In the book Influence Marketing, we dedicate a chapter to some of the platforms we felt were leading the way in the next wave of influence marketing.

These platforms include Traackr, Tellagence and others, for the way they’re moving beyond generic influence and actually delivering business intelligence and results.

Of course, the limitations of a book, as well as how fast this space moves, meant as soon as we’d finished, new platforms came into play that impressed just as much.

One such platform is InNetwork, from Nova Scotia, Canada.

Quality Assurance and Influence

The beauty of the platforms that are moving the influence conversation forward is that they all have something different to offer, and can either complement each other or be used because of these differences for specific campaign needs.

• Traackr, for instance, has their new INA solution, which allows you to see who influences the influencers (a key factor for success in the methodology we present in the book);
• Appinions takes into account offline data, which counters the “you’re only influential if you’re online” approach that the likes of Klout take;
• Tellagence tracks the ebb and flow of influence across communities, and helps identifies the next layer or generation of influencers.

For InNetwork, their differentiating factor is the authority stance they take when identifying influencers.

When you use InNetwork as a marketer and you set up your first campaign, you enter the keywords around the industry you’re in, and the target audience for that industry. That starts to populate InNetwork’s influence roster, as highlighted in the image above.

There are two types of influencers on InNetwork – registered and searched. The registered ones are those that have connected their data to the InNetwork database, and these are highlighted by blue stars.

The searched ones are those that haven’t registered with InNetwork, but have dropped into your search based on keywords used.

This is where the first part of the InNetwork Authority metrics comes into play.

When an influencer registers, they are manually curated by the quality control team at InNetwork, who verify authority on a topic, that they aren’t a bot or fake account, that the numbers add up, and that the influencer actually knows what they’re talking about. Only then do they gain access to the system.

This offers an immediate benefit for brands used to using social scoring platforms for “influencer outreach” campaigns. No more generic, no more false expertise – instead, real influencers with real audiences.

But the authority doesn’t stop there.

The True Audience of Influence

Once you start to use the various filters while setting up your campaign, the audience number of the influencer changes.

While someone may have a collected “follower” number of 10,000 across Twitter, Facebook, blogs, etc, not all 10,000 are going to be interested in the same thing.

For instance, a marketing blogger’s audience may be made up of small business owners, Fortune 50 executives, non-profit volunteers, etc. They need different information for different strategies.

Likewise, a lifestyle blogger may have married moms with teens, single moms with a toddler, retired moms, etc. Again, they’re going to need different messages targeted to their different buying needs.

As you add extra keywords and demographics into the InNetwork algorithm, it starts to show you what the true audience size for these filters looks like, as shown in the image below.

Now, instead of a non-targeted couple of thousand followers, you have access to a very targeted couple of hundred, that are in your target audience demographic and trust the advice of that particular influencer on that topic.

It immediately ramps up the success potential versus throwing a generic message at 5,000 audience members and seeing what sticks.

The more filters you add, the more targeted results you get, until you have a roster of influencers with a warm and engaged audience that’s right for your brand and the message/product/service you’re trying to promote.

The One to One Relationship Factor

Now that you have your chosen influencers, InNetwork adds the final piece of the authority puzzle.

Brand managers, or whoever’s responsible for the relationship with the identified influencers, now have access to a Brief and Statement of Work area, as well as a private messaging function directly with the influencer, as shown in the two images below.

Here, the brand can connect with the influencer directly, and propose their project as well as their requirements, goals, expectations, compensation and more.

In return, the influencer can negotiate that statement of work, to ensure that the message that’s shared with their audience is right for them; doesn’t impact the trust of the influencer; and offers a fair reward for the work that’s being done.

With both sides working together like this, it ensures the brand’s message is going to the right audience, and that the brand is allowing the influencer to share the message in a way that’s relevant to their community.

It’s one of the core reasons any campaign succeeds and, more importantly, moves beyond a short-term campaign and into a longer term loyalty and advocacy relationship.

Once the campaign finishes, the influencer can be “ranked” for relevance of message, results, goals met, and general working relationship. This again helps InNetwork connect the strongest influencers for brand messages, based on their proven metrics and successes in similar campaigns.

The Future Looks Bright

InNetwork only came into public beta launch at the beginning of June, but already you can see they put a lot of legwork in when it comes to providing the type of solution agencies want and need.

The fact they carried out a lot of pre-build conversations with brands and agencies as to what solutions would be useful shows in the features highlighted here.

