How to Use Facebook Dark Posts for Greater Reach

With billions of active users logging on each day, marketing teams are constantly uncovering new ways to boost their efforts on Facebook. One growing trend is the use of “dark posts”. Their somewhat ominous title might be off-putting at first, but we promise – they’re not as shady as they might sound! And, since we had a few clients wanting to know more about the practice – we thought you might too. So here is our run-down on exactly what dark Facebook posts are, and how they can help build your business when used with influencer marketing.

What is “Dark Facebook”?

The term “dark Facebook” is sure to conjure up images of shady goings-on and underhanded techniques. (Or, if you’re like me, it conjures up images of Darth Vader sharing selfies). But, thankfully, this isn’t the case. In fact, these kinds of posts are an increasingly popular way to help streamline your page’s feed and target your posts more effectively. Let us explain.

Why is it called Dark Facebook?

Simply put, dark Facebook posts are posts that haven’t been published on a page. See? We told you they weren’t so scary. In fact, even though we now call them “unpublished posts”, “dark posts” used to be their official name. I’ll give you three guesses why they changed it.

Despite their sinister name, there really is nothing wrong with using these posts as part of your Facebook marketing strategy. But wait, I hear you cry, how can unpublished posts do anything for my page?

The benefits for your business

On Facebook, you can leave a post unpublished, but still spend some money to promote it to your chosen audience. While this may sound strange and unnecessary to some of you, it can actually be a great tactic to keep your feed streamlined, and your posts targeted.

Using dark posts can be incredibly beneficial if your target audience exists in fairly distinct segments. Say, for example, you work globally and have an audience in various countries, with a range of different languages. You don’t want someone coming to your page and seeing the exact same post repeated in five different languages, do you? That would just look messy and unorganised.

In these kinds of situations, using something like “dark posts” allows you to send out these targeted promoted posts, without spamming your entire audience with unsuitable content. Instead, you can create a selection of posts, adjust each posts target audience, and promote them to the right people. Campaigns like this are much more likely to bring you a greater ROI than any kind of blanket marketing posts.

How to use “Dark Posts”

I’m guessing that, as a social media marketer, you’re probably already fairly familiar with the inner workings of Facebook’s pages and ad manager tools. But, even if you’re not, creating these dark posts is still pretty simple to wrap your head around.

Step one: Log into ad manager

If you’re running a page on Facebook, and don’t already use Business Manager to keep it in check, drop what you’re doing and go fix that. Then, log into the ad manager section ready to create some dark posts.

Through the hamburger menu in the top left corner, select “Page Posts” under the “Create and Manage” menu. Then, from here, select the “Ad Posts” option from the left-hand side, and finally, click on “Create Post”.

Step Two: Create Your Post

You should now be greeted with a pop-up window where you can create your post just like you usually would. You can add images, video, links – the whole shebang. So go on and create your awesome Facebook post to bring in those leads and link clicks.

Then, you have two options for how you want the post to be used: “Only use this post for an ad”, or “Use this post for an ad. It will also be published on the Page later”. Selecting the first of these two options will make your post a “dark post”, and reserve it for ad status only.

Step Three: Using your “dark post”

Finally, you want to go into Ad manager and create your marketing campaign. Set the budget, target audience, and duration as you normally would. When you get down to choosing the content you’ll be using, you can simply select “Use existing post” and your recently created “dark post” will be sitting there waiting for you.

It really is that simple and easy to do, and there’s nothing shady about it!

When to use “dark posts”

We already touched a little on why “dark posts” can be beneficial for your business, but let’s delve a little deeper into when and how you should be using these in your marketing campaigns.

A/B testing

“Dark posts” are fantastic for carrying out some good, old-fashioned A/B testing. With these hidden posts, you’re able to discreetly test which image, copy, or incentive works best for your audience, without clogging up your feed with multiple versions of the same post.

With this method, you can test for the best creative, best targeting, and best posting time – without anyone even noticing what you’re doing. Perfect.

Local targeting

Having the ability to only show your posts to certain segments of your audience is an awesome way to carry out some local market targeting. Let’s look at a couple of examples of why this can be a good idea for your business page.

Your audience is global – In this instance, you might only want to run your ads in certain countries, languages, or timezones. People in the UK aren’t likely to care about your special weekend event in China, are they? Using “dark posts” can help to avoid this problem by only showing your post to the relevant local audience.

You want to run a store-specific campaign – Maybe one of your cafes baked too many carrot cakes and you need to run some kind of discount to get the stock sold. You don’t want to have to reduce the price at every store, so you run a “dark post” to only target customers of your selected store. Enabling you to sell your extra stock without costing you money.

Hiring new staff

When you need to hire new staff for your business, Facebook can be a great way to attract newapplicants. But, you don’t want to bore your fans with news of your HR endeavours, so using “dark posts” can be a great way around this. You can also be a little bit sneaky and retarget people who have visited your careers page to redirect them back to applying.

Using Facebook’s targeting features, you can make sure to attract the cream of the crop by showing your posts to people already in the industry with great experience. In other words – your ideal candidates.

Different audience segments

Most marketing teams will already be working with specific audience segments when targeting their promoted posts. But, with “dark posts” you can take this a step further. By only showing your posts to your chosen audiences, rather than to everyone who follows your page, you’re able to use that targeting even more effectively.

For example, if you’re a clothing store running a big blowout summer sale, you can create ads that showcase your crop tops and platform shoes to the fashion-obsessed millennial customers, your smart shirts and work shoes to the 30-something professionals, and your yoga pants and sports shoes to the wellness lovers. Working with this kind of super-specific targeting means you’re likely to see better click-through rates than traditional posting.

When NOT to use “dark posts”

While they can be an amazing marketing tool, as with anything else in the digital world – they won’t work for every brand or every campaign. There are a few instances where using “dark posts” won’t be the best path to take for your brand. So, let’s explore these together.

Limited budget

If you’re working with a pretty limited budget, then you’ll probably already know how vital it is that you put your money into the most effective channels out there. As “dark posts” have to be run as ads, you are going to need to spend some money on them for them to be effective. Especially if you’re hoping to use them to run some A/B testing.

If your budget is really restricted, then your money is likely going to be better spent on a traditional influencer marketing campaign, as you know they’re going to bring you in higher reach and engagement rates than you can achieve on your own.

Time Constraints

Creating effective “dark posts” requires time. They aren’t being posted to your feed, so they are in addition to the usual social media posts you will be creating. This means extra work, extra manpower, and extra time.

