Become an influencer Page 5

  Timeliness: How quickly the post generates this interest. The quicker you start gaining reaction immediately after you’ve posted, the greater the chances that it will pop up in more feeds.

  Relationship: Your friends and family tend to tag you in their posts and comment on yours. They direct message (DM) you and they search for you in the explore tab. If followers do this with an influencer’s account, the account will start popping up in their feed as often as a friend’s would. You need to build such close behavioural links with followers that the algorithm considers you friends. This means the reactions need to flow both ways, so you need to like and reply to comments.

  Frequency: People who open the app often are less affected by algorithm ranking and see their feed in a more chronological fashion because they consume more content. Instagram wants to ensure that their regular users don’t see the same post twice; the same with TikTok and Twitter. If your ideal follower browses any of these for only a few minutes every day, they will see a highlights-reel feed curated for them by the algorithm.

  Following: If you follow more people, the algorithm will play a stronger role in selecting whose posts you see and which ones slip past you entirely. People who follow fewer accounts will see more of what those accounts post.

  The following is more detailed Instagram-specific feedback:

  •The platform also clarified that the algorithm does not prioritise videos over images universally, but if your follower responds to videos more than they do to images, they’ll be presented with more videos than photos. The practical impact of viewing video – the fact that you tend to pause on video content for longer than you do on an image – might also skew your feed to favour video.

  •IGTV tiles are often presented four times larger than image tiles on the explore tab, so this means your chances to grow via the explore tab are increased if you present a really good IGTV tile. (IGTV is the Instagram long-form video format.) Instagram acknowledged that the machine-learning built into the algorithm is aimed at weeding out engagement pods and bots, in favour of truly authentic engagement. The widely shared myth that a comment doesn’t get recognised as such by the algorithm unless it’s longer than three words was also debunked. Verified or business accounts are not favoured by the algorithm – users see all the accounts in which they show interest and interact, equally.

  Instagram clarified some points about its algorithm after users called for a chronological order feature.

  •A simple way of boosting engagement is by using stickers that encourage engagement with your stories, like polls, questions and emoji sliders.

  It is really important to keep an eye on any movement on this front. Obviously, loads of blogs, thought leaders and even news sites carry updates on algorithm trends. Another safe bet is to keep an eye on the platforms themselves.

  Senior Facebook, Instagram and Twitter staff members shared some best-practice guidelines for creating digital content that performs well at a workshop I attended in May 2019. This was at the start of my two-month stint working for the International Cricket Council (ICC) as a digital reporter on the 2019 Cricket World Cup.

  One of the key messages to come out of that session – and subsequent visits to Facebook’s headquarters in London – was that video is a crucial component for driving engagement on both Facebook and Instagram. Regularly creating live videos longer than five minutes, preferably around the ten-minute mark – both for Facebook and Instagram – was a key part of the suggested best-practice strategies we used. Another thing I learnt from the experience was not to think of these live videos as tightly rehearsed, content-filled pieces like traditional TV (in performance or technical execution).

  The aim is not to replace live TV, with professional lighting and high-end cameras. The point is to just be in the moment, to create a feeling of community with the viewers who join in, to break down as much of what creates distance between you and your followers as possible, and to create an authentic, immediate and interactive experience.

  Nine weeks later, when the final of the 2019 Cricket World Cup played out to a thrilling super-over climax between the host nation England and New Zealand, we made our way from the media centre at Lord’s Cricket Ground down to the side of the pitch and went live on the ICC’s accounts. When I say we, I mean the digital reporters and the producers who worked with us.

  We were not looking to replace or substitute what people were seeing on TV. We were not even showing the pitch – the camera was facing the stand, with us in the foreground. In fact, from where I was standing, I couldn’t even see the pitch properly because of the advertising boards and the fact that the fans behind us kept asking us to crouch down so they could see!

  We were waiting there because we were on standby to run onto the pitch and interview the winners as soon as it all wrapped up, but we hosted the live video feed in the final few minutes of the match to create a second-screen experience for fans who were already watching it on television. The point was to help our highly engaged digital fans feel closer to the action, as if they were there with us. We didn’t provide them with expert commentary either, because an exceptionally talented bunch of commentators were already doing so on the TV broadcast.

  What we were doing was simply opening up the experience of being pitch-side for five to ten minutes, so that more fans could hear the noise of the crowd and could identify with other fans (me, the people around me in the stands, my colleagues) because what unified us in that moment was the sheer exhilaration that only a great sporting event can deliver. We felt like we were all witnessing history and we loved being able to do it together.

  Facebook, for example, has a wealth of information tailor-made for creators, available at facebook.com/creators. There you can find step-by-step instructions on how to link seamlessly and cross-post on your Instagram and Facebook accounts, for example. This way you do not need to create the same post twice – you can merely amend and tailor it slightly for the two different audiences and formats. Facebook provides step-by-step instructions on how to convert your personal profile into a fan page, with detailed information on monitoring how people view your content, so that you can learn more about what works and what doesn’t. Mark Zuckerberg’s own Facebook profile (which is public, by the way) is another great place to see which features the company would love to see you accessing and utilising.

