Kendra Bracken-Ferguson is DBA’s chief operating officer. Her background includes online interactive and integrated marketing with specialties in mobile marketing, influencer relations, digital communications, and viral/word-of-mouth marketing, event management and youth marketing. Kendra was named Mobile Marketer’s “Mobile Women to Watch in 2010” and was featured as one of the 28 most influential African-American women in Essence magazine in October 2011.
The following is an e-mail interview with Bracken-Ferguson about the state of influencer marketing and blogger outreach in 2013.
What characteristics define a digital influencer in 2013?
Digital influencers are those who have a unique perspective and distinct presence in the digital landscape. They offer a take on a topic that is obviously very inventive (otherwise they wouldn’t be an influencer OR popular), it’s consistent with their vision, and it it feeds across every aspect of their digital property. They have the ability to create and distribute relevant content, moving their audience to action. (read more…)
SmartPulse — our weekly nonscientific reader poll in SmartBrief on Social Media — tracks feedback from leading marketers about social media practices and issues.
This week, we asked: Which is more challenging?
- Getting happy fans to tell others about you: 65.79%
- Appeasing angry fans: 34.21%
Almost two-thirds of SmartBrief on Social Media readers say it’s more difficult to spur positive word-of-mouth than quiet irate customers. It’s not hard to see the reason. While it’s important to deal with negative reviews and comments in a timely fashion, the process of customer appeasement is much better understood than the process of encouraging positive word-of-mouth. Your critics will come out and tell you what they want from you, but your happy fans offer no such clues.
This means the burden is on you, the marketer, to discover what your fans love about you and find ways to spur them to share that opinion with others. (read more…)
SmartPulse — our weekly nonscientific reader poll in SmartBrief on Social Media — tracks feedback from leading marketers about social media practices and issues.
This week, we asked: Do you discuss products or brands you enjoy on your social media accounts?
- No — 55.91%
- Yes — 44.09%
Word-of-mouth marketing is one of the most powerful tools any business has at its disposal — but taking full advantage of it can be easier said than done. Some people are naturally inclined to share products and services they’ve enjoyed in the past, but those people are decidedly in the minority. Even among SmartBrief on Social Media readers, less than half say they talk about brands or products via social accounts. If you want your business to take full advantage of the power of word-of-mouth marketing, you need to do more than just hope people will talk about you.
How can you avoid leaving word-of-mouth to chance? (read more…)
Scott Monty took the stage at the 2013 New Media Expo in Las Vegas to talk about what he’s learned from four years of evolving social media programs at Ford. While the brand has had its share of ups and downs in the social media space, it has continually looked for new ways to connect with fans and to build positive word-of-mouth around its vehicles. Monty shared a few lessons he’s learned on the job.
- Let fans tell your story. Ford initially created a website called “The Ford Story” to help communicate with the public during the auto bailout crisis and to help share the story of the brand. But Monty noted that Ford soon found that fans wanted to share their own stories of ways they’d connected with the brand. Gradually the site became more and more focused on customer stories until it was rebranded from The Ford Story to FordSocial in 2011.
How do you feel when you view your competitor’s Facebook fan page? Are you happy because you are doing better than he or she is? Or do you wonder what the person is doing that you are not? If it’s the latter, it’s time you started evaluating your Facebook goals.
Identifying Facebook marketing goals
Small and midsize businesses need to have a clear picture of what they want to achieve from Facebook. Almost 20% of company profiles here were made even before their official websites were launched, so their goal could be to provide customers with a means to contact and get to know their business. It could also be that a business’ use for Facebook is to interact with customers. In this case, it is important to make regular posts and reply to people’s comments on your wall. If your goal is to use Facebook as a marketing tool, follow the strategies listed below to get your posts more attention and “likes” from the social network. (read more…)
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