There are some features currently missing that I’d love to see added – the ability to add your own search terms, versus the pre-defined ones, for instance. Additionally, reports are currently generated by a client services team versus being able to define your own metrics and apply that data manually.

However, it’s still early days for InNetwork and these are two features that have been promised in either the next iteration, or an update before the year end.

For brands right now, the platform offers a solid, very easy-to-use solution that takes the pain out of identifying the true reach and relevant audience for an influencer roster, as well as baking in authority data throughout the whole platform.

It takes influence marketing into another excellent and much-needed direction and for that I’m extremely optimistic about what InNetwork is adding to the influence conversation.

The market continues to mature – and that’s never a bad thing.

This post is part of a demo program I’m running in partnership with InNetwork, to test the platform and offer feedback and direction on the platform itself. No financial compensation was exchanged, and these opinions are my own.

If you wish to trial the platform, you can sign up here. During the beta phase, InNetwork costs $499 per month for an agency site license for up to 5 users on unlimited campaigns. Brands can use it directly for $249 per month for three users.  

InNetwork, the Drive for Authentic Influence and What It Means for Brands originally appeared on Danny Brown - Social Media * Marketing * Influence under a Creative Commons license.

As a business resource, Slideshare stands pretty much head and shoulders above most other content platforms.

From presentations to educational content and more, you can find information and curated media on pretty much any topic you have an interest in.

As a research solution, Slideshare offers analysis from some of the smartest minds on the web across all verticals. These include standard presentations, videos, multimedia and more.

Which brings us to this week’s Sunday Share.

Every week, I’ll be sharing a presentation that catches my eye and where I feel you might be interested in the information inside. These will range from business to content to social media to marketing and more.

This week, an excellent presentation from content marketing agency NewsCred.

As content marketing becomes an ever more important staple in marketing, businesses need to understand how they can benefit from the content they produce. These 50 stats show the growing importance of content in the marketing mix and why you should be using it as part of your strategy.

Enjoy.

The Sunday Share – 50 Stats You Need to Know About Content Marketing originally appeared on Danny Brown - Social Media * Marketing * Influence under a Creative Commons license.

Over at the InNetwork blog this week, I wrote about why influencers deserve to be paid. It essentially looked at why brands should be treating influencers more professionally, and respecting them as a key partner in any marketing mix.

In the comment section after the post, Kari Rippetoe, Content Marketing Manager at Search Mojo, left an interesting statement:

Interesting post – you pulled me in with that title, because I wasn’t quite sure I agreed. I totally get where you’re coming from regarding the time an influencer not only spends in writing a post, but also in cultivating and managing their influence and community. But, from an SEO standpoint (and I work for a search marketing firm, so we’re very sensitive to this), paid posts (if you’re indeed compensating the influencer with money) can be detrimental to SEO. Google doesn’t like paid links, and while its algorithm can’t necessarily detect all paid links, I’m not sure if it’s worth the risk. That’s why we don’t pursue requests from bloggers to write posts for payment – because that’s a risk we can’t take on behalf of our SEO clients.

Kari’s point about paid links, and Google’s view on them, is a pertinent one, since – while there are other search engines around – Google is the search algorithm that most people take notice of and adhere to, rightly or wrongly.

The thing is, for me, Google’s wrong regarding their stance on sponsored content.

Sponsored Content – The Google Take

To get a better idea of what Google’s take is, here’s what’s being said around the web with regards what Google does and doesn’t “allow” when it comes to sponsored [paid] content:

Google made it clear that they do not want sponsored content indexed in Google News, and sites that mix in promotional articles with their regular news content could be excluded from Google News entirely.

To clarify, the second warning refers to advertorials or articles created entirely by or for a sponsor, along the lines of what BuzzFeed does… Adam Sherk.

So, essentially, Google is trying to avoid clearly advertorial content that offers nothing but promoting a brand’s message or paid media. Fair enough – there’s enough crap online that’s been paid for and bypasses the good content, which gets lost in amongst the paid stuff.

Where it gets a but muddied, though, is in what Google deems acceptable, as highlighted by the opening sentence in the paragraph that follows Adam’s quote above:

It does not apply to instances in which regular editorial content is given a sponsor treatment.

So, for example, a blogger could write a piece about hair gel and have Garnier Fructus sponsor the post. This means the blogger writes and Garnier might offer free samples. The blogger’s words, the brand’s product.