  The 2018 update to the Facebook algorithm was designed to focus content on an individual’s friends and family members, rather than prioritising spam from businesses.

  At help.instagram.com you will find very useful and up-to-date outlines on how and why you should make the most of IGTV and convert your account status to content creator. It also outlines the interesting and important added features available to creator accounts: a two-tiered direct message inbox; the ability to monitor, as well as share, stories that mention you; and, of course, the all-important insights, also known as metrics or the numbers. This is where you can monitor the reach and engagement on your account.

  Instagram’s own Instagram account is always a reliable source of information on how to structure posts for their platform, how frequently to roll out new content and how to balance your content strategy (how much of it should be Instagram Stories over normal feed posts, how often to make carousel posts featuring multiple photos, and how to weigh up the benefits of making videos). The same applies to Twitter, TikTok and YouTube. They all roll out regular posts with useful instructions and advice.

  Keep an eye on what your favourite social media platforms do on their own profiles. Useful features, important tools and best-practice advice gets updated regularly. Spend some time making the most of the resources that are freely available and also check back in for updates from time to time.

  Pumpkins are a niche too

  As you can see by our interest in the topic, influencer marketing only started coming into its own in 2016:

  In th
e few short years since, a crucial shift has already taken place: industry experts are not only looking to partner with what we now call macro-influencers (people with a few hundred thousand followers or more). What we clearly saw in 2018 and 2019 was a push towards prioritising collaborations with micro-influencers (with roughly 10 000 to 100 000 followers) and even nano-influencers (with fewer than 10 000 followers).

  You can always do your own search on how often things are searched for. Google Trends is a phenomenal way to gauge interest in any niche area or topic.

  There is a bit of disagreement about whether the latter is relevant in the South African market, but I’d say that in the nano-influencer space, you would often be looking at barter exchanges, small cash deals (if any) and invites to events (not paid appearances). In other words, you would ideally want to approach this as a phase. It is important to build relationships in this phase and to really make the most of the experiences afforded to you when you’re in the nano-market, but if your aim is to generate revenue, then this is a phase you want to be able to scale out of – to grow through.

  Micro-influencers offer an appealing opportunity to brands and if you fall into this category, it is important to be awake to the fact that the more niche your interest is, the greater the engagement rate tends to be. On what do I base this? The average Instagram follower of someone like the pumpkin-obsessed food influencer Maggie Michalczyk probably doesn’t have many people in their social circle (in real life) who are also obsessed with eating pumpkin.

  So, Maggie’s followers find a sense of community with the other pumpkin lovers out there who are also commenting and interacting with this niche feed. This is why brands often opt to work with influencers on the scale of pumpkin-loving Maggie, even over a household name like Jamie Oliver with his 7.7 million followers. The Maggies of this world usually yield a low-cost-per-engagement rate, which is immensely attractive to some brands.

  This is how you can calculate cost per engagement (CPE) quickly and simply:

  Compare this to a hypothetical macro-influencer: let’s call them Person X. They boast 100 000 followers and this is why a deal could easily cost R15 000 per post (keep reading for more on how this fee is calculated).

  Person X would then need to deliver 1 500 engagements to ensure the same CPE rate as someone with Maggie’s following and engagement.

  For a brand manager, the option of spreading the same R15 000 budget between three micro-influencers (people like Maggie) and having them each create two or more posts could deliver more bang for the same bucks in CPE terms. If not more bang, at least they have lowered their risk by spreading their bets in the hopes that at least two out of the three influencers will deliver highly engaging content.

  When you are trying to figure out exactly how best to position yourself, remember that bigger is not always better. Put yourself in the shoes of the marketer, solve their problem better and you are in business.

  If you create content that your followers consistently find useful, interesting and entertaining, this will boost your chances of the algorithm rewarding your efforts by showing your content to more followers. Your engagement rate will increase and the value you create for eventual brand partners will start to look after itself.

  Hi, my name is ...

  In radio, it used to be the thing to have a very glamorous showbiz name. If your own was boring, you’d simply adapt or change it, or pick a new one.

  I used to love listening to a radio DJ called Nicole Fox when I was in high school. She used to be on radio in the evenings while I was completing school projects or reading magazines, doodling in the margins of my schoolbooks or texting my boyfriend. She was so effortlessly cool that it actually intimidated the living daylights out of this aspiring radio presenter. I didn’t inherit a fun, catchy surname, so I worried about never quite fitting the radio DJ mould. Imagine my indignation when I later found out that her real surname was Raubenheimer! If even her name wasn’t real, I thought, what else about this person, whom I thought of as my ultimate study companion, was also contrived?

