It’s hard to dig deep into social media marketing or influencer marketing and not come across the name Jim Tobin. He started one of the first social media agencies at Ignite Social Media in 2007. When he saw influence marketing becoming its own thing, he launched a second firm called Carusele which helps brands and other agencies drive performance-based influence marketing programs.
Jim and Erin Ledbetter lead the team and Carusele. Both joined me to talk about the evolution of both firms and how each company interacts with each other. But then we get into their approach to performance-based influence marketing. Carusele guarantees outcomes. It does so with a mix of organic and paid executions, but also with interesting innovations in analytics for influencers.
Carusele has developed a True View metric to report the actual views of an influencers content, rather than reporting reach numbers based on the amount of followers someone has.
Tobin is one of the industry experts I interviewed for Winfluence – Reframing Influencer Marketing to Ignite Your Brand and the book includes a few Carusele case studies. We dig deeper in this episode into how that particular agency ticks and what innovations they’re bringing to the space.
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Winfluence Transcript – Jim Tobin & Erin Ledbetter – Carusele
Jason Falls
Hello again friends. Thanks for listening to Winfluence – The Influence Marketing Podcast. The launch of the book Winfluence is getting closer. February 23 is when Winfluence – Reframing Influencer Marketing to Ignite Your Brand hits bookshelves. And in my book preamble series of podcast episodes, I’m talking to some people who make an appearance in the book — experts in the field, notable people in the influence marketing space that I often turn to for advice, conversation and more. Jim Tobin is a fixture in the social media marketing space, he started one of the first social media marketing agencies Ignite Social Media in 2007. The North Carolina-based firm quickly became one of the top social media agencies in the country and probably even the world. A few years ago, Tobin and his team which includes the always brilliant Erin Ledbetter started a new division of Ignite called Carusele. It focuses on influence marketing. They largely run campaigns for clients that are focused on a specific performance goal. So if you want 20,000 visitors to your website or 150 new reviews on appropriate review platforms, or 2 billion impressions from influencers, posting your product, Carusele guarantees performance through influencers.
Jason Falls
Because Jim and Erin both bring great perspectives to the table. I invited them both to join me for a discussion about the industry. We talked about Carusele’s unique true views algorithm which helps both predict how content will perform compared to the campaign goals, but also reports more realistic numbers for how many real people saw the content. We dug into content performance, influencer fraud, performance based pricing and a whole lot more Smart Insights on influence marketing from the performance agency in the space. Jim Tobin and Erin Ledbetter of Carusele are next on Winfluence.
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Jason Falls
Jim, I want to start with the fork in the road here you are plugging along with Ignite Social Media which was one of the first social media focused agencies you built a really nice business there. And then you launched Carusele. I’m guessing that was the point where you saw influence marketing becoming a business in and of itself. But take me through that idea and decision when did it come about and why.
Jim Tobin
And that was a really difficult to fit. And Jason, in fact, was right around late 2014 where we had tested some programs as Ignite. We were getting really good feedback. Things seem to be working well. But really, it was a couple of key points for us. One is that at Carusele, we focus on an outcome. We will guarantee a specific number of clicks to a website from an influencer campaign, for example. And so and that’s for a fixed price will guarantee a specific number of influencers a specific minimum amount of content, and then the outcome of that example clicks to the site. That’s very different than the traditional agency model, which is how many people that how many hours. Um, so that was one factor. The other factor was in Carusele, we suspected that we would be able to serve a number of agencies. And in fact, about a third of our business today is other agencies who need help with influencer. And we felt that doing it as Carusele was more clear that we had drawn a line and we weren’t going to try and you know, weasel in on their clients, take business from them, do anything unseemly like that. So, you know, different is also a little bit more campaign based at times, not when it’s at its best. But very often it’s, hey, we want to launch this product, can you help us launch this product? and ignite has more ongoing relationships that can last several years?
Jason Falls
Right? So Erin, you were there for this whole thing? I know you were at Ignite for several years before Carusele became a thing. So were you all in? Or did you think Jim was nuts? Or was the was the kind of writing on the wall as it were?
