Category: Influencer Marketing

Businesses Want To Make Money, Consumers Want To Feel Like Heroes

Posted on by Kingfluencers

A Story of How Omni-Channel Storytelling Makes Objectives Meet

The Myth of Storytelling 

While the terminology may differ, storytelling is vital to both fiction and marketing. Successful brands tell stories across the digital ecosystem in a holistic manner, pulling their message together across channels and formats in a way that’s impactful and helps them get through to people and be more successful. Although the term storytelling is (over)used non stop in marketing circles, it sometimes feels like speaking of a mythical creature many talk about but few ever really see. One think we know is that stories work. People have been telling each other stories from before they even invented the words to shape them. Cut to modern times and marketing and the question is: so what is storytelling all about and how to do it effectively and efficiently in today’s omni-channel digital world? 

All About the Hero

Great stories encourage the listener’s active imagination, prompting them to emotionally connect with the characters. In the case of brands, stories help consumers imagine their own experience wearing a pair of shoes, improving their health with plant-based foods, or enjoying a stay in a luxurious hotel. The Hero’s Journey is the foundation of many compelling stories and brands should view customers as heroes of their own story. When people do feel like the hero, even if briefly, empowered by your brand, a little bit of magic happens … 

Brand perception, for one, is key to making sure people respect and trust your brand and ultimately buy it. With effective storytelling through mechanisms such as influencer marketing (IM), you can forge emotional connections and reinforce your desired positioning, driving revenue and strengthening consumer loyalty. 

But it isn’t always easy to know where to start the journey. Social media is a great way to establish interaction and the perfect place to start or expand the journey. Effective use of this channel can enable you to change how consumers view your brand and broader issues surrounding it. That is one element of ‘social influence’. Often, brands are unaware of the influence they could generate through digital storytelling on social media and beyond. And the more this storytelling is incorporated across your marketing, communication and channel mix, the bigger the potential impact becomes.

All-About-the-Hero

But what are the secrets behind achieving good storytelling that captivates your audiences and how to make them the hero of the story? 

Which Types of Heroes Do Your Clients Desire to Be? 

A very important question is which types of heroes your target audience wants to be. Which superpowers would they wish they had that you can help them with? Whether they wanna have the perfect smile, a clean and safe home, or be taken on a culinary adventure, your clients look to you to make them the protagonist in small and big ways and moments. So how can you make it clear to people that you are the one that will do exactly that for them? How to make sure they tune into what you are saying and absorb your message? Your guessed it: with great storytelling.

In order to do great storytelling a few base pillars need to be kept in mind. These principles serve like the foundation to build upon, with the story itself being everything you build on top. But without a solid foundation whatever you build will either be unstable and thus not very credible or interesting, or simply collapse sooner or later. The four main pillars are purpose, emotion, relevance and continuity.

1. Purpose: Start With Mission and Vision

Start from your brand’s mission, vision, and values and make sure all marketing initiatives align consistently with these. Bring every story back to your purpose; why do you exist as a brand and what are you all about. By doing so consistently you create a common thread that allows people to get to know your brand better and get an idea of who you are and why they (should) like or even love you. 

2. Emotion: Be Authentic and Forge Emotional Connection

When you say people you say emotion. Simple. Successful brands connect with consumers and create a relationship. Connection leads to short-term conversions, as well as long-term loyalty and even brand advocacy. The best way to stand out from the crowds and connect is with emotion, empathy, and authenticity. Brands can cultivate brand love by engaging in people-driven, creative, storytelling that unlocks emotion. 

3. Relevance: Help Audiences See Themselves With You 

Consider how your product or service impacts various members of your target audience and draw connections so your posts are relatable. The more your audiences can see themselves in the situations and contexts you describe in your stories, the more likely they are to connect and engage with your brand ad ultimately buy your products.

4. Continuity: Progress Over Time

Stories should progress over time, rather than pushing out multiple random posts, take the audience on an on-going journey that makes them want to see what you will do or bring next as a brand. Solid, ongoing storylines can captivate your audience, create engagement, and make them seek out what’s next.

Example – Corona Beer: The Swiss Limetrack 

Omni-channel storytelling. Corona-Beer-The-Swiss-Limetrack

Some brands are more than a provider of products, they represent a lifestyle, a mindset, a philosophy. Corona is one of those exceptional brands with a powerful identity and strong message.

To strengthen its presence in the Swiss market, Corona engaged with Kingfluencers to create an influencer marketing campaign boosting local appeal and connecting to Swiss consumers on an emotional level.

Kingfluencers assembled an influencer team, The Limetrack squad, and built a sequence of creative activities and steps that allowed the influencers to tell a rich and captivating story over 3.5 months. Serving as protagonists, the Limetrack Squad took the audience on a magnificent summer journey, which included allowing every consumer to become the hero of their own story by following the influencer’s footsteps and giving away dozens of Corona kits via interactive challenges and contests – getting the winners ready to start their own adventures.

Picture: @matsview for the Corona campaign

Give Your Brand a Voice, Create Dialogue, Generate More Brand Love 

Brands can boost their emotional appeal by engaging in people-driven, creative, storytelling and advertising that unlocks emotion. Leveraging brand advocates and influencer marketing to tell stories gives your brand a face that people can relate to and creates more emotional connections. Influencers can tell their own unique stories with emotion, giving products a face people can relate to. 

What’s more is that social media and influencer marketing provide agile, real-time communication channels with consumers. Brands should engage with consumers and aim for effective two-way communication. You can turn storytelling from brand monologues into conversations by encouraging participation and interaction, as well as incorporating user-generated content. A great way to elevate and enrich your storytelling. Influencer marketing has excellent potential for interactive campaigns. The close connection influencers have with their communities is ideal for engaging audiences. 

Whereas influencers are a great vehicle to lift your storytelling to the next level, it can help to include a variety of storytellers in the form of different people. While a brand’s marketing team must serve as the primary authors of the brand’s key messages, consider the important contributions of various storytellers, including employees, partners, and even consumers. According to the Swiss Influencer Marketing Report 2020, about half of the marketing managers surveyed estimate the return on investment of their influencer campaigns to date to be higher than with alternative forms of advertising. 

Example – Various Storytellers Collaborate on the 1st Swiss Music Video Specifically for Tiktok

Building on themes of freshness and authenticity, Evian-Volvic Switzerland worked with Kingfluencers to leverage various storytellers to create the first Swiss music video specifically for TikTok. The video “Volli Kiste,” has received more than a million clicks as of 2 September. With tailored rap lyrics, it features a line-up of Swiss TikTok stars from dance and comedy, including Eastern Swiss comedian “Kiko.”

“Because the Volvic teas, unlike other tea-based soft drinks, are much more natural, have no additives and are much lower in sugar, authenticity was twice as important to us in this project,” said Nina Heller, Head of Marketing, Evian-Volvic. Kiko added, “The whole project has to be just as fresh as the Iced Tea: from the song to the video to the people… I see the project as a kind of cultural promotion with advertising.”

@kikomedy

omg – zuuu nice:-) wennt de Song fühlsch, mach grad dis eigene Video & tag mi! #VolvicTee #VolvicRecords #VolliKiste #AllesNatürlich #OhniSchissdräck

♬ Volli Kiste – Volvic Records feat. Kiko

Omnichannel Storytelling: Be Smart, Consistent & Connect the Dots

Omnichannel storytelling is not without its dangers. A core principle is that the brand identity and messages should be consistent throughout your mix of channels, storytellers, and themes. Brands must make connections not only between channels, such as website and Instagram, but also stories. Even in separate posts, across different channels, your posts should function as ongoing conversations in a segmented but connected way. 

Stories also reinforce your brand message, and research shows that keeping your brand message consistent across channels increases brand trust and purchase intention significantly. Content can be fine-tuned to better suit different channels but must still maintain an underlying core consistency. 

Repurposing content is another way to connect the dots across channels. For example, you can take content created for one purpose, such as an influencer campaign, and revive it for a second lifecycle across various channels. Repurposing content not only helps achieve your goals of creating ongoing storylines, but also saves money.

Author: Megan Bozman, Owner @Boz Content Marketing

IM and the Travel Industry

Posted on by Kingfluencers

Over recent years influencer marketing has seen a huge boom as brands have been discovering the benefits of the practice and benefitting from the positive returns it can generate for them. In 2021 Nearly two-thirds of marketers said they will increase their spending on influencer marketing significantly, compared to only 39% stating the same in 2018. One of many signs that this fresh marketing tactic is no longer standing on the sidelines but has become central to brand’s go-to-market approach. One main reason behind this is that IM return on investment has become a lot easier to measure and track. That being said, in new 2021 studies, 89% of marketers say ROI from influencer marketing is comparable to or better than other marketing channels.

It is thus no surprise that IM has been seeing its popularity rise exponentially and whereas the global advertising market might be undergoing some turbulations, we see that the social media advertising and influencer marketing spending of companies is rising sharply, with the projected year on year increase in global influencer marketing revenue expected to continue to reach double digits for the next foreseeable years – according to renowned market research firms the expected CAGR will be around 32%. Meanwhile 17% of marketers claim they will spend 50% or more of their marketing budget on IM. Do we need to say more?

But of course influencer marketing is more attractive for some sectors than for others and every industry also has its own dynamics that is reflected in how intensively – if anything – marketers adopt IM as a solid part of their marketing strategy. Within the influencer industry, the five most popular categories with a share of 57% were lifestyle, travel, food, parenting, and fashion and beauty. Often even within the sector we see different stakeholders have a heterogenic approach to influencer marketing among the main actors. That is definitely the case for the travel and tourism industry where we see different industry players apply influencer marketing in different ways as part of their marketing strategy.

The case for IM in the travel industry

It is fair to say that all the positive aspects that make IM effective and popular in general apply to the travel industry, and perhaps even more than to others. Why? For starters in travel word-of-mouth is potentially even more important as a decision making factor for those people deciding where to go, how to get there and where to stay than in any other sector. Peer-to-peer reviews are almost nowhere as important and decisive for consumer decisions as in the travel industry. Therefore inspiring trust by means of authentic influencer reviews and recommendations can provide a significant sales push by boosting a brand’s image and triggering positive purchasing or booking decisions. The closer the influencer is to their community the bigger this impact will be. This type of gentle but effective push is hard or impossible to achieve with any other form of communication or advertising. Moreover, it has been shown in studies on consumer decision processes that travel is one of the areas in which consumers most turn to influencers to get inspired. There is a very aspirational component to travel and seeing the people one looks up to visiting certain locations and gaining memorable experiences with the brands that make it possible. Whether you are looking for full-on glamour or back to basics nature experiences, when an influencer promotes your destination or service, those with similar lifestyle aspirations seeking for certain experiences are bound to feel inclined to follow in the influencer’s footsteps.

