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What are the best brands doing to stay relevant, build trust, and create content smarter?
At Share Your Genius, we have the same questions, so we're tapping the best in the space for their answers—one voicemail at a time.
Join us each week for quick hits of insights from b2b marketers and leaders.
[00:00:00]
[00:00:09] Rachel Elsts Downey: There are some people who were doing influencer marketing before it had a name, before brands were hiring creators, before it was a vibe. So I called Justin Levy. Justin Levy has over 15 years in social and influencer marketing. He's seen the evolution of brand influence from the early days of affiliate links and brand reps to the current ecosystem where creators are the media.
[00:00:35] So that's who I called when I was curious about why brands should invest in influencers and what's the real impact. Here's what he had to say.
[00:00:44]
[00:00:54] Justin Levy: Hey Rachel. Thanks for giving me a call. You know, I think that one of the main reasons why brands should be invested in influencers is because they carry an audience and a level of trust that the brand does not or does not have access to, right? People trust other people, not logos that they're used to seeing.
[00:01:15] So by investing in influencers, you're accessing their communities and also their authenticity with their audience.
[00:01:24] So I think that we've seen this arc happen, right? Over the past 15 years or so that I've been doing this. Originally, it was on Twitter, and that's where all the influence was driven. But now over time, as Twitter's turned X, and we've had the rise of, kind of the LinkedIn influencer and whatnot. Brands should invest across other areas like podcasts where you can have influencers interview your execs or your customers. Substack has a platform as well as newsletter, other newsletter platforms. YouTube, where you can drive, you know, demos and some people have their podcast on YouTube, podcast read ads.
[00:02:11] So if you're not gonna invest in a whole podcast, for example, it might just be an ad read. So trying to go where those audiences are. I think a lot of brands focus only on a platform, so they only go and focus on LinkedIn, but what they're missing is possibly tens of thousands, if not more, of subscribers and community members in these other platforms where they could reach out.
[00:02:37] So I think the kind of TLDR on this is that brands shouldn't be afraid of trying to work with creators. You don't need a massive budget. You don't need to have a huge strategy or things like that. What you really need is buy-in from your organization. And to start small, you might only start with three to five creators around a brand awareness campaign.
[00:03:05] Or maybe you have a product launch. You might only start with one or two platforms, you know, maybe just with LinkedIn or LinkedIn and a podcast sort of thing. But don't be afraid of it. You have to make sure you have the guardrails up. You don't want the content kind of going off those rails.
[00:03:22] But it's not something that you should be nervous of. And the brands that don't start to invest are going to be left behind by the brands that are. Hit me back, Rachel, if you have any questions.