to your content, then I think it’s better to do less because you do want to be thinking about like you said, when you introduce the question, what is it that the audience is coming to this influencer for you got you have to not compromise that whatever that is.
Jason Falls
Right. Let’s turn our attention now to the brand managers the VPS of marketing the people who are running influence marketing campaigns out there on the brand or agency side of things. You do talk a lot in your book about the sort of different levels of influencers out there. And you pay a fair amount of respect to the micro nano influencer. I wonder if you were advising an agency or a brand that was looking to engage influencers? And maybe they’ve never done it before. You know, what you would tell them about, you know, a your budget that you’re going to need and be, what level of influencers? Would you recommend most, you know, brands go after to start out versus maybe folks who have built some relationships with some some influencers over time.
Justin Blaney
Mm hmm. Yeah, I think that when people are starting out, I mean, first of all, I think the industry has moved more towards smaller influencers. There’s, you know, exponentially more of them, they’re more flexible, they often are willing to work for little to nothing. And, you know, keep that in mind when you’re trying to become an influencer is that the when you’re especially when you’re starting out, if you have under, let’s say, 50,000 followers, the primary engagement that people are going to be offering you is, is maybe an exchange of product for promotion. And for the smaller influencers, you’re seeing more and more that they’re actually what they’re offering is a discount on their clothing. So the influencer is actually still purchasing things. They’re just getting them at a discount if they if they provide promotion. So that, that has created an opportunity for businesses to get into influencer marketing with with little to no expense. On the flip side, influencers are getting paid less for their promotion. So there’s, there’s some changes going on right now. And that’s again, why I thought it was pretty cool to show both sides. Because if you think about it as your as an influencer, you need to understand that brands have, they’re going to try to get as much promotion from you as possible for as little as possible. They’re a business. Yep. And then on the flip side, brands need to know the influencers, they value their audience, and they need to protect how much they’re promoting to them. And so they need to, they also have bills to pay. And it takes time and money to create beautiful photo photographs and all of that. So I like the the sides know, both sides. But in terms of brands, I do recommend that they work with smaller influencers to start out. Sometimes those influencers become bigger influencers, and you can build a relationship with them as they grow. Ideally, that’s what you’re looking for, you want to look for, maybe that smaller influencer, who you can actually get ahold of as a brand, depending on the size of your brand, you know it can and the size of the influencer, you may be able to get their attention. If you’re a smaller company going after a big influencer, they have more power than you, you might think, well, I’m going to pay them, well, they have lots of people that want to pay them. And so now you have to cut through the clutter, just to get a touch with this influencer. So you want to kind of keep that in mind, depending on your size and what you have to offer. And, you know, another thing you can do is you can offer exposure, you can say, we’re going to we’re going to tweet about you, we’re going to post on Instagram and promote you, we’re going to tag you in those posts that has value to the influencer. And it doesn’t necessarily cost the brand anything or, you know, maybe just opportunity costs of not giving that spot to someone else. And so there’s things you know, you could you maybe you have a conference, or maybe you have a deal with an airline where you have vouchers for flights, maybe to this influencer, they’d love to get a free trip, but to you it doesn’t really cost that much to provide that. So I think it’s it’s great opportunity for brands and influencers to talk to each other openly about what do they want? And what are their goals and see if there’s a way that both sides can get more of what they’re looking for, without costing more in ways that that isn’t as palatable, you know, to the brand.
Jason Falls
What about small businesses and everything from you know, mom and pop shops in small towns to you know, someone who’s got, you know, a 10 or 15 person company and they’re trying to, you know, they’re an entrepreneur trying to build something is do you see influence marketing as effective when they don’t have big budgets, and they don’t have a lot of scale or need for scale? Or is it something that is probably a little bit out of their comfort zone?
