Building Bait: the Value Ladder
For the past year and a half, I’ve been part of a thought leadership agency called The House of Spark (www.thehouseofspark.com) with my co-founder, Ken de Kort. Our goal was to provide the strategy, the formats and the execution to turn expertise into market leadership and thought leadership.
The first thing we tell those businesses is they need to adjust their mindset and start thinking of themselves as content producers. You need to start with the end in mind and work your way back. What is the biggest problem your audience is grappling with right now? Why are they loving this new tool that’s hit the scene? Can you bring a new approach to it all? This novel eye on what content can be will help you find your own way of producing it, of branding it as your own.
When you start cooking, the pots and pans are just as important as the ingredients. Not to go all ‘the medium is the message’ on you, Ken and I have selected a few examples of formats that may fit your Value Ladder. Don’t let them restrict you, though–formats are loads of fun to tweak and fiddle with until you’ve found your fit. Play around and find what feels good, but feel free to steal ideas from the list below.
We’ll clamber our way up the Value Ladder, starting with low-value content and building it up as we go.
Building Bait: the Value Ladder
Surveys exist in many formats. They are tests, questionnaires, quizzes and find-out-if-your-company-is-ready-for-the-next-wave-of-disruption kinds of things. Basically, they’re designed to collect data, and data is gold.
An example that works wonders is ‘Het Digitale Stappenplan’ (Digital Stepping Stones), a Flemish website that presents companies with a series of questions and choices aimed at assessing where they are in their digital transformation journey. A smart move by Roald Larsen, the mind behind the site, as many companies feel a need for digitisation but don’t know where to start. This survey distils their issues out of the data it gathers and presents the company with a neatly designed and personalised report at the end, compiling made-to-measure advice. A sure-fire way to create lots of value for your prospect.
If you want more examples of how to use quizzes and tests as a means to provide interesting insights to your prospects, check out these examples from Qualifio, a famous scale-up that perfected this surveying (https://qualifio.com) and that built a software for it.
“The ultimate flavour battle. Pick your favourite flavour.”
The beauty of use cases is that they provide (social) proof that you are able to execute whatever it is you’re promising. Moreover, the fact that others are blowing your trumpet makes you much more credible in the eyes of prospects.
However, a lot of companies capitalise on their use cases too early in the process. In fact, they tend to start with use cases. Looking at the Value Ladder, though, it’s clear that this type of content is only interesting to those already wanting to learn more about what you offer or the way you work. In other words: your homepage header is no place for a use case.
Apart from where and when to plug your use case, it matters how you present it, carefully stacking the building blocks to create a narrative. Sadly, lots of use cases are oblivious of this etiquette. The following is a recipe for disaster:
•This is our company (half a page)
•This is the client’s company (half a page)
•(if your audience is still there, they’re probably asleep)
•The problem (2 sentences)
•The solution (somewhere between 1 and 50 pages)
•A framework visual, logos, in some cases a business person in a suit with a toothpaste smile
•(arghhhngg–the sound of a slow demise)
Admit it, you either have one of those uses cases on your website, or you’ve at least seen them on half a dozen websites in the last month alone. While prospects may download them, whether they read them is another matter. The value of such cases is rather low and in the end, they are more of a sales brochure than a use case. Sadly, they’re not even a good sales brochure.
Such use cases are a drag. And that’s a shame, because a decent one does have its benefits. So. If you want to do this right, tell your tale but skip the tedium. First think about the person who will read your case. What is she looking for?
•Examples of others with similar issues (Inspiration)
•Solutions to that particular problem (Education)
•If I work with these people, can they do it? (Credibility)
Keep these three pillars of every self-respecting use case in mind, as well as the three rules of thumb:
1.This is a use case, not a sales pitch. And so, it shouldn’t be about you. Instead, talk about the issue: what problem did your client encounter and how did you solve it?
2.If you can, turn your solution into a model others can use. The idea is to make this case useful to others. Let the facts speak for themselves, no need to brag about how resourceful you are.
3.Social proof is key to building trust. So don’t have a single use case, have several. Also, add logos of the companies you work for in your case, as well as faces and titles of both sides of the team–yours, and the clients’.
Use them right and these use cases can serve both as inspiration and education. Thinking like this will steer you away from the classic ‘deliver’ approach and prompt you to build your case so it has actual business worth. You want prospects to look up your case and use it as guidance to deal with their own problems. And if prospects start spreading your use case, all the better, as this will increase others’ faith in you.
