The influencers are not ok
Season 6, Issue 10 put your dark academia core fit on, we're doing a lit review
Kaixo Mehketeers!
Today’s greeting is Basque, which means I am obligated to tell you a story about when I baked a burnt Basque cheesecake for a birthday, took it to a restaurant, and the chef pulled me aside and said “as a professional, I have to tell you, your cake is a little bit burnt.”
As the Tiktokkers would say, that’s the point babes.
And that’s my best attempt at a segue into todays topic - social media for B2B brands! This is a topic I find endless fascinating, but if you follow me on social media of any kind you’ll probably notice I find it a bit of a chore to use (and that’s in a personal sense, I don’t know how people do it for work, hats off to you all!)
By its very nature, social media changes so fast I always see something that I’d like to throw my two cents on top of and then remind myself, the next two weeks of issues are locked in so by the time I say anything it’ll be out of date or everyone will have already seen it anyway.
So, I’m treating today as a bit of a literature review with an anotated bibliography. What I’m hoping is that even if today’s issue is not as tactical or advice riddled as I usually aim for, it’s a source of inspiration, a directory to resources much more qualified than I am, or just old fashioned fun.
Remember, if you enjoy Mehdeeka and find it useful, the easiest and biggest way you can show that appreciation is to share it!
Refer three friends and I’ll send you some stickers!
Resources
Link in Bio by Rachel Karten
Rachel Karten’s views on social media feel so fresh, and as someone in the trenches she’s very focused on topics like keeping your quality high, not burning out, finding inspiration, and talking to other social media managers.
There is a paywall, but if you are aiming for a long-term, specialist role in social media, see if you can get your job to cover the cost of this via your learning and development budget.
My favourite interviews are with Casey Betts of the Whitney Museum of American Art and John Sabine of Merriam-Webster (yeah, the dictionary.)
One thing both of these interviews have in common is the interviewee saying [paraphrased] the reason our social account is successful is because our bosses trust us.
If I were to give you homework on this one, it’d be find out what your manager doesn’t trust about social media and see how you can shift that around to seeing that for *some businesses, social media can be a huge channel.
Lia is hands-down the fastest at breaking social media news (such as A/B testing reels becoming a feature on Insta). By that I mean updates, features, creators, trends, and she attends social media focused industry events and sends out the low-down as soon as the event is over. She also has a paid tier that would be worth it if you’re making social media your career (and ask your work to pay for it!)
If you only get your social media info from one source, it should be this one. Your homework here is to subscribe and thank me later.
Food for thought
You can now hire Cirque du Soleil performers as influencers, and pick out individuals, segments, or whole shows of performers, all organised directly through Cirque du Soleil!
This is pretty cool if you ask me, and if you’re in the health and wellness industry it’s a no brainer that these performers would have your target market following them.
Pricing is based on how many followers each of the performers have, how many you want to use, and how involved the campaign is. I would say this is no different to Nike or Adidas using their sponsored athletes for campaigns - except the Cirque performers as full time employees (I think.)
“If you have all of these employees and they have influence already, all boats rise in the tide if you’re able to utilize those influencers to help market and expand your reach of your product or your brand,” said Kelly Dye, vp of product and innovation at Acorn Influence, the influencer marketing arm of New Engen, a digital agency.
Who your audience is matters more than how big it is
Instagrammer @mikaeradesu (or Micaela in her English spelling) is a Canadian-born influencer who’s lived in Japan for the last almost 20 years. She’s done a lot of tourism work, and recently shared on her stories about how a client had said they don’t want someone with a huge following, because the influencer might be less intentional with the audience they attract.
They believe that it isn’t about accessing “many” people in an audience but accessing “the right kind [of] people”
Here’s the full stories, in her own words (should be able to click to see full size):
I really appreciate Micaela’s take on this, so I hope she doesn’t get offended I screenshot her stories, I swear it’s not a regular habit.
We’ve been hearing for a while that “micro” or “nano” influencers are more effective as they’re closer to their audiences and therefore more influential. We’re still yet to really see this in B2B though - most people who become influencers end up selling their own things rather than selling other products, which is probably a side effect of a single person not really being able to vouch for that wide a breadth of B2B products.
Imagine shilling for an enterprise software and having never used it as if it was haircare gummies or something. I guess case studies are the influencer marketing of B2B, and even then the promotion of it is on the side of the company, not the indivdual/customer who endorsed it.
Don’t do it just for the sake of it
Stressed out because you’re not doing social media? Don’t be. It’s far better to have a static company social media page that says “go to our website for info about us” or “sign up to our newsletter to stay up to date” than stress yourself out over keeping your social media buzzing.
Case study: Influencer collabs
Future Social (another good social media focused newsletter) ran this piece on Hyundai advertising a car through two food influencers.
A sentence you probably never thought you’d read!
They got a chocolatier to make a chocolate sculpture of the car, and a critic to critique the car in a duet. It was really seamless, and the two influencers had dueted each other’s work before (organically) so the selection felt “right”.
Turning the brain cogs: Is the B2B equivalent of this a panel of guest speakers?
Lucky dip links
Instagram’s director of brand, Cynthia Pratomo talked about what it was like designing Threads and developing a new social media platform identity.
If you like looking at weird, kind of interesting, things only reach people buy, 1st Dibs is a good rabbit hole to go down.
Here’s a chair I’d like to read a book in (from this house although this picture is not in the link):
P.S. in case you’re wondering I’m currently reading Sleeping Beauties by Stephen/Owen King. A bit of a late Halloween read.
Bye for now,
Kayla
P.P.S this is issue 10 so a reminder there’s only 2 issues left until I go on break over the summer.