See a flaw there? Yep, it can still be viewed as paid content by the blogger’s readers. Why would Garnier sponsor without something being in it for them? Did the blogger remain unbiased, or were they tempted by bigger partnerships if they slipped in a couple of favourable mentions of Garnier throughout the post?

While there may not have been physical dollars exchanged, the question is still there – “can this opinion be trusted?”

Once that happens, it counters the very reason Google wants to clamp down on sponsored content: false advertising, inferior products, etc., and how they’re displacing quality-led, honest content.

Sponsored Content – The Irony Factor

Which brings us to the point that Kari made in her comment over at the InNetwork post, about Google not liking paid links and how that can impact a brand that uses this marketing method.

As I mentioned earlier, I can understand why Google wants to keep their results quality-driven. It helps the consumer, who uses Google more, who can charge more for ads, and… oh, right. Ads. Otherwise known as paid content.

Look at the image below, based around a search for “best SEO companies”.

There are 11 results visible in the screen shot – essentially, above the fold results (or what people see without needing to scroll down on their screens).

Of these 11 results, only three are organic, and clearly show a solid understanding of SEO by the company involved, which holds the #1 and #2 spot, with #3 being a YouTube video.

Every other result is an ad. Or, for want of a better description, Google accepting paid content to promote a business over another one. Sound familiar?

So it would appear that sponsored/paid content is fine if it’s ads with Google but not if it’s ads appearing within Google.

This is kind of messed up. Especially since, as I talked about in the post over at InNetwork, trust is the ultimate currency of a blogger, and isn’t something that can be bought at any price.

Sponsored Content – The Trust Factor

Are there bloggers that don’t give a crap and will write any old thing for a brand in exchange for regular sponsored content campaigns? Unfortunately, yes, and these are the ones that Google should quite rightly hammer.

But I’ve tended to find that they’re mostly in the minority.

Instead, what you have are bloggers looking to make a living doing the thing they love – sharing content, making recommendations, helping their community find a solution to help with a certain need.

That love, and that desire to help, allows the blogger to build a loyal and trusted audience – one that they would never deceive or whose trust they’d break, for the sake of a positive review when in fact a product or service was crap.

On the flip side, good brands know that the best way to meet customer needs is to listen to them. Because of the inherent mistrust of brands by consumers, often the only way this listening can happen is by sponsoring a post, allowing a blogger to write about you, offer some trial product, and then monitor the feedback over the coming weeks.

This understanding on both sides sees the blogger write an unbiased view, with the brand allowing that to happen in order to truly understand their target customer’s mindset.

As you can see, it’s a win-win for all involved. Except it’s not – because Google doesn’t really want this type of exchange to happen.

Instead of getting honest and quality content throughout their engine, Google would rather allow other types of paid content – ads – that have no indication of the quality of the company behind them.

At best, this seems a completely flawed approach. At worst, it could ironically enhance the current issue. After all, if solid content via honest sponsorship and disclosure is being punished and grouped in with the crappy stuff, why even bother…

Thoughts?

Why Google is Missing the Point on Sponsored Content originally appeared on Danny Brown - Social Media * Marketing * Influence under a Creative Commons license.

The ease in which topics and conversations can be filtered using the hashtag on Twitter enforces the idea that, when done right, Twitter chats and their attached hashtags are a great way to solicit feedback, user experience, crowdsourcing and more.

To make that ease even more effective, here are three cool hashtag trackers that don’t need a second mortgage to use.

1. Tagboard

The first platform is one I came across just last week, called Tagboard.

Working out of Redmond, Washington, Tagboard allows you to view hashtags across multiple networks. They currently support Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, App.net, Vine and Google+.

You can either track popular hashtags currently happening across these platforms, or create your own to monitor. Below is an example of the one I created around the Influence Marketing book hashtag.

You can either view all conversations across the platforms your hashtag is active on, or use the top navigation to filter out the channel(s) you wish to concentrate on.

If you want to join the conversation, you can reply directly on Twitter via the Tagboard panel, or click the comment/reply option for the likes of Google+ and Facebook and be taken directly to the discussion on that platform.

While fairly simple at the minute, Tagboard offers a clean and uncluttered snapshot at who’s talking about what, and on what platform, when it comes to your chosen topic.

Pros: Free to use (currently), clean, ability to upload logo for some personalization, multiple channels.