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PUT YOUR CASES IN A BOOKLET
Don’t just put your use cases on your website, turn them into a mini-book. Never mind if it only has a few pages: by its shape alone, a book emanates credibility, even to those who don’t read its contents.
Structure your booklet like you would a book. Start by introducing to the client. Next, dig straight into the problem, using visual flows to illustrate the model you’ve used to solve it. The last page is where the magic happens. Here, you deliver by offering two choices (remember the vegetable dilemma!) and add social proof by including logos of client companies.
If it’s a printed booklet you’re publishing, add a link to something that can be downloaded on your website, like a canvas of your model or a video tutorial. If it’s a pdf, put it up as a free download, but add a simple fill-in box to collect email addresses in return.
Ah, whitepapers. A dreaded method favoured by traditional marketeers. Do people actually read them? Probably not. I have downloaded tons of whitepapers and usually gave up all hope of understanding them after a few sentences. Whitepapers often get lots of downloads, but don’t convert. Having said that, there are ways to make them work. Intuo (www.intuo.io), for instance, started calling their whitepapers ‘mini-guides’, a smart move catering to a generation with a short attention span.
I bumped into Intuo’s mini-guides everywhere I went. Intuo specialises in HR software and clearly, they also specialise in making decent content. Their Chief Marketing Officer, Jorn Vanysacker, told me exactly how they do it. ‘Intuo’s strategy is to look at a market and define its target customers. Next, we name their problems.’ In HR, for instance, there are several major problems a company can run into:
•Workforce Planning. They named their mini-guide ‘The ins and outs of strategic workforce planning’.
•Employer Branding. The name of the mini-guide is ‘The ultimate HR guide to employer Branding’.
•Reward strategy. The name? ‘An actionable guide for a reward strategy’.
And so on. All these guides feature attractive titles and copy that’s all about helping customers, educating them so they’ll be able to do it themselves. But Intuo’s real genius hides on the very last page–the very place where most companies go wrong. The classic approach would be to put your logo there, along with a ‘contact us on sales@company.com’. Not Intuo. They did this:
What Intuo has understood is that with whitepapers and mini-guides, the end is what matters most. And so on the very last page, Intuo tells you to talk to Siemon. Not some vague lady or lad in sales. No, Siemon. An actual person who knows things, because he’s actually written this mini-guide. A smiling face, the arrow pointing at him, the pitch: creating high-performing cultures one company at a time, a personal email and his direct number. That is what your prospects want to see. Siemon is the guy they will call. With this sort of approach ingrained in their DNA, it’s no wonder Intuo managed to scale their company like crazy.
Let’s look at an example from Drift again. Theirs is a software company that sells a very successful chatbot for sales. On their website, you’ll be surprised to find a section dedicated to books. Over the past few years, Drift has published books on an array of topics, with titles like ‘5 Email Templates to Make Your Sales Outreach More Empathetic’ and ‘The State of B2B Buyer & Customer Experience’.
These books average between 8 and 25 pages. With this amount of content, Drift could have just as well offered an ebook, but I just love the way they position these publications as books and play with the cover design. The copy is good, too: a perfect example of attractive sales copywriting on the cover and more of it on the inside. A mini-book, with maxi-quality.
Here, too, GrowForce serves as an example. As a strong believer in sharing free educational content, they use canvases in their sessions, but also produce booklets packed with tips, which they hand out. David Van der Auwera, their co-founder, told me that it boosted their website traffic from 200 visitors per month to + 18k visitors–not to mention how many email addresses prospects happily left behind.
Board of Innovation does consultancy on everything to do with, well, innovation. Their whole methodology is neatly synthesised in canvases. They use them in workshops with clients, but you can also download them from their website, for free. Well-designed and with tasty names like ‘Make it, break it, fix it’, their free frameworks and matrices are a perfect example of how to share your knowledge and prove your worth in one go. All of these tools are designed for their future prospects to download, print, and use in their own workshops. In the end, it’s the Board of Innovation logo on that wall during the workshop anyways.
Canvases, matrices and other free templates work well to brand your customer’s experience, and they have other perks, too.
•For workshops: Board of Innovation walks their talk. They bring their own material to use. Added bonus: they can leave it with the customer–clearly proving their expertise and knowledge.
