B2B Marketing Blog - TopRank®

B2B Marketing views, news and interviews.

The Difference Between Brandividuals & Influencers – Why You Need Both

influencer brandividual

From creating advocacy programs to the content co-creation we specialize in at our agency, working with influencers presents a number of challenges, especially when it comes to effectively identifying, qualifying and recruiting.

In fact, according to a study by Augure, 61% of companies say finding “true” influencers is a top challenge.

Everyone is influential about something, but the ability to influence varies greatly across individuals, between different audiences and even at different moments in time.

Defining Influence. As Sam Fiorella, Co-Author of Influence Marketing says, “Influence is the swaying of beliefs, behaviors or actions.” Therefore, it stands to reason that identifying influencers must take into account their ability and willingness to affect action – not just achievement of high fan, friend and follower counts.


The Difference Between Brandividuals & Influencers – Why You Need Both

Lee Odden on How to Co-Create B2B Marketing Content With Influencers at #C2C15

Lee-Odden-C2C15

At the Content2Conversion conference in Scottsdale, there were a lot of hands up when Lee Odden asked how many in the audience had been tasked with developing substantially more content for 2015.

The hands in the air were far, far fewer when Lee asked how many in the audience had been allocated an equal amount of resources for the development of that additional content.

82% of senior executives are say more content is a significant driver in their buying decisions according to a report from Deman Gen Report. As more buyers are consuming more content, Odden says “you gotta fish where the fish are.”


Lee Odden on How to Co-Create B2B Marketing Content With Influencers at #C2C15

What You Need to Know About Content & Influencer Marketing. BONUS: Case Study

influencer co-created content

Influencer Marketing was a hot topic in 2014 and will continue to gain momentum in 2015 for both B2C and B2B marketers, especially when it comes to content co-creation.

Why the warm and fuzzy for influencer content you ask? According to CMI and MarketingProfs, over 90% of B2B marketers are investing in content marketing. Yet, in an age of information overload where 74GB of data are delivered per person, per day (USC), standing out to business buyers can require unreasonable budgets and resources.

Inspired by the need to scale content marketing performance, a growing number of B2B marketers are creating better quality content that gets shared more often, reaches more prospects and grows their influencer network – all at the same time. How so? Through influencer content programs.


What You Need to Know About Content & Influencer Marketing. BONUS: Case Study

Influencer Outreach – 5 Ways to Fail

influencer outreach fail

Content Marketing has dominated much of the conversation about marketing in the past 2 years and the popularity of influencer marketing is also on the rise. What could be better than a combination of both?

The intersection of influencer marketing and co-creation for content marketing is an area we’ve been testing and implementing thoroughly over the past 5 years. Not only have we implemented these campaigns for ourselves in partnership with marketing kingpins like MarketingProfs, Content Marketing Institute and Social Media Examiner, but also major brands like LinkedIn, Dell and McKesson.

But as the approach to content shifts from marketing departments to crowdsourcing, insourcing and community co-creation, I’ve noticed a sharp increase in sloppy or ineffective tactics like influencer outreach.


Influencer Outreach – 5 Ways to Fail

How a Shift from All SEO to Social & Influencer Content Boosted Page Views by 500%

social influencer content

A small business technology company was focusing their online marketing efforts on SEO and this approach proved to be effective for several years.

Research revealed relevant keywords in demand from searchers actively looking for solutions in this software category. Existing content was optimized, cross linked and new content was created where needed. Content was promoted to attract links and social shares to ensure a presence on crawlable social media platforms.

But then organic traffic began to slow down in growth and eventually decline, despite following SEO best practices capable of the most specific Google scrutiny.

A decision needed to be made: Will more aggressive SEO tactics be used or was it time to shift perspective?


How a Shift from All SEO to Social & Influencer Content Boosted Page Views by 500%

Forbes’ 50 Most Influential CMOs of 2014

Influential CMOs 2014

Forbes recently published a list of the 50 most influential CMOs of 2014 in conjunction with the folks at Appinions. According the to AdAge article where I discovered the list, “the CMOs were ranked by how they have established themselves by sharing opinions that and generate significant reactions.”

More specifically, Appinions analyzed over 100 million articles from news, blog, and social media sources, noting opinions from and reactions to CMOs from 500 of the Forbes Global 2000 largest companies. From that analysis, they created an influence score and ranking.

eMarketer has reported in the past that consumers appreciate brands more when C-level executives are active on social media. Social media is a great way for CMOs to show their “people” skills and their digital savvy in today’s world of all digital, all the time.


