Book Review :: Influencer Marketing for Dummies

When I created dandelion moms about three years ago I was pretty green to the whole world of influencer marketing and blogger world.  There have been some growing pains along the way and the landscape is constantly changing, but I feel I have more knowledge of what it means to be an influencer and the importance of staying true to your voice and message.

One of the aspects of the job that has surprised me is how many companies (and individuals) don’t respect that for many bloggers their blogs are a main source of income and would consider it their full-time job.  Not all of us do this full time but many do and depend on the sponsored jobs, affiliate links, etc., to keep their blogs going and help pay their bills.   I say they don’t respect the work that goes into running a website because they feel that we should be sharing with our audience their super awesome product, app, book or service because we owe it to our audience.  Many times this is implied in an email pitch with the line “we aren’t looking for sponsored content” which basically means they don’t want to pay anything for our time for creating a post.  Hmmm. If they knew how much time goes into just creating one post! I have to hold back from replying back asking if they work for free.  I refrain, but books like Influencer Marketing for Dummies  should be sent out to every company to help guide them when looking to work with influencers.

Influencer Marketing for Dummies by Kristy Sammis, Cat Lincoln, Setania Pomponi, Jenny Ng, Edita Gassmann Rodriquez and Judy Zhou  (the major players at Clever Girls)  should be required reading by companies looking to work with influencers.  The authors goal is to demystify influencer marketing and how best to work with influencers to help your business grow.

They describe influencer marketing as:

Influencer marketing is the art and science of engaging people who are influential online to share brand messaging with their audiences in the form of sponsored content.

Think about the last time you wanted to learn about a product.  Did you ask around to your friends and family?  That is what I tend to do as well as other blogs that I have grown to know and trust.  I know for me, I never write about a product or service that I wouldn’t find useful, enjoy or think my audience might like the product.  I tend to shy away from products I don’t think are applicable to our lovely dandelion moms.  My line of thinking tends to be that if I would use it, wear it, eat it, or I find it useful –  I will write about it share it with all of you.

One of the key points I liked about this book is that they pointed out that women influence 90 percent of purchasing decisions in U.S. households.  Think about when your family needs to purchase something for the house, clothing, food, appliances, etc. Who usually researches and purchases these items for the home and family members?

How to Work with Influencers:

This books provides some really great tips from how to connect with influencers, signing contracts, paying influencers for their time and effort, outsourcing it to a marketing firm and how to measure if the campaign was successful.   And they point out that “success” can be measured in other ways such as the amount of content created, increase in your brand’s social followings, site traffic, coupon downloads, engagement and shares after the campaign is over.  All of these things should be looked at when looking at whether the program was a success.

Establish Relationships:

One of the points that really stuck out to me was the importance of treating your group of influencers like individuals.  I know for me personally, when I receive a press release from a company who wants me to do a write-up about their product or service I tend to click erase without really looking at it.  I figure if they don’t take the time to write a few sentences of introduction and how they found me, why they want to work with me and what they hope I find intriguing about their company, then I tend not to pay much attention to it.

With any type of business, treating those we work with and for the way we would want to be treated is a good rule of thumb.

If you are a company who wants to work with influencers I really recommend this book.  Or if you are a blogger interested in learning more about influencer marketing – Influencer Marketing for Dummies is for you!  We have a copy to give out to one lucky dandelion mom!

• Only one winner per hosted giveaway
• Winner must be age 18+ and a resident of the US

a Rafflecopter giveaway

I was selected for this opportunity as a member of Clever Girls and the content and opinions expressed here are all my own.