Influence marketing is about emotional connections. It’s about getting inside your customer’s head, understanding what drives them, listening to what makes them feel, and using what you learn about them and their emotions to make connections. These emotional connections allow you to reach your prospects on a level far deeper than traditional advertising ever could. [...]

Generation Z, that group ranging in age from 18 to 23, grew up in the technology age. They are used to having instant access to information and communications from a variety of sources, and they are much more digitally connected than previous generations were at the same age. In fact, for many in this age [...]

As you probably now by now, Angelina Jolie is in the news again. No, she hasn’t adopted another child or come out with a new blockbuster movie. She’s become the de facto new spokesperson for breast cancer awareness. Angelina has quickly risen to the top of the list for influencers on “Breast Cancer,” according to [...]

You know your executives need to get their names out there, and to have a presence in your industry. But do you need them to develop thought leadership, or are you looking to help them build their executive influence? At first, it is easy to confuse the two; thought leadership is a component of executive [...]

You have a blog, a Twitter account and a Facebook page.  Maybe you have a lot of followers or maybe you don’t, but you still want to be considered an “influencer.”  And why not?  Influencers are getting a lot of attention for the role they play in the consumer purchase decision-making process and some of [...]

It seems logical that success with influence marketing requires you to connect with the influencers who have the largest followings. The reality, however, is that bigger isn’t always better. If an influencer has followers in the right niche or boasts a high level of engagement, it may not matter if he or she has hundreds [...]

Marketing has changed. Over the past couple of decades, new forms of messaging, new message delivery vehicles, and indeed, new types of messages have infiltrated the buyer’s experience. From the mom shopping on her smartphone while waiting at the soccer game to the executive researching a major software purchase, the ways buyers gather information prior [...]

Last week, Hadyn Shaughnessy, a contributor at Forbes, published a list of the “Top 50 Social Media Power Influencers” and, my-oh-my, has this caused quite a stir in the blogosphere. Nobody’s questioning the fact that some of the names on this list are really great people; they are questioning the criteria used.   One individual who [...]

Some people mistake influence marketing for the process of getting customers to shill for brands. To the uniformed, it may seem that influence marketing is all about convincing customers to, perhaps in an unsavory way, cajole other consumers into buying from you. Of course, brands do have the goal of selling more, but such blatant [...]

We’re so excited to announce Appinions 2.0, available immediately for all Appinions clients. This new release combines two powerful changes that will make creating and managing influencer marketing programs more efficient and effective. Sophisticated Sorting We’ve launched a new suite of topic filters that provides you with unparalleled flexibility to slice through mounds of influencer data, [...]