The Cocktail Party Method to Grow Your Own Influence
06/20/22 • 34 min
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Let’s talk about building your influence. And I don’t mean growing your follower count on social networks. I mean really growing the number of people that you have some degree of influence over.
Now, for some of you who want to build a following online or offline and have true influence. Perhaps you want to be content creator that does brand deals and gets paid to create on social media channels. Or maybe you have political aspirations. Or you just see the value in growing your audience or network that you have an impact upon.
Others of you probably see the value in growing the influence your business has. Perhaps over prospective customers. But more specific to what we talk about on this show, maybe you want to grow your influence over the influencers in your space.
When you remove the guardrails of influencer marketing and stop focusing solely on follower counts and social networks online, you start to see true influence. That is often built offline. Face-to-face. At events. Think of it networking, not social networking which now seems to imply online.
When I happen to stumble upon a person, brand, case study or resource that can help me explain and emphasize the offline part of influence marketing, without the R, I latch on to it. And I recently found one such resource.
Nick Gray is an entrepreneur that you could say was an original influencer. He started a website and company on the side in the mid-2000s called Museum Hack. He did what he calls “renegade tours” of the Met and similar museums in New York City. The content exploded and Museum Hack became a full-fledged business with 50 employees. He sold it in 2019.
Nick’s climb to the top of the entrepreneurial success ladder, however, sprouted from a socially awkward kid who moved to New York City in his early 20s. The way he networked and grew his influence inspired a now five-year-long project that resulted in a book. It’s called The 2-Hour Cocktail Party: How to Build Big Relationships with Small Gatherings.
Nick and I caught up recently to talk about his book, the idea of hosting cocktail parties to grow your local and community influence and how the ideas in the book can help content creators and brands alike become more influential. Not just leverage influence or influencers.
Today's episode is presented by Tagger, the complete influencer marketing platform. Get a demo to see if Tagger is right for you at jason.online/tagger.
And don't forget to claim your $100 advertising credit on LinkedIn by going to LinkedIn.com/winfluence.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Let’s talk about building your influence. And I don’t mean growing your follower count on social networks. I mean really growing the number of people that you have some degree of influence over.
Now, for some of you who want to build a following online or offline and have true influence. Perhaps you want to be content creator that does brand deals and gets paid to create on social media channels. Or maybe you have political aspirations. Or you just see the value in growing your audience or network that you have an impact upon.
Others of you probably see the value in growing the influence your business has. Perhaps over prospective customers. But more specific to what we talk about on this show, maybe you want to grow your influence over the influencers in your space.
When you remove the guardrails of influencer marketing and stop focusing solely on follower counts and social networks online, you start to see true influence. That is often built offline. Face-to-face. At events. Think of it networking, not social networking which now seems to imply online.
When I happen to stumble upon a person, brand, case study or resource that can help me explain and emphasize the offline part of influence marketing, without the R, I latch on to it. And I recently found one such resource.
Nick Gray is an entrepreneur that you could say was an original influencer. He started a website and company on the side in the mid-2000s called Museum Hack. He did what he calls “renegade tours” of the Met and similar museums in New York City. The content exploded and Museum Hack became a full-fledged business with 50 employees. He sold it in 2019.
Nick’s climb to the top of the entrepreneurial success ladder, however, sprouted from a socially awkward kid who moved to New York City in his early 20s. The way he networked and grew his influence inspired a now five-year-long project that resulted in a book. It’s called The 2-Hour Cocktail Party: How to Build Big Relationships with Small Gatherings.
Nick and I caught up recently to talk about his book, the idea of hosting cocktail parties to grow your local and community influence and how the ideas in the book can help content creators and brands alike become more influential. Not just leverage influence or influencers.
Today's episode is presented by Tagger, the complete influencer marketing platform. Get a demo to see if Tagger is right for you at jason.online/tagger.
And don't forget to claim your $100 advertising credit on LinkedIn by going to LinkedIn.com/winfluence.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Previous Episode
How to Leverage CSR and PR Channels to Influence
I share a lot of my own opinions about influence marketing here on the show. But of course the meat of what we do here is mine the brilliant minds of our guests. I make no claim to be the know-all and end all to influence marketing.