Newly emerging IM champions in the sector

The travel and tourism industry is made up of many different actors such as passenger transportation and airline companies, hotels, intermediaries (traditional and online travel agencies) and leisure experience providers. These players have typically showed a somewhat fragmented approach to their usage of influencer marketing. One of the surprising evolutions that we have witnessed gaining strength over the past years has been the involvement of travel and tourism associations and destinations, where they have been taking control to gain appeal in the eyes of consumers. One of the already famous examples from this year has been the ‘no drama’ campaign from Schweizer Tourismus which included Roger Federer – in terms of an influencer it does not get much better – and actor Robert De Niro. The campaign has been widely recognized as a massive success and even won multiple awards, including in Cannes. In order to give their campaign even more firing power they have engaged a real influencer squad to further spread the message towards a wide audience and achieve positive outcomes.

New opportunities for the ‘underdogs’

When it comes to the leading actors in the industry – passenger transportation, hotels / hospitality and travel agents – we see pretty much a similar pattern when it comes to influencer marketing spending compared to other forms of advertising. But there are some clear differences. The similarities lay in the fact that just like with traditional advertising the big players – traditional travel agencies aside as they have seen their markets and budgets shrink dramatically due to online competition – in general have the bigger budgets to spend on influencer marketing and can therefor work with top influencers, content creators and professional agencies and have even dedicated resources to plan and execute their IM strategies and tactics. But the more relevant part is probably where IM offer a different picture than what we saw before. For starters despite online travel agencies investing a lot in digital marketing and advertising, especially search, display and on social media advertising, we see them being less active in IM working with social-media-made influencers. Instead we see them working more often with celebrity endorsements, which is for many also considered influencer marketing.

But more importantly by working directly with influencers smaller brands like small hotel chains or individual establishments now also have the power to tap into an effective marketing resource that has proven to yield positive results and return on investment. Interviews with single hotel or small hotel chain employees have taught us that very often these organizations do not even have dedicated marketing professionals or teams and so elaborate marketing actions are nearly impossible for them to manage. However working with influencers is ‘easy’ because by just choosing the right people to work with and giving them a clear briefing, the influencer does most of the work such as content creations and promotion for them. This is a huge game-changer and gives these brands access to a marketing power they did not have before. Often hotels get approached by influencers who pro-actively reach out in an effort to create win-win deals, allowing the hotel to investigate if the influencer is a fit or not without having to spend time scouting through social media, and if there is a fit it is usually cost-effective to book them as often remuneration is a mix between cash payments and in-kind payments – mainly free hotel stays. That means IM has the power to democratize the hospitality sector’s marketing power a little bit.

Another factor where IM plays a role is through the fact that for a hotel it’s much more lucrative to get direct bookings as receiving bookings via agencies (offline and online) is usually a lot less profitable due to the high commissions paid. Working with influencers has been proven to generate sales / bookings and by directing people to the hotel website to book directly, IM can contribute to a higher profitability .

Travelfluencers and the win-win-win

Contrary to what critics might say or wish to believe, travel influencer is a real job. And a rewarding one when done properly, no matter if we speak about macro or micro-influencers. Whether main occupation of side occupation, it requires investment in time, effort and yes resources along with a good dose of creativity, content creation skills and more in order to provide both brands and consumers with what they are looking for. Many travel influencers are skilled photographers, videographers, etc and spend ample time in researching the places they go, and creating the perfect shot that tells a story like no other. What is important for travel influencers is to always remain authentic and honest in order not to betray the trust of their community. It is thus always a tough task for influencers to choose the brands and organization they actually genuinely feel comfortable working with and promoting , while at the same time giving truthful and balanced feedback towards their audience. When done successfully this creates a win-win-win. Often influencer receive benefits such as some form of payment and other perks, the brand benefits from the generated visibility and image-boost, and the audience gets valuable insights that help them make consumer / travel decisions helping them avoid disappointing mistakes and guarantee that the trip will be worth the effort, and money spent.

Go micro, and other tips

By now it has become common knowledge that in order to achieve positive results and return on investment it is not necessary to work with the most famous influencers or those with the biggest audience – so called macro influencers. Especially for the hospitality sector it has been proven to be very rewarding and cost-effective to work with micro and even nano influencers. Often these influencers have an even better and closer relationship with their community which makes that their recommendations carry even more value towards those audiences. Especially in the travel and hospitality industry where this aspect of trust and word-of-mouth is so crucial this ‘closeness’ generates more impact and directly affects people’s decisions, resulting in revenue generation for the brand. Smaller influencers usually also have a more defines audience and homogenous follower community, making them the perfect vehicle to target specific communities effectively. Their communities are usually also more engaged, resulting in higher interaction with your brand based on the posts they do and a higher incidence of call-to-action uptake or conversion as a consequence. As their influencer fees are also generally lower than for bigger influencers, it is possible to work with more influencers in one campaign, thereby expanding the reach and combining reach in numbers with the objective of having a focused reach zooming in on exactly those people you want to engage.

Other tips for travel brands include:

  • When working with influencers go for long term collaboration because the benefits of doing so are significant: not only will you be able to negotiate better deals with the influencers but the influencer will also become more of a brand ambassador for you and as people start recognizing this over time, they will associate the person with your brand and vice versa and their endorsements will generate more positive impact
  • Work with video as much as possible as this is the preferred medium these days as well as the most impactful one
  • Choose the right influencers, based on their image, value lifestyle and especially their community – always do your due diligence
  • Although Instagram is the most popular platforms for travel influencer campaigns, it is worthwhile looking into other platforms like TikTok as well, although these do require a different approach and so it is always useful to look at benchmarks first and explore the options
  • Focus on creatine interaction with the audience and engagement above anything else
  • It’s all about experience and inspiration so when collaborating with the influencers go for the route that really inspires people to the max
  • Track your performance and set goals, IM is no longer just about awareness and top of the funnel but also more and more about actual conversion and generating sales / direct revenue
  • Social responsibility is a big topic, but it no longer just includes sustainability in covid-times – take this into account to avoid risks of public backlash

Don’t forget Covid

The pandemic has had a disproportionally strong impact on the travel industry in comparison to any other industry. Even with gradually lowering restrictions and glimmer of hope that things are slowly going back to ‘normal’, it has to be taken into account that that normal is no longer defined the way it was before. Not only did the hospitality sector need to change the way it operates – check initiatives life the well health safety seal in the US and beyond, but it also has tremendous consequences for influencers and influencer marketing. What was previously easy and simple or no-brainer can now unlock serious repercussions in the form of reactions from the public when not thought of. Influencers need to show that they take the necessary safety precautions when traveling in order to set the example and also to offend anyone in their community (and beyond). At the same time they also need to showcase this aspect of safety and health concerns more than ever when they create content about their experiences on certain journeys and with certain brands as people will be looking out for this and will want to know if certain airlines hotels, restaurants, etc can be considered ‘safe places’, meaning they minimize the risk of covid infections to the maximum. More than ever the aspect of social responsibility has expanded from aspects such as sustainability and employee well-being to include public health-measures. Click here to find out more about our influencer marketing services.

Author: Megan Bozman, Owner @Boz Content Marketing

Why You Need to Get Started Now to Achieve Success During the Holidays

Posted on by Kingfluencers

Many challenging endeavors require long-term, dedicated efforts in order to succeed. Whether climbing a tall mountain, defending a PhD thesis, or embarking on a new career, preparation efforts can’t be crammed into a weekend – or even a handful of weekends. Months of planning and dedicated effort must precede such achievements.

And if your brand wants to succeed and earn revenue throughout the holiday season, September and early October is the time to get started.

Work Now to Achieve a Successful Holiday Shopping Season

Spikes in sales don’t occur immediately at the exact time as ad spend, and ads take time to be created. Many brands also have longer sales cycles, resulting in further deferrals between campaign launch and revenue generation. Again, the time to act is now.  

According to TikTok Internal data, DE, Oct 2020 – Feb 2021, TikTok users embrace shopping content around key holiday moments and build up anticipation for Black Friday and Christmas way ahead of time. To achieve a successful holiday season, Kingfluencers advises setting the foundations for long term success in the early fall season.  

For brands who are prepared, there are numerous opportunities to boost revenue this coming holiday season. 86% of consumers have delayed big purchases such as a car, vacation, or home appliances over the last year. Additionally, many are engaging in ‘revenge shopping,’trying to make up for the consumption they missed during the pandemic and lockdowns by spending extra on things they want – a trend that is expected to continue throughout the end of this year. So as a brand make sure you capture these consumers’ attention and check in part of that spending as revenue.  

Making Wise Marketing Investments

As September has drawn to a close, brands are embarking on the fall/ winter season, which includes many key shopping milestones. Testing and iterating now will set up your brand for success. Brainstorm, develop fresh content, test campaigns, and optimize so you can ramp up and build momentum through Christmas and New Year’s.

Influencer Marketing (IM) has the power to help brands generate awareness and earn consumer loyalty throughout different phases. It’s authentic and impactful and has excellent potential for interactive, engaging campaigns. With influencer marketing showcasing best-in-class ROI figures, it is becoming increasingly attractive for companies. IM has proven to be an efficient way to reach your target audience, and a powerful tool to help your brand get even closer to consumers.

With a holistic approach in the industry and the help of in-house AI-based technology, Kingfluencers is able to run influencer marketing campaigns that not only provide impressive reach but also drive conversions through continuous optimization in four phases:

  • Phase 1 (Sept – Early Oct) – Connect & Create
    This month is the time for brainstorming and developing fresh ideas, both internally as well as selecting influencers and content creators to partner with.

  • Phase 2 (Mid Oct – Halloween) – Build & Execute
    Build campaigns, and begin placing ads so you can gather the data needed to test.

  • Phase 3 (Nov Through Black Friday) – Test & Optimize
    As you accrue data, test additional variables and make improvements. 