Erin Ledbetter
Oh, I was all in I was. So I was running our community management team at the time at Ignite. But you know, and community management does, there’s some crossover there with influencer and the way you can engage with influencers. Our community management team was also in charge of content. And so you know, as we were starting to work with influencers, who at that time, had really kind of turned the curve of becoming just amazing content creators, too. And they seem to just really get the social space. We were following them. And in terms of, you know, what is our content strategy look like? influencers were always the first ones to jump on, you know, everything new that was coming out from the platforms before brands were. So I was really following influencer anyway. And then when we went to launch Carusele, and we started taking this new approach on influencer, I was really excited about the way that we weren’t just using influencers as content creators anymore. We were, we were looking at, you know, what are the really neat things that have happened in the digital space and how it’s evolved in terms of targeting and measurement? Since ignite itself had started doing influencer back in like, 2008 or so. And I’m a data person, so I was just loving how we were we were being able to leverage some of that digital evolution.
Jason Falls
So So Jim, in my mind’s eye, I’m seeing ignite becoming Carusele, but there’s still two different businesses, right? How do you have them structured physically and or as feeders to and from each other? How separate are they? Or are they not just so I understand from a high level?
Jim Tobin
Yes, so Ignite owns Carusele, that’s the simple way to think of it. And Ignite is currently actually the bigger thing I may blab about Carusele a bit more on social channels then Ignite just because that’s where my personal focus has been in the last couple of years. But I’m Ignites actually, the bigger entity. And Ignite basically does all sorts of agency services just in the specialization of social media only. So we’re not going to do press releases or website building, just social media marketing. And the thing I like about our our construct is that sometimes they overlap. So for a very, very large e commerce retailer that you may have used, we did influencer programs that created content plus ignite created content, and then we put it on a big old media mixing bowl until we could drive conversions for them on their website. So it’s nice to be able to be separate on Monday and combined on Tuesday, although it drives me crazy now to get as I do that,
Jason Falls
Yeah. My next question was for Erin, I wonder if every client that comes into Ignite is not also a perfect lead for Carusele because it seems like influencers are becoming an almost requisite part of any social media strategies these days is is that fair to say? Or are there still pretty good dividing lines?
Erin Ledbetter
Um, I would say that Gosh, maybe 30-40% of our clients on the Carusele side are also Ignite clients. You know, in some cases brands are coming in and and where influencer lives on the brand side of things is very interesting. Depending on which brand it’s going to live on social it’s going to live on content, if there’s content, it’s going to live in the digital media side of things it might live on PR or the calm side of things still. And so you know, with depending on who the client is for Ignite, even if influencers are a great fit for that brand, ignite still may not have that as part of their swim lane. In the other hand, once in a while, yeah, ignite does have clients Where influencer just doesn’t make sense. At least the type of influencer, that Carusele does. We are very b2c focused. Ignite does both b2c and b2b not saying influencer doesn’t make sense for b2b, I just think it’s a different approach that you take when it’s b2b, then the way Carusele tends to approach influencer.
Jason Falls
Got it that makes sense. Now, let me throw this out there too, for either one of you. Are there still clients, or prospective clients you encounter on either side of the business that aren’t really bought in to the power of influencers? How much convincing Do you still have to do these days?
Jim Tobin
Yeah, we were talking about one this morning. You know, I got a reasonable budget assigned to it. But you know, there’s two people on the call and once one’s bought in, and the other says, I don’t really I’m not really bought in. But I just feel like it’s something we got to do these days. And so, you know, that reminds me a little bit of, you know, social media, we created ignite in 2007. Back when, you know, people were rarely allocating any significant budgets to social media marketing. And we had to convince some people there. And so I think, you know, when I hear those things, it’s my job to say, Okay, well, what do you what else would you spend your money on? If you weren’t doing this influencer? What would that get you? And can I deliver more for that dollar? That’s the challenge that sort of falls to us. But it’s not constant. Because typically, when people reach out, they’ve already decided they need influencer. Same with with social, but we still have people, we’re in the midst of very serious consideration, or even launch programs while they’re still skeptical.
