One lazy Sunday afternoon, I was scrolling through my Instagram feed and realized that the majority of the content I “follow” is fashion-related. And, the producers of that content aren’t my friends or people I know, but rather famous fashion bloggers. I found myself caught in a trap of never-ending engaging fashion content, beauty tips and information on the latest trends.

I started thinking about fashion bloggers, have they appeared in recent years or have they been here for a while? Some may say their popularity is a new fad that will diminish, is that true? And more importantly, should brands think seriously about finding ways to work fashion bloggers into their content marketing and influencer strategies?

I’m sure all marketers know the terms “opinion leaders,” “influencers” and know about “turning customers into brand advocates.” But, I am not sure if all marketers acknowledge how much influential power fashion (and other) bloggers have over their target audience.

How influential are fashion bloggers?

• Vogue, the 100+-year-old fashion magazine, has 3.5 million followers on Instagram.
• Chiara Ferragni, a fashion blogger, known as “The Blond Salad,” who started her blog five years ago, has 3.2 million followers. (And, she had more followers than Vogue when I first checked five months ago.)

An independent fashion blogger has as much influence, based on numbers, as a respected 100-year-old fashion powerhouse, and it doesn’t end there.

According to Fashionista, a number of bloggers have signed contracts with prestigious brands as a result of their fashion content creation and overall influence.

Emily Schuman (Cupcakes & Cashmere), for example, signed a deal with Estee Lauder, and Susie Lau (Style Bubble) cooperates with H&M, Urban Outfitters and Gap on several campaigns and projects.

They create powerful content and brands are noticing. 

How and why your customers engage with bloggers?

It’s all about influence and trust:

• According to Ninja Metrics, “5-10 percent of social media users are responsible for 60 to 80 per cent of influence.”
• Stokberger-Sauer & Hoyer reports, “opinion leaders represent a powerful group in the marketplace because they can influence consumers via word of mouth.”

For this reason, the influencer’s role is undeniably important because they have significant influence on the pre and post-purchase behaviour of customers.

Especially in beauty and fashion industry, customers tend to follow number of bloggers at once to see what is trending. The most popular blogs with the highest number of followers work as so-called “hubs” in the blogosphere and have the highest influence on followers.

The influencing power of bloggers lies in the engagement with consumers. They trigger conversations and are credible because they are “one of us.” They aren’t top models, but girl/boy-next-door types that are trustworthy. And, the similarity between reader and blogger makes a big impact on the final purchase decision.

A good fashion blogger also adds value and expertise because he or she discovers, evaluates, compares and introduces products to a wide audience. And the blogger also helps to explain how the products can be used to achieve a particular look.

Fashion blogger turned journalist?

Elle, a massive lifestyle magazine, recently hired an independent blogger to “bring life” to their online blog. Fashion brands pay high prices to have bloggers sit in the front row at their fashion shows. And, beauty brands send products to bloggers directly to encourage them to test and evaluate.

A shining example of a blogger that made her hobby into a profession is Zoella, a beauty “vlogger” from the UK with more than 7 million YouTube subscribers. In November 2014, she published her first novel “Girl Online,” and recently launched her very own product line, Zoella Beauty Range, in cooperation with Superdrug, the health and beauty retailer in the UK.

As you can see, influencers are the amplifiers for the voice of a brand. Through their own social media channels, they spread the message to multi-million-strong-target audiences that are hungry for information.

Sounds great, but…

What does this mean for my brand?

Bloggers (beauty, fashion and beyond), hold the power to shape public perception of everything, including your brand—challenging you to determine how your work with them will help your brand become an integral part of their online conversations. There are many paths to help influencers shape their message, with your brand included, and regardless of the path you choose, it will require content.

While I am biased, I believe the best path to success is equipping bloggers with interactive, engaging on-demand content streams (we call them playlists). Thanks to solutions like Content On Demand, brands can put the right information into the hands of influencers quickly and efficiently.

In the time it took me to research and write this article, the list of people I follow on Instagram increased by 15 fashion bloggers, and I went to check out Zoella’s Beauty Range to Superdrug and I am sure I’ll be buying more than I really need!

The post Fashion Bloggers, the Perfect Example of Influencer Marketing Potential appeared first on Thismoment Content Marketing Blog.