You will also need to have the time to dedicate to tracking and analysing these posts once they have gone live. There’s no point in running any kind of marketing if you’re not tracking the results. This is especially important if you’re using “dark posts” for A/B testing. You need to be able to dedicate the time to really dig deep into the results of your testing to determine which worked best. So, if you’re short on time right now – dark posts probably aren’t for you.

How it works in Influencer Marketing

While dark posts can be an effective for your own brand’s digital marketing, teaming these posts with an influencer marketing campaign can help to bring in an even higher ROI. Of course, we’re pretty big fans of influencer marketing here at The Shelf – it’s what we do after all. And, using the two methods together can be a fantastic strategy for your brand.

Niche targeting

If you’re working with an influencer who has an audience that spreads across more than one niche, then using dark posts on their page can be a great way to get the most out of your partnership. This way, you can be sure that your brand is being seen by the best segment of their audience to bring in the best results.

For example, if your influencer straddles both the fashion and travel niches, and your brand is all about travel luggage then this method could be perfect for you. They can design an ad that specifically targets their travel audience and help you reap the highest rewards for your brand.

Post Sponsorship

Unfortunately, Facebook doesn’t currently allow brands to directly sponsor an influencers “dark posts”, but this is easy enough to work around if you plan for this from the start. In your initial agreements with your influencer, you should be clear that you wish for them to create a “dark post” and that the budget for the promotion is included in their fee. This way, they can create and sponsor the post directly from their own account, and help you reap the rewards of using a “dark post”.

But, what about the algorithm change?

Of course, like any other social media platform, Facebook is constantly updating and changing its algorithm. If you read our article on the latest Facebook algorithm change, you’ll know that business pages are being targeted especially, and that it’s led marketers to explore new strategies to bring in results.

How it affects “dark posts”

Thanks to the ever-growing trend of “fake news” and the recent revelations surrounding the outcome of recent elections, Facebook has been forced to take steps to make the platform a safer, and more reliable place for its users.

This includes changes to how marketers can utilise “dark posts”. While you can still use this method to just target specific audiences, people can now choose to see all of your published ads – even the dark ones. There is now an option for users to see all the ads your page has run, whether you published them to your page or not.

This is unlikely to affect how marketers use this method in their campaigns, but it does mean that spying on what the competition is doing with their own marketing is now easier than ever. Now, you’ll be able to check in with what your competitors are doing on Facebook, and use this information to adjust your own strategy.

The algorithm change and your feed

The biggest change brought around by the algorithm change though, was that business pages were seeing their reach drop significantly once more. It is now more essential than ever before to spend some money to promote your posts and reach a higher percentage of your audience.

So, now that Facebook is becoming much more of a “pay-to-play” platform, “dark posts” are likely to grow in popularity as marketers realise how effective they can be at targeting and influencing specific audiences.

Dark posts on other platforms

Facebook doesn’t get all the fun when it comes to dark posts though. This form of marketing magic exists throughout the world of social media. And, while Facebook may invented them – they’re not the only ones who are using them anymore.

Instagram

Every ad that you post on Instagram is technically a dark post – and you don’t need to do anything special to create them. All ads posted on the photo-sharing platform only show up as ads – not in your actual feed.

These dark posts will look just like any other Instagram post, but will also contain a small “Sponsored” tag at the top, as well as a call to action button of your choice at the bottom. You have the same kind of freedom as you do with usual posts too. You can post images, videos, a carousel, or a Story. You also have a great selection of targeting tools to work with including location, interests, and behaviours.

And, because Facebook owns Instagram, those “dark posts” you create on Facebook can be instantly shared in the same here over on Instagram. Making the whole process super easy for you!

Twitter

While the term “dark posts” has never officially been used over on Twitter – they do still exist here as “ promoted only posts”. Much in the same way as Facebook, you can create tweets that will only go out as ads, and only be shown to your chosen audience.

These tweets will not show up on your profile, and will only be shown to the audience you chose through targeting. They will also appear in the same style as any other tweet, but will have a line that says “Promoted by [brand name]”. Other than that, everything is the same, and users can like, reply, and retweet it like any other post.

LinkedIn

And finally, you can also create these “dark posts” on the professional network, LinkedIn. Here, they are known as “direct sponsored content”. Again, they work in pretty much the same way as they do everywhere else. The posts won’t appear on your company page, only in the feeds of your chosen audience.

And, when it comes to choosing an audience, you have similar options to other social networks too. Here, they call it “audience matching” and you can select demographics such as job level, location, and age.

While many blogs are touting the end of dark posts thanks to new transparency measures introduced across social media – as far as we can see, these posts will continue to be a great way to promote your brand online. So, the next time you want to run a super-targeted ad, split test your creatives, or keep your local audience in the loop – why not consider running your own dark post campaign?

Come join the dark side. We have conversions.

Yo yo yo…it’s that time again, kids. Time for lunchboxes, backpacks, flash cards, #2 pencils, and those snarky lunch-table kids that we all know and love…

Back-To-School 2016 is officially here!

To “celebrate” the end of summer fun – and drown out the back-to-school jitters that are induced by all those impending wedgies and hurt feelings – kids are ready to give their full attention to what is perhaps the only real joy of starting a new school year, back-to-school shopping!

Back-To-School is the second largest retail holiday in the US! This year, it’s expected to rake in an unbelievable $828 BILLION!

So to honor this very special time in the lives of children everywhere (as well as to celebrate our love for fun marketing stats – duh), we’ve put together an epic Back-To-School infographic that we hope you’ll love!

Your Guide to Sales and Marketing for Back-To-School 2016

And that wraps up our Back-To-School Infographic… we hope you enjoyed! Here’s a little snippet of code for you to use when embedding this elaborate, whimsy-filled graphic of back-to-school awesomeness on your own blog (if you feel so inclined)… which we hope you do.

</p><br /><div style=”clear:both”><a href=”http://www.theshelf.com/the-blog/back-to-school-2016-sales-and-marketing-guide”><img src=”https://s3.amazonaws.com/theshelf-email-marketing-images/blog_graphics/back-to-school-infographic/back-to-school-infographic-2016-the-shelf-influencer-marketing-tips.jpg” title=”Back-To-School 2016 : Marketing and Sales Infographic” border=”0″ /></a></div><br /><div>Courtesy of: <a style=”text-decoration:underline; color:#11d3c8;” href=”http://www.theshelf.com/the-blog/back-to-school-2016-sales-and-marketing-guide”>The Shelf</a></div><br /><p>

the infographic Sources

A huge amount of spending goes down during back-to-school.