Jason Falls
Yeah. So okay, so I want to get into one of the things that set you guys apart, I think from other agencies or services in the influence space, I’m a brand and I come to you with a goal. You helped me build a strategy, then find the right influencers to execute on that. But you’ve got a true views algorithm that intrigues me. So Erin, explain to me what that is, and how you implement it for me.
Erin Ledbetter
Yeah, well, what’s interesting is that the true view is, it’s not rocket science. All right, what we’re doing is not doing what influencer has done for years and years and years, which is to take credit for the total following of all of our influencers, because organic reach continues to dwindle every day. And so what we what we tend to see is that if we can just focus on the actual reach of every single piece of content, and then we can evaluate the performance, not against the total following that the influencer has but against the number of people who actually saw the content, the same way brands evaluate their social content, and you know how it performs every single day, then we can determine which content is likely to perform well and drive our brand objectives, if we give it broader reach. And so a typical Carusele program is going to have content that’s published organically evaluated against what those true views are. So just the viewable impressions that content received. And then we’re gonna layer in media on top to really expand the reach, we’re gonna use a lot of data to figure out who was that content performing with and optimize the media to get in front of more people just like that. So it’s really kind of leveraging the power of social content and audiences almost like a focus group, and then the power of digital media to get that targeted reach and drive your objectives.
Jason Falls
So is it predictive? Or is it reporting analysis? Or both?
Erin Ledbetter
It’s a little bit of both. So in terms of reporting, yes, the truth is we report on true view impressions. But the performance against those true views, we tend to see that performance in on the organic side of things, does a pretty good job of predicting how it will perform on the paid side of things. So if you if you look at a you know, an influencer campaign that maybe as 100 pieces of content that went out there, roughly 20 to 25%, just kind of rise above the rest. And what we’ll do is we’ll take that, we’ll put it into paid media. And we’ll see that again, that content is going to continue to perform well tends to perform above the typical brand benchmarks. It’s it’s almost like we call it a double float test, we kind of see what floats to the top. And then we get into the media side of things. And we see what floats to the top there. And we really optimized towards that high performing content.
Jason Falls
Very nice. I get the feeling that this true view or you know, true views algorithm is almost a step toward fighting influencer fraud to and in a way. I mean, we’ve talked about that on the program here before with a couple of folks, there’s fake followers, but there’s also comment pods and other behaviors out there that falsely inflate and influencers metrics, mostly vanity metrics. But still, the the true views algorithm almost gets to that point, because you’re not necessarily talking about dealing with fraud with true views algorithm, but you’re talking about being able to better define the actual views of a piece of content. versus the inflated Oh, that person’s got a million followers. So that’s a million potential reach. I wonder if you also have mechanisms or what your approach is to analyzing an influencers content and or network to fight against those fraud metrics? Because that’s something that’s of great concern, I think, as the conversation evolves in the industry.
Erin Ledbetter
Yeah, well, so for one, we have tools that allow us to actually do an analysis of the percentage of followers that the computer systems think are fake. So we do an authentic follower analysis, we also look at what their engagement rates are not just compared to their true views but to their overall following and how that aligns with others of similar size and category and we look at their growth rate so it’s really interesting. You You mentioned the comment pods, but we’re also seeing influencers get in these kind of sweepstakes or giveaway pods over the summer like right right after COVID hit and no one could get you know any no one could get gym equipment and they couldn’t get into the gym. We saw this happening where influencers were like in these groups giving away peloton and we wasn’t really giving away a peloton they were giving away 20 $500 that you could go buy a peloton with, but there were like 100 influencers involved in it and one person got a peloton. So it really wasn’t it. You thought that it was just the followers of this influencer, but it wasn’t. And what we saw as we saw these spikes of followers of all of these influencers who were participating, nobody’s being influenced by that influencer if they’re just following them to win a peloton. And so those are the types of things we’re looking at growth rate, we’re looking at the content the influencer is putting out there. We’re looking at the comments that are being left on their posts. So yes, there’s some there’s some you know, computer behind behind it kind of giving us some initial data. But really, I think one of the one of the things that sets good influencer and bad influencer marketing apart is do you take the time to do that hand vetting that really needs to be done? And make sure that this isn’t an influencer? who just has a bunch of emojis in their comments, they’re actually real people having real responses to their content, that’s going to tell us that they’ve got real followers and not a bunch of fake accounts, you know, and inflate their numbers.
