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With Q2 in full gear now, it’s high time to give your influencer marketing plans for 2016 another look. The advent of live-streaming, Facebook becoming relevant again in a big way and YouTube eyeing all that TV ad money are big stories this week that might cause you to rethink your strategy. Read on for the details on industry’s latest changes with ION’s curated roundup of key influencer marketing stories from the past week.
You can also watch a video about the Future of Influencer Marketing from the [a]list summit late last month.
After 11 Years in Digital Video, YouTube Wants to Take on TV-Sized Budgets
ION’s Take: This important article from AdWeek covers more ground than the title implies. Updated information about the success of YouTube metrics is key but the gist is that online video’s eventual eclipse of traditional television advertising seems long overdue. The analytics are better, the type of content users want in that space is more useful to marketers and the delivery vehicles are vast. Television advertising’s huge piece of the pie isn’t going away anytime soon but smarter marketers will gain more reliable value from digital video. While the article also covers how video on other social platforms are affecting YouTube (from Snapchat vertical video to live streaming), the king of online video sharing is still ahead of the game in so many ways.
It isn’t always easy to pair up the suits of the marketing world with those freewheeling kids that make the buzziest videos in the digisphere. The two sides-and more importantly, their respective brands-must have chemistry.
Live Video Will Save Your Content Marketing – Here’s Why
ION’s Take: 2016 really is the year of live streaming. This Business2Community article is careful to point out why content marketing (and influencer marketing) needs this format boost and how to do it. Whether you go Periscope, Facebook Live or find ways to get onto YouNow, realtime content marketing is here. Time to get on board.
Periscope. Snapchat. Blab. Facebook Live. If there was one clear takeaway from Social Media Marketing World last week it’s that live video is taking over the social world. Also, it was amazing and I hope to meet you there next year.
Influencer Marketing: I’ve got a bone to pick with you – wanna meet me outside?
ION’s Take: Nichole Elizabeth DeMeré takes a decidedly different tack on Influencer Marketing. At the end of the day, she’s back to our fundamental message about it – don’t try to ask people to be part of a campaign if it’s not a good match. This is why Brand Soulmates’ technology is so important to the way ION does business. Influencer Marketing only really works as a collaboration between brands and influeners with similar values and goals.
Joanna Wiebe has this great formula for writing compelling posts. As she puts it, ‘pick a fight.’ Well, there’s been a battle brewing between me and one marketing idea for a very long time: Influencer marketing. It’s hotter than a June bug in July right now.
How Facebook Changes Will Encourage Influencer Marketing
ION’s Take: Facebook has been on the rise in 2016 and it is expanding on all fronts. Many of these changes make the billion-plus user network a better influencer marketing platform as a result, including the focus on live-streaming, integrated tools to encourage transparency for branded content and their efforts to crack down on content ownership. Watch for Facebook to dominate in more categories than just size this time next year.
Facebook has not been as popular a platform for influencer marketing as platforms like YouTube and Instagram. That could change with upcoming feature and algorithm upgrades planned by Mark Zuckerberg and team that will be good for creators and users alike.
What Is Influencer Marketing? Definitions, Examples, and Resources
ION’s Take: This overview article from TopRank Online is full of useful tidbits. Although Influencer Marketing experts will skip by the basics, the copy is rich with useful links, quality examples and a great embedded presentation with excellent tips and tricks for working with influencers.
Content marketers are facing their most daunting challenge yet. We survived the content glut with solid, documented strategy. We have made great strides toward properly measuring and attributing our content marketing ROI. But the next big bad is even bigger and badder than those obstacles: It’s the Fearsome Social Media Algorithm.