How to drive conversions with influencer marketing

Mordy Oberstein:

It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP'S Up. Aloha, Mahalo for joining the SERP'S Up podcast, where there's some groovy new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, Head of SEO Brand here at Wix, and I'm joined by she who is quite influential, the Head of SEO Communications here at Wix, Crystal Carter.

Crystal Carter:

I don't know who she is. Who is she? I've never heard of her.

Mordy Oberstein:

Crystal on the web? You never heard crystal on the web? Crystal on the web.

Crystal Carter:

Oh, that lady.

Mordy Oberstein:

She's an influencer.

Crystal Carter:

Who does she influence? I don't understand.

Mordy Oberstein:

All sorts of people.

Crystal Carter:

Do you know what? I think I once influenced my mom to buy a tiny handbag because I had a tiny handbag and she was jealous that I had this tiny handbag, so.

Mordy Oberstein:

What do you put inside of a tiny handbag?

Crystal Carter:

Wasn't super tiny. It was just wallet, keys, phone, that kind of size, because she had this big giant bag and I don't like big giant bags because I just fill them with junk. So if I have a small bag, then I can't fill it with junk and then I can just get on with my life.

Mordy Oberstein:

Okay, good life lesson. Small bags.

Crystal Carter:

Small bags.

Mordy Oberstein:

Unless they're money bags, in which case make them big.

Crystal Carter:

Hey.

Mordy Oberstein:

Anyway, the SERP'S Up podcast is brought to you by Wix Studio, where you can not only subscribe to our SEO newsletter, search labor at wix.com/SEO/learn/newsletter and see our great free SEO course, it's also where you can enhance your social strategy and track your social traffic with a wide array of inbuilt analytics and native integrations with Instagram, Facebook, and more, which is great for accelerating and tracking the impact of some of your influencer marketing efforts.

As this week, we talk all about influencer marketing and conversions. Does influencer marketing lead to leads and converting conversions? What type of influencer marketing works for signups, clicks, and which don't? How influencer marketing has changed and is changing, and we'll be joined by Semrush's own influencer marketing lead, Nicole Ponce, who will help us dig on in, plus Wix Studio's own Head of Partnerships and Influencer Marketing, Sarah Adam, shares her top influencer marketing tips and her experience with you.

And of course, we have your snappies of SEO news and who you should be following on social media for more SEO awesomeness. So, turn your phone to vertical as we go like, oh my God, you won't even believe, you should totally buy this. Click the link button in the description below on the 115th episode of the SERP'S Up Podcast. Subscribe.

Crystal Carter:

Smash that like button.

Mordy Oberstein:

Smash that like button. I'm always afraid my kids will go take that, my little one will take it literally and smash.

Crystal Carter:

Oh man, I love it when you're in the middle of the video and they're like, "Hey, you join this video, you should subscribe to my channel while you're here." And you're like, okay, thanks.

Mordy Oberstein:

Click the bell for notifications.

Crystal Carter:

Right? You ding the bell, ding, ding, go.

Mordy Oberstein:

Can tell you, I never understood that maybe there's a reason. What's the point of subscribing without getting the notifications?

Crystal Carter:

I subscribe without getting the notifications I have too many-

Mordy Oberstein:

Me too, all the time, but does it do anything for me? I don't know.

Crystal Carter:

I don't know, it shows in your feed, but then you don't have... The notifications I sometimes find stressful.

Mordy Oberstein:

Right, no, I don't like them, but it would show up my feed anyway because I'm watching those videos.

Crystal Carter:

That's true, that's true.

Mordy Oberstein:

I don't know.

Crystal Carter:

This is true.

Mordy Oberstein:

You know who might know?

Crystal Carter:

Who?

Mordy Oberstein:

Nicole.

Crystal Carter:

Nicole?

Mordy Oberstein:

Nicole.

Crystal Carter:

It's a good thing we've got her on the show.

