Ask an Expert: How to Create Compelling Content and Grow Your Instagram, According to a VP Influencer Marketing
“The longer you wait, the harder it is to grow.”
We’ve been spending a lot of time at Create & Cultivate HQ discussing how we can best show up for and support our community during this uncertain time. Community is at our core, and connecting with others through one-of-a-kind experiences is what we love to do. While the world has changed, our mission has not. We’re committed to helping women create and cultivate the career of their dreams, which is why we’re proud to announce our new Ask an Expert series. We’re hosting discussions with experts, mentors, and influencers daily at 9 am, 12 pm, and 3 pm PST on Instagram Live to cure your craving for community and bring you the expert advice you’ve come to know and love from C&C. Follow Create & Cultivate on Instagram, check out our Ask an Expert highlight reel for the latest schedule, and hit the countdown to get a reminder so you don’t miss out!
“
The longer you wait, the harder it is to grow.”
—Rachel Zeilic, VP of Influencer Marketing at WhoWhatWear
With engagement on social up 30% since social isolation started, now might just be the perfect time to be growing your Instagram or finally figuring out wtf to do with TikTok. But in the midst of a crisis, creating good (and respectful) content can feel really difficult. In comes, Rachel Zeilic, VP of Influencer Marketing at WhoWhatWear, to answer all your questions.
Wondering what to post, when to post, what to pay for, or if TikTok is the right move for your brand? Rachel drops lots of advice on our IG LIVE on how to navigate social media in the midst of COVID-19. Tune into this Ask An Expert to make sure you don’t miss a single tip. We bet you’re already scrolling through Instagram, might as well scroll with purpose and grow your brand.
We Want Your (Respectful) Content
“Don’t make any assumptions. Don’t say, Now that we’re all working from home, because that isn’t true for a lot of people.”
“There really is a space for audiences to turning to influencers for comfort for information for distraction, they have a lot of time on their hands right now and time is a precious commodity so let’s serve them.”
“Stay away from anything that is like ‘this is a must-have’ because, if it’s not groceries or masks, it isn’t a must-have.”
“Some things that are performing really well right now is comfy chic, working from home outfits, beauty routines, anything affordable, people are still interested in spring trends, and they also want some escapism.”
“Now is also a time to give things away for free. Even if you’re a brand who could be doing well giving some at-home DIY recipes, people will really appreciate that and remember that when commerce opens up again. More than ever they will remember the brands who stepped up and are giving to the community.”
“This is the first time really in a long time where influencers’ lifestyles are really close to their followers’ lifestyles. They aren’t jetting around the world or wearing designer outfits. So this is a really great time for influencers to connect with their followers in a really relatable way.”
Get On TikTok
“TikTok is not like Snapchat or other platforms where they were popular but there was never really brand integration. TikTok is really different, the way it’s built is really engineered to be successful for brand campaigns. Particularly one feature, the hashtag challenges. That is incredible for creating UGC (user-generated content). To me UGC is gold. If your customer loves you so much that they are creating content, they aren’t an influencer, they aren’t getting paid, if they love the product so much they are creating content that is gold.”
“I think working with TikTok and ‘TikTokers’ absolutely should be part of your campaign given that the demographic aligns, it is a predominantly Gen Z audience. Also the KPIs of the campaign, you need to understand that currently TikTokers or influencers can’t link out anywhere, so if you’re expecting to see immediate sell-through from your campaign, TikTok is not the place to do it. But its great of awareness, you can reach massive audiences.”
“With regards to brands starting their own accounts on TikTok, it really depends if you can do it in a way that’s native to the platform. It’s really not going to work if you’re using the same kind of content you use on Instagram and other platforms. You should only be investing your time into growing a brand account on TikTok if you can do it in the way that is organic to TikTok.”
“The longer you wait, the harder it is to grow.”
Embrace Pay-to-Play
“Yes, it is a pay-to-play world. That being said, relationships and organic strategy are important to stretch your dollars.”