  • Phase 4 (Dec Through New Years) – Reap Rewards… & Repeat
    Making investments and building towards success can drive increased revenue through December, but the process of optimizing campaigns should also be repeated continuously.

Phase 1 – Create New Campaigns & Leverage Influencer Marketing to Connect with Audiences

As you begin to brainstorm new campaigns, leverage a variety of sources for fresh ideas. Influencers are often viewed as a vehicle for connecting to your audience. While they can do so effectively, they can also contribute their subject matter expertise and collaborate with you to develop creative campaign ideas. As subject matter experts, influencers are uniquely qualified to help your brand be more creative, bringing fresh, creative ideas no one else inside your organization may have thought of before.

Consumers use social media to discover products and services, and make purchasing decisions, often with the help of influencers as reliable sources of information. 87% of consumers made purchases based on influencer recommendations. When it comes to brands, products, and services to buy, consumers seem to trust shopping recommendations more from influencers than from family and friends according to a study from gen.video.

Getting started with IM and storytelling by partnering with the right influencers are vital tactics for connecting with your audience. The ability to select specific influencers provides exceptional targeting capabilities, although it can be a challenging process. Influencer choice must align with your brand’s message and values, as well as your campaign objectives. As you build an influencer squad, consider the following:

  • Conduct due diligence
  • Find the right match with the platforms of choice
  • Seek authenticity
  • Find the right degree of creativity
  • Aim for long-terms collaborations
  • Consider various influencer roles

Working with an influencer marketing agency can also help you make ideal matches. Because Kingfluencers has existing relationships with multiple influencers, we can also ensure your brand collaborates with reliable, trustworthy professionals. Contact us at Kingfluencers.

Example – Corona Beer: The Swiss Limetrack

To strengthen its presence in the Swiss market, Corona engaged with Kingfluencers to create an influencer marketing campaign boosting local appeal and connecting to Swiss consumers on an emotional level.

Kingfluencers assembled an influencer team, The Limetrack squad, and built a sequence of creative activities and steps that allowed the influencers to tell a rich and captivating story over 3.5 months. Serving as protagonists, the Limetrack Squad took the audience on a magnificent summer journey, which included allowing every consumer to become the hero of their own story by following the influencer’s footsteps and giving away dozens of Corona kits via interactive challenges and contests – getting the winners ready to start their own adventures.

Picture: @fabiozingg for the Corona Beer campaign

Phase 2 – Build & Execute

Once you’ve established strategies, October is the time to get started with implementation and testing elements like messaging, influencers, and imagery. Halloween is a great occasion to feature, as the first fall/winter holiday in the ramp-up to Christmas.

Establish your unique goals, then measure SoMe results against them. You may want to drive a specific and measurable action, such as email signups or purchases. On the other hand, your social media campaigns may be driving awareness and thus your goals may be impressions and reach. The guidance of experts can help you determine where to get started, establish goals, and build structured plans to achieve targeted goals.

It’s important for brands to assess the outcome of campaigns and continually adjust to keep moving in the right direction as they work to build their funnel. Throughout October, continually gather data to establish a baseline so you can begin to measure changes. If your metrics are trending in a positive direction in response to your efforts, reinforce the factors that contributed to this. And when you view trends moving in the opposite direction, investigate and look at the whole picture. Initiatives that fall short are still important lessons learned.

Phase 3 – Test & Optimize, Which Takes Time

Black Friday is the time to capitalize on what you’ve learned in October and test further to optimize your campaigns in the runup to Christmas and New Years. Knowing which of your messages your target audience responds to enables you to dedicate marketing investments to the tactics that yield the best return on investment. And the only way to reach those conclusions is to test. 

At Kingfluencers, our team of experts help brands put together and implement their ideal optimization strategies to maximize ROI.

A/B testing is a wonderful tool that lets marketers replace opinion with fact. When 2 distinct marketing tactics are executed, and 1 outperforms the other, brands can declare a clear winner and adapt future campaigns accordingly. However, you can only test 1 variable at a time. Conducting tests takes time to gauge results and there are limitations on how much you can condense this vital process. Much like training for a marathon, the preparations required for success simply cannot be crammed into a few weekends.

Based on insights gained in phase 2, you’ll be able to build an ideal influencer profile for your brand and better determine your audience’s preferences. This enables you to optimize overall costs by removing the lowest performing influencers and selecting additional ones that match your objectives. In phase 3, your influencer squad can unleash their creativity and experiment with new concepts such as topics, imagery, and calls to action.

Phase 4 – Reap Rewards… & Repeat

Making investments through the fall sets your brand up for success and drives increased revenue through the end of the year. As you’ve dedicated the efforts needed to sharpen messaging, build a solid influencer squad, and develop confidence in your squad’s ability to engage your audience, you’ll be able to reap rewards. You’ll be set up to launch campaigns during the holidays to drive revenue – at optimized costs. For example, have influencers lead live events that encompass memorable, consumer-engaging brand experiences, and even sampling actions for new products.

Of course consumer interests and trends change, making it important to continuously repeat the processes of optimizing campaigns.

Contact us at Kingfluencers to get started now by putting a winning end-of-year strategy together that will help your brand boost sales throughout key consumer moments between October and new year.

BONUS: Solutions to Test During October and November

Rather than throwing something at the wall to see what sticks there are many sources of expert guidance you can consider as you begin creating campaigns. TikTok, in particular, provides extensive information to brands based on their own research. Things users want include:

  1. More Fun

According to TikTok, users want to see fun videos (e.g. discounts presented with trendy transitions or in collaboration with a comedy creator). Creatives tailored for Tik Tok are the winning strategy. On Instagram, add fun with filters and stories, which also bring a sense of urgency.

  1. Creator Content

A survey by CivicScience found that nearly half of daily Instagram users have made a purchase because of an influencer recommendation. TikTok users want to see creators sharing branded challenges.

Evian-Volvic Switzerland worked with Kingfluencers to assemble a line-up of musicians and Swiss TikTok stars from dance and comedy to create the first Swiss music video specifically for TikTok. The video “Volli Kiste,” features tailored rap lyrics and has received more than a million clicks as of 2 September.

  1. Discounts

Danielle Bernstein, founder of @WeWoreWhat, posted a survey to her 2.5 million Insta followers asking whether they would be interested in “discount codes for her larger partnerships.” 93% of respondents voted yes. 46% of TikTok users say coupons and discounts increase their likelihood of buying a product.

  1. Visual Appeal

Many top social media channels, such as Instagram, are visual mediums, so your posts must look great. Hootsuite advises, “You don’t need professional photography equipment, but your photos and videos do need to be sharp, well-lit, well-composed, and in focus, at a minimum… Great photos are nice, but if they don’t tell a story, or get viewers excited, they’re not going to engage followers.”

  1. All the Key Info

Include it all within a single video: price, discount, where to get it. 

  1. Social Commerce

90% of online shoppers are also using social networks today. You can optimize by including clever shoppable features and working with brand advocates to boost reach. Shoppable features on social media are helping drive an ongoing rapid rise in social commerce, particularly with younger generations. Social commerce differs from social media marketing in that users are able to make purchases directly through social media networks, rather than being redirected to an online store. With features like swipe up, linked shoppable product catalogues, livestream shopping, and temporary flash promotions, it has become increasingly easier to make the link between social media storytelling and revenue generation.

  1. Inspiration

For many consumers, social media has grown to become the predominant source of inspiration and guidance. Social media and influencers are now where people turn for new products to try, fashion trends, and hot new tech. In terms of what makes people buy a product, recommendations from friends and family have declined in importance, dropping to the third place.

Author: Yoeri Callebaut, Co-CEO and Chief Growth & Marketing Officer @ Kingfluencers
Yoeri has been a strategist and marketer for over 14 years and worked for the most part of it for B2B brands, focusing on starting new ventures or pushing young organizations to their next development stage.

The Healing Role of Influencers – Especially in Post-Pandemic Times

Posted on by Kingfluencers

It’s no secret that the pandemic and lockdowns have had far-reaching, long-term, devastating consequences worldwide. From damaged mental health, delayed cancer treatments, and weight gain, to economic devastation and loss of education. As the world moves toward recovery, influencers and influencer marketing can play a variety of helpful roles.

Influencers as Role Models

Influencers are important community voices in society, and they function as role models whether they want to or not. In particular, influencers are often voices of the young community and an effective means for connecting with young people.

Influencers’ behavior reflects their community. Throughout the pandemic, they’ve been able to set a positive example by being careful to obey the rules and restrictions and taking care of their own health.

Modeling Healthy and Active Lives

Many influencers are focused on healthy living, and exemplifying such behavior is particularly important during and after the pandemic. Exercise, a healthy diet, and adequate sleep all help strengthen people’s immune systems to fight off a variety of infections when needed.

The term “active lifestyle” typically refers to fitness, but influencers can also support post-pandemic recovery by leading active social lives. As communities see them engaging in travel, dining, social happenings, and more, influencers can provide inspiration and reassurance of the safety of such activities – taking into account the official safety guidelines to do so responsibly, of course. 

As people ease back into active social lives and attend increasingly large gatherings, influencers can serve as trail blazers and help ‘new’ normality seem less scary and intimidating. By exhibiting these behaviors, influencers can help socializing to become more relatable and a good path for people to follow.

Role of influencers. Modeling Healthy and Active Lives

Supporting Economic Growth

The economic devastation of lockdowns hit some industries much harder than others. The global economy could lose over $4 trillion due to COVID-19’s impact on tourism alone. Travel has always been a popular theme on many social media platforms. Influencers can set a positive example by actively traveling and enjoying hotels, restaurants, and tourist destinations while still respecting the countries’ guidelines and regulations for the pandemic. 

Additionally, while many jobs were eliminated by lockdowns, labor shortages exist in some regions. Influencers could also serve to inform young people of openings in various jobs they might not have considered, further driving recruitment and economic recovery.

People enjoy using social media to stay in touch with activities in their local community. By bringing awareness to local businesses, influencers can direct their support to the businesses most in need that they have personal connections with. For example, the Family of 5 (F05) Travel Blog offered support to the many small businesses impacted by the pandemic.

Encouraging Vaccination While Private Issues Become Increasingly Public

Role of influencers. Encouraging Vaccination While Private Issues Become Increasingly Public

These numbers change rapidly, but currently 52.51% of the population of Switzerland is fully vaccinated. In the US the percentage stands at 53.55%. While more people continue to get vaccinated, the rates in the US and Europe have slowed, and public health organizations are working to encourage continued uptake.

