Online influencers have evolved in the short 15-20 years that social media sites have been around. When I got into the industry in the mid-2000s, the notable people online were people who had authority and followers as bloggers, or were vote-jockeys on content promotion sites like Reddit and Digg.
One of the first influential people in that world I made friends with was Tamar Weinberg. She had a popular social media and technology blog at Techipedia. Which is still active, by the way. She was one of the top 50 influencers on Digg.com, which meant if she posted a link to your content, you got a flood of website traffic and credibility.
While social media influence has evolved to be very social network focused, success still comes to those who can create content. Monetization comes to those who can creatively intertwine branded content in with their own in ways relevant to the community. Blogging is no different, even if the cool kids today aren’t doing it, and Tamar knows long-form written content better than anyone.
As if that angle weren’t enough to want to learn more from her on the podcast, Tamar’s struggle with postpartum depression and motherhood led her down a very interesting path to launch a product — a fragrance — appropriately named Tamar. We talk about how that came about and this interesting new direction for her — I’m sure she’ll be identifying influencers for it as the business grows — but we also dive into the evolution of what online influencer was versus what it is.
Listen, like and share!
Connect with Tamar on LinkedIn or Twitter. You can get her book, The New Community Rules, on Amazon.
Winfluence Transcript – Tamar Weinberg – Tamar
Jason Falls
Hello again friends thanks for listening to Winfluence – The Influence Marketing Podcast. Online influencers have evolved in the short 15 to 20 years that social media sites have been around. When I got into the industry in the mid 2000s, the notable people online were those who had authority and followers as bloggers or were vote jockeys on content promotion sites like Reddit and Digg. Keep in mind this was before Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat or TikTok were even invented. Myspace was big but becoming tired. YouTube and Twitter were brand new. So blogs and sites that promoted blog content were the thing.
Jason Falls
One of the first influential people in that world I made friends with was Tamar Weinberg. She had a popular social media and technology blog at Techipedia which is still active, by the way. She was one of the top 50 influencers on Digg.com, which meant if she posted a link to your content, you got a flood of website traffic and credibility. Tamar went on to write a great book about social media marketing called The New Community Rules: Marketing on the Social Web. She wrote for Lifehacker and Mashable and, on the side has run content teams for dozens of companies large and small.
Jason Falls
While social media influence has evolved to be very social network focused today, success still comes to those who can create content. Monetization comes to those who can creatively intertwine branded content in with their own in ways relevant to their community. Blogging is no different. Even if the cool kids today aren’t doing it, and Tamar knows long form written content better than anyone. She is still managing big content teams with the goal of meeting customers where they are in the funnel. While the focus today may not be as much on “going viral” Tamar knows how to build fundamental influence for a brand’s content by making it interesting, relevant and optimized for people and search engines.
Jason Falls
As if that weren’t enough to want to learn more from her on this podcast. Tamar struggle with postpartum depression and motherhood led her down a very interesting path to launch a product of fragrance appropriately named Tamar. We talked about how that came about, and this interesting new direction for her — I’m sure she’ll be identifying influencers for it as the business grows. But we also dive into the evolution of what online influence was versus what it is today. Tamar Weinberg, my first online influencer pal, coming up on Winfluence.
Jason Falls
So I know we want to talk about your new line of fragrances. Epinonimously, or epinima eppi, epinomiously or whatever that word is called Tamar. But I really think the story of Tamar is your is your journey to get there. So let’s take a little bit of a chronological path. If you don’t mind. You and I met at a social media conference in 2007, I think it was. And you were a known influencer, if you will, though. We didn’t call ourselves back then. In the social media and tech space. How did you get to that point? Tell us the kind of the story of Tamar Weinberg social media maven.