“It’s worth spending a little money on a consultant who can help you know how to spend your social budget.”
“Influencers assets on paid social perform so much better than campaign assets.”
“A lot of influencers have dropped their pricing or are more flexible on pricing right now.”
“Paid social pricing is down right now as well. You can make your budget stretch so much further right now.”
Insta Tips & Tricks
“We’ve been saying to influencers, Instead of getting a picture and then thinking, ‘Ugh what is my caption going to be?,’ why don’t you write the caption first and tell a story and then reverse that and think of an image that can convey that story?’ I don’t think they all have to be long, and they shouldn’t be long if you don’t have something to say. But every brand has a story to tell and every influencer has a story to tell and I think that can be great. It’s like micro-blogging.”
Tools to try:
“You should post as often as you can while creating quality content and without seeing a dip in engagement rate. The more you post the more your engagement will be spread out.”
About The Expert: Rachel Zeilic is an O.G. in influencer marketing, starting way back in 2007. She is currently the VP of influencer marketing at WhoWhatWear, running influencer campaigns for everyone from Walmart to Gucci. Before that she was creative Director of Majorelle at Revolve, and before that she founded two labels, Stylestalker and The Jetset Diaries.
Tune in daily at 9 am, 12 pm, and 3 pm PST, for new installments of Ask an Expert.
Follow Create & Cultivate on Instagram, check out our Ask an Expert highlight reel for the schedule, and hit the countdown to get a reminder so you don’t miss out. See you there!
Four Reasons You Should Hire a PR Agency for Your Business
DIY is great when it comes to Pinterest, but not so much when it comes to PR.
Public relations is one of the most alluring, fast-paced and competitive industries to work within. Whether you were drawn into the industry because you like writing, managing information, or garnering press - one thing is certain, it is not for the faint-hearted.
It is also not for D-I-Y doers.
Yes, it is okay to buy a press release template and craft a release if you intend to dock it on your website, under the press tab. No, It is not okay to assume that media outlets will reach out to you because you put the release on your website.
No, CNN will not call you for an interview. No, ELLE magazine will not put you on the cover. If you are serious about getting publicity, hiring a publicist or an agency is your best bet. At a minimum, speaking to a consultant can help you understand why cold calling a journalist who writes about fashion trends to write about your cook book is unacceptable.
PR pros know how journalists, editors, and writers prefer to be contacted, and how to negotiate exclusivity. We spend years (and a lot of money attending conferences) building our network, so when we need a story to go out quickly, we can go through our Twitter lists, roller-deck, business card binder, email addresses, and cell phone. Our contacts are scared. Asking us to share our contacts with you is not okay. Journalists are overloaded with people asking them for press coverage each day and usually by someone who is copying and pasting the same email to other people in the same newsroom as them. It is the publicists responsibility to decide and leverage newsworthy coverage that benefits the client, and it must be done in a way that is respectful of journalists.
To help you better understand, if you’re revealing a new logo, as your publicist, I would share that news on social media, Facebook first, because it’s community-based. If you are changing the name of your company, as your publicist, I would write a press release and have it go through a newswire. A newswire can be costly, but it’s worth it because it improves the visibility of your news and helps you connect with your target audience. You would not want consumers still referring to your company by its old name because you never put out a statement to newswires. You know who did this wrong? Rally’s. The company formerly known as Rally’s is…Checkers! It has been more than a decade, but I remember it because I never really heard a bell to unring the name across a mass campaign. Smh.
I confess I am a snob when it comes to the public relations industry because we have a bad rep. There are a lot of party-promoters and event planners who use PR tactics but self-identify as a publicist when a job or pay calls for PR professionals skills. This brings me to four reasons why you should hire a public relations agency and not someone who knows a few PR tactics.