Cons: Limited customization, no analytics, no embed feature, no live stream option. (Note – these are available to users that contact Tagboard and request these features turned on, with price to be determined.)

2. Keyhole

Next up is Keyhole, from Waterloo, Ontario in the technology heart of Canada.

The pet project of technology whiz-kids Saif Ajani and Minaz Abdulla, Keyhole was originally built as a personal solution to the pain that often comes with trying to track Twitter conversations. That solution became Keyhole and is used by several brands today.

What I like about Keyhole is it goes a little bit deeper than standard impressions and reach (although they’re still catered for here). Instead, you can find out more about your demographics and where they’re sharing the conversation.

In the image above, for example, you can see a conversation around car manufacturer Audi. As well as the numbers around tweets, users, reach and impressions, you can see who had the most retweets, what their Klout score is, and top recent tweets around the topic.

When you set up a hashtag to track, you gain access to even more information.

Other useful data provided includes:

• The Top Sites section allows you to see what domains were mentioned using that hashtag, and what tweets sent traffic there;
• Share of Voice shows which vehicle is being spoken about the most;
• Most Influential informs who gets the most retweets, who has the biggest Klout score, and who talks about the brand the most.

Add in Location, Demographics, Topics based on Hashtags or Keywords, and Top Sources for tweets, and Keyhole offers a fairly sturdy platform for solo users and brands alike.

Pros: Lots of useful data, clean layout, three monthly pricing models ($14, $39, $99), downloadable reports, embed options.

Cons: Only for Twitter, no way to respond to a tweet from inline.

3. oneQube SmartStream

Located in New York and built by Internet Media Labs, oneQube and its SmartStream product offers a host of solutions for anyone looking to really dig deep into Twitter chats and their accompanying hashtags.

While oneQube offers more than just SmartStream, it’s that part of the oneQube jigsaw that offers the most potential for hashtag users and trackers.

By setting a hashtag, you can not only track it, but use the oneQube dashboard as a social dashboard, along the lines of Tweetgrid and Hootsuite. This allows you to seamlessly take part in a conversation you’re tracking, without the need for multiple dashboards.

But that’s bread and butter stuff – the real meat comes from the data you can glean from SmartStream around the hashtag in question.

Much like Keyhole, you can see the most engaged, the most retweets, and the most “influential” users around a topic. However, where SmartStream really gets interesting is with the extra data they provide around that basic information.

If you look to the right of the image above, you can see a section called Secondary Hashtag Conversations. This allows you to see topics that could be related to the core one you’re discussing, offering an opportunity for brands and Twitter chat moderators to reach a wider audience.

SmartStream also offers a handy hashtag map that lets you see how closely tied these other conversations are to yours – the larger the circle, the bigger the relevance and opportunity.

On top of that, you also have access to detailed information around not only the standard demographics of your hashtag participants, but additional data-points like the type of profile (Business, Individual, Commercial, etc.), as well as the trending topics around that discussion.

This kind of information is useful for brands, obviously, but it also allows Twitter chat moderators to provide extra details about the type of people their chat attracts, which can help them find sponsors to work with. You can find a detailed guide to SmartStream here.

Pros: Currently free in beta mode, detailed anlaytics, hashtag map for connected topics, integrated social dashboard.

Cons: Currently suffering from bugs (the SmartStream fails to load), no threaded conversations option on the dashboard, Twitter only.

Your Turn

These are just three platforms that have caught my eye when it comes to hashtag tracking. Each has their Pros and Cons, which I’ve shared here. It must be noted that beta products do tend to suffer their fair share of bugs, so keep that in mind when coming up against any glitches.

How about you – what tools do you currently use for hashtag tracking and Twitter chats, and why these ones? Share in the comments below.

Three Cool and Inexpensive Tools to Track Twitter Hashtags originally appeared on Danny Brown - Social Media * Marketing * Influence under a Creative Commons license.

As a business resource, Slideshare stands pretty much head and shoulders above most other content platforms.

From presentations to educational content and more, you can find information and curated media on pretty much any topic you have an interest in.

As a research solution, Slideshare offers analysis from some of the smartest minds on the web across all verticals. These include standard presentations, videos, multimedia and more.

Which brings us to this week’s Sunday Share.

Every week, I’ll be sharing a presentation that catches my eye and where I feel you might be interested in the information inside. These will range from business to content to social media to marketing and more.

This week, I’ve cheated a bit (sorry!), and decided to share the accompanying presentation for my recent Vocus webinar on true influence.