Tamar Weinberg
Yeah. Well, thank you. First of all, for having me, Jason. I, I think it’s at the end of the day, it comes down to the early adopter advantage. I was very diligent. I lived in social media before social media was a thing. I was on social networks before anybody really saw any potential. I was literally paying, sometimes $300 a month. And this is when I was a child. So I wasn’t paying it. My father was. My AOL bill and just interacting with people online. And I like, I’m not I consider myself pretty introverted. I don’t know if I read people, well, socially in like a personal interaction, but I can read emotions through text. And I think it gave me an edge. And thus, when I was 12 years old, I wanted to work. I wanted to work in computers. This was like in 1993. And I wanted to major in computer science, simply because there was no marketing, if you will, type of discipline, Or social media marketing, that definitely wasn’t a thing. I found myself pushing through computer science, even though it was absolutely nothing of what I expected. And I said, you know, maybe I’ll build like software apps or something. And no, I never it was the academics. I noticed a little bit of a tangent, but this is sort of interesting insight. I didn’t really like I just I just wanted to, like I said it was going to do it. So I knew I was going to do it, even though I hated it. And now we move into the next couple years. And I worked as a systems administrator, because I wanted to work with people now, computer science and social media. So computer science and systems administration as totally not the same thing. They’re completely outside of that scope. But it kind of was starting to work my way toward what I wanted to do. I wanted to do something with technology and with people. And over time, you know, my interactions online, social media … sites were starting to evolve and, and people were starting to get on go online, I already had a foothold in that industry. I’m not really from from, you know, a profitable perspective. But again, I totally understood how to read people. I also knew what type of content at that time it was a lot of, you know, content marketing was still it was it was actually a thing. And sites like Digg and Reddit — Digg.com. And Reddit, which still exists, I think, is sort of defunct, it’s not exactly the same variation of what it is right now, I don’t even know what it is. I think it a news aggregator of sorts with better it’s curated. If that exists, I don’t even know. But back in the day, if you wanted to be on the front page of Digg, you had you needed to have like pretty much two things going for you. Number one, a strong social media network. And number two, an understanding of content that would resonate to an audience that would potentially up-vote it. And I was working at a, I found myself at you know, as a systems administrator at a search engine marketing company, and they had seen potential for me in, in kind of understanding that mindset of like, what kinds of content would work really well. So we built some really strong content. And I built really strong connections. And that, you know, eventually, that worked really well and propelled a lot of our clients to the front page of these services. And all of a sudden, people looked at me because I was also I was also a blogger. I wanted to be an author more than anything else, but I like technology. So I was blogging, and I kind of gave myself some visibility and being very, very early.
Tamar Weinberg
It’s so weird right now, because, you know, I kind of felt like I took a backseat. I had four children part of problem … part of the issue I don’t really a problme. But now I see these days. And it’s funny, because last week I cuz I hired a TikTok, TikTok influencer for consulting. And it’s just like, you know, I was an influencer, like, in 2006-2007. And now I’m hiring help. Because, you know, obviously, you have to ask for help. And you don’t have to be afraid. But yeah, I don’t know if I have the influence anymore in the way that I kind of would have liked.
Tamar Weinberg
But back then it was a huge thing. I was at the highest point, at my highest point, I was the top 40. I was number 42 in the top 100 of Digg. And that got me a tremendous amount of visibility, those conference speaking engagements. I worked, I was recruited by Lifehacker and Mashable — was working for them for a while. And I even wrote a book on social media marketing. And then, and then all the things changed. So yeah, that’s the story.
Jason Falls
So it kinda … it’s funny, because you you lead right into another question I wanted to ask. So from an influencer marketing perspective, you’ve not only been one but but have been a consultant or an agency person with your clients over the years, putting those programs together? how did how did did one role for you feed into the other? What did you take from being an influencer? First, that maybe made you better at partnering with influencers? Or vice versa?
