Tag: CEO

Thinking Differently About Influencer Marketing

Posted on by Drew Neisser

This may be the last (no promises) in my recent series of interviews on Influencer Marketing.  Fortunately for you, Matt Hixson, CEO of Tellagence, brings a different perspective on all this stuff since his company develops tools that help other companies identify and then engage communities.  Stay thirsty my friends as this influencer marketing party is just beginning.

Drew: First, can you give me a brief overview of what Tellagence does?
Tellagence predicts how information moves across a social network and informs anyone responsible for a brand’s content and communication what should be shared within their audience. This is accomplished by unlocking complex behavior and dynamic relationships. We have built two products that help us do this. First, Tellagence Discover allows brands to identify an audience, their interests and their choice of words.  Second, Tellagence Community allows you to identify the people who will not only engage on this subject but have the greatest potential to spread a message throughout this audience.

Drew: How would you define Influencer Marketing vis-a-vis Social Media marketing?
Social media has always been about WOM and the relationships needed to be successful. In the early days of online social networks it was simple because the number of users was much smaller. You could hustle and find the people you needed to reach. Influencer marketing is the ability to focus our resources on creating the one-on-one relationships that can significantly and predictably spread the message at scale and drive responses to our calls to action.

Drew: Can you give my readers an example of an Influencer Marketing program in which Tellagence played a role?
The value Tellagence provides is simple: we are able to find individuals who may not be considered an ‘influencer’ due to say a lack of or low follower count in Twitter, but instead play a critical role in how information moves across an online social network.

One of our earliest clients was an agency representing a large fortune 500 brand. They had a decent grasp on the client’s obvious network but we were able to identify a large group of people engaging around an important subject to the brand, which they were completely unaware of.  As opposed to having them mass market to this entire group we were able to identify highly targeted individuals that were critical in how this group not only received information but passed it along to the large percentage of the community.  These were people who had less than 100 followers and a low influencer score but were critical and would be overlooked by most.

Drew: How should brands be evaluating Influencer programs from an ROI standpoint?
There are a couple of core outcomes most brands want in any influencer campaign.  How can they get their messages to spread and how can they drive responses to their calls to action.  Influencer marketing is a much more focused approach than, say social ad buys, were the idea is that by putting more effort into fewer people you drive more reach or more responses to your calls to action. The basic question is what resources (time, money, people) do you put in and how much output did it create.

Drew: Do influencer programs have a role in customer retention or is mainly about driving leads?
If you do an influencer program in the most powerful way then you move from the idea of running a campaign to building a community.  The idea of community has waned a bit as there is much more pressure on CMO’s to drive results in the short term. Influencer programs can definitely do both.

Drew: Are there any risks associated with these programs and if so, how can they be mitigated?
The risk is not engaging with your online community or reaching them inefficiently and at scale. People expect to engage through social networks at all turns.

Maybe not a risk but another missed opportunity is only looking as far as a campaign. In social networks people curate their own content and streams by choosing the people they want to engage with. If you are not providing them value they turn your relationship off, either by not following you or not listening.

Drew: You said in an interview with the WSJ that what’s most important about social media data is the context in which it appears. Can you give us a little more insight about how information travels as it moves through social networks?
Context is where we believe you start, which is why we built Tellagence Discover. The conversation or debate about follower counts, social scoring, and does it make an influencer, is a sexy and emotional one. But the core of this question is answered in deep analytics. People build relationships in context, over time. As that context changes our relationships change. Once we understand those relationships by the context of language used, we build a network predicting how information moves to help the marketer.

Drew: Does Big Data play a role in all of this? If so, how?
Abstolutely. Twitter produces 1 billion tweets every 2 days. See here: https://blog.twitter.com/2013/behind-the-numbers-how-to-understand-big-moments-on-twitter

That’s some big data. The challenge for organizations is how to make sense out of all of that.  What Tellagence does is help them filter out the contextual noise to get to their target audience and then filter out the broadcast noise to get to their engaged audience. Big data gives us the opportunity but it is critical to get to the relevant data within there to create value.

