Two weeks ago I spent several hours judging entries in an influencer marketing awards contest. Part of the submission was for the brand or agency to describe their organization’s unique selling proposition. Every single entry had some version of the following in their answer:

“We focus on authentic, transparent and human connections with our … blah blah blah.”

You could literally copy and paste one agency’s answer to that question into the spot on any other agency’s entry and no one would have known the difference. It’s like they were told if they didn’t include some indication that they were all about authenticity, transparency and creating human connections, they were disqualified.

But, it was an influencer marketing award competition. That was to be expected to a degree. 

Then I flipped over to my Instagram feed and saw the following quote in a meme sent by a different agency. It read, “Honesty, transparency and authenticity are the key factors that will set your personal brand apart from the competition as a trustworthy, reliable source.” 

I snapped. It’s high time we kill all the talk about honesty, being human and transparency. And once and for all, stick a dagger in the heart of authenticity.

I’ll explain what I mean in today’s commentary.

This episode of Winfluence, the podcast, is sponsored by Julius. You owe it to yourself to do a demo of Julius today!

I mention that software more than others in my book because it’s the platform I’ve been using for a few years now to find influencers, engage with them and manage campaigns. Julius has powerful filters that let me drill down find just the gardening influencers in New England. Or the people who get excited about brick oven pizza. But it certainly also gives me the mega influencers and celebrity influencers I might need to help promote anything from stationery to toothpaste.

And in most cases, it has contact information so I don’t have to go fishing to reach them.

Oh, and they have their own audience health score to help you weed out ones with suspect audiences or engagement. 

All the elements of campaign management are in the software, too. I love the fact I can assign a purchase price or value to every single social deliverable that is a part of campaign, automatically track it based on the influencer using our campaign hashtag, and get an ROI report for each element. 

You know I wouldn’t say this if it wasn’t true — You owe it to your brand or agency to do a demo of Julius today. Go to jasonfalls.co/julius and request one. That’s jasonfalls.co/julius.

The Winfluence theme music is “One More Look” featuring Jacquire King and Stephan Sharp by The K Club found on Facebook Sound Collection.


Winfluence - Reframing Influencer Marketing to Ignite Your Brand

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Winfluence – Reframing Influencer Marketing to Ignite Your Brand is available now in paperback, Kindle/eBook and audio book formats. Get it in the medium of your choice on Amazon or get a special discount on the paperback version of the book by clicking the button below, buying on the Entrepreneur Press bookstore and using the discount code FALLS20. That earns you 20% off the retail price. Read and learn why we’ve been backed into a corner to think influencer marketing means Instagram and YouTube and how reframing it to be “influence” marketing makes us smarter marketers.

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