Back-to-school is the 2nd largest retail holiday. — NRF

$606 is what the average household spends on back-to-school shopping. — internetRetailer

$1086 is what the average household with college kids spends on back-to-school shopping.

— internetRetailer

$828 billion is spent annually, during the back-to-school season. — eMarketer

$75.8 billion is spent annually on back-to-school shopping. — NRF

17.2% of the entire year’s retail sales happen during the back-to-school season. — eMarketer

68% of Q3 retail sales happen during the back-to-school season. — eMarketer

Timing is everything.

The “first day of school” differs by state. — CNN

Back-to-school shopping happens over a long period of time, peaking in July and August. — Bizrate

Peak times differ for each type of product. — Bizrate

Clothing, Shoes, and Backpacks beat all other categories.

Apparel – 50%    /    Furniture – 5%    /    Tablets – 18%    /    Footwear – 42%
Stationery/Supplies – 37%    /    Computers – 17%    /    Sporting Goods – 16%
Small Appliances – 8%    /    Backpacks/Computer Bags – 41%    /    Housewares – 16%
— Bing

59% of shoppers say their child’s preference is a major factor behind purchase decisions. — Bizrate

The other major factor that affects purchase behavior : Discounts.

40% more purchases were influenced by deal-hunting last year. — Bizrate

46% of shoppers said that price is one of their main deciding factors. — Bizrate

62% of shoppers plan to spend less than they did last year. — Bizrate

9.9% of shoppers said their purchases were influenced 100% by deals. — Statista

Deal seeking varies by product type. — Bizrate

37% more money is spent when dads are in charge of back-to-school shopping. — Bizrate

Only 27% of dads will use their phones to look for coupons while shopping. — Bizrate

92% of parents use mobile devices during back-to-school shopping. — Valpak

89% say that availability of mobile coupons determines where they shop. — Valpak

33% use their mobile devices in-store when back-to-school shopping. — MediaPost

59% of searches containing the word “coupon” are made on a mobile device. — internetRetailer

88% of searches with “Hobby Lobby” and “coupons” happen on a mobile device. — internetRetailer

87% of searches with “J.C. Penney” and “coupons” happen on a mobile device. — internetRetailer

Parents do a variety of shopping related activities on their phone. — Bing

The digital world has become an integral part of the
customer’s path-to-purchase.

7.9% of back-to-school purchases are made online. — eMarketer

27% of shoppers plan to organize their shopping lists on Pinterest. — Crowdtap

50% browse online, then make the purchase in the store. — RetailNext

2/3 of people check prices on their phones while in a store before buying. — RetailNext

67% browse in stores, then buy those products online. — RetailNext

36% of every dollar spent in a store is influenced by digital interactions with that brand. — RetailNext

1/4 of parents consult Facebook when looking for inspiration to fill their children’s closets. — Rakuten

25% say that they will be using Pinterest for lunch and snack ideas. — Crowdtap

Facebook is the most influential platform when it comes to guiding parents’ fashion purchase decisions. — Rakuten

Influencer Marketing is at a unique place in the market. It has established its worth and yet countless brands are not even in the courting phase of their relationship with it.

One thing I learned very quickly upon joining The Shelf was that we, the team, are here to not only share our product with potential clients but to be a resource for a type of marketing that continues to feel “aloof” to many brands and agencies. Our company’s leadership emphasizes the need to truly walk alongside our clients, both helping them to use our resources efficiently, as well as educating them along the way. It’s not just about understanding the product, it’s about having a grasp on the movement it supports.

Why Influencer Marketing Is So Personalized

The thing about Influencer Marketing is this:

You are dealing with influencers who, despite countless attempts by companies around the globe, remain to be people rather than processes. In “traditional” marketing, there is a certain process in place. It’s, in many ways, mastered. If you do A, you will get B. Influencer Marketing is not a process, it’s people. This means it’s personal and, frankly, that’s the reason it works.

Allow me to use a story to illustrate my point.

Every day I stand on a platform waiting for my train to get to work. There are signs on my walk up to the platform, on the platform, and even behind the platform. If I look at the ads, I can see that the various food commercials and clothing lines are focused on getting people to travel to the outlet stores near my home. Standing, waiting for the train, I can see the cover of a large sign that hangs over the highway in the distance. To the left, a local business has flashing nonsense about their breakfast sandwiches.

When I board the train, I’m welcomed with more ads. When I arrive at my stop, the train station and even the roads I walk along are plastered with them. Every company is screaming out the words of Meredith Gray, “Choose me, pick me”. The problem is by the time I walk into work, even before I sit down to start my day, I’ve been overexposed. Somewhere along my trip I stopped even seeing the ads. They’ve become part of the ambiance of my daily trip, much like the squeaking track and snoring man that inevitably finds a seat next to me every morning.

This is why Influencer Marketing is so clutch right now. Influencers are making marketing personal again. We live in an era where “Google it” is an active verb in everyone’s life. We can educate ourselves just fine with smart computers dressed up as phones in our purses and pockets – so the marketing demand of “do this” no longer has the same motivating effect it used to have. Nowadays, people are pulling back the curtain and asking who and how and why. They want to see real people in their lives, or people they could picture in their lives, using the products that brands claim to be helpful, needed, or the best out there.

Influencers, for the most part, stay true to their art. They talk about what’s relevant to them – posting thoughts, pictures, and reviews on how certain products (shirts, shoes, coolers, food) worked for them. Influencers earn their name sake when they keep crafting their art and readers transform to followers. Especially in the blogging world, readers truly begin to feel like they know their influencer. They read every blog and, in many ways, feel like they experience a small part of the influencer’s life. They feel connected and connection matters.

Consumers are smart and sometimes over-educated about products. Like I said, we have the ability to scan the entire world for information on our phones every day, no matter where we are. It’s no longer just about what’s the best out there, it’s about what’s the best for me. Mac vs PC / Nike vs Adidas / Coach vs Kate Spade. It’s about personal identity.

It’s about connection. It’s about feeling like you are part of something. Connection creates a personal experience (a bond), which is what actually motivates a purchase. Consumers don’t want you to tell them who they are, but through an influencer who matters to them, you can remind them who they may want to be.

Ads.

Signs.

Billboards.

The painfully annoying banner that invades my iPhone.

