JSB Talks Digital is a weekly digital marketing and social media podcast hosted by author, strategist, consultant, speaker and trainer Joanne Sweeney-Burke. Each Friday Joanne shares her digital marketing and social media insights from her work as CEO of Digital Training Institute. 

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In this episode I talk about digital influencers and how to effectively engage with them. This week I delivered a workshop for my professional body the PRII on this very topic. The PRII of which I’m a full member, represents PR and communications professionals working in agencies, in corporate, not-for-profits, public affairs and also working as self-employed consultants.

Coming up in the podcast:

• In social media news, Facebook introduces emojis on desktop, Insta Stories users’ out-number Snapchat and Facebook links Groups and Pages.
• I interview John Carroll, CEO of the Public Relations Institute of Ireland about their digital influencer guidelines;
• In shout-outs: Three digital influencer tools worth talking about;
• Ask JSB;
• In JSB’s column – How to engage effectively with digital influencers; and
• Find out what cool new tool saved my working week.

Social Media News

Facebook is going to make it easier to find groups that brands care about.

The social network has been testing a way to make it easier to navigate through groups and brand pages. Right now, more than a billion people use groups and there are 65 million brand pages on Facebook.

Tech website CNET has been talking to Facebook and reveals the social has been testing a way to make it easier to navigate through groups and brand pages (which Facebook also calls Pages, capital P), by allowing administrators to link the two together.

For example, if you click on the new groups tab from HBO’s Facebook brand page, you can get to the official group for the show “Big Little Lies.”

That ensures you’re getting to the official group instead of one of the many fan groups.

Do you think having a Group tab on your Facebook Page will add value and help you build out your community? I sure think it will! 

New emojis on Facebook for desktop

Facebook now makes it super easy to insert all your favorite emojis with just one click which is very similar to Twitter.

The emoji icon shows up for status updates, photo posts and link posts. It doesn’t show up when you’re uploading a video. But of course you can insert emojis from the Chrome extension.

For a full library of all emojis, including Messenger, Apple, Google and more, see this resource: http://emojipedia.org/facebook.

Instagram Stories has now more users than Snapchat

Designed to rival Snapchat, Instagram now has 200 million users per day with Snapchat lagging behind at 160 million.

That’s a healthy percentage of the app’s total user-base of 600 million.

Business Insider UK is quick to come to Snapchat’s defence. Writing this week, they say that while “lots of people are saying that Instagram just ‘officially crushed Snapchat’ — they’re wrong.”

Contributor Taylor Lorenz says, Snapchat defines a daily active user as a person who opens the app once in a 24-hour-period, but we should consider the fact that the average snapchatter spends around half an hour on the app per day and 60% of users create content.

Instagram, she says, is primarily used for browsing and the average user spends just 15 minutes per day within the app. She concludes that it’s highly unlikely that all 15 of those minutes are spent engaging with Instagram Stories.

I’d love your feedback on how you use Instagram Stories and Snapchat – get in touch to jsbgrams or jsbsnaps.

Interview | John Carroll, CEO of the PRII

In today’s show I speak to John Carroll, CEO of the Public Relations Institute of Ireland about the body’s guidelines on engagement with social media Influencers.

John, you are very welcome to JSB Talks Digital, thanks for joining me on the show.

Be sure to listen to John’s answers.

Q1) What prompted the PRII to write these guidelines? Did you see a gap in the PR, Marketing and communications’ industry?

Q2) What response have you had from the industry and also influencers?

Q3) You say that “the principles of engagement with traditional media, also hold true for social media influencers” but isn’t it the case that many people working in social media have never worked in PR or traditional media before? So in that vein, do you think there is a knowledge gap?

Q4) Who does the code of ethics apply to – members of PRII only or are you asking the wider industry to abide by them?

Q5) Have you come across blatant breaches of the code and if so, what steps have you taken or can you take any steps to rectify the situation for non-members?

Q6) Given the rise in digital advertising spend and the rise of ad blockers, isn’t sponsored content and influencer collaborations a sensible approach – it really is like the old fashion sponsorship strategy in PR isn’t it?

Q7) How important is upskilling in this area for the industry to maintain high standards?

Q8) What advice would you give social media managers who have not worked in PR or traditional media before and who are not members of PRII – what should they do to stay on the right side of ethics and digital influencers?

You can download the PRII guidelines on engagement with social media influencers on their website or download them here.

Ask JSB

In this week’s show I’ve questions from Muiriosa, Gemma and Catherine!

Muiriosa asks about embedding the Twitter DM button on your website.

Gemma asks about the value and relevance of Snapchat filters for businesses.

Here is the case study that I reference in the podcast.

READ THE RED SNAPCHAT CASE STUDY HERE 

Catherine asked for Facebook tips for a photography business and I give her three top tips!

Do you want to ask JSB a question?