Tamar Weinberg
I think it was just really an understanding of how to make content, client content compelling. You know, there were clients who have had sort of the most boring type of content, like, I mean, like I worked with, like an office supply shop. What the heck am I supposed to make exciting for them? I’ll figure out something, you know, I worked with, I forget some of these clients, we did some viral contentn that that had nothing to do with their target, like what their target market was, but it was to potentially reach an audience that they weren’t able to reach. Like, I’m just trying to think of the type of viral campaigns that we had. Um, but most of these things like for example, like I worked with, like a travel client, and we kind of talked about like, the top subway stations of of like the throughout the world. So that was sort of appropriate. And it got a tremendous amount of links and tremendous amount of news because it is potentially controversial. Some people were like, hey, that’s not about it’s not the type of … I don’t agree, I think we need to be there or this one should not be number one. It was it was actually really fun. Back in the day, like those were how you garnered links you have to make, you have to figure out … every type of business has a means of making their content, relevant. It doesn’t have to be like, and this is something that even though I’m talking about like this happened in 2006, 2007 and even 2005. It there, there are ways to, it doesn’t have to be completely self promotional, but it should be tangiential to the target market. So like, for example, if you’re, if you are writing about an office supplies store something like, you know, you are an office supply store talking about something that would be relevant to office workers, and so it could make them productive. You know, those are the types of things that we did. And it’s still something that works to this day, you just have to do a lot differently now, and a lot more comprehensive. You know, like, I find my influence potentially waning in the context of like, the content that I’ve written in the past, because unless you’re like, re, you know, revisiting that content, and refreshing that content and adding additional words to that content, and not saying, puffing it up, but like, actually, you know, really making it beefy enough and compelling enough, then then that stuff eventually falls. But like, back in the day, that was the way to do it, because, you know, it’s about making content in general, very approachable, and exciting, and a way to build links and visibility in some way. Yeah.
Jason Falls
You know, I think the the evolution of things in the last 10 years, I mean, obviously, when, when I look at content today, that is the same type of content, that tangential content that we would have, you know, posted on, you know, Reddit, or, or Digg, or, you know, some of those other sites, so social new sites back then, I think the the, the marketplace brands got it, they understood, okay, we have to build essentially linkbait content. But I think they’ve, they’ve kind of, in the last, I don’t know, five years or so, I feel like brands that are doing content marketing out there, the content is becoming more and more stale. It’s almost like they’re coming back to this sort of self promotional perspective, and not really doing things that are quite as interesting anymore. I wonder if that’s what you see when you see content out there in the marketplace or not? Because it seems like every time I see a brand, saying, hey, we’ve got this great article here, and I go look at it, it’s just like, oh, here’s top 10 reasons to buy your product. And that doesn’t interest me at all.
Tamar Weinberg
Right. And I think that that content has a time and a place, but you have to have a little more content, like top 10 reasons to buy my product over the competitor, that is something that a prospect will 100% evaluate. But the difference is, you know, if that’s all about if that’s your entire content strategy, then no, it’s not about that, how it you know, Simon Sinek wrote the book of, Start With Why. It’s not about what it’s the why of why your content is going to be there. You know, my, like, I launched a perfume brand. What is my why it’s not about my wife, it’s about the story of what compelled me to start this brand. And it ultimately, like, it’s about creating happiness. That’s my why I’m not selling my product, I’m selling a solution. There’s a lot of stories like this. If you’re familiar with the Storyboard, uh, concepts. Same thing, it’s like, you know, finding a hero finding a villain finding the solution. I forget that I forget the, the guy who wrote the book, but like that whole that whole, like, there’s a, that, that there’s so much stuff about that. It’s about really making it about them, versus about yourself.
Tamar Weinberg
And content marketing is still so valuable. You know, you think about and it’s like, last night, you and I both I think we both commented on our mutual on our mutual friend, Stephanie’s, you know, post, where she was kind of asking, I’m not going to get too specific information, because I don’t know how much information I should share. But you know, that people are pushing back against blogging, because what are they seeing from it? But, you know, at the end of the day content is literally like, 90% of what I do. And, and that’s not you know, just in the context of the perfume, it’s the context of you know, right now I’m watching the brand, but perfectly honest, like, there’s still going to be some time before that brand is going to be my 100% focus. So content is literally what I do. And I mean, I’m, I run a team, a very, very large team. And literally, we have tremendous amount of writers and marketers at our disposal and why? Because it works. And the specific industry that I represent in this content sphere, is extraordinarily cutthroat. That content needs to be extremely high caliber. And we need to think about all the full elements of the funnel from the completely unaware to the completely product aware solution aware and the like, you know, you can’t you can’t skirt away from that and you have to provide, you know, an unaware person doesn’t even know about your product right now. They need to know about the potential solutions that could exist. So, you do have to kind of speak to the entire funnel not just, you know why my product is amazing because they don’t care. It doesn’t it’s not going ….
