The Hows and Whys of Influencer Marketing

1. Influencer Outreach
www.buzzsumo.com
Subscriber Series

2. Create Better Content
At BuzzSumo we help content marketers improve their
content through research, amplification and monitoring.

3. RAM
Our Research, Amplify & Monitor Process

4. Influencer & Outreach
Marketing

5. Susan Moeller
Business Development
Manager
@susancmoeller
@buzzsumo

6. What is Influencer Outreach?
Grown up version of asking
your friends to do something
because all of the cool kids are
doing it!

7. Influencer marketing is working with influencers
to help spread the word about
• Your brand
• Your product
• Your content
• Your service

8. Many types, many goals
• Asking bloggers to write about your product
• Teaming up on content pieces to share with different
audience
• Celebrity endorsements for products
• Customer testimonials

9. High Klout Influencers test drive for
Cadillac

10. TheFrugalGirl.com writes about Aldi grocery chain

11. #SoftSide of Life
Downy leverages
beautiful laundry on
Instagram

12. Customer testimonials

13. Why do it?
• Demonstrate thought leadership
• Increase sales
• Grow your brand
• Increase market share

14. Why do it?
• From Social Times, May 2015
– Results of recent influencer marketing studies show:
– Marketing-induced consumer-to-consumer word of mouth generates
more than twice the sales of paid advertising. (McKinsey)
– Customers who were acquired through word-of-mouth have a 37
percent higher retention rate. (McKinsey)
– Marketers felt the biggest issue is scale with 59 percent intending to
increase their influencer marketing budgets. (Tidal Labs)
•
From RhythmOne 1H Influencer Marketing Benchmark Report:
– On average, marketers who implemented an Influencer Marketing
program in 1H 2015 received $9.60 in earned media value (EMV) for
every $1.00 of paid media spend. This represents an increase of 1.4x
over our CY 2014 average EMV of $6.85.

15. Influencer outreach is important for
marketing:
“A brand is no longer what we tell the
consumer it is–it is what consumers tell each
other it is.”
– Scott Cook, the founder and CEO of Intuit

16. • “Creating Great content is not the
finish line. It’s the starting
line…content marketing must
also include community,
distribution, and promotion.”
– Mark Schaefer, The Content Code
Influencer Amplification is essential in Content
Marketing

17. Our research on 100m articles
showed:
• Getting even 1 influencer to share your
content has a multiplier effect on overall
shares
• Getting 5 influencers to share your content
quadruples your overall shares

19. 1 influencer* share=31.8% more
shares overall
3 influencer shares=double overall
shares
5 influencer shares=quadruple
overall shares
*Influencer=Average retweets
over 2 (more on that later)

20. Typical Outreach Process
• Find good quality, relevant
content that has been shared
heavily
• Find the creators of the
content and the sites that
they’ve posted on
• Find who shares specific
content
• Research authors and sharers
to find out how authoritative
they are
• Find influencers in your topic
area
• Filter by relevant factors
(e.g., site authority, number
of followers, engagement
rate)
• Add key people to an
outreach list
• Reach out and build
relationships with them.
Follow them, share their
content
• Work with them to create
quality content assets
including interviews
• Utilise their distribution
routes and contacts to build
links and social signals to the
assets

21. How BuzzSumo Can Help
• Find content that is heavily shared
• Identify the authors and their other most shared
content
• Find the people that share and amplify popular
content
• Find authoritative and well shared sites in the niche
for your content
• Find influencers in your topic area and filter by
location, reach, authority and engagement
• See the content they share
• Follow and engage with influencers

22. How do you define influencer?
• Several metrics that boil down to:
• Audience size: How many people are listening to them?
• Audience responsiveness: Do people act on their
recommendations?
Are they a good fit for your content or
product?
• Subject area
• Interest in content besides their own

23. Find Influencers
whose Audiences Overlap with
Yours

24. Find authors of heavily shared content in your
topic area:

25. Look for publishers of heavily shared content
in your topic area:

26. Find Influencers By Topic

27. Find Influencers by company

28. Find people who shared content that
overlaps with your content

29. Find people who shared content from
Industry leading domains

30. Find influencers who shared competitor
content
Competitor A OR Competitor B

31. Find influencers in a specific location

32. Find Influencers by Type

33. Ways To find Influencers whose content overlaps
with yours:
Find authors of content that is heavily shared
Find Influencers by topic area
Find Influencers by company
Find Influencers who shared content that
overlaps with your content
Find Influencers who shared content from
industry-leading domains
Find Influencers who shared competitor content
Find Influencers by location
Find Influencers by type

34. • Are they interested in content other than
theirs?