•For sales: Board of Innovation sales people go to their prospects, explain how they work, and then leave behind some of these very nice canvases. ‘Here, dear customer, now try it yourself.’ Guess who these customers will buy from? The agency that tries to charge them 15k for an analysis without disclosing anything upfront? Or the agency that helps them for free after just one simple sales visit?
Three canvases offered by Board of Innovation. Straightforward, well-designed and clearly named.
As you move up the ladder, you offer your prospects more value. Right at the top are face-to-face meetings. These are hard to top, as they’ll give you the opportunity to better listen to your prospect and read them as they tell you their story. However, this is 2020. I am writing this book in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic. Not only have webinars and online events replaced their live counterparts, the digital versions are scaling rapidly.
If you’re thinking about hosting a webinar, there are three types to choose from:
•Sales webinars about a product or service, focusing on what it does
•Technical webinars about how a service or a product works
•Expert webinars with guest speakers talking about how to solve a problem
Guess which one will have the least amount of participants every single time? Indeed, the sales webinar. Why? Because it’s obvious the host is selling us something, and we don’t like that. Moreover, these sales-like formats fail to do the one thing they’re made for: sell. So let’s look at what does work.
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6 THOUGHTS ON MAKING A WEBINAR THAT WORKS
Make an expert webinar
Don’t host a webinar all on your own. Instead, invite guests, as they will attract your prospect’s attention and boost their trust level. And there’s more good news, as inviting guests means you get to leverage your guests’ reputation and network. ‘Yes, Michael, but that’s a lot of work. I need to make the PowerPoint and so on.’ What? No. You are thinking along classic lines. Why would you need a PowerPoint? Think like a producer and use what your guest has to offer: either she has a fantastic storyline, or she has slides, or you find another guest who does.
Put a face on that thumbnail
The picture that goes along with your invitation to the webinar should feature the faces of the experts you’re inviting. Faces foster trust. Here’s an example from Drift again: straightforward, and they’ve managed to sneak in a logo, too.
Do a monthly deep dive
If you’re offering a technical product like software, have a monthly deep dive in which you explain to prospects how to best use your product. Make it a live webinar and use it to share background information on why features were built the way they were. Show your prospects how to apply these features to their business. Keep it technical and you’re sure to make fans in the technical community, who will make the case for you with the internal sales department if they’re convinced your product is the one they need.
Add an educational gift
Add something to download to your webinar. A canvas, a mini-guide or something educational that enables you to cross the gap between online and offline. Don’t forget that people may watch the recorded version of your webinar months after you’ve put it online. In this case, a download is the way to keep those leads coming. More on the subject in this video: www.youtube.com/michaelhumblet.
Build your storyline
The most important parts of your webinar are the beginning and the end. So build your storyline something like this:
•A short intro. Two sentences will do. Forget the ‘I am this person. I am important because I have had a career for over twenty years’. Citing your credentials won’t work at this stage, as your audience doesn’t know you. Instead, speak from a position of power and give credits to your guest, it will make you look the part.
•Show or explain the problem and tell your audience why it matters (contextualise)
•Tell your audience why they should solve this problem NOW (don’t forget this one!)
•Give them the solution, preferably a model that you can show them (potentially downloadable as well)
•A final insight
•Wrap up
•Q&A (you know which questions always return, so make sure to cover those)
Go out with a bang
Here’s a magic trick. At the end of your webinar, you’ll have your final image up on the screen. This is where you propose two calls to action and add your contact details. Stay on this image for the Q&A, it will do a whole lot more for you than those sorry ‘thank you’ slides.
Here’s how Matthew Van Niekerk, CEO at SettleMint ends his presentations. Hard to resist, no?
I’ve talked about what thought leaders do. They share their expertise on stage and in books, but if you want to be the cream of the crop, you need your own event. A physical one. Why? Because people like to see, touch, feel that you’re the real deal.
When prospects don’t know you well but want to check out what you’re doing, they like to watch from the sidelines, incognito. They can do this online by looking at your videos and webinars, but a lot of people also go to events, watching and learning from the back row. In the long run, it’s usually not the loud people in the front seats that matter. It’s those quiet ones in the back. However, you can’t just run up to them and do your little dance, as clearly they like to remain anonymous.
