Influencer Marketing for Even the Smallest of Businesses

Neal Schaffer: 0:01

This is the maximize your social influence podcast with Neal Schaffer, where I help sales and marketing professionals, entrepreneurs, and small business owners, build, leverage and monetize their influence in digital and social media. Hello, everybody, this is Neal Schaffer, welcome to the maximize your social influence podcast. One thing that I have not been able to do that is really part of my roots as a podcaster is broadcast to you, wherever I am a traveling the world, I happen to be in Dublin, Ireland today at the Irish Management Institute, where I teach a full day course, as part of their digital business program. It's a great program, we had people in there from Facebook, Adobe, Microsoft, at the Bank of Ireland. And it just a fascinating class, both in the content and the engagement and the conversations that come from the audience. Now, I've talked to you in Ireland for several years. And every year obviously, as I review and refresh the content for the class, there's always new modules added and other modules that are now irrelevant, deleted. Well, this year, one of the big additions and what I think actually generated the most conversation was the new module on influencer marketing. Now, obviously, because I'm writing the age of influence, which is all about influencer marketing, I get asked this a lot. And I've had a lot of people specifically asked me to actually talk more about this, which is influencer marketing, not for those big consumer brands that can spend a lot of money on it. But for the small business, is there a way that small businesses can leverage influencers? Well, my answer is a resounding yes. As you know, I define influence very differently than the way marketers have been Miss educated on the concept. And really, collaboration in social media is there for the taking, for those that get it and are into developing relationships of mutual value. So no matter who you are, or in what industry you're in, even if you're a solopreneur, a small business owner, I hope that you listen to this podcast and take my message to heart and you to begin collaborating. And when you have a successful case study on influencer marketing for your business, I want you to reach out to me and let me know that I can interview you. So I can feature you on my podcast as well. So with no further ado, here is Influencer Marketing for Small Businesses. Good morning, good afternoon. Good evening to wherever you are in the world. This is Neal Schaffer, welcome to a live edition of the maximize your social influence podcast. For those of you that don't know, I will occasionally do interviews with other marketing professional social media professionals that have a lot of value to offer my audience. And I do these over Facebook Live. So obviously, I hope that you continue to subscribe to the podcast. But if you ever want to see some live video of me presenting on the topic, please make sure that you sign up to my email list, I'm going to put that in the show notes. And then you'll get notified when I do these Facebook Live. So today, I know that some of you probably tuned in hoping that you are going to hear me interview a CEO to talk about social media, his value is not revenue, it's something far more important for b2b companies. Unfortunately, the person that I was supposed to interview did not show up for lack of a better word, hey, things happen. I totally get it. But as they say, in show business, this show must go on. So today I want to talk about and this is something that it was actually someone I believe on Twitter, reached out to me and gave me some questions. And I love to create content around the questions that you have. So as you listen to this podcast, and if there's something like Neil, what is your take on this? Or Neil, how do I do this? What should I do about that? I urge you to reach out to me either by obviously send me an email, but obviously through social media, Instagram, whatever it might be. And I would love to help you. I also have a community on Facebook that will very soon be rebranded as the maximize your social influence community. So I'm going to put a link to that in the show notes as well. Right now. It's called the Social Media Center of Excellence. So the topic I want to talk about today, as you know, I am writing a book on influencer marketing. So I want to obviously share more content about that, leading up to the launch of the age of influence, which is the official name of the book. If you're watching the video, you will see the link to access the Amazon page of the book to get more information about it. We're still a few months from the official publication. But obviously I've written a lot of information related to influencer marketing in that book and in blog posts what have you so what I want to talk about now is specifically influencer marketing for small businesses. And I believe that's the person reached out to me because there's a lot of content out there on how these huge brands are doing. influencer marketing and they're working with the Kim Kardashians. But what about the small businesses? And well, if you're in the influencer marketing industry, you know that there's a ton of startups of really, really small businesses that have done well with influencer marketing. But I think that might be, you know, information that is only known by those that are, you know, in the industry. So I really want to share the information