While some influencers are hesitant to engage on an issue that has become political, plenty have made the choice to publicly share their support for vaccination. Health has often been a private matter, but now we must recognize the change as many choose to make certain facets of their health status public. In particular, influencers can serve as effective touch points with young

Influencer Marketing is The Right Tool

Influencer marketing is the right tool because young people take it seriously and see it often more than other media and ads. Many people are more trusting of influencers than traditional marketing. For example, 84% of millennials don’t trust traditional advertising. The Swiss government hired a marketing agency to help educate the public about the pandemic. The agency first invested in traditional ads and, fortunately, they’ve recently started to work with influencers as well.

We’ve seen a variety of effective campaigns with influencers, such as Aditotoro’s TikTok interview with Swiss politician Alain Berset, which was shared on TikTok and YouTube. Berset answered questions and clarified the importance of the existing lockdowns and restrictions. 

The Role of Comedians and Podcasts

When people need information about infectious disease, they don’t usually turn to comedians. However, comedians have played an interesting, helpful role in the pandemic. Zeki made many jokes about both COVID-19 and Swiss politician Alain Berset, and he did so in a good-natured, inoffensive way. Humor is a constructive way of coping with a variety of challenges. Zweiammorge, a comedy and meme channel, also brought much-needed brevity to social media.

In the first wave of the pandemic, podcasts served as one of the main sources of information and have continued to be a useful social media tool for scientists. For example, Stefan Besser spoke with politicians and government epidemiologists. Influencers serve as community voices and, by hosting interviews with experts, provide important info to their audiences.

The Role of Comedians and Podcasts

Influencers Helping with Society’s Challenges

While influencers generally put out messages that others may follow, they can also serve as an outlet for followers to express their views. Influencers can help communities work through difficult issues and provide a voice to younger people. Many Swiss influencers have interviewed and surveyed people on the street, generating interesting insights. For example, TikToker Joung Gustav met with people at Stadelhofen during the lockdown and made videos with them, revealing a closer look at their points of view. Such posts can provide an unfiltered platform for a broader group of people and expand beyond the voices featured on news media. 

Anja Lapčević, Kingfluencers’ Chief Influence Officer and Co-CEO, recognizes that people active on social media have a degree of responsibility. Her vision to encourage conscious behavior in influencer marketing prompted her to co-found Conscious Influence Hub (CIH), a non-profit NGO. 

Many Influencers can Serve as a Source of Inspiration 

Many Influencers Serve as a Source of Inspiration

Many of the top influencers are big superstars, but those with a smaller following can still serve as sources of inspiration, healing, and support. Often such micro-influencers have closer connections to their communities, leading to a greater impact. Unlike big stars, they are normal people living lives we can relate to, with the power to inspire by showing that we can all achieve great things. Influencers encourage people to not be shy in revealing their own creativity and imagination, whether in a funny way or serious way. We all deserve a platform and the opportunity to share our ideas with the world.

If you’d like to team up with influencers to support post-pandemic recovery, contact Kingfluencers for help making a perfect influencer match and structuring campaigns to meet your goals.

Author: Megan Bozman, Owner @Boz Content Marketing

Tips & Pitfalls to Avoid for Successful Swiss Influencer Marketing Campaigns

Posted on by Kingfluencers

Don’t Forget the Swiss Audience

When building strategy and tactics for influencer marketing campaigns, it’s important to be aware of common pitfalls and to have plans in place if disaster should strike. After all, forewarned is forearmed. Knowledge is power. In this article, we’ll dive deeper into how to analyze and build an approach for success, to both achieve your goals and avoid stumbles.

Metrics to Monitor

There are many metrics you can review in order to assess the efficacy of your social media efforts. Building upon that foundation, we’ll address what to monitor specifically to look for red flags, so you can pull a circuit breaker and stop any campaigns that may be ineffective at best or damaging at worst.

Tips Swiss Influencer marketing

Fake Followers: A high quantity of followers on social media means access to a large audience. Of course, not if that “high quantity” consists of fake bot followers. Unfortunately, fake followers, like spam, are inevitable. A few signs to help determine if followers are potentially bots include:

  • Globally dispersed followers
  • Lack of engagement
  • Comments that consist entirely of emojis
  • Generic comments such as, “I like this post”

However, don’t let the presence of some bot followers eliminate an influencer from your consideration. There’s no precise way to know with certainty if followers are bots, and there’s no specific formula to measure how many bots you should tolerate before rejecting an influencer.

Selected Influencers: Avoid IM landmines by making influencer matches as perfect as possible. Influencer choice must align with your brand’s message and values, as well as your campaign objectives. When you conduct due diligence, also be on the lookout for influencers who might have the potential to offend your audience, or who are prone to impulsive or deliberately shocking actions. Working with an influencer marketing agency can also help avoid disasters, since agencies conduct extensive research prior to doing business with any brand or influencer.

Tips Swiss Influencer marketing. Target Audience

Target Audience: If you’re a Swiss business working to earn Swiss customers, it might go without saying that you need to reach a Swiss audience. Examine the followers of influencers you’re considering, and don’t just assume all influencers based in Switzerland have many Swiss followers. Additionally, look for an overlap between your target customer audience and the influencer’s followers, for demographics such as age group, background, and interests.

Languages: Swiss brands often need coverage of French, Italian, and German, depending on their objectives and focus. This creates important questions and decisions to be made for brands in terms of which languages to communicate in, where and when. What is crucial is to address your audiences in a way that they feel personally addressed and maintain a consistent approach over time.  Even when there’s shared language, there are still colloquialisms to consider. For example, “getting pissed,” has quite different connotations for Americans versus Brits, (angry versus drunk.)

Regionalization of Messaging: Knowledge of the local culture and history can help you be more impactful and successful, as well as avoid potential disasters. In most cases above points can be addressed to a degree by working with the right mix of influencers who have a focus on specific regions – perhaps because they are from or live in the region – and languages. 

Avoid Cultural Missteps

As described by Fast Company, “Say the words ‘Kendall Jenner’ and ‘Pepsi’ and people know… This is at the top of just about every Worst Ad list and will be for a long, long time.” Such catastrophes should be avoidable with a hearty dose of common sense, combined with a diversity of perspectives. Those perspectives should include plenty of local insight, both fluency in the local language and knowledge of local customs.

In May of 2020, Volkswagen posted a clip on Instagram of a black man who is pushed around by a white hand and finally flicked into a shop called “Petit Colon,” which translates to “Little Colonist.” The car maker was reluctant at first to recognize the error, but ultimately described the video as tasteless and promised to clarify the situation.

Swiss organic bratbutter Migros produced containers with the Italian text, “Burro per arrostire svizzeri,” which means something like “butter to fry the Swiss.” A tasty chop was depicted directly above this cannibalistic sentence.

Conduct Due Diligence

Making ideal influencer matches is an important step in avoiding trouble. Influencer choice must align with your brand’s message and values, as well as your campaign objectives. There must be a clear link between your brand and the person in order to keep your IM campaigns real. Authenticity is always a good best practice, and by working with credible influencers who use and genuinely like your products, you can drive engagement while avoiding backlash due to compromised trust.

When you conduct due diligence, also be on the lookout for influencers who might have the potential to offend your audience, or who are prone to impulsive or deliberately shocking actions. An agency can be particularly helpful in making influencer matches, as well as negotiating terms, executing contracts, and managing projects over time to ensure high quality and brand reputation.

In addition to the fit between your brand and an influencer, consider brands they’ve promoted in the past. A sustainability brand such as Greenpeace might want to avoid influencers who’ve previously collaborated with non-sustainable brands.

Tips Swiss Influencer marketing. Authenticity is always a good best practice.

Give Influencers a Precise Briefing, But as Much Freedom as You Can

Give Influencers a Precise Briefing, But as Much Freedom as You Can

To make influencer marketing effective, it must align with your key brand messages. For your influencer partners to accomplish this, they must understand those messages. Success begins with giving influencers and content creators a clear briefing. Not only must they understand the messages, but the entire scope of the project, including the processes for approval prior to posting, and details such as hashtags and URLs to include.

Let influencers do what they do best. Give direction without putting them in a box. While influencers are an effective vehicle for connecting to your audience, they can also contribute their subject matter expertise and collaborate with you to develop creative campaign ideas. As subject matter experts, they’re uniquely qualified to help your brand be more creative, bringing fresh, creative ideas.

Many Swiss brands tend to keep their marketing efforts centered on traditional initiatives. Influencer marketing can help serve as a catalyst to breathe fresh air into your marketing mix. Even those brands that already have a unique, creative approach have found influencer marketing to be a particularly successful addition.

Plan for Contingencies

Finally, make sure your influencers know your contingency plans if things go wrong. The only thing worse than bad news is bad news late. Influencers should know to immediately inform the brand of backlash so you can proceed with your existing crisis management plans.

Swiss-Specific Support

As a Swiss company, we also wanted to share some tips that are unique to Switzerland.

Remain Politically Neutral. Of course, this is safest since there’s no risk of alienating those with differing views, but it’s also considered polite to keep political views private. This is in stark contrast to the US, where all influencers and celebrities are expected to be left-oriented.

Express a Sense of Community. Many influencers are proud of the canton/area they’re from and freely express it. Such pride is common and also helps influencers connect with fellow canton residents.

Consider Varying Platform Popularity. The relative popularity of platforms in Switzerland doesn’t always align directly with global usage. For example, while Twitter is one of the “established giants,” it’s not widely used in Switzerland. Additionally, Twitch doesn’t have many Swiss users, although you may want to consider it to reach a niche audience.

Manage Expectations. The total population of Germany is nearly 10 times larger than that of Switzerland, and France is almost 8 times larger. It’s important to keep these numbers in mind, since the community size of Swiss influencers is therefore smaller. Fortunately, Swiss communities are very responsive and engaging, especially if the influencer speaks in their native dialect. The smaller quantity of Swiss influencers who offer high-quality content helps their audience remain engaged and loyal.