Jason Falls
So what I’m hearing there is the the next innovation to come down through for Carusele is you’re gonna have percentage of fake followers, and percentage of coupon clippers and contest people. Right?
Erin Ledbetter
You know, I would love to get to that coupon … well, coupon clippers aren’t necessarily bad, okay, coupon clippers buy. They purchase. But yeah, the contest the sweepers, as we call them. Definitely not the types of folks that most brands are trying to get to.
Jason Falls
Right. So Jim, I talked to you for the book, thank you for that time, by the way. And in talking to you, then I got the feeling you guys are kind of obsessed with identifying the best performing content, then supporting that with paid spend, I guess I should first start out by saying is that fair to say? And then tell me how you go about identifying the best performing content?
Jim Tobin
Yeah, I think everybody would say, you know, we have, you know, we try to get the best influencers, we try to get the best content, we try to get the best result. I think our difference is that we start with the assumption at the beginning of the campaign, that there’s no way we’re going to know what the best content is, until it goes live. And so you have to be ready to pull in how each individual piece of content is performing through the API is what’s getting the most likes, comments, shares. But then as Erin said, you have to look at it by hand as well, just to make sure if something’s gotten 500 comments, are they all, you know, single emoji comments? Well, that’s bot traffic, are they all about the influencers jacket when a program is about, you know, hummus, and that’s not great content. And so you need to do a little bit of work, actual work not just on the computer to do the work to figure out those pieces of content in real time. And then you have to be ready to amplify only the high performing pieces. And not with just you know, okay, I turned on the brand and handshape branded content tool, the handshake tool, whitelisting whatever, and I throw 25 bucks at each influencer, every single post and who look at all that reach I’m getting now I mean, to do this really well, and you want to fight fake, well then optimize for conversions. And obviously you can’t do that when you’re selling, you know, mascara in a Walgreens, you know, pick up a retail, but you can do that on a lot of e commerce sites. And, you know, if you’re really optimizing every day toward conversions, you know, then it doesn’t really matter what the vanity metrics are saying. So it’s it’s difficult. We can’t always do it when we can do it. It’s really powerful. And one of the challenges the industry with pixels and third party pics Going away is it’s actually going to get a little harder to do that over the next, you know, year or two.
Jason Falls
So just out of curiosity, when you’re looking at the, you know, overall engagement, are you looking at it for the campaign in comparison to, you know, other posts in the campaign so that you’re optimizing for the campaign content? Or do you look at it as how that content maybe compares to previous content by that influencer to say, hey, this influencers over performing what they normally do? I mean, I can see value in both, but I’m curious about how you focus on it.
Jim Tobin
More the former. Go ahead Erin.
Erin Ledbetter
Well, actually, yeah, it’s, it’s really a little bit of both. Our c-stack algorithm is what you know, really does the measurement on content performance. And the most important metric is either going to be an engagement rate or a click through rate based on whatever the campaign objective is, we also have things like virality in there. So what’s basically this called the share rate. That’s an important metric. And then, yes, we do look at the comments and how those are performing. We’re going to end we’re going to compare that to not only other content in the campaign, but if a piece of content really outperforms or over indexes compared to that influencers content, it gets a boost there, too. It just it tells us that wow, this, it wasn’t just about this influencer and how their audience engages. But this piece really knocked it out of the park. And so that is a factor, though it’s not the most important factor.
Jason Falls
Awesome. Erin, can you can you do good influence marketing today without paid spend?