with you and that I don't care as I like to say, I don't care what industry you're in. And I don't care how large or small your company is. Influencer Marketing is equally appropriate. If you have any questions or comments, I can actually see them. There we go. Thank you, Christopher. For being a loyal fan. I want to believe in influence more, yes. I want you to believe in influencer marketing, I know that you yourself are an influencer as as your wife. So I'm hoping that this will obviously help your businesses, and really leverage influencer marketing. Oh, hey, Katie, thank you so much. That's exciting for you so much disconnect in this area, too. I have clients and people reach out saying, if you pay me $1,000, I'll post a post on my Insta for you. Then there's the contrasting value of collaborating in the right way. Caddy boom, you know, paying on what you have, basically. And I'm going to look at this from the flip side, right? You have a supply and demand, right. And you know, social media algorithms are controlled or managed by supply and demand. Facebook, there is a huge supply of content, there is demand for the content. But there's just an even larger supply, Instagram, there's a huge demand for content. But there's a lack of supply of content, which is why you see, on average, you're going to get a lot more engagement on Instagram than Facebook. So obviously, there are other things like Pinterest is more of a search engine than a social network. So even though there's an incredible amount of supply and not as much demand, you would think you can still get a lot of engagement, ie web traffic in the case of Pinterest engagement. So every network is different. But if you think of it in the concept of supply and demand, we're still pretty early on with influencer marketing. Yes. Influencer Marketing is an extension of the celebrity endorsements. If you want to think about Yes, the celebrity endorsement has been around this is the first chapter of Age of influence is really talking about how you know influencer marketing is that the extension of that celebrity endorsement. But what's happened over the last, you know, five years, if you're a company, you didn't do social media, and someone said, hey, I'll do your social media for $250 a month. Sure, I'll do it right. And I think there's a lot of social media consultants that have you that have actually found business that way. But if you have not been an influencer marketing, but you hear like, wow, influencers are going to drive a lot of business, you might have an influencer reach out to you say, hey, if I can stay in your bed and breakfast for a week, I'm going to do some great content for you. Or, hey, if you spend $500, or 1000, what have you. And really, you need to be educated to make the right decision as a small business owner as to should I or should I not work with this influencer at the beginning, right? If someone is reaching out to you out of the blue, you're being sold to this is just a general sales 101. Right. So immediately, there should be a red flag that this person only sees you as money. This gets into this topic that you hear me or the concept that talk a lot about, and I talk a lot about it in the book as well, that influencer marketing comes down to collaboration. So collaboration goes two ways. As a small business owner, you want to collaborate and there's a lot of ways you can collaborate with influencers. From an influencer perspective, you want to engage with the spirit of collaboration as well. So if an influencer purely sees you as someone that they're going to sell a product to, it's going to be a one sided relationship number one, number two, I just don't know how much value you're going to get out of the relationship because how many other companies are they cold calling out of the blue or cold emailing or cold Instagram DMing out of the blue, asking for money. So Catty, I just want to get back to your comment, if an influencer reaches out and says, Hey, I love your product. Did you check out my photo from a few days ago? I'd really love to find a way to work with you because I'm already sort of an organic brand ambassador, you know, in I teach influencers there. There's another side to my book, which which covers the influencer side and advice I give to people who want to become more influential. But that's the right approach. If you have people approaching you that way. That's awesome. Right? But let's take a step back here. Hey, Christopher, we do a ton of work pinches for traffic. Yes, every social network is different. Obviously, the engagement and Instagram does seem to be on stories. Yes, in Clary, we're all sort of in the same space. So there's I'm not the first person to talk about this topic. I'm trying to add value where I can based on my experience, Christopher Yes, out of the blue, they are targeting you. So let's take a step back here. Right. So regardless of how big or small your company is, it really comes down to who are the voices in the community that can help push your product forward in terms of it becoming aware by a new audience that doesn't know you or maybe an existing audience that you want them to get to know you better. This is a universal concept regardless of the size of your business that you should be talking about. So first of all, it comes down to well, who is talking about your product? And it sort of comes down to Social Media Marketing one on one, right? When we're sort of looking for what social network do we