Swiss-Specific Support

Keep your Eyes on Performance at all Times 

Keep your Eyes on Performance at all Times 

Too often brands measure the wrong metrics or measure the right ones but from the wrong point of view. Often absolute numbers or topline metrics like ‘followers’ or ‘website visitors’ tell you very little about how you are really performing. A more nuanced measurement is required involving qualitative and quantitative angles combined. The most common social media metrics that are worth monitoring include:

  • Total followers and audience growth 
  • Impressions & reach per post or campaign
  • Engagement (Likes, shares, comments, etc.)
  • Click-Through-Rate
  • Share of voice: volume and sentiment
  • ROI

Through it all, stay focused on how your metrics are trending, and how they compare to your individual goals. Pay close attention to engagement, which is one of the most important metrics. When a person has actually engaged with your content, they have absorbed your message and the content created a moment for them. Those moments matter because the more positive moments you achieve, the more people will feel connected to your brand. Click here to find out more about our influencer marketing services.

Author: Megan Bozman, Owner @Boz Content Marketing

Influencers and Politics: Should they Speak Up

Posted on by Kingfluencers


Social media is used for more than posting holiday pictures or the outfit of the day. Many users, including influencers, are also bringing awareness to sociopolitical topics and encouraging their followers to take actions such as voting or participating in protests. What are the pros and cons of taking a stance, versus keeping politically neutral? 

Whether you like it or not, politics is all around us and impacts our daily lives in many direct and indirect ways. It is a topic of discussion amongst family and friends. Compared to our neighboring countries, talking politics is still somewhat taboo in Switzerland. This phenomenon can be witnessed online as well, including in the behaviours of influencers. A good example is voting. Every few months, during initiative season, more and more creators and influencers are sharing information about the different initiatives. Many don’t share any pro or con information, but rather encourage their audience to vote. It is also clear to many, especially now, that politics does impact our daily lives. “Especially now, when the pandemic affected all of us, it is clear for all that politics has a huge impact on our personal lives,” according to Andri Silberschmidt, member of the Swiss National Council (FDP).

Influencers and Politics

Influencers can have significant impacts on the outcomes of votes. For example, one might even say that the referendum for same-sex marriage and adoption rights, which was held on 26 September 2021, may have been overwhelmingly approved by Swiss voters thanks to the Komitee Ehe Für Alle’s marketing campaigns and social media. Many Swiss influencers, including those who normally don’t engage in sociopolitical dialogue, like Steven Epprecht, have stepped up and encouraged their community to vote “yes.” Also, content creators and casual social media users alike have voiced their opinions and shown their support. Even normally politically neutral brands like Ikea Switzerland have shown their support for the referendum both online and off. 

Should Influencers Take a Stand on Sociopolitical Issues?

On the one hand, just like many of us, most influencers are not political experts. On the other hand, influencers do have the power and an indirect responsibility to use their large reach and bring awareness to certain topics. This debate has gone on for years and was highlighted in last year’s Black Lives Matter movement where many influencers and content creators worldwide, with large and small communities, have spoken up. The fact is, whether influencers talk about political issues or choose not to, they get criticized.

Of course, influencers are not obligated to talk about political issues, just as politicians are not obligated to “run a lifestyle blog or write travelogues,” as Michael Walter put it nicely. As a rule of thumb, Andri Silberschmidt recommends that only those who are enthusiastic about it should get involved online. Everyone does have the right and privilege to form their own opinion and vote in Switzerland. 

The Benefits of Influencers Taking a Stand on Sociopolitical Issues

Influencers have a large reach and can influence the perception of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of people. If they can influence their audiences to buy a product, why shouldn’t they influence their audience to make positive changes in the world and discuss political issues? As lifestyle blogger and digital entrepreneur, Slavia Karlen, said: “Not speaking out on political issues is a missed opportunity to engage in political dialogue.” Swiss politician and member of the Swiss National Council, Andri Silberschmidt, agrees with this statement: “I think it’s cool and I’m always happy when influencers participate in political discourse. Even if they don’t have the same opinion as I do, it’s still enriching because it encourages discussion.” 

Another reason why influencers should be involved in sociopolitical issues, especially if they are passionate about certain topics, is that they can change the world in positive ways. As musician and outspoken influencer Moo Malika said in our Clubhouse talk in April 2021, “I actually always think to myself, angry people have changed the world. It wasn’t those who didn’t dare to say something, but those who spoke out and took to the streets. I am of the opinion that one must draw attention to wrongdoings.” Generation Z in particular, doesn’t necessarily listen to politicians or traditional celebrities, but they can be swayed by their favorite influencers. 

Influencers have a unique position to inform and educate, and must act responsibly in wielding that power. Influencers can provide a platform to their communities and amplify their voices for causes that are near to their hearts. 

Of nearly 5.5 million Swiss residents who are eligible to vote, in the year 2020, 49.3% have participated in votes. According to the Department of Swiss Youth Parliaments, almost half of Swiss voters between the ages of 66 and 75 always vote, whereas nearly two-thirds of voters between the ages of 18 and 35 either never vote or seldomly. Younger voters tend to vote selectively, only participating in initiatives that they truly care about. As observed in recent Swiss initiatives, like the referendum for same-sex marriage and adoption rights in September 2021, social media has made a huge impact and significantly increased the participation of young voters. Influencers, content creators, and casual social media users alike have encouraged their communities to go to the ballot box and it worked: The participation rate of eligible Swiss voters has increased to 52.6% and 64.10% have voted yes.

Influencers and Politics. I Voted.

The Downsides of Influencer Involvement

Influencers and Politics. The Downsides of Influencer Involvement

On the other hand, if not carefully managed and properly communicated, voicing one’s opinion can lead to something that many influencers fear: being canceled. This happened, for example, with ex-freestyle skier Miriam Jäger, who still has her comments limited to this day due to her stories in June 2020 where she spoke critically about the Black Lives Matter demonstrations in numerous major Swiss cities. This also cost her an influencer deal with Swiss Post. 

One plain reason why influencers should not be involved in political issues is the fact that they are not political experts. As beauty and lifestyle content creator Anastasia Casaluci said: “That’s what politicians are for. We can’t do it all. Many people simply don’t know enough about the subject, and I think that certain things should simply be left to the experts in the fields.” 

Furthermore, influencers have more than their community watching their every move. Important stakeholders such as agencies, employers, and the press always stay up-to-date with their influencers’ online activities. One wrong move and an influencer’s career can be negatively impacted. This is why entrepreneur, model, and content creator Michael Walter usually keeps a distance when it comes to speaking out about sociopolitical issues: “I keep asking myself how far I should go on social media and to what extent I should express my opinion on sociopolitical issues.”

Another simple reason why influencers don’t get involved in political issues is the fact that they lead very busy lives with multiple jobs and the different hats they wear as influencers, i. e. administrator, bookkeeper, marketer, writer, photographer etc. Most influencers in Switzerland work part-time as influencers. Being an influencer consists of more than posting images and videos and answering comments on social media. There are a lot of hours of work that goes behind one post. “And with (a) job(s), family, dog, etc. — there is not much time left to politicize”, as digital creator Fabio Zerzuben has said frankly.  

Influencers and Politics.

Who’s Right About Being Right?

Talk quickly about the fact that one big question is: what is RIGHT?  For example you might think that Donald Trump is a bad person and should not win elections because his program is bad but this is all very personal, universal values aside, and for someone else he might be the right choice. Or abortion might seem murder to you, but not to a rape victim … so one very crucial point to take into account is that before speaking up and influencing people you better be 100% certain you’re on the right side of history and if not or or if you don’t have all the info to make a very informed statement should you even be influencing people as someone with the power to do so ? ethical question to be considered ! 

Throughout history, powerful people have acted in ways that have been revealed to be misinformed and even dangerous, such as doctors promoting cigarette smoking. When influencers consider taking a stand on an issue, it’s important they’re well-informed. From an ethical standpoint, influencers wield power and must be certain they’re acting responsibly.

Tips and Tricks Direct from The Influencers 

If you do choose to dialogue about sociopolitical issues, we have listed some tips for influencers as well as everyone engaging on social media. The following are exclusive tips from our influencers, as well as Andri Silberschmidt, along with guidance from the Conscious Influence Hub (CIH).

  1. Be informed before publicizing your opinion
TikToker wemmse

TikToker wemmse stated: “Online, I only comment on a topic when I feel well informed and confident in my position. But I often put enlightening posts in my story so that those who want to inform themselves can do so.”

Always fact check. Check your information sources and educate yourself before informing others.

  1. Add humor

Consider adding humor, particularly if you don’t usually post serious content. Satirist Hamza Raya says: “Indirectly, I participate by contributing to the formation of opinion as a satirist.”

  1. Remember words can have consequences

As an influencer, your words could have consequences if you don’t watch out. Blogger and sustainability activist Anina Mutter has set some ground rules for herself from the beginning of her career as a blogger: “My basic rules are that I only express myself when I am actually sure that I can stand behind my statement and that I know what I am talking about (of course, I can be wrong there, too). I also seek advice from experts when I am unsure. Or I just allow myself (for the time being) not to say anything if I am not sure.” Slavia warns: “You have to be careful what you say, because if you have even a minimally different opinion, this can unfortunately very quickly end in a shitstorm.”

  1. Leave people their own opinions.

Educate and suggest, but don’t impose. Understand that what’s right for you might not be right for someone else irrespective of their motives.

  1. Emphasize facts over emotion

Speak mostly with facts rather than emotion. Speak with emotion only when the objective facts support your claims.

  1. Avoid aggression

Don’t aggressively attack or offen. While respecting everyone’s opinion, be constructive in finding common ground rather than fighting. 

Andri Silberschmidt’s exclusive ground rules for all social media users:

  1. Be respectful and maintain decorum

There is no such thing as a wrong opinion. Even when disagreeing, act with good manners and propriety.

Andri Silberschmidt’s exclusive ground rules for all social media users:
  1. Listen to your counterparts

Even if they don’t have the same opinions as you.

  1. Be transparent with your vested interests

For example, if you are an influencer for an organic farmer and have a clear opinion for environmental protection, say so from the beginning instead of someone finding out later and not taking your opinion seriously afterward. It must be clear that you are expressing your opinion for ideological reasons and not for financial ones. 

  1. Promote discussions

Don’t use the platforms to just announce your opinion, but to promote discussions and find solutions.

What Initiatives are Coming Up?

On 28 November, we will vote on the Judge initiative and the Nursing initiative, which many nurses and healthcare professionals are advocating on social media for people to vote YES. A vote will also be held on the amendment of the COVID-19 act. The act is highly controversial and widely discussed on social media, and even billboards.