Going Viral

Posted on by Drew Neisser

paul_greenberg_largePaul Greenberg is CEO of CollegeHumor, a division of IAC that is growing faster than you can say Rodney Dangerfield. At this point, it is easy to believe that Greenberg’s mission for his organization, “To be the best and largest multimedia multi-platform comedy studio,” will be realized soon enough.  In the meantime, I thought you would appreciate more insights from Paul on making viral videos, budgeting, how marketers can work with CollegeHumor and lastly, how to lead a creative organization.

Drew: Is one type of video more likely to viral than another?
Often the ones that go really viral are new sketches. Because it is a new idea, it gets introduced, people latch onto it, they love it and they send it around.  And so for example, we did one that was called, Gay Men Will Marry Your Girlfriends. The thrust is, let gay men marry each other because if not, they’re going to marry your girlfriends and they are going to be much better husbands than you would ever be!

Another one that went really viral was called Look At This Instagram (see below).  And it wasn’t again in the Zeitgeist per se but it was a great take on how people use Instagram and it really kind of turned it on its head and parodied it beautifully and people just kind of I know I’ve seen those pictures a million times, I know what they are talking about, and so we really hit those.

Drew: Are series any different from a virality standpoint?
With series you are less apt to get into the Zeitgeist really quickly and so you build an audience over time.  So we’ll often see in a series episodes further down the chain do better than the original ones or we’ll see them catch up. People will discover Very Mary Kate on its 10th episode and go ‘oh wow, I didn’t know about this, and I am going to go back and re-watch all of them. We see binge-watching all the time, people just come in and they watch fifteen videos at a time, and a lot of times it is going back to start series when they’ve come in the middle.  Not that everything is serialized in terms of its plot, but it is just obviously thematically serialized and so we want to make sure that people love to go back and check it out.

Drew:  So how do you budget for production?
We work a monthly basis. So, I say to the team, ‘here is your pot for the month, some you are going to spend more on some and less on some and you know do what you got to do.’  And we work very closely as a team to make sure that if, for example, we are going to go for broke on a Batman video, we are going to do a couple of more Hardly Workings or batch-shoot those and try to do things cheaply. Overall, we’re very efficient in terms of costs.  We have figured out lots of ways to cut corners: we shoot in the office so we don’t have to pay location and we batch-shoot sometimes. It’s very efficient.

Drew:  Are your videos the primary driver of traffic and new users? 
To an extent, although sometimes the non-video content gets shared just as much as the video stuff.  For example, the article Eight New Punctuation Marks That You Need got over a million views because it just got shared everywhere. And now there is interest in a series of it. So it really depends, [non-video] content can really drive a lot of view as well.

Drew:  Do the video creative team also create the other stuff? 
No. We have a separate production team including separate writers who have to be very topically driven.

Drew; Okay, do we get to the point where there is a cable station called CollegeHumor?
No, I don’t think so.  I mean I feel like being the multiplatform studio that we are, we are as close to a new age cable channel as you can get.

Drew:  So tell me about Coffee Town, your upcoming movie—did you write this in-house?
We actually did finance it but we didn’t write the script. Our agent UTA found Brad Copeland who was the writer for Arrested Development.  Brad wrote his own movie script and was looking for somebody to help to allow him to produce it and direct it.  So we were the studio. Brad wrote it, directed it and we produced it.  We went out to LA and hired a film crew, a real legitimate movie crew, etc.  (see trailer here)

Drew: I would suspect you are hoping to rally your army of CollegeHumor fans to see the movie, right? 
Yeah, oh yeah.  We’ll definitely use the army without question. A big part of this is the fact that we can mobilize 20 million people immediately to say or to at least raise awareness if not to get them off their butts into the theatres. And if we put it on iTunes, we can say, hey click here and you’ll be able to watch CollegeHumor’s movie.