Erin Ledbetter
I think you absolutely can. I think it comes down to really understanding what your objective is. We, you know, we have brands come to us. And, you know, we’ll give them a recommendation because they’ve said, Oh, my, my objective is brand building and awareness. And I really just need the most people to learn about our brand. That’s number one. Okay, well, then I’m going to put some media behind that, because media is the most efficient way to get to your audience. Now, you know, obviously, we believe in influencer marketing. And so I believe that having a third party talk about your brand is going to be more effective in that media spend than your brand just out there, you know, staying at schpeel. But we still do have brands that will come and say, Oh, well, I thought I was gonna have more influencers than that. And absolutely, if one of the major benefits like I talked about when I ran the community management team, one of the major benefits of working with influencers is they are amazing content creators and storytellers. And if that’s a goal for your campaign, and that’s what you’re trying to get out of it. You want to leverage that content? Absolutely. You You don’t need to put any media behind it, you know, leverage those influencers. But I do think just, you know, because brands are really trying to compare what they’re spending an influencer to what they’re doing in the digital space. Otherwise, I do think media is becoming important. Because like Jim said, You’ve got to compare where, where am I going to spend my budget? Where else could I spend my budget? And I think what what’s happening is when brands don’t spend the media, then they turn around, and as long as they’re measuring true views. And they’re not measuring these inflated, like total reach types of numbers. You know, they turn around and they say, Wow, well, that that influencer campaign was $100. CPM? Well, of course, it was because you had baked into the cost of your campaign content production. So that was a non working dollar that you’re evaluating on a working dollar metric. And we see that happen a lot. So no, I don’t think media has has to be involved. But I do think you’ve got to consider what does success look like? What am I hoping to get out of this spend? And if you’re gonna compare it to another digital media approach, with cost per click cost per impression, cost per 1000 impressions, that type of thing? Yes, you need to include media to do that efficiently.
Jason Falls
Nice. Jim. I don’t recall who brought this up with me recently. I think it might have been Qianna Smith Bruneteau from the American influencer Council. I believe I talked to her a couple of weeks ago, but let me throw this out there. Do we as brands and agencies that serve brands need to start walking a fine line on paid support for influencer content? And I ask that because there’s this idea that if a brand pays to drive eyeballs and engagement to an influencers content, the network’s in question see that and see that they can make money from that influencers content, and thus could potentially turn down their organic reach, forcing the influencer to put more money into their posts. So to shorten the question, this paid support negatively impact long term organic reach for the influencers. And are we shooting ourselves in the foot by doing that too much?
Jim Tobin
Well, I think the cows out of the barn or you’ve already the bloods are on your foot or whatever you want to use, because I mean, organic reach has already plunged it plunged in 2013 for brands and you know, it’s not as bad, badly hurt for influencers, as it is for brands, but we can see organic reach among influencers. That’s how we calculated the algorithms we were talking about earlier. And that’s the data we’re pulling out of API’s in real time. So organic reach is already down, we calculated it roughly 9%. Now, that’s, you know, 0.5% for Pinterest, and maybe as high as 25 30%, for Instagram. So there’s huge volatility in there. But yeah, we’re, that’s that ship has sailed, number one. Number two, I think as brands, what we need to understand is there is a trade off between an ability to measure something and an ability to impact something. And what I mean by that is, if you come to me and say, I want, I want you to guarantee me 20,000 clicks to my website, landing this exact landing page with UTM codes in the month of March, I can absolutely do that. But I’ll tell you what, I’m not going to use YouTube. Because by the time I pay an influencer, to create a good piece of content, and then drive off YouTube, in that timeframe, it may not be the most efficient way to do it. However, that video, that’s a good review of your product, that’s really interesting. That may be driving links and sales that you simply cannot measure. Yes, you can put a track link in there, we have data showing you miss the majority of sales off of track length, you may put a promo code in there, that might work too, but it’s just, you’re not going to be able to measure it. And so when you compel, you know, an internal staff person on your team, or an agency or anyone else to give you provability in a certain window, you also you remove some tactics. And so there’s good reasons to do all sorts of tactics. There’s good reason to want measurability, we love measurability. But it comes with trade offs. And I think that’s what brands really need to be aware of.