Crisis Communications
When things go wrong, you will always immediately fill with worry. Publicists are trained to begin researching and strategizing around formulas such as C.A.C. We handle the situation with care, action, and context. If there is a rumor, we research the rumor, take control of the rumor and address the rumor through the RIA formula. Publicists break down the reach, importance, and level of ambiguity of the rumor. We center the truth and take a position that is comfortable for the client and enough for the public. Don’t handle a crisis on your own. Even large companies are handling crises poorly. If something goes word, the last thing you should do is spin it. Spin is propaganda; it is used to deceive people and convince them to buy-in to what is being said or sold. Always be honest about your business, it’s successes and failures. The public is forgiving when you apologize for a mistake, not when you lie to cover it up. Get your PR team to serve as the first and last line of defense.
Reputation Management
The way you introduce yourself to the world is often the way the world will see you for years to come. Whether it is adversity towards a product or tragedy, reputation is the key elements of your business being successful or failing. Customers value trust above all else. For example, if you are a skincare company and you attend a conference where the founder is speaking on regulations of the beauty industry, and you cannot answer honestly that animals were not tested and harmed to produce your product, as a consumer, I would not trust you as a beauty lead, or businessperson. A publicist would can prep you for situations like that. You cannot respond, “oh, email me and I’ll ask the company that supplies my product.” Hire a publicist to help you craft the three things your business does exceptionally well, what your company is working on and what’s to come. If I were a consumer, I would believe you and continue to support you because you know your brand and where you plan to take it next. The more long-time consumers you have that trust you, the more of them will support you on social media, write reviews and video testimonials.
Return On Investment
Katie Bouwkamp said it best when she said, “the public relations industry has a big PR problem when it comes to communicating how it directly impacts the bottom-line.” Today, PR pros rely on several systems to be able to tell if your press plan is bringing in money or wasting money. The most popular way to know if your PR plan is thriving is website traffic generated after people read your earned media articles. PR pros use metrics such as website visitors generated, leads created through form submissions, and transactions completed (for e-commerce companies). To put it simply, web analytics track goal conversions and assign a dollar value to those conversions. Public relations firms are managing campaigns, writing news releases, producing content for social media and arranging interviews, preparing clients for press conferences, so that you can gain and retain loyal consumers. PR pros take your stakeholders seriously and have a deep understanding of what it means when those stakeholders are happy or unhappy.
Social Media
No matter how much you want to save money by running your social media account on your own, you will never be able to do it better than someone who knows how to do it practically and most importantly, theoretically. You will miss out on consumers every day who would have gladly paid $14 for a vegan lip balm - I know because I am one of those people. Believe it or not, there is a science and psychology behind levering your social media, and PR pros have mastered it. When you entrust a PR pro with your social media assets, we goal set between social capabilities to increase your brand awareness, get you a higher quality of sales, create a loyal fan base and get you a better pulse in your industry. We know how to find your competitors, not to necessarily to take them out but to make sure you are setting the standard, leading the way and bringing in just as much, of nor more revenue. We know what strategies to use to drive engagement and sales (for those of us who are hybrid-mass communications professionals) because we do a lot of social listening to find out what your consumers are saying about the brand and product. Let a PR pro manage your social media, not only so you can serve as the face, voice, and brand of your company, but so you can continue to grow your business.
In the vast skillsets of PR pros, there are a few things you should never D-I-Y, the four are mentioned are the ones I do not waiver on. Trust me it’s worth it, hire a PR firm.
By: Danyelle R. Carter
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Danyelle R. Carter is the President of Her Communications Agency, the first communications and public affairs firm committed to delivering high impact strategy to organizations, companies, and candidates that center on advancing women and girls. She formerly served as a U.S. Digital and Press Congressional Staffer and legislative support for women and girls. While serving in the House of Representatives, Danyelle helped launched the Congressional Caucus on Black Women and Girls and Multicultural Media Caucus. Most notably, she conceptualized and wrote the bill to get a statue representative of Shirley Chisholm in the U.S. Capitol that is now being championed by Rep. Yvette Clarke (NY) and Senator Kamala Harris (CA). Connect with Danyelle on Twitter.