These all have their place in the world of marketing (maybe not the banner because it drives me crazy), but you can’t approach an influencer as if they are a billboard and expect it to go well. As I mentioned earlier, influencers are not processes, they are people. And brands seem to forget the reason they’re even approaching influencers in the first place. The personal connection. Sending cold emails to random people and expecting the perfect ROI is unrealistic. Influencers are people, motivating people because it’s personal. Brands need to roll up their sleeves a little and get to know the bloggers they approach.

ROI, of course, is always a focus point in marketing. You need to know that you’re getting the right kind of return. And you can read more about that here.

There is, however, another ROI brands need to focus on:

Relate-ability Of Influencer to the product. Your return (ROI) means very little, and may add up to be very little if you’re not honoring the personal connection the influencer has to his/her platform and followers. They write about what matters to them, which is what transforms readers to followers.

A dog leash company needs to target people who actually have dogs to work with.

A t-shirt company probably shouldn’t be sending random emails to a blogger who only writes about high-end shoes.

A children’s apparel company should probably focus on parents writing about children’s items, not single ladies going out on the town.

Influencers influence their target demographic – not every target demographic. Consistency creates loyalty in any relationship and the influencer/follower connection is no different. We’ve seen what happens when bloggers go off script or go “rouge” from who they are. It’s not pretty. You don’t want that anyway. You want influencers who can talk about your product organically and you can target this by finding people who are already talking about things like your product. This is why relate-ability is so key.

Influencer Marketing reminds us that personal connection matters, and in that, brands must revisit their approach to Influencer Marketing as a whole. This is such an untapped way to reach consumers and if done the right way, you will have incredible results.

Find Success With Influencer Marketing

Influencer Marketing is about people, not processes.

Personal Connection matters, which is why Influencer Marketing works.

ROI 2.0: Relate-ability Of Influencer – your product must be relevant to the influencer or it will not resonate with those they influence.

Now, over to you. Are you doing Influencer Marketing? What is your experience with it so far? Please let me know what you think in the comments!

Influencer Marketing for Snapchat: An Interview with Branden Harvey

Just like YouTube and Instagram have provided a platform for digital stars aka influencers to blossom, so too has Snapchat. But what do these influencer marketing campaigns look like and what are some creative ways to utilize the platform?

We went straight to early-adopter and Snapchat influencer, Branden Harvey to get the goods on this unique platform, how he uses it to help brands grow, PLUS some tips on how to run successful Snapchat campaigns.

But before jumping into the interview (and the unknown depths of Snapchat), let me give you a quick overview of the platform and working with Snapchat influencers, just in case you’re a lost soul.

Let’s get real here:

As if influencer marketing isn’t enough of a tangled web already, Snapchat came along and confused the heck out of everyone over the age of 25. This newer social platform attracts the likes of Millennials between the ages of 15 and 25. If this is your demographic, you need to be on here. Like yesterday.

Millennials are moving away from Facebook for various reasons but one important factor is that they’re tired of being marketed to 24/7 (aren’t we all?!). Meanwhile, the grounds for Snapchat are so new and brands have yet to dilute the space with too many marketing messages. This gives them the opportunity to step back, reevaluate their approach, and find relatable ways to engage on Snapchat. Many brands are still missing the mark though and aren’t creating content that’s geared toward that younger audience. Either that or they’re avoiding the channel all together because they don’t understand it. Fair enough. It’s not exactly straightforward for a regular user, let alone a marketer who needs to figure out how to leverage it. Both parties often give up pretty quick.

What’s more, it’s difficult to see the value in a social channel that can only be measured manually or with the help of supporting channels. Plus, it can only hold an audience captive for 24 hours before the Snaps disappear for good. But it’s important to point out that the majority of engagement on Facebook posts happens within the first two hours of going live. Things get pretty stale for most brands after that.

According to Shaun McBride, the author of Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook, “A lot of people think that since Snapchat content disappears, it’s not valuable. He says that’s not the case. On many social media platforms, viewers scroll through content quickly. And even though those posts will be there forever, viewers will never see it again. Marketers are only grasping for 50% of users’ attention at a time, and those users never look back. Snapchat users can’t look back. However, marketers have 100% of their audience’s attention for the length of the content’s life.”

The very thing that makes Snapchat so unique – its transience – is also the thing that makes it so difficult to leverage and measure. One of the only obvious ways to tell how you’re doing on the platform is to see how many times your Snap was viewed, by who, and if a screenshot was taken and shared across other platforms. Is this lack of measurement holding back a lot of brands from really digging in?

Snapchat lets users share photos or 10 second video clips privately with friends OR publicly for 24 hours before the messages disappear for good. And that elusive nature of the platform is the very reason why Millennials are signing up faster than the speed of lightening. Sharing and receiving privately and for limited periods of time is far more attractive because people can be in the moment without taking themselves too seriously. They know their Snaps will disappear, so there’s no need to perfectly curate things like we do on Instagram. Nor is there a need to look as sexy as Kim Kardashian did in her most recent Instagram photo.

Getting into costs of Snapchat campaigns is another story. Brands can expect to pay up to $1000 per Snap, depending on the influencer they’re partnering up with, and the campaign at hand. Of course, there are also the smaller or magic middle influencers that will work with you on a far smaller budget. Since it’s new ground, there’s plenty of room to work out a fair price based on the campaign you’re running and the ROI the influencer can likely deliver. You just have to go super-targeted with your influencer selection and keep relevancy top of mind when you’re building these campaigns.

Now, onto our interview with Snapchat influencer, Branden Harvey.

Branden, tell us about yourself.

I’m a photographer that likes to share stories of hope, justice, and joy across the globe. My mediums for sharing are Snapchat and Instagram.

How did you become a Snapchat influencer?

Snapchat is very much built for storytelling, so I just committed to making one story every single day for the foreseeable future. When you do anything every single day and make it public it builds an audience. All the content I’m creating is very focused on in-the-moment stuff, which I think my fans really relate to.

Tell us about a Snapchat campaign that you were really passionate about.

I recently did a campaign with UNICEF and it was the perfect fit for me because I’m really passionate about what they’re doing. The idea of their campaign was to draw awareness to the fact that over 1 million people have been displaced from their homes in central Africa due to armed conflict…and over 400,000 of them are children. These kids are fleeing and ending up in refugee camps in different countries far away from their homes. The goal of the campaign was to create conversation and raise awareness on Snapchat in a way that would appeal to a younger generation.

