Caught an awesome story today from a fun blog for Shoes of Prey, a nifty startup which allows consumers to design their own shoes.  They had a post about how a 16-year old “video blogger” (I don’t like this limiting term, but ok) changed their business (possibly forever).  It’s a great post — you should read it.

Long story short, the company engaged with Juicystar07, a 16-year old YouTuber  who posted this video about Shoes of Prey.

Because of Juicystar’s tremendous audience, this one video was viewed over 477k times, received over 93k comments and absolutely destroyed Shoes of Prey’s previous record for daily traffic to their website by a factor of 10 (actually more).  Amazing show of power from another online influencer.

We found several interesting things about this story (by the way, you can check out JUICYSTAR’S TRAACKR PROFILE here — she’s far more than a “video blogger“).  Some things of note:

• The most obvious win in this story is the UNBELIEVABLE amount of traffic that one video post was able to drive to the Shoes of Prey website.  Since the site’s existence (5+ months), they have generated a total of 700k visitors….this video led to almost 500k of those visits (from what I can tell from the article).  That is simply remarkable.
• Making this more remarkable is that Shoes of Prey had received a good amount of other coverage (mostly traditional media) — both online and off.  None of this other coverage could touch the effectiveness of this single video.
• Michael Fox (from Shoes of Prey) makes a good point – while this video produced a ton of web traffic, was it QUALITY traffic?!?  The problem was that all of this traffic didn’t drive many sales.  Very low conversion rate.  This is because Juicystar’s audience is young (13-17 year olds) and not able to make purchases at Shoes of Prey’s premium price point.  Another piece of coverage drove far less traffic, but more actual sales.  So, was Juicystar’s traffic worthless if it didn’t drive sales?  Obviously not — just the traffic alone boosted Shoes of Prey’s Google Juice for future searches.  Also, Michael mentions how most of the people that came from this video actually ENGAGED with the Shoes of Prey site/application. They designed shoes, they wrote descriptions for their designs…and even wrote about the events at which they would wear their new shoes.  These visitors may not be buying immediately, but in the long run — I would bet that this group will lead to more sales than anything else.
• On a more controversial note, I commend Michael for admitting that they actually paid Juicystar for her review and contest.  Here what he says:

We paid her for the review, though she doesn’t do videos for everyone, she reviewed our shoes herself first before agreeing to take payment and do the video and all this is disclosed on her YouTube channel. And we worked with both Blair and her agency to put together the competition so that it would work best for us and for her viewers.

I, for one, don’t have a problem with this (I know, I know…let the comments begin — not everyone at Traackr agrees with me on this).  I don’t have a problem with brands paying influencers for helping their efforts.  Of course, I believe in full disclosure on both ends and understand that not all arrangements are (or will be) reasonable and right.  But overall, I believe that influencers are talented people who know how to build a loyal and engaged audience.  And I don’t have a problem with them making $$ for their skills and talents.  In fact…I’m excited to see a variety of marketplaces and business models develop around influencers and  the brands they can support.  A new age of Collaborative Marketing   (to that end, great to see that Juicystar has an agency!)

Bravo to Shoes for Prey and Juicystar for a terrific collaboration.  We look forward to following this story.

DS

The Special Envoy for Malaria for the UN recently announced their upcoming social media campaign, the UN Social Media Envoy for Malaria. The Envoy group is part of a social media grassroots campaign that relies on active celebrity Twitter users, such as Ashton Kutcher and Larry King, as well as big social media names like Mashable’s Pete Cashmore and Twitter co-founder Biz Stone, to spread the word about malaria through their own social media networks. Those that are part of this group pledged to take one “social action” regarding Malaria once a month for the next year. A social action in this instance is considered a tweet, post, video, etc. The ultimate hope for this campaign is to reach the Secretary-General’s goal of providing all endemic African countries with malaria control interventions by the end of 2010.

What is interesting about this campaign, and what inspired me to write about it, is that it depends on the common belief that the most influential online individuals are those who have the largest follower base. There is no question that collaboratively the Envoy group reaches millions of people, however, if you caught Derek’s recent insights into the ICOM study, you’ll see that this is not necessarily the most important piece of online influence, and therefore not the best approach to campaigns with an online presence. One of the main points in the study, and one of our fundamental beliefs at Traackr, is that influence online is contextual. Those with extremely high reach aren’t necessarily going to make an impact on topics that they don’t normally talk about or that their followers aren’t truly interested in.

So, we definitely think this will be an interesting campaign to follow and we’ll be sure to keep you updated with insights once it officially kicks off on World Malaria Day on April 25. Stay tuned…

For more details on this cause, visit the official Web site at http://www.malariaenvoy.com/.

ICOM (a division of Epsilon Targeting) released a new whitepaper today based on an influencer study they conducted between 2007-2009.  Obviously, we always like to see new influencer studies conducted because they greatly help support as well as inform our work.  We’ll share our thoughts in this post, but you can also download the report for yourself here (after giving ICOM your personal information)…

Overall, we didn’t find any groundbreaking results in this study, but there were definitely some very interesting insights.