Drew:  What exactly is native advertising and what are you doing in this area?
Native advertising is when the advertising blends more with existing content and it becomes less distinguishable as an ad.  We’ve been doing that for five years whether we called it branded entertainment or branded content or branded advertising or native advertising, About a year ago, we reorganized an entire group around native advertising.  We hired two comedy writers just to write branded content and native advertising pieces and we also reorganized a production team so now we have a native advertising production team that just creates videos for advertisers. Out of those 50 videos we create in a month, maybe less than half are advertising video.  But it still feels like CollegeHumor content and people — advertisers [like KFC, AXE & Listerine] come to us because they are interested in our sensibility.

Drew Neisser:  What’s the best way for marketers to work with CollegeHumor? 
Great question. We need to understand what you are trying to do.  Are you trying to increase sales?  Are you trying to just increase your brand perception?  Are you trying to increase relevancy?  Are you trying to activate an audience to go do something? Is about getting more Facebook likes? What do you want as a brand?  And then we can help you come up with content that fits that goal.

Drew: How involved are you in the content decision making process?
Not that involved, at this point, certainly not day to day. We have a phenomenal team of very creative people who are very good at what they do.  I get involved at a high level making sure that we have a strategy and we are trying to follow it and everybody knows what that strategy.  I’ll get very involved if something is questionable from a legal perspective or a taste perspective. But on balance, and that’s how I try to manage my team – hire the best people you can, hopefully people who are smarter than you, and who are experts at what they do and you get obstacles out of their way and you let them do what they do.  And so I don’t see any need to micromanage the content team. Besides, I’m not that funny.

Drew: Have you gotten funnier since you joined?
Much. Much funnier–I’m hilarious.  Actually it is intimidating in a way because these guys are really funny. And they are so quick. We have our weekly staff meetings and even a lot of the executives are standups [comics], and they are just hilarious. I mean it is like somebody took all of the best class clowns and put them all together in one room, it’s hysterical.  It is a really fun place to work.

Drew Neisser:  Do you ever say to yourself, ‘I can believe I have this job?’
Yeah.  Yeah, it’s awesome. I love creating content and creating products that affect people’s lives in a positive way.  That’s one of the things that’s always driven me from a business perspective.

Drew: How about a few secrets to your success?
One is, never stop working ever; just be as aggressive as possible and want to win and do your work your absolute hardest because there is always somebody who is going to work harder than you are and ideas are wonderful but they are a dime-a-dozen.  Everything comes down to execution and doing it right and doing it well.

Drew: Do you have any advice for new or aspiring CEOs?
The advice somebody once gave me for managing is, only do what only you can do and spend your time doing that.  To that end, I wrote an article on this recently that identified five things that CEOs should spend their time doing:

    1. Set the strategy for what the company needs to be and what we are trying to accomplish and what’s our mission and where are we going.  And that’s not done in a vacuum per se, that’s done with the team but ultimately the leader has to be the one who puts his or her stamp on it and say this is the direction we are going to go.
    2. Then it’s making sure that the strategy is communicated very well and that everybody knows what’s going on and that there’s absolutely no misunderstanding. And making sure that everybody is coordinated so that ad sales and editorial and marketing and PR all know what each of the other ones is doing, to help support that overall strategy.
    3. Then its hiring and firing.  Personnel.  Putting the right people in place, and making sure that they are — smarter than you, they’re experts in their field and they are great.
    4. Then it is getting obstacles out of their way and letting them do their jobs and not micromanaging them but making sure that if there is something wrong, that you are there to help them.
    5. The fifth thing is making sure there’s enough capital to run the business and making sure there is a business plan that can be executed.

Drew: You’ve been on both sides of the creative development process including being a voice over talent and a radio announcer. Do you think that has helped you as a leader of a creative-driven company?
Yes. If there is somebody who is never been a creative before and never been on the talent side, you’re going to make decisions purely based on the bottom-line and probably potentially the wrong ones.

Note: this is the 2nd part of my interview with Paul. Click here to see the first part. 

Being Bullish About Customer Engagement

Posted on by Drew Neisser

Jay Samit, CEO of SocialVibe, an innovative and rapidly growing digital advertising platform, will be speaking at next week’s Pivot Conference in New York City.  (By the way, last year’s conference was both inspiring and enlightening and was among the best of its kind.) Here’s my brief but informative interview with Jay who is particularly bullish about 2012 and his promise of consumer engagement.