  She wasn’t alone, of course. Elton John was born Reginald Dwight. Lady Gaga is an act Stefani Germanotta created. However, I think the idea that a name will make or break your career, before it has even started, is fading along with the hierarchy that used to decide who had earned the right to entertain, inform and inspire (and who had not).

  A crucial shift has taken place in popular culture over the last decade or two and I think it has much to do with the fact that the studio, the record label, the publisher, the radio station and the TV network have seen their powers eroded. There used to be quite a bit of distance between the entertainer or tastemaker and the consumer, which was created, controlled and sometimes abused by the owners of media platforms.

  There have always been loads of talented people, natural content creators with amazing and powerful skills to share – ones we would have loved to listen to, to read, to watch and to learn from. But until social media took off, you didn’t need only talent and skill to make it as a content creator; you also needed to be chosen. You had to land a record or book deal, an acting role, a job as a radio DJ or journalist, a residency as a comedian at a comedy club through a manager who would promote you and leverage their access to your chosen industry for a cut of your pay. You had to peddle your content from a soapbox that someone else owned. For about a century, key executives employed by large entertainment platforms mostly made the careers of content creators by choosing them – or not.

  Cracks started to show around the turn of the century and, before long, the move away from this hierarchy gained such fierce momentum that it literally felt as though the earth was moving under our feet. Reality television shows such as Idols, Big Brother and Survivor elevated the Average Joe to Household Name nearly overnight. You still had to be chosen, but in this new century, the executive handed over the power to choose to the viewer, a tribe or a celebrity judge – in theory, anyway.

  It was a very short journey from having Simon Cowell exercise that choice, to full on user-driven choice as we know it on social media now. Today, you are choosing who gets elevated to household-name status every time you like a post, save it, share it, download it, record it or comment on it – every time you spend more time scrutinising an influencer’s feed than you do your best friend’s.

  As a creator you need to choose yourself, choose your audience and ensure that your content is chosen by them in turn. More risk, yes, but also loads more rewards. You don’t need to share nearly as much of your power with an executive and their overlords anymore. However, you do need to remain directly attuned to your consumer, your follower.

  Because traditional media executives don’t have the final say about who we read, listen to, watch, laugh at and follow, I think we are increasingly picking our content creators based on more substantive things than their names. We have seen musicians launch new music albums with seemingly all-access documentaries accompanying their actual work, actively profiling and showcasing the real person behind the scenes.

  To illustrate this: Lady Gaga makes music through the pain in Five Foot Two; Taylor Swift makes music despite sexual harassment and politics in Miss Americana; and, in 2017, Katy Perry lived in a Big Brother house of her own making (complete with live-streamed psychology sessions) during her YouTube live-streamed weekend called Witness World Wide. She did this to launch her album and generate interest in the themes of her new songs.

  Strategists in the entertainment industry realised that we don’t only want Lady Gaga to deliver the fantasy of a spectacular live show; we also want to be able to relate to Stefani Germanotta. We want to know what she looks like without the Gaga get-up, whether she experiences hardships of her own and has family members just like us, because it’s about the followers. This is why the showbiz name, in effect, is over: your followers don’t want to be fooled – not all the time, anyway. You don’t need to choose a bogu
s name – just elevate the one you were given.

  Should I be authentic or aspirational?

  When I discussed this topic in quite some detail with Ridhima Pathak, one of my colleagues at the 2019 Cricket World Cup, she shared an interesting insight that underpins her approach to her work on social media.

  Ridhima studied engineering but now works as a TV/digital presenter, popular event host and influencer, predominantly in India. During the tournament, she did quite a bit of influencer work, sharing a number of sponsored posts. In the evenings we’d go for a jog and I’d cheerfully share videos on Instagram Stories of my sweaty, red face on my run through the streets of Birmingham, while Ridhima took great care to carefully curate only the most manicured and polished images of herself and her environment for her own feed and stories.

  Her theory was that because of the massive wealth gap in India, her broadest base of followers would probably never be able to travel to the United Kingdom themselves – certainly not for a Cricket World Cup tournament, but also probably not even as tourists. She saw it as her responsibility to ensure that her feed remained a form of escapism, of fantasy and aspiration for her followers, of ambition, yearning and desire. The basic idea was that even if I cannot go there and see this for myself, Ridhima is opening a portal into this wonderful world of glamour, wealth and adventure – how the other half lives.

  Her approach was to give her followers a look behind the curtain only when it would inspire and delight them. She didn’t bother to include the hard slog that is involved when you’re scheduled to cover back-to-back game days, the late-night travel on jam-packed trains or the early-morning hours spent doing preparation and research. She could have shown the blisters you typically earn from the 30 000 steps we walked each day covering a cricket match, but instead she chose to focus on the excited fans she met.