One big gap in the report was ICON’s definition of an “INFLUENCER.”  There wasn’t one.  The results of the study were based on the differences between a group of “INFLUENCERS” and a group of “Random Members of the Population.”  Without knowing how they determined who belonged in the “Influencer” bucket, we’re not completely sure how to really analyze the results.

Also, it’s important to note that this study did not focus on online influencers, but instead on “influencers in general.”
With that said, here are the most interesting insights we pulled from this study:

1. INFLUENCERS ARE TALKERS.  The study showed that influential people rate high in “talkability” — they simply talk more than random people.  While the study doesn’t show it, it is natural to assume that this behavior trait would translate online, making traditional off-line influencers, active online influencers.  And vice-versa, by the way.  Often times, a person’s online influence is a proxy for his/her offline influence.  This is important to note.  The benefits of finding and engaging with online influencers are often greater than their online presence.
2. INFLUENCE IS CONTEXTUAL.  In other words, as the study says, “Influencers are category specific.”  This means that someone who is influential in the world of baby diapers is not necessarily influential in the world of auto repairs.  In some ways, this is quite obvious.  However the concept of “universal influence” is something that still holds water in general practice.  The idea that the Ashton Kutcher‘s or the Chris Brogan‘s of the world are influential across any topic area or category is something that some people still believe.  This study disproves this idea.  This “contextual-based” influence is also a fundamental belief of Traackr — we have always believed that an individual’s influence has to be related to how much he/she talks about a specific topic area (which is how we measure an individual’s RELEVANCE).  We don’t believe in “universal” influence.  It’s all contextual.
3. DEMOGRAPHICS DON’T MATTER WHEN IT COMES TO INFLUENCE.  The report delivers a very interesting quote:

No demographic similarities emerged in the data; there was no skewing toward age, gender or income.  Influencers may be grandfathers or twenty-somethings, working mothers or stay-at-home dads.  They could be the well to do or the up-and-coming.

This is another very important insight.  Again, it’s a relatively obvious point, but one that is not widely practiced.  For example, some marketers are still looking to build campaigns that target “Mommy bloggers.”  This study (and we at Traackr) would argue that there is a fundamental flaw in this logic.  The only thing that “Mommy bloggers” have in common is that they are mothers and that they blog.  There is nothing to say that they (or their audiences) are interested in anything and/or everything related to babies, parenting, etc.  Some “Mommy bloggers” are interested in organic food, some in fashion, some in law, some in baby goods, and yes, some may even be interested in auto repair.  Demographics shouldn’t be a factor in an influencer campaign.  Pre-conceived notions about who may be interested in, or influential for, a particular product or topic area can only hurt the results of the campaign.  We realize it’s a hard thing to wrap one’s head around (especially for those with years of marketing experience), but the concept of “demographics” doesn’t have much place in an influencer analysis or campaign.  What matters is an individual’s Relevance to a specific topic area or subject.

That’s it for our immediate assessment of this report.  We may have more thoughts later — we’ll be sure to let you know

With all the hoopla going on about SXSW we simply couldn’t pass up the opportunity to show off our sweet A-List skills and bring you a public list of the Top SXSW Music Influencers. With hundreds of musical acts showcasing their talent on over eighty stages in downtown Austin, we knew the buzz would be huge.

After compiling the data, we can honestly say that we were surprised with the results. Who would have thought that a political journalist, everyone’s favorite gossip columnist, a well-known public television station (not usually associated with music) and not one, but two marketing pros would make a music list?

See the list for yourself here. In the meantime, be sure to follow the top influencers via Traackr’s SXSW Music Twitter list (@traackr/sxsw-music-influencers). Once you’ve seen the list, tell us what you think – did you love it? Hate it? Let us know!

We are putting influencer of the month on hold this month, but only because we’ve been busy cranking on an exciting partnership that was just announced at SXSW…(btw, we’re here now, so if you’d like to meet up, just ping @dskaletsky).

Official logo of SXSW 2010.

As you can read on the release, we’re partnering with PR powerhouse, Porter Novelli, our long-time friend Crimson Hexagon, and a newcomer  Spredfast to create the ultimate marketing/communication/social media application — complete with sentiment analysis, influencer identification and campaign outreach management. We really like the way this application is shaping up, combining what we consider the three most important elements of any quality social media campaign (at least from a tool perspective) — understanding sentiment, finding the influencers and managing engagement.  It’s a powerful solution and kudos to Porter Novelli for having the vision and commitment to put it all together!  We’ll certainly be talking more about this application and business opportunity as it develops in the coming months.

To learn a little more about it, you can check out the Porter Novelli microsite.  We have a Top 10 Trending SWSX influencers list updating on a daily basis on this page.  Check it out and…as always, let us know your thoughts…

Cheers from SXSW!