Matters of Influence: Week of 2/14/21

Influencer marketing news moves at the speed of social media. Every platform update, algorithm tweak, and current event makes a huge difference to the influencer marketer. We’ll help you keep up.

Julius product spotlight

Cause marketing is about bonding with your audience over the stories you share. Partnering with an influencer who has a shared passion creates an instant connection, and amplifies your voice as part of a greater conversation. Aligning with influencers who strongly believe in the same things your brand does is key to defining your identity as a brand, and creating long-lasting relationships with your target audience. That’s why we’ve built out our Cause Filter with thousands of different tags: so you can find the influencers who are on the same page. Combine the Cause Filter with others (like Ailment, Ethnicity, and even Location) to find partners with personal connections to the causes that matter the most to your brand. Check out this Help Center article to find the influencer who can help you make a difference.

Creator snapshot

As a songwriter, producer, rapper, and flutist, Frank Waln (@frankwaln, 45K IG followers) demonstrates his incredible range of unique talents on his Instagram, where he proudly represents his heritage in both art and activism. Located in Chicago but originally from the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota, he is a proud Sicangu Lakota musician, and has partnered with brands like MTV and Google to raise awareness and start conversations. He contributes to the Dream Warriors scholarship for young Native Americans interested in music, and has won three Native American Music Awards. Learn more about Frank Waln here.

Featured headline

Influencer Marketing Strategy Won't Work Without This One Key Ingredient (Entrepreneur)

This headline might sound surprising at first, until discovering that the secret ingredient here is empathy. The ability to imagine seeing from someone else’s perspective and feel the validity of their lived experiences is essential to understanding your audience for who they are as people. The first step to getting to know your audience is doing research, and discovering what common threads and interests unite them as a community. With this in mind, we would advise you to also examine audience demographics and psychographics with Julius, and puzzle piece together audience insights through influencer content, and find the perfect partner—one who you know is aligned with your brand, through empathy. Studying the details that offer insight into who they are as individuals can help you learn more about their experiences, and build connections based on genuine empathy, care, and understanding.