Conclusion

There are many pros and cons to engaging in political debates, and it’s ultimately a personal decision. It’s reasonable for influencers to want to stay out of the fray, but for those who boldly enter, it’s vital to do so responsibly and ethically. They must be cognizant of the potential impact of their actions, and remain respectful of differing views.

And to all Swiss people out there – your vote is your voice, so go vote! Although it might feel like your vote won’t really matter, it will always make a difference.

Conclusion

Author: Sherriene Redha, Junior Social Media and Community Manager

Co-Author: Megan Bozman, Owner @Boz Content Marketing

Breaking News – Kingfluencers with new Co-Management – Press Release

Posted on by Kingfluencers

Usually, we use this blog to showcase our best articles, interesting campaigns and cool collaborations. But today we have some good news to announce ourselves: As of the 1st of September 2021, the company will be newly led by a woman and a man. Anja Lapčević, who has been with Kingfluencers for more than a year as Chief Influence Officer, will share the role of Co-CEO with Yoeri Callebaut who started as a Chief Growth and Marketing Officer in July 2020.

Belgian Yoeri Callebaut has worked in several countries around the world where he has been a strategist and marketer for over 14 years. He has worked for various corporations and start-ups with a focus on branding and digital transformation.The new Co-Managing Director Anja Lapčević comes from the former Yugoslavia and started her career in the Swiss banking world. With her experience as a social media manager and marketing consultant, she founded the Conscious Influence Hub, which promotes respect, tolerance and empathy in social media. At Kingfluencers, Lapčević will be responsible for Operations, HR and Creativity as well as for all influencers. Callebaut will be responsible for financial planning, marketing, clients and technology.

Unser Ziel als Team ist es, das Beste aus den sozialen Medien herauszuholen und dies mit Herz, echten Menschen und Kreativität zu tun.

Yoeri Callebaut – Co-CEO & Chief Growth and Marketing Officer

Kingfluencers’ successful strategic direction is joined by new faces

The previous CEO, Benny Schiegg, has decided to start new projects abroad together with his wife. We would like to thank Benny for his commitment as the CEO and wish him a lot of joy and success in the new phase of his life.

The new strategic direction initiated last year towards a creative agency of digital storytelling with the core competencies of social media and influencer marketing was successfully implemented with the management team Schiegg, Lapčević and Callebaut. While the industry grew by 30 percent in H1 2021 compared to the previous year, Kingfluencers was able to increase by almost 70 percent – in terms of revenue.

With Benny’s departure, the company will be additionally strengthened with concentrated female power in the management as of September. Myriam Djela, who was formerly with Ipsos, will take on the role of Head of Consulting, and former Jung von Matt Project Manager Andrea Müller will be the new Head of Campaigning. The proportion of women at Kingfluencers thus rises to over 65 percent!

Wir sind stolz darauf, dass wir eine der vielfältigsten Agenturen in der Schweiz sind und diese weiter vorantreiben.

Anja Lapčević – Co-CEO & Chief Influence Officer

Click here to find out more about our social media services and here for our influencer marketing services.

What to Do When Influencer Marketing Goes Wrong

Posted on by Kingfluencers

Full disclosure: we’re a marketing services firm specializing in social media and influencer marketing. As such, we are convinced that influencer marketing is an authentic, innovative, and forward-looking form of advertising which suits many brands. More than advertising, it is a storytelling approach that generates real impact. 

But we’re not going to pretend sh*tstorms never happen. Instead, in this article, we’ll cover how to avoid problems, and what to do if they occur.

Avoid IM Landmines by Making Influencer Matches as Perfect as Possible 

The ability to select specific influencers provides exceptional targeting capabilities. Influencer choice must align with your brand’s message and values, as well as your campaign objectives. When you conduct due diligence, also be on the lookout for influencers who might have the potential to offend your audience, or who are prone to impulsive or deliberately shocking actions. 

Authenticity is always a good best practice, and by working with credible influencers who use and genuinely like your products, you can avoid backlash due to compromised trust. Many questioned the fit and authenticity of the 2005 Carl’s Jr ad featuring the very thin Paris Hilton eating a huge hamburger for example. Makes sense! Often common sense already goes a long way as well. There must be a clear link between your brand and the person in order to keep your IM campaigns real. People connect with people, not logos. So the more the audience can relate to the person, the higher the engagement factor.

Snack brand BiFi worked with Donna Adrienne in what was considered one of the most embarrassing influencer campaigns of the year 2018. One Instagram post featured the Heidelberg medical student naked in a bathtub, covered in bubbles, smiling while eating a mini salami. A Horizont article satirically stated, “Because it is so obvious and convenient to tear open a sausage pack during a relaxing bath and eat an oily salami.” While this is an example of influencer marketing gone wrong, it was not a paid promotion. BiFi sent Donna Adrienne free samples in response to her inquiry, but the promotion wasn’t discussed with BiFi and therefore didn’t align with their marketing strategy. Nevertheless as the audience and critics did not know this BiFi and Donna Adrienne were criticized for not indicating that the content was advertising and thus in violation of the guidelines surrounding influencer marketing. The lesson is to be very careful and apply the rules correctly at any time. When in doubt, rather take the road of caution and indicate that a post is part of a collaboration – independent of the exchange behind it. 

influencer marketing wrong

Additionally, with long-term collaborations, you establish an enduring relationship of trust between your brand and selected influencers. This creates real value by giving a credible face to your brand, such as Mujinga Kambundji, the fastest woman in Switzerland and Nike. By associating liked people to the brand, people feel closer to the brand and connect more to it, ultimately building positive brand preference.

As your relationship with the influencers grows stronger and they come to know the brand in detail, the risk of mistakes gets lower. Be aware however that at the same time these influencers become such a part of your brand that missteps can cause little shockwaves. It is thus important to continuously keep managing the relationship with your brand ambassadors and assure that they are aware of what is happening with the brand as well as the role they play in your success and how to play that role to their best abilities.

The closer you work with them the more positive the outcomes of your collaboration will be over time. Get the most out of these relationships by investing the time and effort, because it’s worth it.

Fit with Former Collaborations

In addition to the fit between a brand and an influencer, problems can arise when a single influencer promotes multiple brands with contradictory values.

For example, a health-conscious influencer might be a good fit for a campaign against alcohol, but make sure their feed doesn’t have a previous promotion of beer. A sustainability app such as Greenpeace might want to avoid influencers who’ve previously collaborated with non-sustainable brands.

An Experiment to Determine if Influencers Will Do Anything for Money

Recently, Marvin Wildhage, a German Youtuber, created a fake skincare product, Hydrohype, complete with a fake PR firm and attempted to convince influencers to promote it. The face cream was actually made out of personal lubricant and listed with fake ingredients, like uranium, asbestos, and “pipikaka seed oil.”

An Experiment to Determine if Influencers Will Do Anything for Money

Spoiler alert – he succeeded, and a few well-known German influencers promoted Hydrohype in their Instagram stories. Martin told the story in a series of videos, with more to come.

It’s easy to dismiss these influencers as gullible and greedy, but we shouldn’t be too quick to condemn them for accepting payment in exchange for promoting a product. One solution is for influencers to work with an agency, that can protect them from this type of scam since professional influencer marketing agencies conduct extensive research prior to doing business with any brand. Rest assured the vast majority of influencers are highly trustworthy professionals adhering to clear ethical standards and taking their job very seriously. But for the few ‘rotten apples’ in the basket you can rest assure that industry professionals will shield you from those. Top agencies know exactly who is who in the influencer ecosystem and have a tested working relationships with influencers they engage with. 

Negotiate & Write Contracts Carefully

Like service agreements with any vendor, contracts with influencers must be written carefully. Of course, contracts must include details like payment terms and content rights. To help avoid disaster, also include clauses within the statement of work, such as: 

  • Process for approving posts for quality control before go live
  • Steps to take if they make mistakes, resulting in a negative backlash
  • Provisions and pricing for any re-work needed

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, but still include crisis management procedures in your contracts in case the sickness should strike.

Give Influencers Creative Freedom, but Monitor Campaign Details Carefully

Kingfluencers consistently advises letting influencers do what they do best. Don’t use influencers strictly as a vehicle for connecting to your audience, but instead leverage their subject matter expertise and collaborate to develop creative campaign ideas. Give them a precise briefing and direction (including a creative concept for consistency and guidance), but as much freedom as you can at the same time.

Give Influencers Creative Freedom, but Monitor Campaign Details Carefully

That being said, once they bring fresh, creative ideas to the table, approve those posts prior to going live. While we encourage brands to resist the urge to simply tell influencers how to do their job, we do encourage you to supervise and grant final approval before messages are communicated out to your audience, at least for influencers you do not have a long standing relationship with yet.

Invest the time to monitor if you want to spot errors. Influencers must include many things in each post such as hashtags, swipe up links, tags, and tracking links. It’s a lot of work to check it all. Careful campaign management is another way in which an agency can be particularly helpful, such as providing quality control for posts and approval of content before it goes live.

When Precautious Fail & You’re Facing Backlash

Expect the best, but plan for the worst. While no brand begins an IM campaign expecting a crisis, it’s important to make plans and be prepared. Working with people always means mistakes can be made. No one is perfect, don’t forget that. Crisis management plans should include:

  • Affected stakeholders
  • Type of crisis
  • Crisis levels
  • Designated crisis communicator
  • Who to contact
  • Procedures, including reach out, remove the post, and apologize (if relevant)

Outline steps influencers must take if any content generates negative backlash, such as for example apologizing and engaging in activities necessary to remedy the damage, such as making additional posts.

  1. Delete the offending content
  2. Don’t pretend it was never online. Denial can lead to additional backlash!
  3. Own up to it and apologize where needed
  4. A statement from the influencer can also go a long way in smoothing things over 
  5. Determine the necessary actions and take them, this might include separating the influencer and terminating the working relationship
  6. Post an update letting your audience know the status

Even if the mistake was entirely on the influencer side, know that as a brand you always should pick up responsibility. That also means that trashing the influencer will not help in times of a crisis and might actually make you look bad. Keeping a positive and constructive posture always works best. Never go low as it could affect the way your brand is perceived. 