Justin Blaney
I don’t think that everybody should rush out and try to do this. I think that a company should have a pretty good idea of how they’re going to make this profitable and work for them and their size and organization. And a lot of small businesses say like a local restaurant. Well, if they’re going to work with an influencer, they’re gonna want to make sure that that influencer primarily has audience in the city and within which they exist. Because all of the exposure you know, so if you come to me and you have a store in Seattle and I live in Seattle, so we promote it together. Only 5% of my audience lives in Seattle, then you’re paying for 95% of my audience that’s not benefiting you. So that doesn’t work out very well. So it does, you know, when you’re, when you’re limited by geography that makes it a little bit more difficult, sometimes a lot more difficult to find influencers to work with. Now, there are influencers who specialize and have their audience primarily in certain geographies. And specifically with eating, that’s more common, because you have foodies that love to eat and get free meals. And so they kind of promote themselves as Seattle’s food expert. And so maybe that works out. So, you know, you want to be aware of some of those things, a lot of small companies can ship nationwide, or they can ship internationally. And that’s the best bet. Because, you know, person can come to your site from anywhere, no matter where they’re seeing that influencer, wherever they live, they can still benefit from it. So I would just with small businesses, and I’ve worked with small businesses more than big businesses in terms of my own consulting career, and it’s really the difference is that smaller businesses can’t afford to waste money on ineffective campaigns, it hurts more than with bigger companies. And so with a smaller business, I’m much more inclined to do a deal where I can specifically track the cost of acquisition, and make sure that that’s a profitable exchange, you know, stuff, lifetime value of the customer is $100. And $10 of that is profit, that I know that when I do a campaign, I need to acquire a customer less than $10 a customer, or I’ve lost money. You know, now you might look and say, well, they might might go viral, there could be some other factors. But I like a small business to really look at that do a small test, and see if they can make it work for a few hundred bucks before they go and spend $10,000 on a campaign. Because I have seen small businesses do that. And then everybody’s kind of looking around and saying, was it worth it? Well, if you have to ask the question, was it worth it and you’re a small business, I think that you didn’t set it up in such a way to make yourself successful, you need to know Yes, it was worth it. We spent $10,000. And we got $20,000 in profit. And we’re gonna we think we can improve this next time and make it so it’s a three to one exchange, That, to me is a really positive way for a small business to look at it. That’s great.
Jason Falls
Will Post for Profit: How Brands and Influencers are Cashing in on Social Media is the name of the book, by the way, your co author, Kate Fleming, tell us how you connected with her? Because I think she is she’s an influencer. But but I didn’t. I don’t think she set out to be …
Justin Blaney
No, no, she actually has a digital analysis background she’s programmer has kind of a different mind than you would think would normally be somebody that get in and be really successful with beauty and skincare. That’s more of a soft science, right. And so she what she actually did was she blended her her like programming and background and, and computer science. And she took that and applied it in the makeup world. So she goes out to her audience and says, I’m going to tell you what’s really in the makeup. And I’m going to try to help you make informed decisions. So you’re not spending $100 on something you could get for 10 bucks. And yeah, she started out. And I actually met her, I teach a class on influencer marketing at the University of Washington. And I needed a guest for to come to speak at the class. And I found her on Instagram and connected and was just really impressed with her. And so when it came time to look for a co author to help with this book, I wanted to get somebody with a different perspective for mine and reached out and offered that to her and we were often away.
Jason Falls
Well, often way you are the book is very good. I love again, I love I’ll hit on this again, I love the fact that it’s got great advice for influencers or those wishing to be influencers, and it’s got great advice for the brands that want to work with them will post for profit, how brands and influencers are cashing in on social media. Justin, where can people find the book? And then where can people find you on online?
Justin Blaney
Oh, thanks for asking. Yeah, well, the book will post for profit, we got that domain. So willpostforprofit.com. And if you go to slash specialoffer (willpostforprofit.com/specialoffer), we have $100 and freebies like we created a whole workbook that that accompanies the book. We have some q&a sessions with myself and my co author and we bring other guests and so that’s an offer that we can make available to your audience just for listening to the show. If they go to Wilco will post for profit, comm slash special offer, they can register to get that in the books available on Amazon wherever fine books are sold, of course, and we would love for people to check it out.
Jason Falls
That’s great. Justin, thank you so much for sharing this with us look forward to people reading the book. I’ve read it and it’s great and I hope they go out and get it and I really appreciate your insights today.
Justin Blaney
Thank you so much love, love to be on your show and we’d love to have you on my podcast some time I think we talked about that. It would be fun to have you as a guest on that.
Jason Falls
Let’s do it.
Justin Blaney
All right, let’s do it.
Transcribed by otter.ai
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