I want to give you a voice on JSB Talks Digital. Simply log on to www.digitaltraining.ie/askjsb and you might find yourself and your question on air!

JSB’s Column | How to Engage Effectively with Digital Influencers

In today’s column, I’m sharing my insights into how to effectively engage with digital influencers.

As you heard in my interview with John, I’ve developed a one-day workshop on this very topic for my peers in the PR, marketing and communications industry.

The Digital Age has transformed the business of communications for PR and marketing professionals. In a world where the battle for visibility is based on vanity metrics, community and influence, how do we engage digital influencers?

But what is digital influence?

In my view, digital influence has three components:

1. An engaged tribe
2. When called upon they act
3. They value your opinion and seek out your truth

Digital influencers are in almost every walk of life and industry but how they deliver a return on investment will differ according to the client requirements, and this is where we as the communications professional play a key role.

In the age of social media, it’s very easy to become obsessed and distracted by vanity metrics i.e. Likes and Followers. As communications professionals responsible for investing in digital influencers for our own brand or client brands, we have a responsibility to do due diligence on that collaboration. This is why I’ve put together this guide to engaging effectively with digital influencers.

How do you decide who has digital influence?

After completing the audit above, you should be one step closer to deciding whether your blogger, podcaster, vlogger or expert holds digital influence. However there are a number of other ways you can measure online influence.

10 Effective Social Proof Strategies

If you want to know more about developing a digital influencer strategy, get in touch. Simply drop me an email to [email protected]

Shoutouts | Three influencer marketing tools

In this part of the show I usually give shout-outs to brands, organisations and individuals whose work online is worth talking about.

In today’s show I’m sharing three digital influencer tools that are worth talking about.

Ninja Outreach

Ninja Outreach helps you easily find, manage, and contact influencers that are ranking for the keywords that you’re looking for and gives you the ability to easily find guest posting opportunities.

It’s also great for finding viral content based on keyword searches.

Here are the best features:

• Personalised templates: You can create personalized templates with custom fields, ensuring that every message is targeted to an individual.
• Automate email outreach: Email automation will save you time.
• Email statistics: You can track everything from opens to clicks to replies and much more.

Take a free trial at: https://ninjaoutreach.com/

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Buzzsumo

A content marketing tool, BuzzSumo allows you to search for the most popular/shared content online for any topic. The pro (paid for) version of the tool allows you to see who has shared the content online and filter by type (such as influencers and brands) and location.

Some of the top features of BuzzSumo include:

• Filter by type, such as influencers and brands.
• Filter by location, if you only want to focus on one location.
• Find top content, ordered by number of social shares.

Use BuzzSumo to monitor mentions of relevant keywords and branded terms on the web.

For content marketers, it will help you find relevant content to share, link to, and be inspired by. You can also contact the authors and see if they’re interested collaborating with you.

You can also use it to find influencers who can share your content after you produce it.

BuzzSumo has an excellent tool for monitoring Twitter for the best influencers in a specific industry.

You can then create a list of influencers so you know who to reach out to after you create your content.

The cost is $99 per month but you can use some freemium features to get familiar with the software.

Find out more at: http://buzzsumo.com/

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Twitonomy

Twitonomy is a Twitter analytics tool that provides simple yet powerful insights and features that help you monitor, manage, track and optimize your activities on Twitter.

Twitonomy also allows you to monitor and analyze your competitors.

It is easy to get started on Twitonomy; you just connect your Twitter account to get access to the free version.

There is also a premium version, but the generous free version provides you with a wide range of powerful and insightful analytics tools. While you may want the premium features, such as detailed search analytics on specific keywords, you can still get great insights with the free version. 

Get started now at: https://www.twitonomy.com/

Social Media Tool of the Week: eCamm Live for Facebook

The social media tool that saved my working week is eCamm Live for Facebook.

It’s designed to record FaceTime calls – both audio and video – to your Mac.

Some of the cool features include: 

• Recording FaceTime chats, podcasts and interviews in HD
• Calls can be converted to MP3 for podcasting or into internet-ready movies for YouTube or Vimeo
• You can make text overlays
• You can pick your camera and microphone
• Your video stays on top when you share screen
• You see comments come over your screen
• You can share a VIDEO and play it! This is huge!

Think of the possibilities e.g. playing back a webinar you already created, playing a podcast you already recorded, playing back a promo video etc.

Just downloaded before and went live within 5 minutes. Love it!

Only $29.95 lifetime updates – no monthly subscription.
I’m not an affiliate.

Find out more at: http://www.ecamm.com/mac/ecammlive/

I love feedback

I’d love to know what you think about this episode. So please get in touch by commenting below or tweet me @tweetsbyJSB or send me a snap to jsbsnaps.

Listen: JSB Talks Digital | Episode #45

I would like to thank Eoghan Murphy aka The Galway Gamer for producing my podcast series and to Flirt FM on the campus of NUI, Galway where I am based for the use of their studio.