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6 Quick and Dirty Tips for Marketing Yourself
Build trust, not walls.
photo credit: Bloguettes
Are you looking to grow your following in 2017? Here are 6 quick easy to follow tips.
1. BUILD TRUST
If you’re asking yourself what’s more important going viral or a steady band of dedicated users, think on this:
Exposure is great. It can make you feel like you’re doing something right and the world is catching on for good reason. But exposure can also leave you bare naked in the public eye with no plan to backup your following. Trust is the most important element to growing exposure and that doesn’t usually happen with a viral hit. You want to grow your influence steadily, giving your followers a reason to stick with you, not give you a 15-second-of-fame career.
2. MAINTAIN CONSISTENCY
If trust builds brand loyalty, than consistency builds brand recognition. According to Lauren Hooker, founder of Elle & Co, “recognition is key to branding. It's why we automatically think of Chipotle when we see a foil-wrapped burrito or Apple when we hear Siri's voice or an iPhone ringtone. These businesses don't switch things up regularly; they maintain consistency across all of the visual and invisible components of their brand.”
She advises, to “choose fonts, colors, and imagery and use them over and over again. Over time, people will begin to associate those design elements with your business and easily recognize your graphics.”
“Consistency,” adds Lauren, “also makes your brand appear professional.” Speaking of…
3. ALWAYS APPEAR PROFESSIONAL
We turn to Lauren again for this, who says, “First impressions are huge; they can make all the difference between someone taking you seriously or writing you off. If you're just starting your business, you don't have to look like you just started your business.”
4. DON’T EXPECT INSTAGRAM TO DO IT ALL FOR YOU
Instagram is an amazing tool that can broadcast your brand to millions of people. That’s the goal after all. But it’s not a magic app.
Instagram is the connector, it’s not the business. Use it wisely (and maintain consistency), but if you want to market yourself, you need to cast your net wider. There are a TON of fish in the Instagram sea and you need the social platform to funnel back into something else.
"Instagram is the connector, it’s not the business."
Tweet this.
Whether it is a website, a service, or a product there needs to be something. Especially if you want to build out your brand to do more than schlock products in paid posts.
5. PARTICIPATE IN OFFLINE EVENTS
A like will never replace a handshake. And in many ways, they are not even comparable. You can pay your rent with a like, but you can bank on an IRL relationship. That means, attending conferences, like the upcoming Create & Cultivate New York, where you meet with like-minded professionals. Or pitch yourself to companies to speak on panels.
6. PAY ATTENTION TO YOUR COMPETITION
Marketing yourself isn't solely about you. You can't change the game if you're standing in one place. While an authentic brand is a successful brand, you also need to have a leg up on the competition. That means keeping in tune with what they're doing.
Fine tune your marketing efforts as you go. Pay attention to their audiences and see what they want and how you can provide a better service or product to them. Learn from their mistakes, and know that you can do much better.
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Tina Wells Started a Company in Her Teens, Today It's an Award-Winning Agency
How this marketing guru has survived twenty years, with aplomb.
When you start your company at 16, there’s a decent chance you won't be doing the same thing by the time you graduate high school, let alone two decades later. Yet Tina Wells, founder of Buzz Marketing Group, defied that decent chance and remains CEO, founder and captain of the marketing company she started in her teens.
It wasn’t her intention. She didn’t set out to run a company. Rather, the goal was to be a fashion writer, ideally at a Hearst publication. “Seventeen was the dream,” she says.
“Never in a million years did I think I’d run a company or that twenty years later I’d be doing the same thing.” Like the start of many companies, her foray into marketing came from a place a need. As a fashion and beauty loving teen with five younger siblings she knew her parents weren't going to be able to buy her the newest trends. "My parents," she says, "were working their butts off to get us into private school and I knew I needed to come up with a way to make money. That's all it was. I figured out that I could review product and then wear it."
