Inspirational Mom :: Holly Hamann of Tap Influence

About four months ago I came across a video where Holly Hamann and Rustin Banks were talking about how important it is to tap your influence in the marketplace.  As I am fairly new to the whole mommy blogging sphere, I have been attempting to learn as much as I can so that I can provide quality content for our wonderful dandelion moms while working with companies I feel our audience would like to learn more about.  Rustin and Holly were pretty dynamic on the video and since then I have been an active follower of the Tap Influence network.  In fact, Forbes Magazine recently named Rustin as a Top 10 Leaders Changing Content Marketing.   I love to see women leading the charge and am happy to feature Holly Hamann, who co-founded Tap Influence back in 2009 and together with Rustin,  they have seen the company grow each year.  As co-founder and CMO, she helped raise the funding to start Tap Influence. They work with over 100,000 bloggers and influencers and connect major brands with these bloggers to help create meaningful content.  I had a chance to speak to Holly about her journey as a business owner and how she balances her home and work life.  Plus she offers some great tips for fellow bloggers!

Tell us how the idea to create Tap Influence came about.

The idea came from my business partner and TapInfluence CEO, Rustin Banks.  Rustin moved from Utah to Colorado with his wife and young daughter. His wife started a blog to stay in touch with family and friends and quickly accumulated a large following of other new moms. Rustin realized the power his wife was creating and the impact that influencers like her could have on brands that were looking for ways to create and share more social content.  I had been helping to launch start-ups in the Colorado area for over 15 years, met Rustin in 2008, and was very excited about the potential. We left our jobs and launched the company in the beginning of 2009. We raised two rounds of angel funding by 2011 and recently closed a Series B round of venture capital bringing our total funding to $9 million.  We have 45 employees, offices in Boulder, CO and NY, over 100 enterprise customers, and 100,000 bloggers and influencers in our marketplace.  Since launching almost five years ago, our mission hasn’t changed – to partner brands and social influencers to co-create authentic and meaningful content for consumers.

What changes have you seen over the years in this digital age of social media?

There are been several changes in the past few years that have had major impacts on the digital space and social media.  First has just been the rapid explosion and adoption of social media and the applications and businesses that have been created to support that ecosystem.  Just think of the app space alone.  There are thousands of apps (mobile, desktop, and cloud-based) that have been created to support the creation, distribution, and tracking of information and content.  By making content easier to create (whether its text, image or video), it has fueled the rise of the “social influencer”.  These influencers are every day people who began creating content about a niche subject they know well (maybe food, fashion, fitness, politics, entertainment, etc) and attracted loyal followers of people who trusted their opinions or just liked their content. Just look how big Pinterest is and it wasn’t even around a few year ago. In addition to the rise of the social influencer, we’ve seen the decline of the online advertising space.  Banner ads no longer work to capture attention or drive engagement.  They are ignored by consumers and are now thought of as a distraction.  This means marketers needed alternative ways to reach and engage large consumer segments who were still active online.  This fueled the influencer content ear even more.  Another big change has been the adoption of mobile use. For example, 189 million Facebook users are mobile only. This means brands MUST make their sites, applications, and content mobile-friendly and easy for consumers to find and use.

As a mom, how do you balance your work life and home life?  Are there any tips you find helpful that you can share with us.

I am a single mom, which adds an extra layer of complexity. My son is now a teenager, which makes it so much easier. He also drives and has an after-school job so I don’t worry about what he’s up to during the day when I’m at work.  When he was younger, it was harder.  I relied on after-school day care or I worked from home.  In the early days of TapInfluence, I would work from home a lot in the summer, when school was out.  My two big priorities were my son and my company. I don’t have time to take care of all the household chores by myself but an orderly home is still important for my sanity. So I pay someone to clean the house and take care of the yard. For meals, I have four crock-pots, a big freezer, and lots of cookbooks that have words like “quick”, “easy” and “one pot” in their titles.  I also created some boundaries for myself that supported my priorities.  For instance, when I have my son, I don’t accept evening invitations, whether they are social or for business and unless its absolutely necessary, I limit travel when he’s with me. Thankfully, a career built around an internet-based software solution inherently allows for some flexibility since I can do my job from anywhere as long as there is an internet connection.

Where do you see Tap Influence going and what do you hope bloggers/companies gain from joining the community?

TapInfluence is quickly becoming the industry leader when it comes to solutions (both software and services) that allow brands to find influencers and collaborate with them to create, distribute and track co-branded content.  The appetite for information and content by consumers will only increase, which means bloggers will become even stronger partners with brands looking for social partners. Bloggers who join the TapInfluence marketplace are matched with brands that are a fit not just for that blogger, but for their audience as well. Once they are in the marketplace, brands can search by more than 35 criteria including geography, age, education, children, language, pets, and topics they blog about.  Bloggers get a searchable, highly professional media kit that showcases their best work, accolades, and traffic stats so brands can quickly identify relevant influencers and invite them to campaigns.  Being in the marketplace is a must for any blogger looking to generate revenue by working with brands. Bloggers can sign up to join the marketplace on the TapInfluence site at https://www.tapinfluence.com/solutions/influencers/.

Any news you want to share with our lovely dandelion moms?

Yes!  In addition to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and blogs, TapInfluence now supports four more social channels – Pinterest, Google+, YouTube and Instagram so there are even more opportunities to work with brands on those platforms. We also have a webinar on Dec 5^th for bloggers on how to take one piece of content (like a blog post) and turn it into a dozen more.  Bloggers can register for this online webinar here https://pages.tapinfluence.com/turn-content-into-more-content