The Power of Influence

06/22/20 • 44 min

2 Listeners

Brands are struggling to find a new way to authentically connect to their customers and we are witnessing major communication disruptions. In an article that appeared in Adweek, Twitter said that users now trust influencers like YouTubers, almost as much as their friends. This is the age of influencer marketing. So here's today's big question. Should brands consider adding influencer marketing to their everyday marketing mix and is there a right way, and a wrong way to do it. Neal Schaffer, author of ‘The Age of Influence” gives us the scoop.

Related Content & Links:

https://hydroottawa.com/
Twitter feed: @NealSchaffer
Amazon link to book: The Age of Influence: The Power of Influencers to Elevate Your Brand on paperback
Website: nealschaffer.com
Apple podcast link- Maximize Your Social Influence Podcast

Transcript:

Dan Seguin 0:02 Hey everyone! I'm Dan Segin from Hydro Ottawa. And I'll be hosting the ThinkEnergy podcast.

PewDiePie, Dude Perfect, Hola Soy German, Whindersson Nunes, and El Rubius. While perhaps not household names to you and I, they are powerful influencers to Gen Z's audiences aged 13 to 18. In fact, these youtubers combined have 262 million subscribers, and are more influential to this generation than movie stars and politicians. It's not surprising that today's consumers are increasingly more savvy and critical of branded advertising. Gone are the days where advertising messages and propositions were trusted and taken at face value. In an online world where advertising is seen as more intrusive than valuable.

Brands are struggling to find a new way to authentically connect to their customers, we are witnessing major communication disruptions. This includes declining television viewership, continued growth of social media audiences, an increase in ad blocking technology media Fasting, and a significant rise of noise clutter on all channels. It's becoming increasingly more difficult for brands, particularly energy brands to keep up with the digital landscape, as consumers take extreme measures to avoid being advertised to. With demand for attention on the rise and overwhelming product options on the market, consumers are beginning to lose sight of who they can trust. Is the energy industry facing a Kodak moment? In an article that appeared in Adweek, Twitter said that users now trust influencers like YouTubers, almost as much as their friends. This is the age of influencer marketing. So here's today's big question. Should brands consider adding influencer marketing to their everyday marketing mix and is there a right way, and a wrong way to do it. Our guest is no stranger to social media and the marketing world. He's the author of three books, teaches digital media to executives at New Jersey Business School, has a podcast called maximize your social influence, orchestrates digital transformation for leading businesses and is fluent in Japanese and Mandarin Chinese. Dear listeners, please welcome Neal Schaffer. Hey Neil, how would you define influencer marketing? And can you give us some examples of brands doing it well?

Neal Schaffer 3:48 Thanks Daniel. So influencer marketing is something that I think a lot of people are mystifying or they're mis educated on or they've been misinformed about. You know, when I look at influencer marketing, I look at Who has online influence? Who has digital influence? So, yes, celebrities have digital influence. But there's a lot of other people that I've influenced because there's so many of us that use social media that build communities, in the hundreds in the thousands in the 10s of thousands, but even those people that have communities in the thousands are still able to influence others, right. And even in the influencer marketing industry, where they have gone smaller and smaller, you know, with each year we they used to talk about macro influencers, then mid tier influencers, and then micro influencers, which are people that have between, you know, 50 to maybe 500,000 followers. And then over the last year or two, we talked about nano influencers, people with one to 10,000 followers. And if you think about, you know, I don't know about Canada, I'm assuming it's pretty similar demographic wise, but in the United States, the majority of the workforce are millennials. So these are digital natives that have been doing social media since it began. And they've bui...

Related Content & Links:

https://hydroottawa.com/
Twitter feed: @NealSchaffer
Amazon link to book: The Age of Influence: The Power of Influencers to Elevate Your Brand on paperback
Website: nealschaffer.com
Apple podcast link- Maximize Your Social Influence Podcast

Transcript:

Dan Seguin 0:02 Hey everyone! I'm Dan Segin from Hydro Ottawa. And I'll be hosting the ThinkEnergy podcast.

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The Ingredients of a Great Podcast

If you ever thought about starting your own podcast or wanted to learn more about the process, this episode is for you. With years of experience in the podcasting industry, Rhys Waters and Jonathan Burns – co-founders and producers of Podstarter – have seen it all, including ups, downs, successes & failures. They believe that success can be found by any podcaster through a healthy balance of passion, consistency, and a genuine connectedness with their target audience. Tune in to learn the ingredients of a great podcast.

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Transcript:

Dan Seguin 0:02

Hey, everyone, I'm Dan Séguin from Hydro Ottawa. This is the ThinkEnergy podcast. Changing times have led to the implementation of numerous new technologies in business. One of the most fascinating is this, what you're doing right now listening To a podcast. First, thank you for listening. I'm grateful that every two weeks you tune into our show. As the world becomes busier and channels more cluttered, podcasting is becoming increasingly popular. According to Forbes, there are 62 million Americans listening to podcasts every week. But why? With more than 850,000 active podcasts available, the variety of topics is limited only by your imagination. podcasts have been around for a decade and a half. But in the last five years, we've witnessed a renaissance thanks to smartphones, podcast apps, and voice activated speakers. They're easier than ever to access. Hydro Ottawa opted to invest in podcasting because they are convenient, very portable and easy to use with tremendous listener retention rates. In addition, they provide a repeat touch point for audiences. podcasts have a unique way of making technology disappear. You simply listen to your device. There's no tapping, swiping or clicking. In this way, podcasting reduces the friction and noise associated with traditional digital advertising, allowing us to speak directly to you and find a connection. Maybe you're listening to this while you're doing the dishes, driving exercising. With podcasts, our hands are free to multitask. A recent study showed while 49% of podcast listening happens in the home 22% happens while driving 11% at work and 8% while exercising. If you ever thought about starting your own podcast or wanted to learn more about the process, this episode is for you. It's relatively easy to begin with little overhead or broadcasting experience. You can actually start recording a podcast with just your iPhone or a pair of headphones or ear buds. So here's today's big question. How can podcasting effectively build relationships and trust and become an efficient way to make positive connections with people simply using the power of voice? To help us better understand the strategies and process behind podcasting? We've invited the cofounders of pod starter on today's show. They share a vision of helping people in companies make great podcasts and guide them on how to tell compelling stories. They've built global audiences and have worked with broadcasters like the BBC, their company He's responsible for more than half a million podcast downloads. Dear listeners, please welcome Jonathan Burns and Rhys Waters. gents. First things first. Tell us about your company podstarter. And what drew you to podcasting?

Rhys Waters 4:22

I personally started in podcasting back in about 2015. Back in the UK, I was working on some radio projects for the BBC. And we kind of got roped into releasing some radio shows, as podcasts and it kind of spiraled from there. My background is in film. So it was kind of a really exciting new creative place to just play with audio and tell stories and, and kind of grow in in that environment. So since then, yeah, I've just been having fun with it, seeing what challenges you can overcome in terms of recording in real world locations and studio spaces and then having those kind of conversations That you can't necessarily have in other realms that podcasting really allows you to, to take advantage of.

Jonathan Burns 5:08

Yeah, for myself, there's a couple of reasons of why podcasting really sort of drew me to it. My background has been creating content anywhere from online training videos to building augmented reality, virtual reality experiences, sort of content that has impact or connects with an audience in a unique way. And having met Rhys a few years back, we started having conversations around podcasting and how accessible It is to be able to communicate and cra...