Jason Falls
Now your for just for the benefit of the listeners out there, you know tomorrow is talking about sort of the day job as it were because the fragrance, which we’re gonna talk about now is something she’s building the day job is she runs a you know, very large content marketing team for for a company. So let me let me ask the question this way tomorrow because I think the big life change obviously you mentioned earlier, you’ve got four kids, you know, you as you started a family and whatnot, I think you, you you obviously kept working but your I think influence status kind of waned a little bit because you were occupied building a family. But I think it was walking down that path of a big life change and being a mother and whatnot, that kind of led you down the path that eventually led to the idea for tomorrow, take us through that origin story and tell us how you landed on and a place where you wanted to start a fragrance?
Tamar Weinberg
Yeah, it’s, it’s not something I would ever, if you had told me 5, 3-4 years ago that I would be doing this, I would be like you’re out of your mind you were dropped on your head. I don’t know where you would have come up with this. I mean, I’m the biggest tomboy, I build my computers, I don’t even own a pair of heels, and I don’t wear makeup. So here I am creating a perfume brand. What? So but, the story is that it’s not about perfume for perfume sake. And I was I will get into that. When I’ve had my first child in 2009, I would say that I did hit a depression. It was a very profound depression. But it wasn’t something that it was profound initially from the get go wasn’t something I had awareness of. So, you know, I was very happy. And I was like, Oh, I’m gonna have more kids. It’s so exciting. And but I didn’t realize that I the joy was sort of sucked out of me. And as I continued having children, I had, you know, my second one in 2012, and then 2014. And then in 2016, I would say that I was mildly depressed, but the awareness of the depression was not quite there. And then in 2016, that vulnerability, all of a sudden, like, you know, when you’re a parent, and I don’t really share this, but I think it’s important to share this when you become a mother. You know, at the end of the day, you went through a tremendous amount of trauma, but it’s like your trauma is like kind of second, secondary or tertiary. It’s not like it’s totally put in the backburner. And your kid all of a sudden becomes your 100% priority. And like, you know, and I think that’s really what, what causes postpartum depression for so many people, you know, they go through this tremendous amount of trauma, mentally, emotionally and physically. And what, and then nobody does anything for them, or they give you food, you know, maybe they’ll give you some presents, but like, how are you being spoken to and how handled emotionally. So I didn’t realize having this. And by 2016, I actually felt that I had a codependency on it on somebody who’s like, all of a sudden gave me kind of the emotional thing that I was basically clawing for. And I was like, Oh, my God, I totally told I got addicted to it. And that ended up actually imploding in my face. Because, like, I guess there was instability from being mildly depressed for as long as I have. And it ended up like ending in a trauma. For me, it was like kind of thing I wouldn’t work well wish upon my worst enemy. Let’s put it that way. And that was 2018 April 2018. And I basically wake up, go through the motions, I would, I was hoping to change things and get things done in a better way. But, um, it was it was not salvageable. And to this day, I have no closure whatsoever, and it’s painful, but at the end of the day, like that was the way it had to be, I guess, the worst part of my life, but maybe the best thing that ever happened to me.
Tamar Weinberg
I ended up becoming you know, like, I was withdrawn my bedroom I was working over like crouched over a laptop, and that was my thing. Now I’m sitting with a, you know, in a, in an open space, like I wasn’t back in the day, that was not my thing. And then one day, probably in the middle of the summer so early … This was like at the end of June or early July. I I don’t know what what it was that compelled me but I found a tiny vial of perfume in a cabinet. And you know, I had been pretty much doing like I said, going through the motions. I did things very, very basically, I didn’t I didn’t deviate from my norm which wasn’t much of a norm It was like, you know, I didn’t maintain myself well at all. When you’re depressed, you don’t care what you look like you definitely don’t care what you smell like but for some reason I decided I’m going to put on perfume that day. And all of a sudden, like I took that breath of the the fragrance and I felt like I got excited about it. I don’t know what it was. And it wasn’t such a selfish intention here. But at the end of the day, it sort of had selfish and selfish overtures or whatever it was. And I got super super into like wanting to experience scent. The next I did was I like went to Sephora. I was like, This is so amazing. Well, actually, firstly, this specific brand, I ended up like buying all their stuff online and looking for the 40% off coupon because I wanted to buy their entire catalog. And of course, I needed that to justify financially and, and then I went to Sephora and I was literally spraying things basically from like my fingers to all the way to my shoulders to get experience of scents in different ways. And to kind of learn a little bit more about it, taking advantage of sales, lots on eBay and asking my Freecycle and Buy Buy nothing websites, local websites, Can people assist me with perfume? I just got so infatuated by it. And like I said, you know it like it woke me up.