invest time in, or you know, where is our audience who is already talking about keywords, and in Instagram, it's going to be hashtags, obviously, but it's not limited to Instagram, because if you're a b2b, you probably want to spend more time on a LinkedIn than an Instagram, at least at the beginning. So who is talking about you, or about your competitors or about product names, and from there, you're going to begin to build a list of people that might be influential, you don't just want to look at follower count, you want to look at actually how many people are engaging with that content. And in order to do that, you're gonna have to look at when that content was published, because if it was published an hour ago, you're not going to see the engagement. But if it was published 24 hours ago, I think we'd all agree that a lot of engagement sort of dies down after 24 hours, with the exception of Pinterest. So and we don't want to forget about Pinterest as well, because it can be extremely valuable. And I think a lot of influencers should actually be investing more time on Pinterest. And that's a subject of an entirely different podcast that I plan to record. So in this scenario, right, we begin to look at people that are talking about things that are related to us, therefore, we assume that they have a community that's listening, we then begin to look at not just follower count, but engagement count, we then begin to look at, well, how often are they talking about this? So every once in a while, I may tweet about automotive. So I am a car. Lisa, I'll be very honest with you. I don't buy a car, because I know that technology outdates itself before the lifetime of the car. So I'm really happy that I'm Elisa, because now both cars and I own Apple CarPlay. And if I bought a car five years ago that didn't have Apple CarPlay because most of them didn't, I would be very, very upset. And I live in Southern California where we spend half of our lives in cars. So those are my reasons. You know, once I posted, hey, really proud to be an owner of a Volkswagen Tiguan, it's an awesome car, right? That's one post. And maybe I did a hashtag team VW. And maybe if you're competing with Volkswagen, it's like, well, who's talking about automobiles, right? And you find that one post that might have gotten a lot of engagement, because I have a decent amount of followers. But it's irrelevant. I only posted about it once, you really need to look at the last several posts. And imagine if this person was talking about my company, my product, would it be relevant? Would it make sense? It's like all these people reaching out to me that want to get a link on Neal schaffer.com. And they're like, Hey, we blog about elearning. We'd love to, you know, buy sponsor content, your posts, I'm thinking, My audience is not interested in elearning. There's sales and marketing professionals or entrepreneurs, their small business owners elearning is completely irrelevant in my content. So even if I did publish, that it's doing a disservice to that brand. And it's doing a disservice to my community. But if there's an influencer is just in it for the money, they'll take that business, right. So this is where we need to take a step back, right? And you need to spend some time, right, because we're looking for long term relationships. We're looking for someone that we want to get married to, you're not just going to go somewhere and randomly date someone. And you know, next day say, hey, let's get married, you're going to meet a lot of people, you're going to engage multiple occasions and over long term before you make the decision whether or not you want to commit to each other. You know, if you see me speak about this at Social Media Marketing World, it really is a marriage, not a one night stand. And I hope that you remember that. So the initial stage, and if you're an enterprise, and you can buy influencer discovery tools, that's awesome. It's the same process. But we really need to find the right people here. Just let me get to a comment here, caddy. Yes, you need to write for both sides. This is something that I'm really passionate about. Because one of the reasons why I embarked on writing age of influence was when I presented to a group of USC MBA students on social media strategy. And the number one question I got asked after my presentation, and these are MBA students who are, you know, late 20s or early 30s. A lot of them are already doing social media marketing at brands here in Los Angeles. The number one question that I usually get asked is about social media strategy, social media ROI, social media tools, which is why I wrote maximize your social and I created the social tool Summit. But the number one question I get asked was, how do I become an influencer? You know, my next door neighbor is a YouTuber, they just bought a million dollar home. How do I get in on the action? I know that a lot of marketers have become influencers, like maybe their dog. I think the the largest Instagram site in Japan is of a dog. And it was started by a marketer who did influencer marketing, right. So I think it's natural that marketers who get involved in the space want to become more influential. And I would argue in my book, that you'll read the chapter, it makes sense for any business to want to become more influential, because you get to a point. I have companies reaching out to me saying, hey, we'd love to, you know, publish something on your site, and we'll share it to our 100,000 