Since these kids are being packed into camps, UNICEF was getting them to draw things that they miss most about home. UNICEF sent me these drawings and the concept was to humanize them and share their stories. I did this through a Snap and related it back to what I love most about my own home. I had this great memory of how I left this kid’s sleepover to go back home, so I shared that with my audience and then tied the whole thing back to the fact that these kids don’t have the option to go home like I did. I had a call to action to have people draw what they love most about their home and tweet or Instagram it with the hashtag, #bringbackourchildhood. Bringing it onto supporting channels allowed UNICEF to better track the campaign. The other call to action was to follow Unicef on Snapchat, allowing them to carry promotion on from their end.

My biggest challenge with this campaign was to translate such an emotioanl message into something that’s hopeful and something that doesn’t bum people out!

I tried to make this Snap personal because Snapchat is such a personal platform. If I can share a little bit about me, then my audience feels like they’re getting to know me better and this important cause. In fact, I try to make all of my Snaps as personal and authentic as possible, while keeping people engaged. For this campaign, it was just me in my house monologuing.

Have you done a Snapchat campaign where the focus was on the brand’s account instead of yours?

ABC Family recently hired me to create content on a weekly basis for this brand new show called Stitchers. Every week, they had me watch the new episode in advance and create content around it on the Stitchers Snapchat account…kind of like a takeover style. The premise was to watch my reactions to the show and hopefully get people to engage on a deeper level before and during commercial breaks. Since the show airs right after Pretty Little Liars, we would also try and leverage their massive following on Snapchat to remind followers that Stitchers was on next.

Since ABC Family targets a similar audience as the Snapchat users, the idea was to engage people where they are at and, subsequently, grow the show viewership. Instead of creating the content on my own Snapchat account, the idea was to populate theirs with high quality content. Their thought process was like, if Branden is really good at creating Snapchat content, why not have him do it?

We had a lot of calls to action within each Snap. For example, we’d tell everyone to take screenshots of some of the Snaps and tweet them out or show us their reaction to what happened on the show that night. This call to action ignited a lot of UGC on Twitter and Instagram and created a ton of engagement for the show.

Tell us about a campaign where you got to add your own ‘Branden flare’ to it.

I was hired by Paramount to promote Mission Impossible 5. That was a lot of fun because I got to run around and do really goofy stunts for my fans. Mission Impossible only recently launched their Snapchat account, MissionMovie, and they wanted to drive awareness to it. On my own Snapchat, they had me mention that I’d seen a behind the scenes feature on their Snapchat account. The rest of the Snap was me running around doing goofy stunts and letting my fans know that Tom Cruise does some really crazy stunts in the movie. The idea was to create a subtle movie tie-in and then create fan engagement. I asked my fans to send me their own stunts and I probably received over 10,000 Snaps. In fact, I received so many Snaps, it caused my phone to shut down several times.

This was a super fun campaign because it was so engaging and got people really excited for the movie. The best part was that it was so subtle. I didn’t ask anyone to go watch the movie or follow their Snapchat account. I just let them know that I saw this clip and created content around it…and now my fans could create content around it too.

Any advice for tracking the results of Snapchat campaigns?

I set a reminder in my phone before all the Snaps are going to expire and then take screenshots of all the views those stories received. I also take note of how many screenshots each Snap received. Keeping track of responses manually actually becomes very difficult when you have tons of followers. Snapchat isn’t really built for influencer tracking yet. After you get 50 Snaps, Snapchat automatically deletes things older than that.

What advice can you give to brands getting started with Snapchat influencers?

Partnering up with an influencer is one of the most effective things you can do. Find an influencer who fits what you’re trying to do. Have them walk you through the process of creating campaigns and content and utilize their audience to build your own. With Instagram, you have to publish a lot of content before you see follower growth and your followers can always go back and look at your old content…but with Snaps, they disappear after 24 hours. This means you have to start Snapchat with a bang!

Snapchat is the poster child of imperfection. People go on Snapchat so they can be imperfect.

QR codes for Snapchat are a great way to grow your audience.

Drive attention, be consistent.

You have to post Snapchat content consistently otherwise people aren’t going to be thinking about you. And people should know what kind of content to expect from you.

Have fun with Snapchat and don’t make things perfect. I try to have at least one imperfection in all of my Snapchat stories, like me getting cut off, stumbling on words, bad lighting, something where people can relate and see that my content is authentic and genuine. Your Snaps shouldn’t feel super crazy planned. In fact, Snapchat is the poster child for imperfection. People go on Snapchat so they can be imperfect. Whereas on Instagram we have perfectly curated accounts, people go on Snapchat because they can send duck face selfies to all of their friends. They know they can have fun with it because it’s going to disappear in 24 hours. To sum that up, brands should be doing whatever the equivalent of a duck face selfie is for their own brand..because people are going to resonate with it and be excited about it.

And lastly, who are your favourite Snapchatters to follow?

My favorites are Mike Platco (@mplatco)..he has a great Snapchat account to follow. I love Maia and Alex Shibutani (@shibsibs), they are figure skaters and also do an amazing job with their social media. I also like to follow Kid President (@bradmontague) and Casey Neistat (@casetneistat).

I can think of 50 people max that I could refer out for Snapchat campaigns. That’s a really small pool to draw from, considering the number of brands that exist today. Many people still don’t understand Snapchat, so it’s difficult for them to be creating engaging content on a regular basis.

Strive for the awesomeness that Branden exudes with his amazing knack for Snapchat storytelling.

Branden has been listed as a top Snapchatter on numerous sites and has hundreds of thousands of followers to prove just how awesome he is. But you may be wondering…what sets him apart from the rest? Well, as Branden told us himself, “I’ve always been a huge fan of telling stories.” And because he’s so darn good at it, he gets to travel the world, meet interesting people, go to really cool places, and share it all with his fans through pictures, videos, and Snapchat stories. On his most recent adventure, he traveled to the White House as part of Instagram’s 11th World Wide Instameet, where they hosted just 20 lucky Instagram influencers. Branden decided to take things a step further though and produce the very first Snapchat from inside the Whitehouse. How cool is that?

Snapchat storytelling is unlike any other medium because it’s more raw and unscripted, which is in stark contrast to the posed nature of Instagram. The ephemeral nature of a Snap is alluring to Millennials and once you watch a few Snaps, you’ll see why it’s so compelling. It allows you to get creative. And as Branden demonstrates with his Whitehouse story, Snapchat has very diverse use cases and is so effective at communicating so many different types of messages.

He covered a lot of scenes in his Whitehouse Snaps. So many different rooms…each room or scene had a funny caption or emoji overlayed or quirky jokes that bring the reader into his world.

Green room? More like Groovy room!