It is a resourcefulness that followed her through high school graduation, into college, and helped her grow BuzzMG's buzzSpotters-- a network of trendspotters that was cast to be a research network. It's a group of those in-the-know "and now and always looking around the next corner." In the beginning the buzzSpotters consisted of Tina and her ten friends. “I remember when we got to 200 people I thought it was too much," she says. There are now 37,000 people worldwide. "Consumers know what they want and want to be part of the process," she says. “That’s something I recognized as a 16 year old. I knew that if my friends and I wanted to be a part of the process of a company making something for us, then other people had to want it too."
"Consumers know what they want and want to be part of the process."
Tweet this.
It's a thought that has paid off. It was during Tina's freshman year at Hood University when someone said to her, “I just paid someone $25,000 to do market research and what you’ve done is ten times better.”
It was perfect timing. When this conversation occurred Tina was taking an Intro to Business class with the head of the Business Department. She went to visit that professor during office hours and told her what she’d been up to the last two years. That professor told Tina to take independent study with her to figure out how to make it a viable business. She did. “That was the launch pad,” she says. “It wasn’t me saying, ‘I have a great idea for a business,’ rather I was being told I was doing something really interesting that could be a business.”
Today, Buzz Marketing Group is an award-winning media communications agency that focuses on Millennials, moms, and multicultural consumers. They deliver data and strategies that drive the marketing approach for clients. “I’ve been doing this so long,” Tina says, “that back when I started it was youth marketing. There weren’t Millennials and there certainly wasn’t the idea of Millennial marketing.”
"So long," gives Tina and her team a certain edge-- even though the technologic landscape around her has moved seismically. “I still reference the business plan I developed with my professor 18 years ago,” she explains. In addition to running her company Tina is the current Academic Director of Wharton's Leadership in the Business World program and is teaching a summer program based on the principles set forth in that business plan. "The basics of building a business are still the same." she says. Adding, "You still need to answer those ten questions every business owner has to answer." (Check back, we'll be sharing those next week!)
What has changed are the tools. She jokes that if she had launched her business now she would have scaled in three months “Technology tools empower us to be better at our jobs every day.” It's technology that allows Buzz to survey people in their network better and provide better results for clients.
“Technology has the ability to do the unbelievable, but my business is built in a very brick-and-mortar way," a foundation she insists has the ability to withstand any tech wave or crunch. "I realized early on build a great business and let the tools empower you. But don’t be so focussed on creating a business for a particular tool."
"Build a great business and let the tools empower you."
Tweet this.
BuzzMG is built in a way that's evergreen-- they are, says Tina, "research first, not creative first, and we're very honest with our clients about that." They develop marketing strategies based on data from consumers of all ages and internally develop original research for the client. "We’ll go to our network of buzzSpotters, conduct an internal survey, and go back to the client with an audit of where their brand is, where it need to be, and what we will do to get to achieve that goal.”
"Because we’re research driven we never go into any situation assuming how a conversation is going to go." It also helps Buzz create campaigns that are likewise evergreen. One of the things Buzz is known for are their lists. They help build the inspiring Levo100 List, which was first released in 2015 and is still being shared today. They worked with American Eagle Outfitters on the aerie beauty and body line, leveraging their proprietary database of influencers to create and educate a curated in-market ambassador program of over 150 ambassadors in every state with an aerie store. Upon re-launch, aerie performed 500% better than projected, generating over $250 million in sales for AE.
It’s an approach Tina believes (and has the results to prove it) gives her a great advantage because her team is always looking at what the consumer will tell them. "We make decisions by looking at all sides. Culture is changing, it’s moving so quickly-- how we’ve survived for twenty years is by sticking to the solid principles of marketing."
“I never want to get caught in hype.” she says. “There are people who say 'this is dead,' 'that is dead,' 'blogging is dead', 'influencer is dead.' 'No.' I’ve said to clients, 'Print is not dead, bad print is dead.' And it should be."
"Print is not dead, bad print is dead. And it should be."
“A great brand is always a great brand," she says. "It’s just the tools that change.”
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