When Precautious Fail & You’re Facing Backlash

Based in Switzerland, the Conscious Influence Hub (CIH) is a non-profit NGO that encourages conscious behavior in influencer marketing. Working together, Kingfluencers and the new CIH recently launched a new Code of Conduct for influencers which supports them in acting with respect, empathy and transparency. 

Some of the guidance which can help both brands and influencers avoid problems includes, “Stay factual and check your sources. Credibility is your greatest asset. Be honest and transparent. Respect the rules of the analogue world online.”

Mistakes are Opportunities to Learn

It’s important to remember that mistakes are also opportunities to learn and grow as an influencer and a brand. It can help you challenge yourself and your business, and make improvements. It is harmful to not learn from one’s own mistakes and those of others and simply carry on as nothing happened. Instead, one should draw lessons, define actions, and share the results. This is how one remains credible and human.

Work with Experts to Navigate and Remediate Safely

An agency like Kingfluencers has the expertise to help you navigate influencer marketing, work to avoid problems, and react quickly and effectively to mitigate damage in the event of an issue.

Having experts to rely on is always helpful, but particularly in a stressful crisis situation.

CIH Campaign

Zeki, one of the largest influencers in Switzerland, made fun of an attack on LGBTQ TikTokers which occurred earlier this year at a train station. Due to Kingfluencer’s reaction, he realized his mockery was wrong, and responded by apologizing and creating content for the CIH to raise awareness. This showcases how professionals can help guide the industry to its maximum potential and assure that social influence remains a source of information and information and a force for good and positive outcomes for brands and consumers alike.

Author: Megan Bozman, Owner @Boz Content Marketing

Managing Metrics – How to Know if Your Social Media Efforts are Working

Posted on by Kingfluencers

It’s now possible to measure marketing more precisely and efficiently than in decades past. Measuring outcomes is also much less expensive. No need to bring in consumers for focus groups. Social media platforms and Google Analytics give you insights for free.

So how do you know if your SoMe efforts are successful and why/not? Figuring out how you are doing and what is working and what isn’t is important to get the most out of your social media activities.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and social media “success” is in the judgment of the brand. There is no single set of benchmarks that explicitly define success, but Kingfluencers has provided some frameworks and guidance below.

We’ve seen too many brands, even established, global brands, lacking a real strategy for their social media. The execution of tactics, such as making posts, doesn’t imply the presence of a strategy behind them. Instead, the tactics are often ad hoc and random, sometimes even outdated and detrimental, leading to negative consequences and missed opportunities. But brands can move in the right direction by leveraging expertise to establish objectives and build structured plans to achieve targeted goals. 

Consider Your Goals

Measure SoMe results against your unique goals. You may want to drive a specific and measurable action, such as email signups or purchases. On the other hand, your social media campaigns may be driving awareness and thus your goals may be impressions and reach.

Consider the Platforms

If your content naturally lends itself to amusing posts and you’re targeting a younger generation, you may find more success on TikTok. For example, Ceylor Switzerland, the most popular condom company here in Switzerland, uses humor accompanied by pop music to inform the public of the importance of safe sex.

However, if you offer something that’s inherently visual, such as fashion or home decor, Instagram might be your best fit. Instagram is also used more heavily by women, making products such as makeup more likely to thrive on the platform.

This is not to say that you should eliminate other platforms from your efforts. Rather, make a distinction between your core platforms on which you focus investment, and moderate your expectations for any ‘add on’ platforms that don’t align as closely. 

Consider Your Peers

Metrics. Consider Your Peers

If you’re a clothing boutique with a single location, don’t compare yourself to a large chain like H&M, Chicorée, or Tally Weijl. If you’re a niche kitchen tool, such as the AeroPress, don’t compare yourself to a mega-brand like KitchenAid. Look for benchmarks for your particular industry, and consider what most closely matches your business. In the end, monitoring progress is the most important thing. Gather data to establish a baseline so you can begin to measure changes.

Compare Yourself to Yourself

It is always important to track your metrics over time and see where you are heading. If your metrics are trending in a positive direction in response to your efforts, then you should feel good about that progress and if possible reinforce the factors that contributed to this. Trends and progress are extremely important metrics of success and tell you that your efforts are having an impact.

And when you view trends moving in the opposite direction, investigate and look at the whole picture. Maybe your reach declined, but if the engagement went up, that could be a success. It simply depends on your goals. Of course, it could indicate a failure, such as a message that didn’t resonate, but even then, you’ve gained real-world data to back up your hypotheses and know what to avoid moving forward. The crucial aspect here is not just understanding in which direction you are evolving, but especially why and what the impact on your business is likely to be. Once you understand those things you can take corrective action when needed. 

Sometimes it also helps to look back at past successes and failures and see if perhaps you have seen certain patterns before and what you were able to learn from then or how you were able to take control. 

The Wrong Metrics for Social Media

Metrics. Consider Your Peers

Kingfluencers’ contributing author Megan Bozman gave us a great example to illustrate this point: “One of my clients paid a SoMe consultant who was regularly getting their Twitter account locked due to following and unfollowing large quantities of accounts. Twitter places technical limits on how many Twitter accounts you can follow.

“That seemed like a red flag, so I dug deeper and discovered that, despite posting on behalf of a B2B tech firm, she was following accounts as varied as adult nightclubs, individuals selling soap, and accounts dedicated to political rants. While these ‘follow for follow back’ techniques did indeed increase the number of followers on Twitter as well as Instagram, this couldn’t reasonably be considered successful. And that was clearly revealed when I suggested we look at engagement and click-through rates.”

The moral of the story is quite simple – When you measure the wrong metrics or measure the right ones but from the wrong point of view, for example by focusing on quantity versus quality, it really does not tell you much about your performance. In fact you might believe you are on the right track while in fact you are doing the opposite or even causing damage to your brand. 

The Need to Align on Proper Metrics

There are many other facets of marketing in which the wrong metrics can masquerade as the correct ones, and thus fool businesses into thinking marketing activities are advantageous. For example, when considering website traffic, total visitors is indeed important, but also consider metrics such as bounce rate, time on site, returning visitors, and pages per visit. A high and growing click-through-rate is also important, but additionally look at subsequent conversion rates. It’s not so great to have many people clicking your ads if none of them ever buy.

SoMe teams can’t merely tick the box of “followers.” Make sure you measure success based on metrics that actually have an correlation with and impact on your relevant business performance. Often absolute numbers or topline metrics like ‘followers’ or ‘website visitors’ tell you very little about how you are really performing. A more nuanced measurement is required involving qualitative and quantitative angles combined. 

Metrics You Might Not Have Thought Of

We’ve already mentioned a few of the most common social media metrics that are definitely worth monitoring, including:

One of the most important metrics here is definitely engagement. Although one might argue that engagement is over-used and ask what it really means, chances are big that when a person has actually engaged with your content they have absorbed the message you were trying to get across or at least part of it and hence the content has created a ‘moment’ between your brand and the person. Those moments matter because the more positive moments you achieve, the more people will feel connected to your brand. 

But we suggest you also consider a few different Key Performance Indicators to assess social media performance. Some are difficult to quantify, but still worth monitoring. Here are some suggestions: 

Follower Community Composition: Consider the composition of the follower community. Ideally, they’ll closely align with the target audience you want to connect with and nurture, so they’re likely to ‘convert’ to customers or donors, in accordance with your goals.

Platform Customization: As noted, while some platforms might be a better fit, you don’t need to abandon those which don’t align perfectly. Are you customizing your content to adapt to each platform where you post?

User-Generated Content (UGC): It’s great to have loyal fans, but are they engaged and how many are mentioning your brand? Are you making use of UGC? Content generated by brand fans and advocates can be very valuable and boost community engagement.

Campaign Results: Evaluate standard metrics, but on an individual campaign/contest- basis.

Creativity & Variety: Evaluate your efforts for variety and ensure it’s not all one-note. Are you experimenting with a wide variety of attributes, such as:

  • Themes: Current events, holidays, leisure activities
  • Topics: Individuality, environmental sustainability, social justice
  • Media: Text, videos, images
  • Social media formats: Lives, stories, IG TV, TikTok and Reels videos, interactive polls, forums
  • Interactivity: Engage audiences through challenges, contests, polls, debates, etc.

Brand Consistency Across Channels:  Are you staying consistent with your brand values and messaging, including when taking other channels into consideration? Research shows that keeping your brand message consistent across channels increases brand trust and purchase intention significantly. The importance of brand consistency is often very wrongfully understated. 

Agility and Alignment: Are you successfully synchronizing social media with your entire marketing mix and channels (e.g. newsletters, website, events, promos, etc.)? Are you responding swiftly to new trends and incoming comments? Are you repurposing content to maximize value? Are you effectively executing new campaign ideas within a reasonable timeframe? When done properly social media can greatly reinforce your marketing activities in other areas, such as boosting sales and conversion campaigns. Maintaining a holistic view has many benefits by exploiting naturally occurring synergies between marketing areas. 

Internal Participation: How many employees are advocating your brand publicly? CEOs and other leaders are part of the face of your brand. You should channel and grow their enthusiasm.

It’s All About Perception! 

You might ask yourself, ‘why do these things really matter? What is the consequence of all this when I get it right?’ There are a bunch of reasons but probably the most important one is that all this has an effect on how your brand or organization is perceived online. Do you generate a positive perception of your brand? Are consumers’ perceptions of your brand in line with what you’re communicating? Are your social media efforts perceived as authentic? Brand perception is key to making sure people respect and trust your brand and ultimately intend to buy it. By getting the points above right chances are that you will create the brand perception that reinforces your desired positioning and helps you get your message across. Once that is achieved, a big part of your marketing task is achieved and your social media activities are actually generating real impact for your business. 

Some Extra Tips to Meet Your Objectives 

Once all the above is settled and you are measuring your performance in the right way, it’s time to evaluate how your social media efforts are really performing and where you might need to improve. If you see that your social media activities are not reaching your goals, you can take a series of actions to improve, such as: 

Some Extra Tips to Meet Your Objectives 
  • Establish a clear and diversified social media content strategy and calendar 
  • Use the right content formats in order to capture people’s attention
  • Tell a story – don’t just post stuff, tell stories, create storylines and keep them going over time. Involve customers, employees, people in general, and bring in some emotion where possible
  • Work with variety of content creators that can boost how your brand is perceived, including social media takeovers by influencers and content creators
  • Have a purpose and be vocal about it – support society and local communities
  • Boost content so that even people that are not yet within your direct reach see your content and feel inclined to follow you or find out more about your brand
  • Work with a social media agency to achieve your goals in the most cost-effective and hassle-free way possible

Create a Framework for Your Brand and Team

One way to evaluate your social media performance using the right metrics is by creating an evaluation framework for your organization. Don’t know where to get started? Below is an example that can be used to do a first topline qualitative evaluation of how you are doing and where you might need to improve, before diving into the nitty-gritty numbers. 