First pantsuit portrait in the White House. (referring to the portrait of Hillary)

This woman wasn’t actually a First Lady. She was more like the Beyoncé of the 1800’s.

And the end of the video was marked with a very apropos row of hysterical emoji’s.

Each of his Whitehouse Snaps were so fun to watch. He was just having fun, doing his own thing. There were even a few seconds of him just spinning around in a room aka the #PresidentialSpin.

This is just one example to illustrate how creative you really can get with Snapchat. After all, if the Whitehouse can do it, why can’t you?! But the most important thing is to choose influencers that have a gift for storytelling, like Branden. Give that Snapchatter creative control of the video and direction because they know their audience best.

And if you’re doing the Snaps on your own channel, they can be a super creative way for you to show the more human side of your brand. Your customers will love you for it.

So there you have it. A few really great ways to get started with Snapchat, whether it’s on your own channel or through an influencer. And in case you need more help, we’ve compiled our top ten tips and this neat infographic so you can get the most out of your Snapchat influencer marketing campaigns, pronto. There’s even an embed code if you’d like to share it on your own website or blog, so head on over there to see it for yourself!

Do you use Snapchat? What are your thoughts on using it for brand campaigns? Let us know in the comments!

A tremendous thank you to Branden Harvey for taking the time for this interview.

In the past year, a new trend emerged that shows the importance of social media influencers and visual content creation. Digital marketers who leverage visuals are seeing significant increases in website traffic, social media engagement, and conversions. With that in mind, visuals should be at the heart of every content marketing strategy. Today, customers even trust people they don’t know more than they do brands. This makes social media influencers a great resource for reaching your target market in an authentic way.

Influencer Marketing Through Social Media Influencers And Visual Content Creators

Let’s say you’re trying to get your smokey eye palette in front of millennials. You might enlist a 22 year old beauty YouTube vlogger to do a tutorial and show off the final look. Or perhaps you want photographers to check out your latest DSLR’s. You might get a few into the hands of mega Instagram influencers, so they can use your equipment and demonstrate the amazing photos it takes. No matter who your target demo is, there’s a visual influencer that can present your product in a relatable and engaging way. In fact, every social platform and niche have their own set of ‘super’ influencers with fans that trust their recommendations more than anyone else. Agencies see the value in these niche visual influencers and are repping them on very large-scale campaigns, like Tinker Street, for example.

The facts about visual content

• 70% of marketers claim they plan to increase their use of original visual assets in 2015.

• There are 300 hours of video content uploaded to YouTube each day.

• Tweets with images receive 150% more retweets.

• There are over 40,000 influencers on Instagram covering all verticals, including fashion, beauty, health, and wellness, home decor, food, and more.

• The number of video posts per person has increased 75% globally and 94% in the US.

• Adding a photo URL to your tweet can boost retweets by 35%.

Visual influencers are flocking to Instagram

As visual content is on the rise, so too is the social media influencer. Bloggers and digital tastemakers are quickly discovering that they can easily deliver a powerful message that informs action through social media. So, it shouldn’t be any surprise that many influencers are forgoing a website all together. In the past year, we’ve noticed a lot of visual influencers emerge and they aren’t devoting their time to website development; instead, they’re focusing on social media storytelling. In their eyes, it’s a lot less maintenance, and often, for the same payout. You’ll also notice that these influencers aren’t heavily active across all their social channels. They usually specialize in one particular channel and leave the rest either partially or completely by the wayside. This chart illustrates that movement.

You’ll see that each color represents a social network. The first two represent Facebook growth, the middle two Instagram, and the bottom Pinterest. Instagram is the single most popular channel in the fashion, beauty, lifestyle, travel, food, and mommy space by a landslide.

In fact, Instagram is where most influencers post their content before anywhere else, even their websites, giving their fans and readers a window into what’s going on right away. Most DSLR’s give you the ability to send content straight to mobile, meaning an influencer can publish anything to social media right away. Additionally, more and more readers are straying from reading traditional style blogs because they can get the same experience on Instagram, but in a bite-size and digestible format. Brands have taken note, which is why many have set aside ad budgets for standalone Instagram campaigns. It’s no secret that influencers can make a killing from their sponsored social content. Danielle Bernstein of WeWoreWhat recently revealed all to Harpers Bazaar that she can make anywhere between $5,000 to $15,000 on a single piece of sponsored content, like an Instagram shot, and now that she hit 1 million followers on Instagram, she can charge “a good amount more.” Yowzers.

Blogs are still important

The way we share content online isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution. According to style blogger, Nicolette Mason, “There’s a lot of gray area, and it all boils down to why you need the blog. If readers are only looking for pretty photos or style and shopping inspiration, then yes, Instagram might be all they need. But, if they’re looking to join the bigger conversation and engage with really authentic content, they’ll still keep coming back to the site.” The same thing can be true for brands that care primarily about high-quality photography. While using a stand-alone social network as a means of distribution can work for some, others want to showcase their high-quality photos beyond the confines of an Instagram square viewed on mobile.

Below I’ll explore three visual social channels – Instagram, YouTube, and Snapchat – and how you can leverage influencers on each channel to tell your brand story.

How to work with Instagrammers

Instagram has become one of the most engaging visual platforms, with more than 300 million users actively perusing their feeds. When it comes to this channel, people are looking for relatable and aspirational content but this can be extra challenging for brands and small marketing teams to achieve. Instagram influencers are a great resource because they already have experience creating content that’s catered to their fans, and your ideal target demo. They know what resonates and what doesn’t. Leave content creation in the hands of the right visual influencers and you can trust that it will drive engagement and spur action.

Birchbox partnered up with Instagram influencer, Christina Zilber, Founder of Jouer Cosmetics on an Instagram takeover and giveaway for Mother’s Day. As part of the takeover, she posted four Instagram photos detailing her life in LA. They tied in a giveaway where fans commented on the best beauty tips for moms. The activation resulted in a ton of engagement and 1,135 user-generated posts.

Pro Tip: Encourage Instagram influencers to develop a storyline or visual “day in the life” concept inspired by your products. It’s far more compelling for their fans (and your potential customers) than an endless stream of branded content. Now, that kind of marketing just doesn’t fly on Instagram.

How to work with YouTube Vloggers

With over six billion hours of viewership on YouTube per month, this channel is a force to be reckoned with. Not that vlogging is a new concept but today’s tastemakers have been capitalizing on the phenomenon more than ever in the past year. The most notable vloggers have hundreds of thousands of subscribers and receive millions of views. In turn, they can sell products out in a matter of hours, making them viable marketing channels for many brands. Can you say…digital marketer’s dream come true?!