DN: As 2011 winds down, are you thinking “good riddance” or “darn I’ll miss it?”
For SocialVibe, 2011 has been an amazing year. When the economy is tough, brand managers need to justify each and every ad dollar they spend. This has been the year for value-exchange engagements. Hundreds of brands have jumped on the bandwagon increasing our reach to over 600 million consumers per month.

DN: Can you boil down your Pivot presentation to one or two key insights?
Impressions are the least effective way to measure advertising. Measure consumer engagement. Value exchange advertising turns consumers into brand evangelists generating millions in earned media.

DN: Looking back at 2011, what new things did you try?
SocialVibe expanded our value-exchange engagement platform beyond Zynga in 2011, to encompass Facebook credits, premium content, and mobile. With a broader reach of over 150 million American consumers per month, we are now able to pair the product message with their exact audience. The result: millions of consumers opting in to spend over a minute with their favorite brand and sharing that message with dozens of friends online.

DN: Is the current economic uncertainty effecting your plans for 2012?
SocialVibe is expanding globally in 2012. The success of our London office has us now running social media advertising campaigns in dozens of countries in Europe, the Middle East, and Latin America. With a reach of over 660 million consumers, Japan and Asia are SocialVibe’s next area of expansion.

DN: Looking ahead to 2012, are there some emerging trends that you hope to capitalize upon?
Providing a rich media solutions for small and medium size businesses is a key growth area for SocialVibe. Today we reach hundreds of millions of consumers for the top 300 brands in the world. In 2012, we want to give smaller businesses access to this targeted, engaged audience of consumers.

DN: Are you particularly proud of something new that you tried or recommended in 2011?
Great topic for another story: SocialVibe is now providing our advertising solution to the Presidential Election of 2012. We have clients from both sides of the aisle. The amazing thing is that political ad campaigns generate results even better than brand campaigns because people love to talk politics.

DN: Finally, among the trends I’m tracking are complexity (for marketers) and data-overload (for consumers). How are you responding to these?
Consumers on the Internet are inundated with marketing messages and have learned to tune them out. The secret is to enter the conversation by finding the “pause moments’ when consumers can and will pay attention. SocialVibe has published over 100 case studies illustrating how brands in virtually any category can achieve great results.

How HopStop is Giving Google the Run Around

Posted on by Drew Neisser

Like the sling-wielding David of old, Joe Meyer, the CEO of HopStop, fears not the battle before him. Instead, he welcomes it, having already faced off against Google twice in his career. “For some companies, it’s intimidating and scary,” explained Meyer, but “Google leaves a lot of crumbs on the table,” crumbs that have helped HopStop achieve profitability, positive cash-flow and extraordinary growth over the last 18 months. How Meyer and his small band of compatriots at HopStop have stayed out of harm’s way while building a loyal army of fans is an enlightening tale of entrepreneurial chutzpah and dead-eye focus, all inspired by The Boss.

Born to Run: Product above all

When Joe Meyer arrived at HopStop 18 months ago, the pedestrian navigation service already had an avid group of followers, having been the first in the market in 2005. What attracted Meyer to HopStop, in addition to the fact that Google’s entry into the space validated the market, was the utilitarian nature of the product and “the fact that the technology was very difficult to replicate—you can’t build it in a weekend.” That said, Meyer put all his energy and that of his team into “enhancing the user experience.” Explained Meyer, “people come to our site to get directions and we have to nail that experience and [though it’s very good], it can get even better.” “Unless you have a frictionless user experience, it’s tough to justify doing nice-to-have’s versus must-have’s,” offered the relentlessly focused Meyer.