Today, influence is determined by how high a social score you have. But that dilutes what true influence is, and places the attention on the wrong people.

By focusing on the customer and identifying who truly influencers their decisions at key times in the purchase life cycle, we can target better and gather lead generation, increase customer acquisition, and provide real ROI for influence marketing campaigns.

Enjoy.

The Sunday Share – Influence and Focusing on the Customer originally appeared on Danny Brown - Social Media * Marketing * Influence under a Creative Commons license.

Oftentimes in life, we have these little moments of real time to ourselves, where there’s nothing but silence to keep us company. In today’s always on, ever connected world, these moments in time become ever rarer, and we have to grab them while they’re here.

In these moments, we see many things in a different light. One direction we were on is revealed to be flawed, while journeys yet to take become more important.

There’s no real rhyme, nor reason, as to why certain thoughts take centre stage to ponder, while others remain hidden, waiting on their own time in the spotlight when the next peaceful moment comes.

What is clear is that it allows us to refocus, and define what we want versus what we need.

What We Want

We all want different things. Depending where we are in our lives, these can interchange or disappear altogether.

When I was a teenager at school and college, for example, I always wanted to be a journalist. I loved writing and had a curious streak mixed with a stubborn nature, that would probably have come in handy had I decided to pursue that career.

But then I discovered girls, and my hormones decided that while my grades would have allowed me to take a journalism degree at one of Scotland’s most successful universities, what I wanted was to discover more about girls.

As I grew older, I found I wanted different things in life.

I wanted to be rich (still do, to a degree). I wanted to be famous, as in celebrity famous. I wanted to fly into space. I wanted to travel the world. I wanted to invent something that changed the world. I wanted to be liked by all that met me. I wanted to be an author.

For a while – during my teen years, I hasten to add – I wanted to be the world’s most popular male porn star. I mean, that had to be the world’s best job for any guy, right? Riiiight….

So, yeah. I wanted.

The thing is, as I discovered when I fell into marketing and then built on that with a degree in the medium, there’s a big difference between want and need. As marketers, our job is to find that difference and instill a desire to buy.

Now that I’m probably well into the second half of my life, the pursuit of want isn’t anywhere near as important to me as the acceptance of need.

What We Need

Much like we are when it comes to what we want, we’re all different when it comes to what we need, at least from a material sense. From the metaphysical and emotional side, perhaps they’re not so different.

I can look back at some of my wants and how they manifest themselves differently when they come up against what I actually need.

I wanted to be rich, but do I need to be? No. There’s no doubt being rich helps attain a level of comfort few of us ever achieve, but what is comfort? For me, it’s being able to keep a roof over my family’s head and ensure we don’t go hungry.

Being rich may provide more expensive food and a bigger house, but do I really need that? No.

I wanted to be an author, and I’ve been fortunate enough to have realized that goal. But while it might seem mysterious and attractive, or whatever, to be an author, the travel away from home when you have a wife and two young children where the oldest is barely three can be soul destroying, despite being surrounded by great friends and new friends-to-be.

Do I need to be an author to prove something about myself? Maybe, I don’t know. But I do know I need my family more than whatever that former need is.

I wanted to be liked by everyone I met. Call it vanity, ego, or whatever, but my younger self believed that if you were liked by all, that made you someone that demands respect. The thing is, while it might seem a contradiction, liking doesn’t necessarily equal respect.

I may like someone, because I feel they’re doing what they believe to be right. But that doesn’t mean I respect the way they’re doing it. So, popularity and respect aren’t as close as I had them pegged to be.

Now I know better. Now I know that it doesn’t matter if people dislike me or, to take it to its natural next step, don’t respect me. While it’d be nice to have, generic respect is a flawed goal. The bigger picture, and the more important one, is the respect from those that truly matter.

As long as I can end the day, and look my wife and children in the eye and know that I didn’t let them down and did the right thing, that’s the ultimate measure – for me – that I kept on the right side of the respect track.

My family; my friends; my colleagues; my clients. These are who I deliver for; everything else is happenstance.

What We Want Versus What We Need

We’re all in the same boat. Your moment of silence and clarity may not be today, but it’s there, just waiting to pull up a chair and spend some time.

Make that time.

We live in an age where we’re always on, and rarely take the time to sit, think, regroup. We need to do that. Every single one of us. Otherwise we’ll go stir crazy from the speed of the merry-go-round we’re on, and miss the chance to think of what’s important to us.