Twitter followers and I'm like, Well, I got 200,000 So I'm begging you in terms of Twitter influence that has no value. But think if you have 100,000 followers and the influencer only has 20,000 you now offer something of value that they don't have because you have built more influence influencers love working with influential brands. So at the end of the day, you need to understand the concept of influence and it's really going to help you in your influencer marketing as you become more influential. Leasing does how that happens advantages doesn't increase. I'm the same thing I have to mobile, the jump plan. So every two years, you'll see me hook into a new iPhone, okay, yes, even our 12 year old wants to be a YouTuber with sponsorships. And I think that for the Gen Z up today for the you know, the teenagers really becoming an influencer in social media is bigger than, you know, the.com dream was back in the day, you know, 1020 years ago. So we live in a new world. And definitely, you know, everyone wants to become an influencer, which is why brands are going to be bombarded with people saying, Hey, pay me for publishing something. And yep, caddy my kids do my kids the same, although they know daddy works in social media. So I limit their social media. But anyway, so let's get back to the subject. So that is really the first step, right? Who are these people, once again, even if you're the local barbershop, maybe if people aren't talking about specific things, you need to go broader with your keyword research. And maybe in that type of very, very hyper local business, you need to talk about people that talk about things in your community, they mentioned the city name, or use the city hashtag, these are people, they may not be directly related, but there is an indirect relation, but you really need to dig in and find these people. Now, you know, we call this a pool of influencers that you're going to start to reach out to, and large enterprises whose tools, they might have a pool, I have a case study my book of like 2000 influencers, right? I think if you're a small business, you're going to start small. And that's fine. Start with maybe five, maybe 10. But what you want to do is, you're really testing the waters and saying, Hey, we're involved here, we have this type of business, notice that you publish a lot about this type of content, was wondering if there's any way we can collaborate. Now, the number one mistake that small businesses make when they reach out to influencers is they automatically reach out to the Kim Kardashian of their industry, there are nobody, she's a somebody, and she requires a lot of money. So you know, if you want to pay $50,000, for an Instagram post, go for it. But that's why I'm doing this podcast is because I know that small businesses don't have that money, nor do they want to spend that type of money. So it's really about finding a comfortable follower range. Right now, followers alone is not everything, they need to have a certain amount of engagement. And as you, you know, look at 10 different people. And I'll use Instagram as an example. Because it's very, very easy. You have 10 people that you think are relevant. They have followers, take a look at their last three posts, you know, that were published 24 hours ago or more, and do an average of the number of likes per post, divide that by the number of followers, and you get an engagement rate. And yes, Christopher $50,000 for an Instagram post. It's true. So, and there are many that are in the 10 $20,000 range, maybe people that you've never heard of, but obviously your kids have. So case in point, but you know, getting back to the 10 person rule, by looking at followers engagement rate, you're already going to see comparative engagement rates, if everybody has like a 1% or greater engagement rate, I'd say they're doing okay, you know, 2% engagement rate is great. 3% engagement rate is great. But it also depends on a number of followers. My daughter is a ninth grader in high school. She has a private account, she only follows people that she knows. And I make sure that right. She already has 300 followers. So when she posts a I forgot what it was called an Instagram story like a truth, like a question or dare truth or question, not truth or dare something different? You know, she gets like 1/3 of our audience will respond to that she'll get like a 20 to 30% engagement rate on her posts. This is originally when Instagram was four, right? This does not happen to brands Hi, this happens more to people with very, very small niche communities like my daughter has, for most people out there even influencers, you know, one to 3% is going to be the norm if they're under 1%. It's sort of a red flag. But if everybody you're looking at is under 1%. It just means that engagement is getting harder and harder to get in the feed. And we know this to be the case. If we've been working in an influencer marketing caddy Academy. Katie, I don't want to pronounce your name wrong. I'm really sorry if you can, if you can. Yes, Katie. It was a poll that I was talking about on on an Instagram story, where they responded one way and then if it was like, you know, tell me a truth about you. My daughter would respond and give them an honest assessment of the personality. And she was surprised. I didn't know what it meant. And she's gonna listen to podcasts and laugh at me. But I guess, you know, it's something that's very, very common for high schoolers. So, um, yes, watch out for