Here’s an example of how GrowForce leverages this timid crowd to scale their company. Both the CEO and the company’s founders connect with prospects on LinkedIn. Once this connection is established, these prospects receive a personalised message asking them if they would like to be invited to a micro educational event over lunch, somewhere in their area. The magic is in simply asking. GrowForce needs the prospects’ buy-in, so they don’t push. They simply send them a link with an invitation to an event that will only take an hour of their prospects’ time.
In this event, GrowForce explains how growth hacking works and shows the audience how to apply its general principles to their own company–pure inspiration and education. At the very end of the presentation, the two options GrowForce offers the crowd are ‘join our academy’ (learn it yourself) or ‘talk to one of our experts’ (if you need inspiration or want them to do it for you).
These are small-scale, personalised events with a maximum of thirty people attending. And they work. Conversion during these events is very high: between 20 to 30%, depending on the crowd. A worthwhile investment.
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HAVE AN AWARD
For a short period, I was the interim VP of Sales of a large video agency. At the time, we wanted to attract larger corporate customers. During a brainstorm, we came up with the idea to create a new award: the Chief Video Officer of the year. To test the waters before diving in, we called the VP of marketing from a large corporate. We congratulated him on his efforts in the video department and told him we’d decided to nominate him as CVO of the year. He enthusiastically assured us he’d be present at the award ceremony. We were also welcome to use his name, as well as his company’s, in our communication, even though he wasn’t a client of ours.
We’d passed our self-inflicted test: the event was a go. We had a lovely gathering with 250 attendees, five-star international speakers, sponsors and fizzy drinks. The next year, we made it a little bigger, and so on. This way, our award ceremony helped put us on the radar of corporate companies, who now thought of us as a force to be reckoned with. Because the organisation that hands out the awards must be a thought leader in that industry for sure, right?
I’m a fan of video, as it is simply the most efficient way to produce quality content in big batches. Video has a whole lot of advantages, I’ll name you my favourite ones. First, video doesn’t have to be stand-alone. Why not make a mini-series and build up your storyline? Second, videos have faces, which helps nurture the bond of trust between you and your prospect. They provide you with leadership and credibility. And these faces, yours and your employees’, are one of the crucial elements for scaling your thought leadership as well as your business. While you yourself can’t be everywhere at once, your image can.
Also, because YouTube is the go-to channel for anyone with a problem, video works well as a first contact point and a way to lead prospects to your website or other pieces of content you’ve produced.
Last but not least: you can endlessly vary formats, and there’s no reason why you should pick only one. Inspire and educate your audience through expert videos, in-depth interviews and more technical how-to formats. I’ll give you eight possible content options below, but do go out and experiment, mixing up existing formats or thinking up new ones. Being a fan of video, I tend to think in moving images first. However, all of the formats listed here work just as well in a podcast.
So if I’m this lyrical about video, why isn’t it featured in the far-right corner of our Value Ladder, where the value is highest? Because video isn’t a format that should be confined to a single place on the Value Ladder. I like to keep a holistic approach when it comes to video and podcasts. They should be there at every rung of the ladder, feeding that ladder without respite. Make them at every stage and people will flock to your website and channels to see what’s new. And don’t worry, they’ll select what triggers them and follow the trail of crumbs you’ve laid out.
Interviews with experts, thought leaders and opinion-makers come in all shapes and sizes. They are powerful for a number of reasons:
•You don’t need to produce all the content yourself, as your guest will do most of the talking
•The Halo Effect of sitting next to a thought leader, radiating her knowledgeability on you? It works
•You can ask your guests the questions your customers ask you
•Interviews, by definition, have two people or more talking, which creates interaction and is more fun to watch than a single talking head looking straight into the lens
•Interviews are great if you’re looking to repurpose your content. Even more so than other formats, a video interview can be reworked into a podcast or cut into several pieces to form a series. They work well in a webinar too
A thought on titles, while we’re at it. Don’t just call your piece ‘interview with person X on the subject of Y’ when you put it up on YouTube. Use it as a means to highlight your bigger cause (remember Chapter V) and talk about what you’re really trying to achieve. This will lend your interview series some allure as well as coherence, and ensure you transcend the ‘oh, another interview’ shrug.
One day, I bought an iPhone X and couldn’t figure out how to install an app on it. So I opened YouTube (on another mobile; -)) and typed: ‘how to install an app on iPhone X’. I selected the first video and after 20 seconds found out I had to press a button on the side. Forgive my stupidity–excitement got the better of me and I hadn’t noticed this button sitting on the side of my shiny new plaything. What did catch my attention, was that this video had 4.2 million views.
