-Director of Marketing for HCCMIS-Responsible for social media & brand awareness

- HCCMIS sells insurance for people traveling internationally

- One of first to sell health insurance online

-We have built over 250,000 targeted followers across multiple channels

-Reached about 6 million people in twelve months

- I am also co-author of Nothing New: An Irreverent History of Storytelling and Social Media, an Amazon

Best seller.- Nothing New is not your traditional book on web

marketing or social media- Nothing new tracks back in history to show how the art of storytelling is impacted by new technologies,

including social media- Download the e-book on amazon at

http://amzn.to/OcDJM3

-The world is home to 7 billion people; 1/3rd of the world population is online

- Expansion is steady in developed countries, but exploding in developing nations

- We have 1 billion users of social media

- There are 1 billion users of social media- There are over 200 active social media

networks

80% of people in social media only share one content of category in a month.

- 51% use social media to research when shopping

-2/3rds social media to make purchase decisions - Jay Baer

-Not only are we doing our research online, we are making our purchasing descisions!

- This insane growth of social media is impacting how many channels we, as marketers now have to

engage in

- Basically...

-Social proliferation has changed how we do business

- but have we, as marketers and content creators, kept up with changing times?

- Unfortunately, for many of us, the answer is no

-As content creators first, and marketers second, many of us are operating under the unicorn strategy

- we create awesome content- we post this awesome content

- we expect folks to find it and wala! double rainbow

- but there's a problem

- Without an enormous following, this is like screaming in the woods- there is a better way

- own the results of your content - create that amazing content you are so good at- post this content to a beautiful web property

- then... promote it- Take your content to the people who want it

- hand deliver it. - Create your double rainbow

- a tried and true delivery method is brand advocates/influencers

- Influencers are individuals who words and actions impact the ideology and actions of others.- Create brand advocates vs. influencers- this concept is highly used in traditional

advertising

- Brands use celebrities to ensure impact the buying decisions of consumers

- Stealing star power has been used for years1- 48% trust companies. But that means that

52% think you’re lying. Have someone else tell your story

- Check out this data

- Celebrity spokespeople still work, much less so than they did in the past

- Blogs and social updates are considerably more influential  than celebrity endorser to those who

want substantive advice

-On top of this

- 98% trust advice and information they get from blogs

- This is important to remember because most social media influencers also own a web

property like a blog

- So far this year we have released over 6,000 pieces of content.

- Our network has grown to over 250,000- Influencers play a huge role in how we develop

and promote

- So lets look at some of our results

- Anatomy of a backpacker is a mixed media piece that we created to inform international

backpackers how to prepare for a trip. It included short infographics, charts, and written content.

- A link to the content was given to a high influence Stumbler and it blew up!

- 40,000 visits- Over 5 min on page

-26% bounce rate-Remember, this is for an insurance company! Like,

that’s crazy!

@MuhammadInc @hccmis

- In this example, we had already developed a relationship with a makeup artist who had over a million followers on Pinterest. We created a

piece of content, just for her, to fit her demographic of engaged followers.

-300 reshares-Over 1000 visits to site in the first 3 hours

-Traffic continued for several weeks

@MuhammadInc @hccmis

- Sometimes it is better to build your own network. Because of a focus on the adventure traveler

demographic, we built a facebook community of over 15,000 follower. This community was used to

promote an interactive infographic.

-3.9m impressions

-2k comments

-Over 100 shares

- This is all great, but does your boss really care about what I did? No, he's all "Steve.." *tap*

@MuhammadInc @hccmis

- let's get some actual work done and keep the cats happy

- We will cover, locating, engaging, and launching influencer content

- In each section we will have a tool, so keep a sharp eye

- Locating social media influencers is the first, but easiest, step

- Social media influencers are very active online. They are loud! So they tend to be hard to miss in

their verticals

- Love/hate relationship with Klout- Use the gamification system of Klout to find

influencers on certain topics- Ignore the first page to avoid people that gamed

the game

@MuhammadInc @hccmis

- Third party tools like Statigr.am let you search content based on keywords

- also use internal search tools of networks

Followerwonk searches bios for keywords and allows you to download the results to an excel

sheet

@MuhammadInc @hccmis

Social crawlitics is a free tool that crawls webpages and pulls back the social sharing

statistics on each of the pages.

I use tools like this to check the websites of potential influencers and see how active their community is regarding their blog content.

The next step is to take that targeted social media influencer and become friends with them.This is the HARDEST part of the process.

Expect it to take a long time.You are trying to create a friendship that can

withstand the test of time.

Before you reach out to them, you need to figure out who they are as individuals. Remember, your first approach will NOT be about

placing content. You are looking to make a friend.

For example, if you are targeting an adventure traveler, that person may have interests like Hiking, Skiing, or backpacking.

Since social media influencers are so vocal online, their profiles are a perfect place to figure out their interests.

-Kotex did an awesome job with their pinterest campaign-50 women

-Created special boxes based on what the women were sharing on pinterest

-Mailed those boxed to the targeted influencers- Created 700,000 brand impressions via social media from those

women enthusiastically sharing what they received.

You can also use social influence tools like Klout to see what people are consistently talking

about. In this case, it looks like Allison Carter loves Vampires. Maybe you should start out by

talking to her about True Blood.

Reaching out to influencers for the first time can be daunting.

Stop worrying and just say hi!

Go ahead and jump into the conversation.

Realize that you may get ignored the first few times, but be persistent.

Now that you’ve created a BFF, and brand advocate, out of your targeted social influencer,

it’s time to make some rainbows!

Remember the vanity of people. The networks of social media influencers expect the best content from them. They trust them! Make sure you meet the vanity metric by placing content that makes the influencer look like a million bucks.

As you saw earlier, sometime you may have a great piece that fits them. However, sometime you may have to create a brand new piece of content just for them.

With all the fun it can be easy to forget that you need to measure your efforts to determine ROI.

Using a measurement tool is CRITICAL.

At the very least, use bit.ly links so that you can track clicks and geographic information.

If you use Google Analytics on your site, a best practice is to use campaign tagging on all your links.

This google docs spreadsheet automatically creates a tagged URL for you AND automatically creates a bit.ly

link!

I like to put all the influencers under one campaign, and identify them by name as the “source” with their

preferred platform as the “medium”

Tagging the links provided to each influencer allows you to measure the visits, onsite time, bounce rates, new visitor percentages, and even track

them through the buying cycle!

This is important not only to ensure your original assumptions about their

value are correct, but also to show value to your internal stakeholders AND to provide information to the

social media influencer

Remember, this is not a one night stand. Once you have launched the promoted content, go back and

share the results with your influencer. This meets the vanity metric. If this go well, tell them! Make sure

they know how valuable they are to you.

TELL THEM THANK YOU!

Thank you for having me at Blog Indiana. Feel free to reach out to me any time to ask questions, and

remember to buy Nothing New: An Irreverent History of Storytelling and Social Media. It’s a

great read for any web marketer!