Forbes’ 50 Most Influential CMOs of 2014

How to Incorporate SEO and Influencer Content

Optimize Influencer Content for Search

Make no mistake, discovery of content through search engines is more important than ever. But the practice of optimizing content for search visibility has changed substantially.

As search engines look for signals of credibility amongst content and links, humans do the same thing. In the way that links alone used to drive the search visibility of a web page up, endorsements and mentions from industry influencers can still boost the visibility of a brand. As a result, the trend towards advocate and influencer marketing is on the rise.

While SEO and influencer content might seem more meatball sundae than PBJ, I assure you, the combination can be whatever you want it to be, because it’s content. Understanding demand for topics reconciled with the brand’s ambitions around a topic, search optimization insights applied to an influencer content program can boost both the quantity and the quality of attraction.


How to Incorporate SEO and Influencer Content

How to Get Executive Buy-In for Your B2B Influencer Marketing Program

TopRank Marketing Editor
TopRank Marketing Editor
Influencer Marketing, Online Marketing

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Increasing numbers of marketers are enthusiastic about the power of influencer marketing – and not just in the B2C marketing world. B2B marketers are also discovering that influencer marketing goes beyond things like asking bloggers to vouch for their products on Twitter in return for a free sample.

Professionals with clout are engaged in active digital conversations about things that matter to them with their audiences – audiences that contain buyers that are influenced about which products and services they buy. According to a study by Nielsen, 85% of consumers seek out trusted expert content when considering a purchase.


How to Get Executive Buy-In for Your B2B Influencer Marketing Program

Content and Influencer Marketing is A Powerful Way to Grow Your Business

influencer content marketing

A never ending stream of high quality content simply isn’t sustainable for most organizations. But what if Marketers could tap into a rich source of content optimized for engagement, sharing and action?

This is the promise of co-created content and participation marketing. Not limited to influencers, participation marketing is to partner with others to create content that the community they are a part of would find useful. These co-creation partners might be existing customers, industry influentials, other connected businesses and individuals or even prospective customers.

A brandividual is popular. An influencer is effective at creating popularity.

While many see influencer marketing as a way to simply gain entry to an influencer’s network, there are many more dimensions to it than that. We’ve been experimenting with numerous influencer content projects over the past 3 years and have developed some exciting strategies and processes around influencer engagement and content co-creation.


Content and Influencer Marketing is A Powerful Way to Grow Your Business

Influencer Marketing and Content FTW! 7 Steps to Co-Created Awesome

Influencer Marketing

What’s a faster way to connect with a target audience than building thought leadership from scratch? Working with influencers that already have authority and credibility with the target audience you want to reach.

Why so many companies focus only on buying their way into new markets and audiences I may never know. Working with industry influencers through networking, interviews co-created content has been an instrumental approach for our boutique and specialized agency. By connecting with influencers and working with them to achieve mutually beneficial goals, we’ve grown our business substantially.

This post is an in-depth look at how your business can tap into the power of influencers and co-created content through 7 steps that go from planning to implementation to measurement.


Influencer Marketing and Content FTW! 7 Steps to Co-Created Awesome

Top 50 People Most ReTweeted by Digital Marketers – What Does It Mean?

digital marketer topics

When identifying influencers as part of your social media and content marketing program, topic match and popularity are not enough to qualify an influencer as “effective”.

By effective, I mean the ability and likelihood that a person can actually inspire action amongst a community.

To determine the effectiveness dimension, it’s important to use tools that look at other criteria such as the extent to which people respond and take action in response to a person. When it comes to Twitter, things like ReTweets and sharing of links are signals worth looking at.

To shine a light on the digital marketing category, Leadtail and Punchtab have published a new report (h/t SocialFresh) “How Digital Marketers Engage on Twitter” that includes a list of publishers and people that are the most often mentioned and ReTweeted by digital marketers.


Top 50 People Most ReTweeted by Digital Marketers – What Does It Mean?

9 Tools to Discover Influencers in Your Industry

Influencer Discovery Tools

The tide of influence hunting on the web is rising beyond public relations and social media to digital marketing at large.  In particular, there’s growing attention being directed towards influencers as gateways to new audiences.

Influence as the ability for a person to inspire action amongst a community is a very powerful thing and therefore, increasingly appreciated by digital marketing and PR pros alike. An influencer program that identifies, qualifies, engages and maintains relationships with industry influencers can serve as a formidable “force multiplier” for everything from content amplification to product feedback to content co-creation. 

Beyond the “brandividual endorsement”, people with a strong center of influence can provide valuable context and credibility to a company seeking to connect with an audience of buyers. But in an age of information overload and the ability for anyone, anywhere to publish, finding those influential connections in your industry can prove to be a challenge.


9 Tools to Discover Influencers in Your Industry