But most YouTube vloggers don’t get started just to make money, they do it because they love to entertain. YouTuber, Alayna states, “I just love it. I love filming, I love editing, I love seeing everyone’s reactions to my content. I love being able to look back and remember different parts of my life. I love communicating with my viewers. I vlog because I love it.” In fact, this desire to entertain is present in the vast majority of vloggers. By strategically selecting and building relationships with these passionate YouTubers, marketers can tap into engaged audiences that are growing at unprecedented rates.

In a recent favorite, Contiki partnered up with ten YouTube influencers on their annual roadtrip. They created a web series on their YouTube channel to chronicle the YouTubers journey and share the experience with an audience of millions. During their July 2014 RoadTrip, they received over a million views and 30,000 subscribers in one week. Through the YouTubers content alone, they gathered more than 20 million views.

Contiki is a brand that ‘gets’ the YouTube space and how to work with its creators. “The secret to working with YouTubers and digital influencers is collaboration,” says Alexis Sitaropoulos, Group Marketing Director of Contiki. He adds, “Contiki thinks as an editor, networks as a friend and acts as a YouTuber, working with creators to provide the experiences they want for the content on their channels. It really comes down to the quality of our product. When you are confident in the delivery of the experience, and trust the creator knows how to engage their audience, you can afford to be less prescriptive.” The entire travel experience was shared in an authentic way that inspired audiences to travel with them.

Pro Tip: Encourage creators to be authentic and unscripted when marketing your brand. Whether it’s sharing their visual experience on a fabulous trip or a tutorial on how to apply matte lipstick like a pro, the content should come across as genuine, interesting, and ultimately, it should inspire action.

How to work with Snapchatters

Snapchat is the single best way to share every inch of your life, unedited. This is in stark contrast to most social channels where influencers carefully craft and curate their photos before sharing them with their fans. Snapchat is far more raw and organic, capturing moments as they happen through ten second video and photo clips that get stringed together over a 24 hour period before they disappear for good. It’s this elusive nature that has millennials flocking to the channel at the speed of lightening, leaving behind Facebook, Instagram, and other social channels that are heavily monitored by their parents. While some see it as marketing in the dark, any brand trying to capitalize on the millennial crowd knows they need to be here in full force.

Bloggers are migrating their followers over from the more traditional channels, like Instagram, over to Snapchat for a more human touch. And while brands might be trying to do the same thing, they never come off quite as human as bloggers do, which is why their accounts are a smart place to market their products. “Influencers that have tremendous Instagram followings are gravitating toward Snapchat because it’s more casual,” says Melissa Davis, ShopStyle’s vp. She adds, “They can have more fun with Snapchat and engage with their audience.”

Influencer fans are so obsessed with the Snaps that they’ve been messaging them through Twitter and Instagram to figure out where they can shop the outfit they spotted in this on-the-go footage. It’s this Snapchat craze that prompted ShopStyle, the shopping search engine and sales aggregator, to get involved. In partnership with online retailer, FarFetch, they teamed up with five style bloggers – Jacey Dprie, Natalie Suarez, Geri Hirsch, Courtney Trop, and Christine Andrew – to promote what they’re wearing in their Snapchat stories. As viewers watch the Snaps, they’re directed to shop with a link to ShopStyle’s Snapchat landing page, where every item featured in the Snap can then be found and shopped on FarFetch. The experience is still a bit clunky since the links aren’t live, but since the link is pretty easy to remember – snap.shopstyle.com – it’s pretty much guaranteed that eager fans will make their way over to the site to Add To Cart like crazy.

In a recent move, Snapchat’s CEO, Even Spiegel pitched video ads to advertisers, meaning monetization is in the pipeline. Time will tell if their will be any click-to-buy options within the Snaps. The grounds for Snapchat monetization are so new that we look forward to seeing how brands and influencers get creative with these campaigns.

Pro Tip: Remember that Snapchat is meant to feel organic and raw. As we’ve seen from the current Snapchat influencers, their followers end up messaging them for more info on where they got their garb. The influencer’s Snaps shouldn’t become a billboard for your product, so encourage them to integrate your product seamlessly into their everyday regime, and subsequently, their Snaps. As a new and emerging social channel, we’ll see many influencers marketing Snapchat through their other platforms, such as Instagram and Twitter, to drive more followers over to their Snaps.

Get Started Working With Social Media Influencers

Even if your product isn’t the most “photogenic” you can still inspire action through visual content by enlisting the help of social media influencers across Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube, and other platforms. These visual influencers can either rep your brand on a grand scale through their own channels or create content specifically for your channels. These guys are ninjas at taking any product – photogenic or not – and turning it into a visual piece of art that informs, inspires, and relates to your customers. No matter what type of social media influencer you decide to work with, one thing remains true: the influencer needs to tell her own story about your product. Let it be unscripted, real, and authentic. Your product will shine in the end. Need help finding and reaching out to social media influencers? Check out our platform – we got you.

We work with a lot of brands who are new to influencer marketing, and in our experience, it can be tricky to master right from the get-go. To help you roll out campaigns like a pro, we enlisted 40 experts to give you the low down!

40 Experts Weigh In On Running Effective Influencer Marketing Campaigns

If you love this infographic and find it useful, please feel free to share it on your own blog using the embed code at the bottom of the post!

Influencer marketing is unbiased, targeted, and genuine. Most importantly – IT WORKS!
There are endless opportunities to get creative and generate ROI that will dwarf that of your other marketing channels.

</p><br /><div style=”clear:both”><a href=”http://www.theshelf.com/the-blog/2015/8/12/how-to-run-influencer-marketing-campaigns-infographic”><img src=”https://s3.amazonaws.com/theshelf-email-marketing-images/blog_graphics/pr_roundup/the_shelf_pr_roundup_infographic.jpg” title=”How To Run Influencer Marketing Campaigns Like A Pro [INFOGRAPHIC]” border=”0″ /></a></div><br /><div>Courtesy of: <a style=”text-decoration:underline; color:#11d3c8;” href=”http://www.theshelf.com/the-blog/2015/8/12/how-to-run-influencer-marketing-campaigns-infographic”>The Shelf</a></div><br /><p>

If you like what you’ve learned here, please share this infographic on your own blog or website!
Just copy the code above and insert it into your blog post, using the HTML view of your editor.

Wrapping Up.