vanity metrics. There are a lot of fake followers fake engagement going on there. So if you see someone KD Thank you, Katie. So if you see someone if you're looking at 10 people, and the average is like, you know, 0.5 to 2% And then you see something like a 20% engagement rate, that's actually a red flag, it's almost too good to be true. Unless they have a very, very small number of count like my daughter, in which case, it's definitely possible wells for Katherine gotta Katie, thank you. Yes, the human connection really is key. So we have our list. And we have a sense as to who may be real. Now, the one thing I didn't mention, you know, there are different ways to categorize influencers, the most common way is by follower count. So now we're at the point in influencer marketing, where we're getting smaller and smaller and smaller in terms of the people that we consider influencers, the latest one, it used to be micro influencers, and there's different levels 10,000 or 50,000 5000, to 25,000. But more recently, we've heard the term nano influencers, and these are people with as little as 1000, or even 500 influencers. And I recommend when you start out, you want to start small, start with Nano influencers, start with people that have 500 influencers, that get decent engagement that are relevant, and I would reach out to them right, so pick 10 Start with between 500 and 1000. You always want to start small, because if you somehow in your communication, like the Houston Rockets did, if somehow you mess up without intending to mess up, and I don't want to get political here. So that's a whole other subject. But if you mess up for whatever reason, you're not messing up with an influencer, who may be sharing that in social media, the fact that this brand requested me to do this and isn't this ridiculous because that does happen. And I do share you know, influencer marketing mistakes and in my in my classes and in my speeches, so you don't want to be on one of my slides. So start small, right? Start with people that actually have less global influence, but still have great influence in their niche. And you know, if they're on Instagram, send them a DM, if they're on Twitter, send them a direct message. If they say in their bio, please contact me here, follow those instructions. You want to contact them where they want to be contacted. But if they don't say anything, contact them on the social network that you find them. And here's the reason why. If you're a member of this person's community, and you send them an Instagram direct message, and they don't respond to you, I started question how much of an influencer, that person is because influencers know the value of community engagement. And they know that getting and responding to an influencer direct message actually helps them in the algorithm, it sends an incredibly powerful social signal that says that there's a connection between these two. So that's why if you send them an Instagram DM, and they don't get back to you in 24 to 72 hours. To me, that's a that's that's a question mark, that sort of red flag, I would move on. And that's why you always want to have a pool of influencers. If they don't respond, you move on. And if you get through all 10, they don't respond, you find him more, right? There are tons of people out there that can help you. Just because you strike out of dating 10 times it doesn't mean that your perfect soulmate is not out there, right? It's the same concept. Keep going, don't give up. They're out there, right? And maybe then if you're out and into influences, you need to move into micro influencers fine. But if you strike out of 10 people, you need to take a step back and think hmm, maybe the pitch wasn't right. So the pitch is really simple. I love the content you post about kombucha we're actually a kombucha brewery. We're local here. And in, you know, Orange, California, we'd like to get people to come into our, you know, come into our tap and try to kombucha we'd love to offer you, you know, complimentary kombucha for you and 10 guests, you know, something like this is going to attract the right influence. And this comes now to the concept of compensation. There are a lot of things you can offer influencers and influencers are only asking for money. That's where I sort of think of that as a red flag, because not every influencer is in it for the money. And if they are only in it for the money, it's more of a business to them. And you're not going to get any special treatment. Because the idea here is that whoever we work with whatever influencer we work with, we want to convert them into becoming a brand ambassador. What that means is through a long term relationship, they are going to be talking about us and recommending us to their friends without our having to ask them. That's that's the ideal. That's what we're aiming for here. So I get offers. And let me just take a little sip here. I had some feedback that the paper cups I was using in my broadcast, were too sexy. So here's my Twitter cup, every live stream, I'm going to show you a different coffee cup that I have because I tend to acquire a lot of them. And by the way, that is a Nespresso decaf with oat milk if you're curious, and I can't wait for Starbucks to carry oatmeal. So I'm digressing a lot here and we're sort of running out of time. So Christopher barter with infants. Yes, it is you're trying to develop a win win relationship. And every influencer is different. So when I look at a hashtag, I've a