Increase Revenue & Strengthen Consumer Loyalty While Driving Excellent ROI

A variety of social media analytics tools are available to help. Social media marketing, and influencer marketing in particular, are powerful tools that can empower your brand to forge emotional connections, increase revenue, and strengthen consumer loyalty. With a structured approach, you can optimize each part of your campaigns and drive excellent ROI. Working with an agency such as Kingfluencers can boost your efficiency by accessing expertise and innovative technology.

Author: Megan Bozman, Owner @Boz Content Marketing

The Evolution of Social Media Part III: Social Media Tribes & Clans

Posted on by Kingfluencers

In the Evolution of Social Media Part 2, we talked about innovations in social media technology, along with the battles among platforms. In part 3, we’re addressing how human evolution has impacted social media use. Specifically, tribalism… and the other way around, how social media is shaping the tribalism of the modern world.

Humans are Tribal in Nature

Saul Levine M.D., writes in Psychology Today, “We humans are a social species, tribal by nature. We’re given to gathering and communing in familiar groups. ‘Belonging,’ our capacity and need for empathy, compassion and communication, is in our DNA.”

Social media only amplifies this tribal nature.

Dr. Levine writes about the “dark side” we also have, consisting of tribal animosities. (You don’t need us to tell you that social media amplifies that too.)

What Do Your Social Media Habits Reveal?

Social media users often make posts revealing their values, interestings, and views. But what can we learn about users based purely on the platforms they frequent, without even looking at the content they post and engage with? Are instagrammers more lifestyle oriented, are twitchers cool nerds, and are TikTokers free minded cultural challengers? 

Forget the horoscopes or traditional personality tests. Tell us what platforms you’re on and we can identify some of your key traits. This is particularly useful for brands who want to reach and activate their user communities. Most platforms offer detailed demographics and interest filters that enable brands to effectively reach their target audiences in order to optimize spend. But by thinking beyond demographics and thinking ‘culture’, ‘mindset’ and ‘community’, a whole new world of consumer targeting opens up.

Increasing Segmentation

With the proliferation of platforms, there’s something -and somewhere- for everyone. Influencer Marketing Hub published a list of 103+ social media sites you need to know in 2021. As the sheer quantity of platforms continues to rise, social media audiences become increasingly segmented. This segmentation is increasingly based on mindset or social behaviors, making social media ‘tribes’ less about age and more about beliefs, lifestyle, values, and interests. Yes, mindset over demographics.

For example, Untappd gives beer drinkers a platform where they can rate beer, share pictures of beer, and review tap lists from venues nearby, and ReverbNation, which is dedicated to musicians and helps them build careers. So what if you run a brewery or supply musical gear? What better place to reach your community? 

Content Houses Combine Influencers into Clans

To drive additional value from content creators, some brands have launched “content houses,” in which influencers are given a luxury residence for a set period of time so they can use a product and create content. 

Gen Z fashion brand Finesse creased a house in LA from April to July, and esports team FaZe Clan was formed back in 2010. “Content house marketing can boost reach and also the relatability of branded content, says Tim Armoo, founder of Gen Z talent agency Fanbytes and the Byte House, the UK’s biggest TikTok house with up to 90 million views a week across its six creators.” 

Taulant, Simone, Eric, and friends

Kris, Malwyn, Franny and friends (Youngsters)

Aditotoro, Stucki, Nathi, and friends (the Youtubers)

Carly, Leo, and friends (Western-Switzerland)

Zeki, Rash Jr, Goustav, Ivan (the Comedy-Club)

Battle of the Generations? 

There are numerous memes mocking millennials and of course, the famous, “OK Boomer.” This is one of our favorite mockeries of the trend. Gen X seems to be forgotten in the middle, something we’re generally just fine with. Then there are claims that, “Generations are fake and it’s time for the industry to change this way of thinking,” as written in Talking Influence.

Still, there are some trends we can observe according to age. For example, App Annie’s State of Mobile 2021 report includes, “In the US and UK, Gen Z had the highest affinity for Snapchat and Twitch, respectively.”

Generation T (for TikTok, Of Course)

But there is one platform that is challenging this more and more. When it comes to TikTok, “Generation T is age-agnostic.… on TikTok, mindset trumps generations.” Talking Influence defines Gen T as valuing community building and having a thirst for knowledge along with an interest in connecting to subcultures. Although the TikTok audience is overwhelmingly made up of younger people, with 65% of users in Switzerland being between the ages of 13 and 24, other generations are also becoming more active on the platform. TikTok is investing actively to become seen as an age-agnostic platform for everyone. One is example is the growing mother community on TikTok with content focusing on cooking, household tips, children, or even leisure tips and much more. 

Generation T

With TikTok in the lead, they’re undeniably setting trends. According to App Annie’s State of Mobile 2021 report, “TikTok’s average monthly time spent per user grew faster than nearly every other app analyzed, including 70% in the US and 80% in the UK – surpassing Facebook. TikTok is on track to hit 1.2 billion active users in 2021.”

The Social Media Clans in a Nutshell  

Instagrammers can be described as the selfie taker clan, focused on appearances, posting photos that make their face, hair, makeup, and physique all look flawless and pore-free like a Barbie doll. This “appearances clan” also carefully curates photos that make their lifestyle appear glamorous and fun.

The narcissism prevalent on platforms like Insta has given rise to a new platform, Poparazzi, which strives to be the antithesis of the selfie-obsession, maintaining the positive attributes of social media while eliminating the negatives. “Poparazzi is an app where you can’t post photos of yourself. Instead, you have to tag a friend. Selfies are persona non grata… While you can react to Pops with a range of emojis, the app takes a firm stance against the popularity competition. Profiles don’t show how many followers someone has.” Additionally, you can’t edit your pics.

TikTokers want to entertain and display their creativity. Many of the top TikTokers post dance videos… but no popular accounts post technical critiques of those dance videos. The focus is enjoyment and entertainment, not technical proficiency.  

While the population of people who “use” YouTube in terms of watching video encompasses practically everyone who has internet access, there are some similarities among YouTubers who actively create content. Many are educational, with tutorials on everything from improving your skills cornering on a mountain bike, to makeup, to building a guinea pig cage. If you can dream it, you can find a video tutorial for building it. One member of our team has uploaded choreography ideas for teaching step aerobics and cardio kickboxing.

For many users, Facebook retains a greater connection with the “IRL” world. Many users view and share local events, photos with friends and family, and discussions in community groups. Two-thirds of Facebook users visit a local business page weekly.

On Twitter, only the bravest speak. Kayvon Beykpour, the head of consumer product at Twitter, stated, “A lot of people are terrified to tweet. A lot of people don’t use Twitter for the creation side at all. They’re here to consume.” Data from Pew Research backs this up. “Adult Twitter users are younger and more likely to be Democrats than the general public in the US for example. Most users rarely tweet, but the most prolific 10% create 80% of tweets.”

Our Most Important Tribes are Online

Facebook recently worked with researchers from The Governance Lab at NYU to provide new insights into the importance of online communities. “Facebook groups are used by over 1.8 billion people every month, with more than half of all the people using Facebook now members of five or more groups. There are also 70 million people leading these groups as admins and moderators.”

To rank relative importance, respondents were asked whether the most important group they belonged to operated primarily online or offline, or both. “Overall, 77% of respondents indicated that the most important group they’re a part of now operates online,” either primarily or in combination with offline operations.

Clans for Good

Based in Switzerland, the Conscious Influence Hub (CIH) is a non-profit NGO that encourages conscious behavior in influencer marketing.

Working together, Kingfluencers and the new CIH recently launched a new Code of Conduct that includes best-practice guidelines and examples. Initiatives from CIH included a pro-LGBT campaign and collaboration with major Swiss brands such as Zeki to use influence for good.

Translating to Revenue

Brands need to make choices about where they should be active based on where their audiences are. Investing in promotions and influencer marketing in the places your target audience frequents most will make your campaigns efficient, lowering costs. 

When building social media campaigns, consider the various clans as you make the following choices:

PlacesWhere: When deciding what platforms to use, review the demographics of each platform to see where your target audience is most active. “The Evolution of Social Media – Part I,” includes stats on the average ages of different platform users. Also consider what most of the users are doing on that platform. While it’s possible to stream a workout video on Twitch, clearly users expect video games. Your chances of building a following increase if you provide the type of content audiences are actively seeking and consuming.

Approaches: After selecting platforms, continue to consider the typical mindsets of users on those platforms. Comedy works best on TikTok, while style and glamour are a great fit for Instagram. On LinkedIn, appeal to authority is popular. The top two influencers are Bill Gates and Richard Branson, and posters often share the commentary and insights of such business thought-leaders.

Formats: Consider what each clan prefers and post accordingly. On Instagram, inspirational quotes, food, landscapes, and human faces (or the back of human heads with an arm pulling the viewer forward), are all popular content. On TikTok, people enjoy dance videos, lip-syncing, and challenges.

Resources: Ideally, brands both create their own content and partner with influencers, and in all cases, creative ideas are needed. You can then commit resources to adapting those ideas to each of your chosen platforms. Take a theme such as a “share your best summer experiences,” contest and encourage submission of imagery on Insta and funny videos on TikTok. All the while, always stay true to your brand values, be authentic, and prioritize the human.

Goals: Always start with a strong foundation, which includes clearly defining your messaging and setting goals, such as:

  •  Visibility and awareness
  • Increase social media followers and engagement
  • Increase website traffic
  • Conversions, such as email sign ups
  • Improve brand reputation
  • Generate revenue, and social selling

Social influence marketing delivers reach and real impact on consumer decisions. Rather than being blinded by vanity metrics such as big numbers of views and followers, remember to consider the quality of the connections within your target audience. Remember that influencer marketing can enable you to succeed with secondary or tertiary goals, such as generating press coverage.

Author: Megan Bozman, Owner @Boz Content Marketing