Before we start, let’s have a quick poll. Question 1: How many of you made a New Year’s resolution connected to one of the following: healthier living, losing weight, improving your fitness or eating habits? (My guess is more than a few people raised their hands.) Question 2: How many of you belong to a gym that complements these goals with great fitness marketing? (My guess is very few hands raised.)

I quickly researched and learned that four out of the top five New Year’s resolutions people in the UK made for 2015 were health-related. And, Forbes recommends “maintain a health and fitness regimen” as resolution #2 on its list for 2015. I gave up on making such promises to myself and instead, I try to set my fitness goals throughout the year.

However, as a marketing professional and sports enthusiast, I pay extra attention to fitness marketing and new campaigns that appear shortly after the holidays. I know that they aim to attract new customers to sign up for a gym membership based on their New Years resolution fitness goals. The message is usually pretty simple: sign up now and get results quickly!

As good as this sounds, this approach works neither for the customer, nor for the gym, over time. We all know that in order to achieve our goals, we need to go an extra mile. What might be surprising is that the fitness industry has a great opportunity through content.

Content marketing and fitness marketing. The long-distance run (with obstacles)

Fitness centers often struggle with a high drop out rate shortly after January ends. What should they offer to customers in order to retain their business and change them into brand loyalists and advocates? Content.

We know that 90% of consumers want more content from their favorite brands, and we also know exactly where and how most customers want to receive content, mobile. According to Flurry by Yahoo, use of mobile and apps for health and fitness skyrocketed by 62% in 2014.

As a member of an always-on generation, I like to measure my personal fitness performance, compare and share results with friends via one of my devices and search for tips online. You will probably understand my disappointment when, after my last session with a personal trainer in London, I was sent away with a piece of paper containing sketches of the exercises I should do on my next visit. Of course, the paper was lost, and I found myself online trying to find some of the exercises he sketched.

This was a truly user-UN-friendly approach.

I go to a personal trainer to get a professional advice, great tips about diet and a workout routine. I do not want a sketch; I want engaging content effortlessly sent to me, when I need it, on the device I choose. It should include detailed descriptions of the exercises, recommended heart rate zones, maybe even a suggested Spotify playlist and recipe for a post-workout smoothie.

Sounds great, right?

Is this too tall of an order? Not at all!

You might think this too much to ask. It’s not. To prove my point, within 10 minutes I created a fully customized playlist using the Content Cloud Content on Demand solution and sent it to myself via text message.

(You can review the playlist here)

The biggest advantage is that I was able to source and mix both earned and owned content to create the best possible mix of content. The playlist is easy to customize and can be tailored to the needs of every single customer depending on their individual goals. It can seamlessly include visual images, short descriptive videos, tweets of encouragement, interesting blog posts or press articles.

Wouldn’t it be great if my gym and trainer had done the work for me?

Empower your reps with content for more personalized experiences

What I’ve described above would be easy for a trainer to create and would work just as well for countless other industries. Content marketing has changed the landscape of brand marketing and digital advertising, so why hasn’t it done the same for rep enablement in fitness marketing? Provide representatives with better, smarter, real-time, mobile content, and you can change occasional/short term customers into your most loyal brand advocates.

Tips for building personalized fitness marketing content:

• Empower your employees with a tool that allows them to effortlessly curate, source and manage content that has already been created by users (UGC). Find authentic content to attract more customers.
• Be a storyteller. Find out what your customers are looking for and share stories that engage and motivate with the right messages. In sports, success stories of others can work miracles.
• Mix UGC with your own branded content to create original, personalized experience, while also creating a chance to promote other parts of your business, such as group training classes, wellness sessions or consultations with a nutritionist. Don’t forget that your representatives are the voice of your company; make sure that user-generated and rep-selected content is mixed with the branded content.
• Learn from your results. In marketing, data collected from customers allows you to improve your performance, generate valuable insight into their engagement and determine what works best and where to improve.

I once heard that in fitness you can only improve what can be measured. Set realistic goals, measure results and don’t forget that the greatest success in both fitness and fitness marketing will come to those who take their routine a step further.

Now, that sounds like a New Year’s resolution I can get behind.

The post It’s Time for a Digital Transformation in Fitness Marketing appeared first on Thismoment Content Marketing Blog.

As a fan of LEGO, I have always been impressed with how well they engage with customers.The favourite Danish toy manufacturer has always had a positive brand image, and with a mission to “Inspire and develop builders of tomorrow,” it comes as no surprise that their customers are a key component to their marketing success. So, as you can imagine, I was thrilled to hear Lars Silberbauer, Global Head of Social Media for LEGO, talk about marketing and customer engagement at a recent Thismoment event in London.

