Go here: The Age of Influence Docuseries on Hulu
In the following video, I give a quick, 5-minute book review of Neal Schaffer’s, The Age of Influence: The Power of Influencers to Elevate Your Brand. I give the book 5 out of 5 stars and highly recommend reading it. Enjoy the Age of Influence Book Review and subscribe to my Youtube channel to be notified when new videos are added.
The Age of Influence: The Power of Influencers to Elevate Your Brand
So last week, we did the End of Marketing Book Review. But today, we’ll be talking about Neal Schaffer’s, The Age of Influence – The Power of Influencers to Elevate Your Brand.
I met Neal years ago at a conference in San Francisco and have been following his work for several years. First, I want to point out that this book reads like an academic paper. It’s linear and structured like a college textbook.
He starts the book by answering the question why … why influencer marketing? And goes on to cite studies of brands that have seen strong ROI from influencer marketing, as well as studies that show brands planning to increase their budgets. He then discusses different ways when working with B2B tech influencers. He goes into detail about 16 different ways to do so.
This section also highlights employees as influencers, which I thought was an excellent addition.
He then moves into paid and organic influencer marketing, with different considerations on how and when to do that.
He discusses the art and science of researching influencers to partner with, measuring, and ROI. He even covers several social platforms that can be used to identify or track influencers through campaigns.
He ends the book with some very actionable steps to become an influencer.
A few interesting case studies were more on the B2B side. One is an unnamed company in the unified communications space that partnered with influencers and grew contract revenue by 30% yearly.
The other case study was VMWare and their work with their annual conference, VMWorld. They partnered with Onalytica, an influencer management software, and invited 75 influencers to the event in Barcelona. As a result, they did tweet chats, created unique content, and reached 1.3M users.
Most other case studies focused on consumer brands like Lord & Taylor, All Bar One, Mockberg, and the Hawaiian Tourism Bureau.
This book is relevant to most audiences, from the C-suite and middle management to agencies and college students. Please enjoy this Age of Influence Book Review.