That’s not to say we should give up on our wants – far from it. It’s nice to have goals and dreams, and see some of them come true.

But we can live without our wants.

Our needs, however, are simpler to achieve – yet, more often than not, they have the highest return. And that’s no bad thing, when all’s said and done.

What We Want Versus What We Need originally appeared on Danny Brown - Social Media * Marketing * Influence under a Creative Commons license.

On Wednesday June 5th at 2.00pm EST, I’ll be hosting a free webinar in partnership with Vocus around actual business results through influence marketing. Details of the webinar and where to register are below.

For anyone that’s been involved in marketing for any amount of time, you’ll know there are shifts in thinking that take us beyond what we know, into what we can truly benefit from.

Think about some of the shifts from the last 20 years or so:

• Print media and flyers to social media and banner ads;
• Telesales to geo-fenced mobile marketing and QR codes;
• Direct mail to email marketing;
• Billboards to digital signage.

These shifts allowed us to be smarter at targeting audiences on a wider scale, and also to measure our campaigns more effectively.

However, despite these improved methodologies and metrics, there was still one form of marketing that could trump all of them – word of mouth.

If we heard positive or negative feedback from a peer, friend or colleague about a certain product or service, there was a much higher chance of conversion to that recommendation than there was from any of the methods highlighted at the start of this post.

Brands understood the power of word of mouth marketing, and looked for ways to be part of these recommendations. This paved the way for influence marketing as we know it today – otherwise known as social scoring.

The problem is, when it comes to actual business results like lead generation and customer acquisition, that definition hasn’t moved the marketing needle as much as the other shifts highlighted here.

Scoring platforms like Klout and Kred can help brands achieve share of voice and amplified awareness, but for true business results, we need to move deeper than the solutions they currently provide.

We need to move into the Third Stage of Influence Marketing.

What is the Third Stage of Influence Marketing?

When it comes to influence marketing, there are three clearly defined stages:

Stage 1: Celebrity Endorsement

PR pioneer Dan Edelman introduced the concept of celebrity endorsement in the middle of the last century. Seeing the shift of power to celebrities and how the public reacted to them, he pioneered the method of using stars like Vincent Price to represent the California wine industry. Through increased media, this led to an increase in sales and profits, and celebrity endorsement as a marketing tactic was born.

Stage 2: Social Scoring

While celebrity endorsements had a fine run and can still be used today to great effect, the danger of using a celebrity for your brand showed the flaws of that approach.

Tiger Woods; Lindsay Lohan; Mel Gibson; Oscar Pistorious; Lance Armstrong, and many more like them. Personal issues spilled into the public and began to tarnish the brands connected to these endorsers. A new method was needed, and this is where social scoring stepped in.

Early adopters in the social influence marketing space saw the potential of finding who was influential on a topic, and connecting these people to brands in that vertical to share that brand’s marketing message with their audience.

Initially, it worked. Superstar bloggers and social network users with large followings helped raise awareness for a brand or product, and public scores from Klout, Kred and PeerIndex could show which person was influential around what topic.

However, flaws started to appear in that methodology as well. Critics questioned the validity of the data and lack of success stories being shared publicly; influence was only measured by public Twitter updates unless you connected your other networks; and profiles and scores were being allocated to people without specific permission.

These flaws, along with how the algorithms on these platforms could be gamed, led to the need for a more effective and truer reflection of influence and what it means in the marketing sector.

Stage 3: Customer Centric Influence Marketing

The problem with both celebrity endorsements and social scoring when it comes to influence is that they both place the “influencer” at the heart of the marketing circle.

While they may have a large following or audience, that doesn’t mean they’re right for the various segments of a brand’s customer base, current or potential.

The purchase decisions of a customer are influenced by many factors: emotional, financial, familial, peer, logical, time and many more.

Additionally, a message resonates differently with customers depending where they are in the purchase life cycle.

Research. Awareness. Consideration. Intent. Purchase. These are just five stages of the purchase life cycle that need to be addressed differently – then you also have guilt and vindication play into the mix of decisions.

As you can see, the simple act of making a purchase is far from simple, if we – as marketers – are looking to encourage the customer along the decision-making path and into the action of making a purchase.

This is where the Third Wave of Influence Marketing succeeds, because it places the customer at the heart of the marketing circle and works back from there.