Tamar Weinberg
Um, you know, I start to liken it to you know, the fact we have five senses. But if you think about smell, it’s taken for granted. You know, if I ask you, What did you eat yesterday? What did you wear yesterday? What did you watch yesterday? Where did you listen to yesterday, you will have answers for all four of those things. And I asked you, what did you smell yesterday, you’re gonna think I’m a whack. What the hell is she talking about and I realize we don’t care about smell. But there actual literal, a literal science of that, like longitudinal studies that show that if a person has lost their sense of smell, over their sense of sight, they will actually be more depressed, if they if they’re anosmiate, which means they lost their sense of smell than if they went blind. Because eventually people adapt to the blindness. And people do not adapt to smell. And yet, we don’t even think about it, we don’t think about it. And I said to myself, there is something I need to do here. I, I also don’t like respond well, to perfume ads. And I think that’s why I was doing this and what like, I used to own a perfume that I loved. But I threw it out, in a way because I thought it probably got bad. I was probably wrong. By the way, I think it was fine. But But I also did for my sense of myself, I do not like this, like I don’t like the way sensor is marketed. It’s so it’s all about seduction. It’s all about sexualization. And I don’t respond well, to those types of ads. I don’t need sex selling. I, you know, I want things a little more G-rated, maybe because I’m a parent. That’s among other reasons. But I said to myself, we perfect … scents is not like I think we need to start thinking about scents in a way that first of all, it needs to be part of your daily practice. And you need to actually take a mindful approach toward it. And that it should be part of your mental health, self self care, intentional, intentional self care ritual. And in 2019, after my vast exposure to perfume, I said, I’m going to launch a brand. And the reason why it’s called Tamar because you brought it up. First of all, I own Tamar.com. But that’s not really the reason why. It was actually two Thanksgivings ago, I raised it with my family and my brother in law’s like, you should call it Tamar. And I’m like, Oh, I own the domain, I might as well. It was really just great.. But it’s like more of a fact that I felt like I was a zero and then I feel like I could potentially be a hero to help other people and to just bring in scents and all of a sudden that could change their lives. Yeah.
Jason Falls
That’s great. So so give us the rundown. I know, you’ve got two different scents that are available and then kind of break those down for us and, and who are these for?
Tamar Weinberg
It’s for anybody. Honestly. It’s very hard. Because how do you define your target market? And it’s as an influencer these days? And I’m like, Oh, I don’t really know. Like, at the end of the day, it is for any like, you know, my children our into Fume — my four year old. He says, I was Fume. You know, like the young kids. I think it’s it’s about taking fragrance and normalizing wrist sniffing. It’s for anybody at the end of the day. It’s really for anybody who’s not allergic to perfume and can put it on. I tried to you know, I call it powerful but not overpowering. Um, by I mean, it is unisex and it is I mean, it’s about putting it on. Like, people who love essential oils would probably also think about it this way. Like when you when you have a like it’s not about no I don’t want to focus on essential oils. I mean, like I consider fragrance for myself a mindfulness practice. I think that it’s it’s really about putting on perfume, aligning the application of perfume with a specific mindset. So for example, I put it on and I have great happy and healthy thoughts. Healthy, wealthy thoughts, whatever it is. And then I take time throughout the day, just to smell and breath it in … anchor myself in the presence that sort of like, you know, the whole entire mindfulness exercise, and hopefully, because they scents and you know, memory are so closely intertwined, that just by the fact that you’re smelling, it’s sort of suggestive. It’s like, you know, the objective of like you put on, you have affirmations, and for example, you might write your affirmations, or you might reinforce your affirmations through the practice of looking at it, or just knowing that it’s there. And over time, that’s gonna be sugg … suggestive, and it could potentially change your life. And I feel that just with a small act of putting on perfume, taking a quick sniff at that moment, and then doing it maybe like a few times throughout the day, three, four times, eight times, however many times you’d like to because it’s supposed to smell so good. That could change your life. That’s the mindset.