35. Find Responsive Influencers
Do they:
Respon
d to tweets?
Retweet
content from
other
sources?

36. Find Influencers who share other
people’s content

37. Find Authoritative Influencers
• Are these influencers
respected in their field?
• Does an audience act on
the information the
influencer presents

38. Find Influencers by page or domain
authority

39. Find Influencers by Audience Size

40. Identify influencers whose audience
responds to them

41. Remember:
Bigger isn’t always better.
“True influence drives action, not just
awareness.”
-Jay Baer

42. Why average retweets is important
Your goal is for
the influencers’
audience to
react.
Not just nod and
smile.

43. Use BuzzSumo With BuzzStream
Create a prospecting list with BuzzStream

44. Use BuzzSumo With BuzzStream
Click ‘start
prospecting’

45. Use BuzzSumo With BuzzStream

46. Use BuzzSumo With BuzzStream

47. You have a list of
Influencers.
Now what?

48. Export your lists

49. Spreadsheet tips:
• Eliminate anyone with less than 2 average
retweets
• Combine lists with influencers for the same topic
(ie List of sharers for individual articles)
• Eliminate duplicates
• Eliminate anyone with reply and retweet ratios
less than 20%
• Eliminate non-English accounts
• Eliminate any strays that just seem odd for your
topic

50. Build strong partnerships
• Ideally, you will begin to build relationships
with influencers before you ask for their help.
• Social is social: Give a lot to others, don’t just
ask others to give to you.

51. How to Reach Influencers
• Tweet and share their content
• Mention them when you share their content
• Comment on their blogs
• Seek introduction through a connection
• Ask to interview them for your website
• Ask them to write a guest post for your site
• Collaborate on content
As Matthew Barby says the first thing that you need to
establish when approaching an influencer is consider their
incentive.

54. What you can offer
• A link to the influencer’s personal site within each post,
valuable if you have a high authority or highly ranked site
• A recommendation for their services on your website
• Free or discounted use of your services
• Offer to share other content from the influencer to your
mailing lists and social following
• Money – Payment by shares achieved say

55. Don’t forget the basics!

56. Follow

57. Add them to a Twitter List

58. Build Twitter Ad Lists
• Twitter now allows marketers to promote ads to
audiences based on either email addresses from their
own CRM system or lists of twitter IDs
• Target people that share your content
• Target influencers in a topic area
• Export list from BuzzSumo and filter/refine

59. Get To Know Them
• What do they share

60. Get To Know Them
• What do they share

61. Set up an alert for them
• Use an author alert
Be the first to
share their
content.

62. Find link opportunities
• See who is linking to
competitor content

63. What about Money?
• Should influencers be paid?

64. What are the legal or
ethical issues for influencer
marketing?

65. Know the legal issues
• The FTC governs marketing in the US:
– If you write about how much you like something you
bought on your own and you’re not being rewarded,
you don’t have to worry. However, if you’re doing it as
part of a sponsored campaign or you’re being
compensated – for example, getting a discount on a
future purchase or being entered into a sweepstakes
for a significant prize – then a disclosure is
appropriate.
*We are not lawyers. Consult a legal professional.

66. Know the ethical issues:
Contently.com provides great insights:
From the world of Journalism
seek truth
act independently
minimize harm
be accountable

67. Content Marketing Code of Ethics
“Content marketing should seek to adhere to
stricter standards of reporting than traditional
journalism, due to it’s different legal position
and increased commercial motivations. Content
marketers should take care to disclose the
sponsorship and intent of their work.”
http://contently.com/strategist/2012/08/01/ethic
s/

68. Avoid:
• Deception
– Hiring people to write fake reviews
– Contracting people for fake likes, comments,
retweets
– Not disclosing affiliate links

69. Recommended Resources
Legal issues:
FTC endorsement guides:
https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-center/guidance/ftcs-
endorsement-guides-what-people-are-asking#social
FTC advertising guides:
https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/documents/plain-language/bus41-dot-
com-disclosures-information-about-online-advertising.pdf
Content Marketing Code of ethics from Contently:
http://contently.com/strategist/2012/08/01/ethics/

70. Thank You
Questions?
@susancmoeller