Instagram/YouTube Influencer
For this talk we had Gemma Birch who manages to be a prolific on
Instagram and
YouTube while still doing a full time job!
She shared a lot of wisdom and her approach to becoming an Influencer for fashion and mental health.
It all started with a video blog of her holiday one time in Morocco, and after realising people would watch and comment she took it a bit more seriosuly. Since then, she's been on a journey blending two of her passions between fashion and being a psychotherapist.
Not a common mix for an influencer but one that defineitly seems to be working and tapping into an audience that blends both areas of interest.
Gemma shared a few stories of how she started to engage with brands, dealing with payments, growing her following, and setting boundaries with brands.
She tried many ways of growing her following and the topic of pods were mentioned. Gemma was invited to join a niche pod (engagement groups for growing followings) and recommended this approach but with caution as some become very spammy.
Above all, keeping the authenticity was key to growing the audience and also keeping the happiness to carry on creating content, sharing stories and engaging with the her audience.
Key Takeaways
- Start a food blog (food on Instagram is going through the roof)
- The more you share the more relateable you are
- IGTV is going to be big (not now but it's coming!)
- Post everyday and change location + hashtags
Tools To Takeaway
Best Hashtags - Find key hashtags, volumes and recommended hashtags
Rocket Lawyer - Free resource for creating legal documents
Locowise - Social media analytics and reporting software
Table 2
The Rise of Pet Influencers
For this table we had a returning speaker,
Layla Flaherty from
Urban Paws UK, a pet modelling agency.
The rise of pet influencers is a fascinating tale and Layla and team have been at the heart of it. Brands now want our furry friends in their adverts to promote everything from bleach to Dyson hoovers and cats, at cat walks!
Layla talked about her strategy for keeping up with demand of pet influencers and how actively monitoring what is happening when advertising agencies win big clients as that becomes prime time to pitch. For this the team have started using Instagram tagging feature and also LinkedIn.
Tagging the directors individually is working great for them as it's not a saturated market and still niche enough for the tagging to be novel.
As the brand have developed they have realised that they don't need to focus on attracting the pet influencers anymore and more about clients.
A comparison that can be made to people and pet influencers is that the micro influencers are more authentic, have better engagement and likely to provide a better return on investment.
The micro influencers are those with a loyal following and usually between 10-20k or 25-75k, it's subjective at times but a good indicator can be the levels of engagement and ratios on their post/likes.
Key Takeaways
- People influencers are selling too much and pets are authentic
- Tik Tok is going to be the next big app
Tools To Takeaway
Table 3
Influential Places
Joe Keggin from
Marketing Liverpool, the company who are the destination marketing organisation for Liverpool. Joe has a mutli-faceted role that spans public relations and all things that engage people and organisations in the city and bringing people to the city for press and promotions.
From working with Visit Britain on global campaigns and co-ordinating/project managing influencer visits to researching and identifying influencers who's audience is ideal for the city, the experience shared added a different dimension for influencer marketing.
Joe shared a few best practice examples of how to make sure both parties benefit from the agreement and having the influencer enjoy the experience as well as Marketing Liverpool benefit from the authenticity of the influencer.
One of the example is for influencers to be with fellow influencers/friends so that the enjoyment they are seemed to be having is real and not so staged, as well as making sure the itinerary they have is varied, well suited to their tastes and audience taste. The aim is for the influencer to create authentic content that their audience will be able to resonate with and see this is inspiring/interested in visiting Liverpool and experiencing the same.
Key Takeaways
- Spend the time doing the research and finding the right fit for brand
- Know the measurements before committing to a projec