person with 1000 email listed that does seven figures. Yeah, okay. Yeah, there's a lot to talk about here in terms of influence and generating money but just getting back to the subject of and if I do my little banner here influencer marketing for small businesses, the idea is that when you want to reach out you want to make it an offer that they they don't want to refuse. So one way to do it obviously is open ended. We'd love to collaborate with you. We don't know how you work with brands on Are you open to a phone call? That is the easiest Broadway. But if you've done that, and you're not getting any success, I don't like the immediate offer money. But I do like the offer of product or service. And in fact, a lot of brands are finding success working with influencers, who just, they're just offered product or service. And think about if you are going to pay what they say the rate for engaging with influencers, the rate of working with influencers, and we as EMST Instagram, as example is for every 10,000 followers $100 I think that's almost come down to like for every 10,000 followers more like 50 to 75. So, you know, we can send them a $50 gift card, which a lot of brands do. Or we can offer them $25 a product or $50 worth of product experience that I think is a lot more authentic, but it also gives them something to talk about in social media, right? I mean, if you were to, if you're a restaurant, it's just a no brainer that you want to invite people, if you're a hotel, it's a no brainer that you want to give them one night stay that that's that cost you nothing. And you're used to competing, right? You're competing friends all the time. So why would you do that for influences? You know, it kills me and I talk about this a lot, when like a market into a company reaches out to me and says, hey, we'd love for you to talk about us and social media on your blog, we're gonna offer you a free 30 day trial. And then I go to their website, and they offer everybody the free 30 day trial, why wouldn't you offer someone a free lifetime trial, if you really want them to talk about you. So you need to be a little bit selfless here, you're building a relationship. If you're going out on a first date, you want to make a good impression, you're going to take them out to a really, really nice restaurant, you might go in and Out Burger depending on their tastes, but chances are you're going to invest a little money to make things right. You know, at the outset, it's the same thing with influencers. So like I said, everyone has different either start open ended, or find something that works with one influencer offer to others is really my advice here. Now with the remaining time, the other thing that I want to talk about here is obviously developing the relationship. So you've offered something they've ticked they've taken it, you know, after a while, if they haven't posted about reaching out, hey, just wondering if you had any problems? Hope you enjoyed our time at the restaurant? Or have you tried out the product? Or you know, what do you think, you know, we haven't seen you post on social and would really love if you could share your experience with your community, you're gonna find that not everybody's going to post now, if it's purely monetary, and you have that contract, yes, they might post. But if you're just offering something for free, there's going to be a bit of follow up, expect to do that, right? If the sale in other words, so you're gonna have to do that. And over time, you're going to find that there is going to be some that are more responsive, some that are less responsive, some that get better engagement for their post, some they get less engagements after a while, you may want to repeat with those that are really, really successful, and maybe on a monthly on a quarterly on a seasonal campaign basis. Really reach out to them while you continue to expand the number of influences that you work with. And you can also as you reach out to new influencers, say hey, we've worked with A, B, C, D, you know, we work with these people, we'd love to work with you as well. This is how we work. And you begin to give them ideas of how you can work with them based on how you work with other influencers. So here's the thing, how much does it require to work with influencers? You don't know until you start? Right? And the only way to start is to start? So I know that this was a very, very short 30 minute broadcast. I want to Hey, Chris, I know that your wife is an influencer in Mexican food a big box set your tea is insufficient for a post by Mexican food blogger, the brand or influencer must put cash in the game? Well, I would argue it really depends on the level of lager, it could be a special experience, it could be a year's worth of tortilla chips to work in all the recipes. So I think that depending on the influencer, I don't want you to do the default. They're just in it for the money, it may come down to money, but I want you to be open ended in how you reach out to them. And in the conversation you have and think of other ways. That makes sense. Now, if you'd rather give them $100, then a year's worth of tortilla chips. Awesome, right? It's also a financial decision that you need to make, but just like anything else, right? If you're in marketing, it requires money to get the word out about your product or service. And even if you're posting things organically in social media, it is eating up your time and time is money. So whether you spend it