Influencer Marketing: Channel Selection

Going back to the examples that you’ve had, in terms of brands adopting this new channel, how do they view that with the existing channels, whether it’s social, or just digital more broadly?

I think that a lot of brands incorporate them all together. In the same way that they might do a campaign that involves digital and outdoor and TV and other things, influencer marketing is just a part of that. Some brands decide that they have an influencer marketing campaign that is just standalone and separate from other things they’re doing. There’s no real, one size fits all. I think it just depends on what the goals are and where the campaign would work best and where the message would work best.

What are the core differences between social and influencer marketing?

Again, it’s about the personality of the influencer and it’s about reaching that really specific audience that the influencer has. It might be the same demographic you would reach with social, but it’s about the relationship that the influencer has with that specific part of the demographic.

Is the demographic significantly different between Snapchat, YouTube and Instagram, for example?

You do find that you have different audiences on different platforms or, on different platforms, people like different things. For example, my Facebook audience, even though they might be a similar demographic, gender wise or geographically, to my Instagram audience, they really, really just like London content. Whereas, on Instagram, I can share content from anywhere in the world and people will still like that. It’s a small difference, but it’s a really important one for me, because I know that I really need to make my Facebook content London focused and try not to veer off that path too much. Whereas Instagram, anything goes, in terms of geography. I just need to make sure the photos are quality enough for people to want to engage with them.

Do they engage with the content differently?

They do. Part of it is because the platforms lend themselves to engaging differently, but part of it is, again, the specific people that you get as followers, the specific type of community you build. On some platforms, people will want to engage with each other, in addition to engaging with you. On other platforms, they just really want to engage with you or they don’t want to engage much at all; they just want to hit the like button and walk away.