What stands behind LEGO’s success? What differentiates the brand from the others?

As he put it, “when you feel that you are being advertised to, you lose a lot of trust in that message.” Therefore LEGO tries to build a genuine conversation and relationship with its community and create content that is trustworthy, engaging, innovative and fun.

Wait! That’s easier said than done!

Naturally engagement is a goal for all marketers, however what should we do if we don’t have amazing colourful product that is popular with all age groups and sold worldwide, to back up our content marketing activities?

An examination of recent LEGO social media campaigns offers helpful insight.

Masters of imagination, creativity, fun, learning, caring and quality

LEGO is a master at content distribution, so much so that we have learned a bit about the concept of “Any Content, Anywhere” from their social media team. LEGO regularly posts videos on Vine and Instagram, replies to questions and shares customers’ experiences on Twitter, they run multiple contests on Facebook and make sure that their Youtube channel, powered by Thismoment, is a never-ending source of inspiration for builders, regardless of age.

According to Lars, the key value lies in the connection between the brand and customers. As he has mentioned during our customer event recently, “LEGO sees its brand as something that is co-owned with its fans, because they also have perceptions about the brand and future direction.” This approach naturally involves mutual trust and never-ending engagement with the customers.

On top of that, LEGO excels in areas that some other brands haven’t even tried to enter:

• Imagination

LEGO encourages the community to come up with new innovative ideas and to not be afraid to customize their sets and share their creations. On its own that might not seem like anything new, but LEGO takes it a step further and runs a dedicated website called LEGO Ideas where anyone can submit their ideas for new product set designs. If the proposal gains more than 10,000 votes from the community, it is forwarded to the product development team for consideration. 

•  Creativity

LEGO simply loves to do things differently and they often come up with new ways to boost its fans’ creativity. Out of all its latest activities on Facebook, I personally enjoyed #SpookifyYourSet. Customers were asked to customize their LEGO sets in Halloween theme, which was very successful activity that generated hundreds of pieces of content. Just from a pure interest I searched for that hashtag using our content marketing solution platform – Content Cloud – and within few minutes created a playlist that you can check HERE. This program, which encouraged customers to get creative and build something fun for Halloween, is a fantastic example of encouraging creativity.

•  Fun

One of the golden rules of content marketing is to create experiences that people love to share, not advertising they try to avoid. LEGO is really good in listening to what customers want and what they are interested in. In recent years, they enriched their more traditional sets through licensing agreements with Star Wars, The Simpsons, Harry Potter and many more. By introducing these innovative sets, they are connecting communities that share huge interest in a specific topic. Moreover, it is giving them fun engaging marketing opportunities, such as the #GoldenBrickies contest that ran on Facebook and was hosted by Thismoment. The Golden Brickies Awards asked all creative Jedi builders to submit images and mini-videos of Star Wars-inspired creations to company’s social media channels for a chance to win a year’s supply of LEGO Star Wars goodies.

•  Learning and caring

Although all of the above are valid and important points, what really makes LEGO’s content relatable and authentic, is what Lars refers to as the “human voice of the company.” Despite all the metrics and ways to measure performance of marketing campaigns, we shouldn’t forget that people in the company need to talk with customers, as often as possible. It’s clear that LEGO’s social media team tries to respond to comments and enriching pieces of content. They value education and invest significantly in education programmes and development.

What can all marketers learn from LEGO customer engagement?

• Encourage your customers to customize.  It’s human nature to show creativity, be smart and innovative, allow your customers to do so and you will be flooded with engagement.
• Aim to bring value, not to sell. If an increase in sales is your first goal when creating social media strategy, customers will most likely see through it. Be the human voice of your company and offer something of value!
• Connect with your customers anytime, anywhere.  Be everywhere your customers are – if they are on a new social media platform, you should be too!
• Create experiences that people love to share, not those they try to avoid. When creating content ask yourself if you’d share it with friends, if so, you’re on the right track!

As mentioned, I’m a fan, and to top it off with my recent LEGO experience, check out what I saw on my way home in Covent Garden, London – a LEGO sleigh. Now that’s creative and fun!

The post LEGO’s Winning Recipe for Customer Engagement appeared first on Thismoment Content Marketing Blog.