in Facebook ads, whether you spend it in Google ads, or whether you have a new bucket of money for influencers, you're gonna have to spend money to make money. That's the way it is sorry. Yes, there are viral word of mouth marketing components. But what's the best way to get word of mouth marketing? today? It's working with influencers and that's what we're talking about here. Alrighty. Just going to see if there's any other questions here. As we wrap up a Christopher Katie, you to win the MVP of the day award, I'm going to be reaching out to you to give you your reward for all of your engagement. I encourage you all as you listen to this podcast, make sure that you are logging into future live streams so that you can get the prize of the day as well. And yes, some brands construct tremendous social reach. Yeah. The bigger your brand is the more social reach you have, obviously, the more advantageous it is to you. So that's why as a small business This right. Getting back to the topic here. Influencer Marketing for Small Businesses. That's why you want to build your influence and building your influence obviously begins by touching more people and building your social reach. Just one more comment here. I don't see any questions coming in. Oh, I do see one question are software programs for mind influences worth the money. So at Social Media Marketing World this year 2019. Sorry for aging, my podcast, I specifically did not talk about the tools because I think that marketers immediately go for the tools, and they miss the big picture. Because there are tools that will actually allow you to directly hire influencers or find influencers, but here's the thing, the tools are limited to the API's that they write into, or to the people that have opted in to that community. So I want you to start without tools. And then when it's like, okay, it's just like social media marketing. I'm always like republishing this content on a regular basis. Are there any tools that will allow me to republish the content automatically, and that's it. Oh, Agora Pulse has this has an evergreen content viewer? Hey, Taylan has a smarter cue, right? So you don't want to be tool? First. You want to be concept first? And then try to find the tools. Yes, there are tools that will help you. But what I find Christopher, even with these tools, is that you're going to have to go in and vet the people anyway, the tools are going to help expose people, but you're gonna have to vet them anyway. We still live in an analog world when we deal with people, right? There's only so much we can do digitally. Yes, we can use match calm the Disney find someone. But at the end of the day, there is an analog process. So yes, there are Match com tools out there. But at the end of the day, you need an analog process to vet them and make sure that they are right for you. Yes, some of us are fools for tools. Don't be the tool fool. Yes, I work with a colleague of sales. He got excited about a tool. I'd start without those tools too. Thank you, Katie. I just want to add one more comment here from Katie. Yesterday's do a lot of this work taking a step back with just exchange for trying product, have to like the product, see the results and then decide to share it in my tie. Yes. influencers are being pinged by a lot of people. You need to be cognizant of that you need to be cognizant of their time and as an influencer, you're are probably being more selective and true. You have to build relationships. I appreciate Christopher Katie, you to rock I don't know next time I'm going to see you two in person. Hopefully it soon. Just as a reminder here You have been listening to the maximize your social podcast. This is the episode of influencer marketing for small businesses, which I'm hoping is going to publish on a podcast very shortly. If you are interested in finding out more about the age of influence, I'll have this link in the show notes. But if you're looking at this on YouTube, or the Facebook Live, here's the link. And finally, if you haven't been subscribing to the podcast, I am already at about 140 episodes. So there's a lot you've been missing out on. Make sure you subscribe. The link is here. I'm going to put it in the show notes. And I recently started syndication I Heart Radio radio.com even Google Play. And obviously if you're on Spotify, Stitcher, iTunes, I'm there you'll find me. So I hope that you'll subscribe. I want to thank you all. It's been fun talking to you. Hey, Katie, New York City next week. Hey, I'm in New York City next week. Hmm. Okay, we have to talk about that. I actually teach at Rutgers next week, which is why I'm going to be in New York City. But hey, there's a chance to meet in person. Yep. Christopher short drive down to five in San Diego. There's a chance I'll be in San Diego later this month. Hope to see you there. Yes, 140 episodes. I have not been good at promoting my podcast, which is another reason why I do this live stream so if you're interested in using podcasts and live streams for repurposing content, that's going to be another episode the podcast but I thank y'all for tuning in. I pretty much have a hard stop at noon. If you have any other questions please feel free to reach out to me. Hit me up on social media comment on this video facebook live or when it publishes in YouTube. And as I like to say whenever I or come up to the OSC, Christopher Ciao for now, co KT as I like to say whenever I have my podcasts, make it a great social day everybody. Bye bye