I realised there’s a hungry crowd out there looking for basic how-to information. And that’s interesting for you, too. You could set up a series of short movie clips that explain basic concepts within your realm of expertise.
For instance, I made a Sales Wiki that covers some basic basics like ‘what is sales’ to slightly more complex questions. This wiki works: several CEOs have told me that they feed their new recruits a whole selection of these video clips to digest before they get down to work. Interesting, because these novices will have heard about me very early on in their career. Maybe they’ll think of me later, too.
That’s not all, though. You can leverage your dictionary, alphabet, 101 or wiki a step further by adding it to your website and turning it into a searchable list. Bonus: you benefit from the SEO side-effects, as these are topics your audience is likely to google.
Of course, you could also repackage this content as online lessons, sending interested prospects one email per week. Options, options, options.
Expert movies are straightforward in their setup: a talking head dives into a specific topic, explains the problem and gives a solution in three minutes. The problem-solving part is essential, though. I see too many video hosts who get stuck in rehashing the problem. That won’t do if you want your audience to start sharing your content for you.
So, instead of saying ‘you need to focus’, explain what focus is and tell your audience how they can put it into practice. Another way of making your solution hands-on is to add a case to clarify your point.
Ideally, you use these expert videos or podcasts as a way to lead your audience to your website to download a canvas, a mini-guide or anything else that fits within your Value Ladder.
Another way of sharing your expertise is to make insider videos in which you share an industry secret. Secrets work, so go on and tell people what goes on behind the scenes. Share your thought process, the model you’ve followed, the steps you’ve taken to arrive at the final product, and even your failures.
While you’re churning out material, film or take pictures of the making-of. They’re fun to share but can also serve as an announcement of what is to come, or add a touch of comedy at the very end, as a cute afterthought. Because of their more relaxed feel, making-of clips are a good way to impart your audience a sneak peek at your company culture. Strong but subtle employer branding.
So, bloopers and shots from the make-up room are fun and put all the seriousness of being an expert in perspective. But keep in mind that simply producing a compilation of gaffes won’t attract views in themselves. You’ll need the bulk of the serious stuff before having the leisure of playing around with funny fails.
In ‘Ask Gary Vee’, YouTube smash hit and all-round marketing celebrity Gary Vaynerchuck invites his audience to dial in and ask him questions about the business. This is a great format to stream live on different platforms if you’re looking to create interaction–at least if you manage to keep the questions and the answers short and snappy. Do that and you’ve got yourself a strong format in which you’ll feel right at ease, as the questions you’ll get will be the ones you’re asked every day and that you feel comfortable answering.
I know, I know. I’ve said earlier that hero movies are expensive and time-consuming and that you can make a bunch of other videos for the same budget. But I confess: hero movies are one of my favourite formats, as they take storytelling to the next level. They are mini-movies, and if you want, you can be the hero in them–unless you’re being smart and making your client the protagonist in a use case wrapped up as a hero movie. You see, there are ways to cross-breed.
Three reasons why hero movies work:
•They last, as they don’t focus on ephemeral subjects but on the bigger picture
•They’re high-quality, almost cinematic
•They allow you to dig deeper into your subject matter
As hero movies are pricey, I’d recommend playing around with your batch-produced, simpler formats before pulling out that platinum card. Take your time to find out what works, so you’ll be able to use the proper angle and storyline when the time is right. But when you do get cracking, build your movie around a simple statement or a baseline. Things like ‘always hustle’, ‘we never give up’, and ‘reject the rejection’ have worked for others, but you’ll need to find your own voice. This slogan will be the cornerstone for your video.
Also, make sure to shoot extra material when recording. You’ll probably be using this hero movie at the beginning of a speech or a webinar. Use the extra footage to illustrate your presentation with high-end visuals. I once made a hero movie about ‘the lake of rejection’, a concept I often mention in sales talks. I never published the video, but I did strew my presentations with images taken from that video. Almost every week I bump into a CEO asking me ‘are you the guy that jumped in a lake with his suit on?’
Mini-series on a specific topic are interesting in terms of distribution. They allow you to stretch your audience’s attention span over several weeks and can make you king within your specific niche. At the end of a series, you can make a compilation of all the episodes, stitching them together and adding your two calls to action at the end. I love to use mini-series to test markets and see if there is an appetite for whatever product the end-user is interested in.