Jason Falls
Yeah, Erin, you guys have an opt-in network of influencers too, I think and the influencer can come sign up to be considered for campaigns with your clients. Now, this is interesting to me, because I’ve talked to some influencer database companies who are built with the creator first mindset and ask them if using their own creators is a conflict of interest, because the brand wants to get the lowest cost for the most value, the influencer wants to get the biggest payment for the least amount of work. So I get the feeling your network of creators is probably more of a brand client centric network. Am I wrong? And if not, why would an influencer want to be connected there?
Erin Ledbetter
Well, I think the reason Yes, we we are absolutely representing the brands. So we are, you know, coming from the perspective that we want to get the best bang for our buck for our brands. That said, we also respect we wouldn’t be in this business, if it wasn’t for the influencers and the amazing work they do. So we very much respect that. They have built a business, they have built a following. And they’re amazing content creators. And given I think, since we come from the Ignite social media side of things where, you know, we also do that for a living, we are content creators for a living too, we understand what goes into that content production. So for us, we’re working with influencers. It’s not just about we want to reach your audience. But we respect your ability to tell an authentic story to create amazing photos and videos that represent the brand in an authentic way. That’s a great fit for the channels. And I think that our influencers who work with us, they feel that and they know that, yes, we do have an opt in network, but we also pull from a database of about 4.9 and growing 4.9 million and growing profiles that does scrape the internet to grow those profiles. So it’s not just about our opt in database that we’re leveraging. We definitely are always going to leverage whoever we think are the right creators for the campaign. And whether they’re in our opt in network or not. And those creators, it’s going to come down to the authenticity of their followers, that’s always important. Are they a good fit for the brand? Is their content a good fit? And then after we’ve added all that, yes, it’s gonna come down to price. Because again, we we are charged by our clients to spend their dollars as efficiently as possible to drive the best results. It’s not to say that, you know, our goal is not to undercut people because we won’t be able to work with them again if we were to do that, you know, but there’s there’s some categories of influencers where there are plenty efficiently See. And so if we can’t come to terms with somebody on, you know, a budget, whether they’re in our opt in network or they’re in that broader database, we can’t come to terms with them where we feel like you know, what they want to charge is a fit for what the brand needs to get their goals out of the campaign. We move on, we have less buying power in some categories than others. But yeah, again, we’re really we are focused on trying to do what is best for our clients to drive those results.
Jason Falls
So speaking of pricing, Jim, let me ask you this question. Do you think that we are in a position or the industry, I guess, is in a position? Because I’ve heard this term thrown around a little bit? I’ve had a couple conversations with people about it. Do you think we’re in a position within the influencer marketing space, that pay per performance is actually reasonable and will happen or will shift to happening? where an influencer doesn’t really get to dictate? You have to pay me this fee, but they they are paid on a CPM basis? And it’s compared to other forms of media? I don’t know, personally, that I see that being reasonable, because we’ve already kind of opened up the Pandora’s box of influencers, charging whatever the hell they want to charge. But I wonder what your perspective on that is.
Jim Tobin
I think the I don’t think they’ll be paid on a CPM basis purely. But I think the industry will coalesce around some norms, I think, you know, there’s a lot of articles and if you follow that Instagram, influencer pay gap, if you follow them use the constant complaining among influencers, who are, you know, being offered $25 to create five minute YouTube videos or something outrageous like that, and so it’s appalling on the low end, as well, or we’ll give you 30% off, it’s like, Wait, you’re gonna give me a coupon to produce content and get Kohl’s cash value. You know, it’s just, it’s appalling on the low end, as well. So I think there hopefully will become some standardization over, you know, sort of a low end and the high end, we’ve also had some ridiculous we had a $90,000 program, in which one influencer with not much following ask for $100,000 for a single post, you know, so that’s outrageous on the, on the other side. And so, needless to say, we didn’t work with that person. But I can see a future though, where influencers, and I think this is already happening, where influencers are being paid in sort of an affiliate style, but with the brand being more involved in highlighting their best affiliates versus, you know, here’s a code, good luck to you, we’ll use a network to cut you a check periodically, if you’re successful, I could see a deeper relationship where you know, both sides, you know, finances are a little more aligned. Interesting.