Jason Falls
So I’m thinking about marketing this now and asking, okay, how are you going to take this new way to think about fragrance and think about perfume to the market? So let me ask you this from the perspective of a business owner trying to build a brand and marketing product, as you plan this out. What channels do you imagine prioritizing to get the word out there and change that mindset to not only say, here’s a product that I would love for you to buy, but also I want you to think differently about fragrance and about smell what channels you’re going to use.
Tamar Weinberg
Well that’s where the things get very difficult. It’s not easy. It’s extraordinarily disruptive. And I keep saying to myself, how do I get into this marketplace? Because, you know, frag heads, if you will, those are the fragrance lovers, don’t necessarily see fragrance as doing anything but … like I’ve been I’ve been immersed in that industry, like in that space for the last two years. And I see why people wear perfume. Well, I want to smell good for somebody else. It’s not about doing it for somebody else. It’s about doing it for yourself. It’s about self love and self care. So getting … penetrating that particular audience, you might get buyers, but it’s it’s a disruptive mindset. And then if you’re focusing on the mindfulness and the essential oils type of industry, they don’t necessarily see perfume as needing to potentially reach them. So how do I do it? You’re guess is as good as mine. That’s the biggest challenge that I have. But I think there’s like it is about an education, it’s a completely new education. That’s why I’m sort of like reaching out to the unconventional marketers and tech people, I don’t necessarily know if I need to penetrate the these these industries that might have a little more of a proven value proposition. Um, you know, how did some businesses get out there? I’m trying, I’m basically I’m open to ideas. I think at the end of the day, there will be like, outreach to people who are in the psychology space, the mindfulness space, you know, I am going to be writing and reach PR, you know, the reason why I say going to be is because just full disclosure is I did a crowdfunding campaign, was successful there. I am literally in the middle of making … finalizing my first batch of orders. And I am kind of on hiatus until the product is in hands because I don’t want to aggressively market without like, if I’m, if I get a sale, someone might want it next week, and I don’t have it next week. So I need to make sure I have product before I actually do any of these things. And I’m not sure. You know, because there it is an extraordinarily massive education. Um, I also think that I need to potentially scientifically validate my anecdotal experience. This was what worked for me, but people have since I’ve shared my story, several people have come up to me and they said, perfume has taken me out of my depression. So what I’m saying is not completely foreign. But how do I potentially get that to a place where there’s evidence and other people might benefit from — oh my god? My competitors might steal the concepts … but I don’t know. I you know, but I don’t see it necessarily as competitive. I don’t want my my idea to be competitive. I you know, at the end of the day, sure. I want my product to be the product that people use for this intentional mindfulness practice, but it’s about scent in general leverage your scent, I want to help people it doesn’t have to be through my products.
Jason Falls
So Ta,ar, where can people find this wonderful new brand online? How can they get their hands on it when they can get their hands on it? And how can people connect with you?
Tamar Weinberg
Well, I don’t know when you’re publishing this, so I should have prepared for that. But um, it’s probably the end of December. So we’re very very, very close. I mean, we’re really it’s pretty much yeah, we’re very like hopefully people will have products by the end of holidays, or sorry, even before the holidays. And you can go to Tamar.com. As far as following me, there’s Tamar on LinkedIn it’s uppercase TAMAR, with a period. I am on all the networks here’s the way to keep track of. You could try Tamar.com. You can ping me @tamar @tamar on Twitter and I will respond to you give you some further further follow up links if you if you if you will.
Jason Falls
Well, and we’ll make sure the links are in the show notes as well.
Tamar Weinberg
Yeah.
Jason Falls
So, Tamar you gotta promise me a year from now when this thing’s blowing up, you’re gonna come back and tell us how you did it.
Tamar Weinberg
Yeah, I’m happy to do that. I would love to be a longitudinal study. I’ve been participating in some entrepreneur perspective like it … local stuff here to help as a mentor and it’s like they’re they also want that. They want to understand you know, the struggles that people are dealing with the beginning. It’s not it’s not perspective that most people get you usually hear from somebody when they’re a little more established a little more successful and I know immortally and I’m happy to provide. Yeah!
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.