We can identify where customers are regarding their decision to buy; we can identify what issues or questions they have around it; who in their immediate circle influences them and at what stage; and how we can overcome disruptors like competitor messaging and situational factors.

The upcoming True Influence webinar will show you exactly how to utilize this new wave of influence marketing, and how to drive real business metrics that add to the bottom line ROI while improving the top line, as well as the lifetime value of your customers.

I look forward to sharing with you.

To register for the webinar, click here.

The Third Stage of Influence Marketing – Free @Vocus Webinar originally appeared on Danny Brown - Social Media * Marketing * Influence under a Creative Commons license.

From presentations to educational content and more, you can find information and curated media on pretty much any topic you have an interest in.

As a research solution, Slideshare offers analysis from some of the smartest minds on the web across all verticals. These include standard presentations, videos, multimedia and more.

Which brings us to this week’s Sunday Share.

Every week, I’ll be sharing a presentation that catches my eye and where I feel you might be interested in the information inside. These will range from business to content to social media to marketing and more.

This week, a short but inspirational presentation from architect and traveler Shyamanta Baruah.

As technology grows in importance to today’s business landscape, standing out from everyone else has become an art form. The late Steve Jobs knew this, and lived by the mantra of being different. This presentation shares seven of his best quotes and ones we can all live by.

Enjoy.

image: Leon Nicholls

The Sunday Share – 7 Awesome Quotes from Steve Jobs originally appeared on Danny Brown - Social Media * Marketing * Influence under a Creative Commons license.

As digital and mobile channels continue to pervade ever deeper into today’s business landscape, the challenges facing organizations and their key personnel grows with it.

Whereas before, we could create a message and hammer it home to our audiences until it was accepted, now there are multiple channels, factors, disruptors and more that make marketing your brand much more scientific than before.

Think of all the facets of marketing today:

• Social media marketing
• Mobile marketing
• Influence marketing
• Digital marketing
• Search engine marketing
• Email marketing
• Pay Per Click marketing
• Banner display marketing
• Digital signage marketing
• Traditional marketing

And on and on and on. Still marketing, but now truly multi-faceted.

Now, into that mix, introduce demographics, locale, purchase history, brand loyalty, financial, emotional and situational factors, and creating a successful marketing template becomes much more strategic than ever before.

Which is why a new guide from Worldcom Public Relations Group is a timely release. The world’s leading partnership of global public relations brands, Worldcom provides analysis and understanding of the various cultural nuances in different marketplaces.

Their Global & Local Marketing Guide for CMOs highlights the growing shifts and trends in these different markets, and offers insights from 40 Worldcom partners across more than 15 countries.

These insights help CMOs understand the marketing and PR landscape when it comes to multicultural audiences, locales and industries, and is geared to help organizations and marketing consultants/agencies be more effective in these areas.

Below are some of the key takeaways from the report.

Today’s Marketer Needs to Understand Local as Well as Global

Savvy marketers have always known that true success comes from understanding your customer and meeting their needs and demands.

From type of message to channel of promotion, and language of the message, if you don’t meet your customer on their terms – or at least be fluid enough to adapt to their known terms – then you’re already on shaky ground when it comes to getting your brand message out there.

For example, in Argentina, South America:

…60% of opinions about a product are shared in face-to-face conversations, and people are more eager to exchange opinions with friends (45.5%), family (20%) and colleagues (30%). 92% of the comments within these conversations tend to be positive over negative.

In Arizona, United States:

Small businesses are a major contributor to Arizona’s economy, representing 97% of businesses in the state. 78% of Arizona companies rely on word-of-mouth when purchasing a new product or service.

In Hong Kong, China:

Hong Kong is seeing a growing market for group purchases. In January 2012, Groupon had 360,000 fans of their Facebook page, 10% of the total amount of Facebook accounts in China. [Note: I've never been sold on fans in relation to business metrics, but the percentages and use of Groupon was interesting - Danny.]

These are just three snippets that highlight very different cultural takes on how we do business today. The report itself delves into many more countries and offers some fascinating insights into why the future of marketing is local, and then beyond.

Interestingly, many of the findings tie perfectly into the research and methodologies that make up Influence Marketing, and how dyadic (groups of two) relationships drive influence marketing success when it comes to the customer solution.

If marketers can change their mindsets on placing the customer first and then meeting track back from there to meet the customer’s needs, their goals will be more manageable and measurable.