Another approach could be to pick a specific topic and chop your storyline up into pieces that link together as one mini-series. A lot of online news aggregators and topical websites like Techcrunch will welcome this content, lending you access to their audience. While normally these websites would try to sell you advertising space, the truth is they are always looking for saucy content. And here you come waltzing in with five mini-episodes which you offer them for free.
They’ll be happy, because you’re a thought leader and you’re handing the goods over, no strings attached. You’re happy too, because they’ll be pushing your content for the next few weeks. And since it’s your face in that video, don’t worry too much about donating content. Your goal here is to create as much reach, attention and goodwill as you can.
Most formats so far are meant to be posted on several social media platforms. This means you have to adapt the content to each channel: vertical video for Instagram Stories, horizontal for YouTube and the others. However, there is a way to bypass that. Going live allows you to broadcast to several channels in their native format. Call it reversed batch production.
Pick a one-hour time slot per week to host a show with three to four topics. You could spend the first 10 minutes discussing what’s happening in your market, the next fifteen with a guest, then respond to questions from the audience and end with expert advice. At the very end, throw in a little competition to prompt viewers to follow you to the next step on your Value Ladder.
The idea is that you have multiple interactive formats and that you chop up the distribution. So the first part you stream live on LinkedIn, the next part on Instagram and so on. Afterwards, you put the whole of it on YouTube.
A word of warning, though. From a production and preparation standpoint, this is complex. You’ll need multiple cameras, someone to assist the channel switch and maybe do a live edit, as well as a heavy-duty broadband connection to support these streams. Your preparation will have to be spotless, but what a powerful format you will have!
Luckily, technology is making these live streams easier as we speak. Check out restream.io, a platform that allows you to stream any broadcast to over thirty platforms simultaneously. Something to experiment with, as you increase your production value.
So much has already been said and written about newsletters. Are they dead? I don’t think so. At the very least we can say they’re good at making comebacks. In fact, what I learned from my encounter with Lemlist CEO Guillaume Moubeche was that email is about the only way of moving people through the value journey, of showing them the next step. That’s why, like video and podcasts, emails and newsletters aren’t allotted a single spot on the Value Ladder. They should be there at all times, leading people to your website so they can download your guide, watch your video and put your podcast on repeat.
Once you have a prospect’s email address, you can reach out to him. So, clearly, email is not dead yet. I’d even argue it’s still the main foundation to start from, even though several gurus are taking an even more personal approach these days, sending messages to mobile phones through SMS and WhatsApp.
Of course, you should forget about the long-winding lists of every little thing you’ve done or learned in the past month. No one has time for those. Forget about the beautifully designed newsletters, too, since most email clients mess up your layout anyway. Rather, make your newsletters concise and include one, maybe two links to drive traffic towards your online material.
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MAKE IT TWO EMAILS
If you send a cold email, taking your chances with someone you’ve never met, you have a 2 to 3% chance of this prospect actually opening that email. Whether she’ll read it is yet another matter.
However, when a prospect leaves her email address in return for a downloadable piece of content, your chances of her opening that email shoot up to about 70%. Why? Because she signed up for it. Make this email short and you have a very high probability of your prospect reading it to the end, as this is where you’ve put the piece of content your prospect is after.
Now here is the thing people forget. If you send a second email a day or three after the first one and offer your prospect two choices (aka manœuvre your prospect to the next step on your Value Ladder), you have a 68% shot that your prospect says yes to one of both calls to action. You’d be nuts not to leverage that. So as soon as you draft one email, make sure to have the follow-up ready (keeping within the GDPR limits, of course).
Five lessons on how to make it work online
By Yasmin Vantuykom, CEO Efluenz
Influencers are blonde girls selling lipstick, right? Well, partly. Influencers are also the ones who made the zero waste trend big and led hospital fundraising during the COVID-19 pandemic. Plus, those blondes selling lipstick usually sell more of it in a single post than a traditional ad. And so we asked Yasmin Vantuykom, CEO of full-service influencer marketing agency Efluenz, for some insights. Yasmin connects brands to micro and nano influencers. Not the Kim Kardashians with vast amounts of followers, but selected profiles with a lower following, a higher engagement rate and–most importantly–authenticity. As she pointed out some interesting similarities between thought leaders and influencers, I asked her to guest-write a piece on what aspiring thought leaders can learn from the kings and queens of the ‘gram.