Influencer marketing is one of the most effective ways to get the word out about your awesome products – to the right people, at the right time. It’s all about context and hyper-targeting, which is why the potential for ROI is far higher than most marketing channels.

However, the very thing that makes influencer marketing so effective – its organic and unbiased nature – causes that feeling of messiness too. It’s worth getting your hands dirty though! Brands tend to experience the same challenges when they first get started, which is why we’ve made it our mission to help you through the learning curve – quickly AND painlessly.

Hence this awesome infographic…AND if you didn’t get your fill from this, we have an expanded version with even more tips that can be viewed in this blog post as well as this slide deck (for whatever your info-consuming-preference may be).

We also have a number of other posts that you can use as your playbook when entering the influencer marketing space. Below are four suggestions for your next bite-sized chunk of influencer marketing expertise. Enjoy!

I’ve seen a lot of influencer marketing campaigns and blogger collaborations come and go over the years and I can tell you one thing is for sure. There’s nothing more relatable for your customers than seeing a product used or worn by real people. Customers who view or engage with a piece of user-generated content featuring the brand’s products are more likely to purchase an item…and that kind of says it all.

It’s far easier to push customers through the funnel simply by showing how real people use or style your products. Branded content just doesn’t have the same effect. Research shows that 92% of consumers trust recommendations from other people – even someone they don’t know – over branded content.

How User-Generated Content Plays Into Influencer Marketing

Brands and PR pros should take serious note when it comes to how they work with bloggers and social media influencers. Equally important, they should be keeping track of user generated content from their customers, as it’s one of the most inexpensive, relatable, and strategic ways to dive into influencer marketing. Let me draw on some of my own experiences as well as others I’ve come across.

LOFT

LOFT has a style hub on their site where they encourage customers to share how they wear their brand. They then aggregate the best user-generated content from these customers. Instagrammers have to be wearing LOFT and tag the photo with #LOVELOFT so the photo can easily be tracked by their team. Once aggregated, if a user clicks on that photo, they’re taken to a pop up that allows them to easily shop the look online. Seeing the clothing on a real person is the most relatable way to show off the garment and how to style it. Oftentimes, customers are so inspired, they barely think twice before adding the item to their shopping cart.

LOFT contacted me directly to get permission to use my photo, which was featured both on their hub and on their Instagram channel.

LOFT was very smart to create this hub because the majority of their brand photos – while very nice – are pretty unrelatable. Aggregating content from real people that style their clothes in new and fresh ways adds another layer to their social strategy and helps to drive online sales from their current customer base.

Style Moi

E-commerce store, Style Moi also has a style hub where they aggregate looks snapped by their shoppers. They’ve also created a blogger program that offers gifted goods to bloggers when they earn enough points. If looks are snapped by those bloggers, the photos are tracked so they can add them to their style hub.

They make this SNAPS page easy to find and prove that it’s integral to their brand. As they say, “We believe that we are building something more culturally important than just an e-store. We aim to create a place where you could come and search for style inspirations and the opportunity to follow fashion on your own terms.”

To that end, if something catches your fancy in the feed of styled snaps, you can shop the look directly from there. What’s more, they add all the photos from your blog post and information on the blogger for a more personal element. As you can see below, you would normally be able to shop my look if it wasn’t sold out. Don’t underestimate the power of UGC ‘shop the look’ content because it actually works (in this case my pants were sold out one or two days after I shared them online).

Style Moi also has a section on their website called #STYLEMOI, and as the name suggests, everything is aggregated by this hashtag. Whether or not you’re part of this blogger program, as long as the look is posted on Instagram, Twitter or Tumblr it gets aggregated here.

MEZZI

MEZZI is new on the scene but they’ve made insta-impact with their luxury handbags by immediately getting them into the hands (or should I say onto the shoulders) of the most high caliber bloggers – The Blonde Salad, Fashion Toast, Trop Rouge, Peace Love Shea, and Eat Sleep Wear, to name a few.

Given the makeup of their current social and content strategy, I’m willing to bet that the majority of their ecommerce sales come from these high caliber blogger collaborations.

Not only is MEZZI seeing the value in being featured by such heavy-weight influencers, they get that this high quality content can be utilized through their own channels – their website and various social media presences. Let’s just say it adds a lot of credibility to their brand (and they’ve established this at the onset of their launch – pretty impressive, to say the least).

Clearly Contacts

Let’s face it…Clearly Contacts isn’t a brand you would normally associate with words like “current” or “trendy” or “cool”…until recently. Partnering with style ambassadors that represent these words has helped them climb the ladder to a new, fresh identity. Through their blog, “The Look” and regular style ambassador features, they’ve attracted a new set of customers that value style and affordable prices. They’re now top-of-mind for many of these people. Need to buy frames? Clearly Contacts has your back. Need a fresh look? Eyewear adds a next level element to your personal style…in fact, it’s the perfect accessory.

They seem to know what they’re doing on the marketing front. The content lives on their site and it gets promoted on both their end and ultimately the influencer’s as well. Equally important here is the fact that you can shop the eyewear straight from the post…so any opportunity to increase sales is taken advantage of. They’ve even partnered with niche bloggers and business pros, like Marissa of Design Love Co., where eyewear fits oh-so perfectly into her lifestyle. They’ve done video campaigns and fun collabs that get the attention of their own customers and the influencer’s followers alike (once again including shoppable content). Influencers are quick to share the content…after all, what blogger or business-minded pro doesn’t like a sweet little feature?

Stuart Weitzman

Stuart Weitzman is experimenting with the next level of influencer marketing: people-powered e-commerce. It’s a newer model for sales associates and influencers to set up their own personalized versions of a corporate e-commerce site, curate products and content recommendations, offer shopping advice, and ultimately, sell products for the brand. It’s basically another version of a Style Ambassador Program and rewards the influencer by offering commission on any sale they make. In essence, the influencer is selling the product FOR the brand. Does it get any smarter than that?

How The Shelf Can Help

Do you actively participate in influential social media conversations about your brand? With our platform, you can surface all influencer mentions from blog posts, Instagram, Twitter, and Pinterest so you can leverage and amplify that content. You can even interact with the content and influencers straight from our platform. You’d be surprised how many influencers are talking about your brand already!

So, if you’re one of the many brands that has barely scratched the surface of user-generated content, I urge you to ask yourself why? As Jay Heinrichs says, “Your best customers are your greatest influencers.”

Now, how can you put this high quality content to good use so you can elevate the credibility of your brand, drive interest, and ultimately push sales? Sound off in the comments with your thoughts!