Streets of Philadelphia: Expand from the core

In early 2008, HopStop was in six markets and by the end of 2010, Meyer expects they will be in 26 markets. This remarkable growth required a technology overhaul and again, a singular focus on their core product offering. Explained Meyer, “We spent almost a year re-writing our entire routing engine to make it more scalable,” so pedestrians can route themselves not only within these cities but from one city to another. Explained Meyer, “When I go to Philadelphia [from New York], I never go to the airport–we’re all about alternative forms of transportation and pedestrian navigation.” With his newly engineered routing engine, Meyer expects to “scale to hundreds of markets” in the next year or two, a fact that will bring cheers from Carnegie Hall to Independence Hall and then some.

My Hometown: Don’t forget your first fans

The way I found my way to Meyer’s office was rather unusual. As I regular user of HopStop, I was one of several hundred thousand MyHopStop users who received a personal email from him in which he explained some recent changes they’d been making to the service. I responded to his note and he quickly responded back, something I wasn’t really expecting. Meyer had, in fact, sent out the message to HopStop’s most avid fans from his own email address which he admitted was kind of scary. “We need to communicate directly with our users and if we are doing something that might screw things up or if there are opportunities for us to improve, then we need to give our users the forum to voice their thoughts to us,” explained a contrite Meyer. Having dropped the borough boxes from the NYC navigation page early this year, Meyer and his team quickly learned the error of their ways resolving the issue with refreshing honesty and measured haste.

Hungry Heart: Have your fans do the marketing

After I noted that HopStop’s website last posted press release was from back in February, Meyer admitted, “we’re kind of anti-marketing, anti-PR.” Meyer explained that “in Silicon Valley, every startup is trying to get buzz, issuing press releases every week and I think its just noise.” Instead, Meyer devotes all available resources to engineering, believing that satisfied users will wave the triumphant flag, which indeed is exactly what happens. While this approach might not work for every company, HopStop users repeatedly tell Meyer, “Wow, you’ve really made my life easier,” inspiring a “pay it forward mentality” among his customers. After telling me several personal encounters with customers who expressed their love for HopStop, Meyer noted, “no marketing in the world can replicate the power of word-of-mouth and a positive personal referral.”

Dancin’ in the Dark: Let partners extend your reach and your revenue

While Meyer is thrilled with all the positive word of mouth HopStop receives, he by no means relies on it exclusively to spread the word. In addition to a massive SEO program that treats each direction search on HopStop as “taggable” content, HopStop also licenses its API. “We power directions on thousands upon thousands of sites throughout the edges of the Internet, both large and small,” noted Meyer. A large percentage of these are co-branded, with ad revenue being split between the host site and HopStop. “This gives the publisher a service they aren’t going to build for themselves and a value-add for their users, which also generates incremental revenue for both companies [thereby creating a win-win-win situation]”, enthused Meyer. And in the process, millions of more users have come to know and appreciate HopStop powered-directions from sites like The Wall Street Journal, TimeOutNewYork, NewYorkMag.com and many others.

Glory Days: Don’t get stuck in the past–go mobile or go home

Starting as an online utility, HopStop was quick to realize the importance of a mobile offering to their service. Among the first to offer Web-to-SMS and SMS-to-SMS routing functionality, HopStop has embraced mobile in a number of other ways. In addition to having a top ten iPhone app within the iTunes navigation category, HopStop also has a widely popular mobile site and a Blackberry launcher. Meyer noted that mobile usage of HopStop is growing “several hundred percent per year,” outpacing the growth of an already healthy web-based service. Recognizing the need to go beyond the iPhone and mobile web, and an in continued effort to be multi-platform, Meyer explained that, “Our users are telling us they want an Android App, so we’ll have an Android App launched by the end of the year.” An added benefit of going mobile is that customers are able to provide feedback on the spot, keeping Meyer and his team on their toes 24/7.

Final Note: Before we parted, Meyer told me of his admiration for Bruce Springsteen and “how The Boss resisted the temptation to do too much too soon,” after emerging from a three-year legal battle in his early days. As the leader of of his own band at HopStop and much like his favorite musician, Meyer is staying focused and setting the stage for record growth, without countin’ on a miracle. For the greatest hits of my interview with Meyer, click here.  This article first appeared on FastCompany.com.