Jason Falls
So Erin, one last thing to ask I’m big on the relationship building part of influence marketing, if I’m the brand, I don’t just want to throw money and have someone post with my product that’s very transactional and sterile, I find, do you find it’s more difficult to not default to the transactional and sterile executions on scale? Or are there ways those relationships can still be nurtured? Even if you’re moving a lot of content over a lot of influencers in a short period of time?
Erin Ledbetter
Absolutely. Those relationships can be nurtured at scale. But really where I find the most problematic, you know, where it’s most problematic is brands aren’t investing the way they need to be investing to build those relationships. Some brands are and Oh, don’t get me wrong, we have some brands that are doing an amazing job. We have a packaged meat brand, believe it or not, that actually is is on their third year now have an amazing Ambassador building program. Where you know, they did start off very transactional with influencers early on. And and I think that was the right approach because you don’t want to sign on to this long term relationship with somebody until they’ve really proven themselves. But over time, we’ve built up some some pretty great ambassadors for them, who now consistently post about this brand, they’re creating recipes, they’re creating family meals, every time a new type of product comes out, they’re talking about that. So I I very much do think that, you know, brands are that are investing that way or are reaping the most benefits from influencer. I think the problem is a lot of brands. I think Jim mentioned this earlier, they’re they’re coming and they’re like, I want to just run a campaign for this product launch and they’re thinking about it in a very campaign based approach. And when you do that, you can’t sign on an influencer for a longer period of time and truly bring them in for a partnership. And you know, the The reason being is, you know, if you’re if you went to go hire me, you can’t you can’t ask me to work for you for a year and pay me for a week and say, but we don’t want you to try
Jim Tobin
I tried it Jason. I tried it.
Erin Ledbetter
Like, you’re gonna come to me and say, hey, I want you to do this mascara campaign, we’re launching this new mascara, but we don’t want you to work with any other mascara brand for the rest of the year. Because we might come back to you in like a month and then we might come back to you again in two months and three months and I’m sorry, but who’s gonna do that? Like that’s not a deal anybody’s gonna take and so I really think brands are shooting themselves in the foot with the way that they are allocating budgets to influencer marketing and not being able to build these long term relationships just because it’s so campaign based and the way they’re trying to approach the industry.
Jason Falls
Well Awesome. Thank you for this I love gathering the different perspectives on things for the listeners out there. Jim is one of the experts I interviewed for the book so several quotes and insights from him as well as a couple of Carusele case studies are in there too, I believe so look out for that in Winfluence. You can pre order at winfluencebook.com. Jim and Erin where can people find and connect with you or Carusele online? Let’s start with Erin. So we don’t talk over each other.
Erin Ledbetter
So I am socialsheek, spelled s-h-e-e-k at the end for on pretty much every network. And that’s how you can find me and then of course Carusele is spelled funny. Don’t ask why there’s a long story behind that. Again at Carusele c-a-r-u-s-e-l-e pretty much everywhere.
Jason Falls
And Jim, what about you?
Jim Tobin
Um jtobin on Twitter is probably the easiest one or of course LinkedIn is, is always good as well. So look forward to connecting.
Jason Falls
And for those of you out there who are Carolina or Kentucky fans, you probably are going to be a little dismayed by Jim’s feed. He’s a Dukie.
Jim Tobin
I am indeed. It’s a tougher year though, to do it than most years. So we’ll see.
Jason Falls
That’s true. It was just this week, they you know, came up to Louisville and got beat again. So Coach K’s 6-8 against the Cards. I had to point that out. All right, so thank you both so much for the time and the insights and do please keep up the good work.
Erin Ledbetter
Thank you.
Jim Tobin
Appreciate it Jason.
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.
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