Sure, I have a perspective on the practice and industry I think is unique and expands your thinking about it. I believe that’s why you listen. And I thank you for that.
But some of the people that I share ideas with behind the scenes are some awfully smart folks, too. And I would be doing you a disservice if I didn’t elevate those voices and perspectives as well.
Sarah Panus is steep in experience working with big brands and influence marketing. She’s worked with Sleep Number, Starbucks, Nestle ... among others. Her experience led her to develop her own categorizations of influencers and a smart way of thinking about and executing influence marketing campaigns.
Sarah also happens to be the host of a mighty fine podcast called Marketing With Empathy. It is one of our sister shows on the Marketing Podcast Network. As one might assume from the title, Marketing With Empathy is about far more than influence marketing. But because influencers are top of mind for brand managers that listen to her, and because approaching them with empathy is just plain smart, the topic pops up on the show from time to time.
Sarah recently did a series of episodes about her six categories of influencers. These are stakeholders or pools of people one might turn to for an influence marketing campaign. Celebrities is one. Current customers is another, and so on.
Today on Winfluence, I’m going to share an excerpt from her episode on CSR and PR contacts that can serve as influence conduits for your brand. That’s right ... tapping into corporate social responsibility contacts and media and public relations relationships to further your influence campaigns.
Sarah will certainly give you more to chew on about how to think of it as influence marketing rather than influencer marketing on this episode.
Don’t forget to drop Winfluence a rating or review on your favorite podcast app. Also, if you’d like a deep dive on an influencer marketing topic every so often, subscribe to my email newsletter at jason.online/subscribe. I send it every 4-6 weeks and go deep on a topic to make your influence marketing smarter.
Want to make a future episode of Winfluence awesome? Ask your question about influence or influence marketing that you want my answer to or take on. Send me an email to [email protected]. If you’re feeling adventurous, record a voice memo on your phone and email me that file. I’ll let you ask the question right here on the show using the recording. Regardless of how you ask it, I may use your comment on a future episode or your question to inspire a show topic. If I do, I’ll send you a signed copy of Winfluence the book as a thank you!
Today's episode is presented by Tagger, the complete influencer marketing platform. Get a demo to see if Tagger is right for you at jason.online/tagger.
And don't forget to claim your $100 advertising credit on LinkedIn by going to LinkedIn.com/winfluence.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Next Episode
Understanding Affinity to Find Success with Influencers
The word affinity has a wide range of meanings. The core one is, a relationship by marriage. That’s according to Merriam-Webster. But it can also mean a similarity based on a relationship or causal connection.
Which is to say the spectrum of the relationship can be strong. Or not so strong.
I have an affinity for bourbon. But I also have an affinity for Hanson’s 1997 album Middle of Nowhere. I can live without one of those, so the affinity is different.
And that is the underlying factor a good influence marketing strategist needs to keep in mind, about using affinity as a filter for influencer prioritization. If you’re not familiar with affinity and how that applies to influencer marketing, get out your notebooks. Today on Winflunce, we’ll take a quick look at affinity. What it means in the context of influence marketing and how you can use it to produce more successful influence marketing campaigns.
A lot of the inspiration and learning I’ve been doing about affinity that you’ll hear in today’s episode comes by way of my use of and relationship with Tagger. It is a complete influencer marketing software platform that allows you to find, engage, book, collaborate, pay and measure influencers. Tagger is also the presenting sponsor of this podcast and the platform I use in my day-to-day work at Cornett to manage the influence marketing efforts of our clients.
In fact, Tagger has some proprietary affinity algorithms that do a lot of the discovery and connections for you in the tool. I’m going to talk about how they all happen today so you can know what to look for without it. But why wouldn’t you explore doing all this work with a platform that can help, like Tagger.
I highly recommend you give Tagger a look-see. Go to jason.online/tagger and sign up for a free demo today. It might just be the influence marketing management solution you’re looking for.
And the influencers and brands I use as examples in this episode for visual reference are:
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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