Channels and Content Are Key

For ArCompany, the best marketing and PR is when you’re not even aware you’re being marketed to. The nature of the promotion, the conversations around it, the minute details that are researched before a campaign’s implementation – all are geared towards making marketing as non-invasive as possible.

Sure, the in-your-face way works, especially in certain industries. But more often than not, the campaigns that resonate the most are the ones that see your customers continue to talk long after the initial ad hits your stream.

To this end, the channels your business uses for its campaigns, along with the content and how it’s shared, plays a significant part in an increasingly connected consumer-led marketplace.

For businesses, 88% prefer email as the lead communication channel.

For consumers, 34% prefer social media, although email is a close second with 27%.

76% say that social media [influencer] outreach is a top priority for clients.

85% cite LinkedIn as their preferred channel.

49% claim social posts are too promotional.

46% said the communication was too frequent.

In addition to these numbers, the breakdown between B2B (business to business) and B2C (business to consumer) content and strategies offers a clear difference in strategy and approach.

B2C content should be educational; stimulating; entertaining; non-commercial; objective; focused on engagement and two-way communication.

B2B content should present ROI in a clear, understandable and measurable manner; be solution-driven; have an integrated media approach; include infographics, videos and social media content alongside traditional media.

While the lines between consumer and business marketing are beginning to blur more, as corporations adopt more social media and influencer campaign models traditionally associated with consumer campaigns, the differences are still large enough to warrant specific strategies and tactics for each.

The Landscape is Shifting

It’s not just social media that’s leading the charge in the way we do business – mobile is dramatically shifting not only the way we consume media, but also the way we shop and make purchase decisions.

More traditional verticals like Financial Services, as well as more forward-thinking ones like Retail, are seeing seismic shifts in how customers of these industries use mobile phones to gather information and quantify their decisions.

In the Financial Services sector in the U.S., mobile banking is the #1 activity bank customers expect to be able to carry out with their chosen bank.

In the Retail sector, mobile shopping will represent 62% of digital consumers by the end of 2013.

In addition to these numbers, the Hungarian Advertising Association showed mobile marketing grow 12% in 2012, accounting for just under 20% of the complete advertising budget for the European country. This trend is visible elsewhere, as the full report shows.

Where Does This Leave You?

As the examples here and in the full report show, today’s CMO needs to be multi-talented.

As well as being responsible for product development, market research, sales management and advertising, they need to be up-to-date on the trends that matter for their customers as well as their business and stakeholders.

As a CMO in today’s marketplace, you need to:

Know who you’re speaking to, and understand their habits and behaviours of your key customers.

Know what, how and when to share your message.

Understand measurement and where you’re succeeding, where you’re struggling, where you need to pivot and where you need to acquiesce.

Plan for sustainability, move away from the campaign mindset and be strategic in building long-term loyalty and advocacy through delivering on your promise and continuing the after-service long after the sale.

The simple fact of the matter is, mobile and digital marketing is only going to become ever more pervasive, and require more hats to be worn across the board. The marketing hat starts with the CMO – make sure you’re wearing it well. Need help? Let’s talk.

The full Global & Local Marketing Guide for CMOs 2013 can be downloaded here. This post originally appeared on the ArCompany corporate blog.

Today’s Marketer and the Changing Face of Purchase Decisions originally appeared on Danny Brown - Social Media * Marketing * Influence under a Creative Commons license.

While social scoring platforms like Klout, etc, can help identify who could potentially be influential from a brand amplification standpoint, the business return – dollars in the cash register – has been more problematic to solve.

Likes, shares, blog posts and more are discussed abundantly when it comes to reviewing a campaign using social scoring as the lead means of influence identification. But likes and shares don’t pay the bills.

This was one of the key reasons Sam Fiorella and I wrote Influence Marketing: as marketers and users of influence campaigns ourselves, we knew the real return on influence had to be lead generation, customer acquisition, and moving the customer along the purchase life cycle.

With that approach, brands could better understand where their customers are, and how they could help solve the problems they faced.

Essentially, we take influence away from the superstar bloggers and social media rock stars, and place the emphasis squarely back on the customer, and work back from there.

To give you an idea of how this looks, this second teaser video from our upcoming video series to complement the book looks at what happens when the customer is placed at the centre of the marketing circle, and how that leads to financial and customer return on your brand’s influence campaigns.

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What’s the Return on Influence Marketing? originally appeared on Danny Brown - Social Media * Marketing * Influence under a Creative Commons license.