Influencer marketing is way older than you might think. It dates back to the times when the Queen and the Pope endorsed medicine for the benefit of citizens and it was already there when Santa showed up in Coca-Cola ads in 1931. In a sense, the Queen, the Pope and Santa were among the first influencers in history. Back then, the argument was that if people loved the person promoting a product, they loved the product too. Nothing’s changed – except you don’t need big shots like Santa or the Pope anymore to be of major influence.
We are all influencers in our offline lives. People share stories about a pair of shoes they’ve bought and use social media to express their thoughts on hot topics ranging from #metoo to #blm. In fact, the way to build up a following online isn’t that different from the way we make friends in real life: it’s all based on trust. Numbers used to matter, but today nano influencers often prove more effective to work with than big names, as they produce more organic content that’s genuinely worth something to their followers and manage to stay true to themselves.
I know, socials are overcrowded and here you are now, looking to take up some more space. However, I strongly believe that there is always space for those who create content that’s worth its salt. To help you along, here are five tricks that work wonders in influencer marketing and are just as applicable to building your thought leadership.
1.To create content that’s commendable, you need to carefully choose your brand’s representatives. That’s not necessarily the most likeable person on Instagram, but it definitely is the most authentic one. If you have the luxury of choice, make sure to factor this in.
2.Don’t stick to one single format or strategy. Combine different ones and you’ll see this has a big impact on your reach and engagement. Try out all the creative ideas you have and don’t be afraid to copy something that’s worked for a competitor.
3.New content creation tools and channels pop up all the time. Experiment with vertical video formats, augmented and virtual reality, live broadcasting or IGTV. All of them are an easy way to increase your audience’s engagement.
4.Using several channels allows you to adapt your content, formats and even your tone to a channel-specific audience. Change the angle of your message where and when you need to, but stay true to yourself.
5.Don’t be too perfect. An unpolished reality and behind-the-scenes attitude are more valuable than unattainable perfection. Especially younger generations are more convinced by real-life content, tongue-in-cheek humour and anything out of the ordinary than by stereotypical storylines.
Posting inspiring or educational content is your first step towards becoming a thought leader. Beware, though: as soon as your first post goes online, the beast from the land of likes will be awakened, ready to haunt you.
This is how it will go. Your first post will have some success. The ensuing ones a little more, and so on, until somewhere between week 4 and 6 your reach, likes and shares plummet dramatically. The horror! Of course, you could argue that engagement is a metric linked to vanity rather than actual conversion. However, you need this approval, and quite a bit of it, to get the cogs in motion.
How soon can you expect results?
The reason for this dip is simple: your audience doesn’t trust you yet. When you start posting from your personal account, you will have many friends, colleagues and family members liking your post and writing comments like ‘so proud of our son’. Cute indeed, but it won’t help your professional image or your trust levels.
Don’t sweat it, though. If you persevere, your friends and family will grow tired of you after a few weeks. All jokes aside, this is what happens in the minds of your close fans:
•He/she is doing fine, no need for me to like/share/comment
•He/she is talking about something I don’t know, so why should I react?
•I gave my support already
The question, then, is not why your engagement drops, but when your posts will be picked up by the right audience. The answer–provided you don’t give up–is six to eight weeks, at least. Then, your prospects will slowly start believing that you’re not selling but genuinely sharing.
When people outside of your personal circle start sharing your content, you know you’re out of the woods. Forget about the likes, what you want to be taking score of is how many others are sharing your content and mentioning your name. One day, you won’t have to post a thing, as you’ll be mentioned as a reference on myriad channels. But that will take time and consistency from your end. Keep at it!
The most important thing about picking formats is to start with what you like and feel comfortable with. The second thing is to keep in mind how much time and effort it will take from idea to execution. After all, you’re a producer now, and batch production is your mantra.
Here’s a list of all the formats mentioned above, plus an overview of how much time you’ll need to produce them and a cost comparison. This should be enough for you to make a head start.
Summary Video Content Model
Start small and step up your game as you go along, trying out more elaborate formats and mixing them up any way you like. Chances are you won’t look at Netflix in the same way again, making note of interesting formats and going ‘wow, look at the lighting on that headshot’. Watch and learn – and don’t let the quality of your productions bother you too much in the beginning. You’ll get better and look back at your quest with a big smile in due time.