Mordy Oberstein:

So let's get right into it. So influencer marketing is one of those things that's kind of weird for me. Everyone kind of talks about it, a lot of people do it, but often not well. Is that spicy? Yeah, it's true, it's true. I'm just going to say because it's true. Everyone's like, oh, we're going to do influencer marketing, but then it's not always so great. So as someone who's done a boatload of influencer marketing over the course of my career, it's easy to get distracted by things that don't actually help you with the influencer. I'll just say, number of followers can be very distracting sometimes, it doesn't always matter the way that you think it does.

Anywho, on top of that, there's also the disruption in the space. Over the years this whole thing of like, I'm a famous person, I'll promote your product and everyone will know I've never actually used it. That doesn't work anymore. Stevie Wonder doing a commercial for Zenni doesn't work. You know he's never used it.

Crystal Carter:

What?

Mordy Oberstein:

Zenni, it's eyeglasses. Stevie Wonder is blind.

Crystal Carter:

Oh, okay.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah, I order glasses online. Sorry.

So, that whole celebrity thing, they're just going to promote it and just get a famous person on there, and that doesn't work. Everyone kind of sees through that a little bit. So I think that whole thing is the notion of influencer marketing being like, oh, it's about being famous people talking about my product is a bit of a misnomer, which is why I'm very happy, somebody I used to actually have the privilege of working with day in and day out on influencer marketing is here with us right now. Welcome to the show, Semrush's, Nicole Ponce.

How are you?

Nicole Ponce:

Good. Hi, Mordy. Honestly, the pleasure is mine and whoever's listening probably doesn't know this or hopefully now they will know this, but Mordy and I used to work on the same team, so I also had the pleasure of working with Mordy in and out and brainstorm a lot of ideas. So, a lot of my ideas also come from Mordy's really great trajectory, so I give kudos to you back.

Mordy Oberstein:

That's way too much credit. If no one, an influencer promoting whatever product they never used, no one believes you.

Nicole Ponce:

Okay, perfect.

Crystal Carter:

He's going to be insufferable now, Nicole. I don't know what you've done, you're never going to live this down, I was just feel like. Nicole says, Nicole says.

Mordy Oberstein:

My giant ego just got bigger.

Nicole Ponce:

I love this, I love this. No, but truly mean it. Thank you for having me. I'm really excited to be here to talk to you both, especially about influencer marketing, the B2B space, because I think B2B is such a new space to talk about influencer marketing and as Mordy was mentioning in the intro, it's hard to really show the impact for something that it's not a physical tangible thing to really showcase of how many people are purchasing it, but something that is a platform and is a service that you really need to showcase. What is the value of it for somebody to pay for it month to month? It's a really enticing, long tail effect of how to do it properly.

So we've tested a lot at Semrush. I'm sure you guys have done, you guys do a great job at Wix also. I've had great conversations with Sarah about this, but yeah, it's definitely a different tactic and different strategies that need to be in place, but I'm curious to hear what we are going to talk about today, in terms of what that would look like in the future as well.

Mordy Oberstein:

So exactly just that. This whole idea of, and I'm curious about your opinion on this, where there's so much demand for influencer marketing and there's also demand for conversions. Does influencer marketing work for conversions? How strong is the connection between the influencer market and conversion? Is there a direct correlation or direct connection? How do you see that whole equation kind of thing?

Nicole Ponce:

Yeah, so a lot of people actually think about influencer marketing when it goes to conversions, they think affiliate marketing right away, which is not the case because yes, affiliate marketing does help you with conversion based directly. But in terms of the way that we work and the way that I see influencer marketing as impact for campaigns, it should definitely be enticed to conversion based. It doesn't mean that you'll see the conversions right away. I mean, ideally the goal is, because if you're investing some sort of specific budget on a campaign as a whole, if you're working with the right audience of influencer and that their audience is also somebody that is in need of the content that you're producing or what you're advertising, then obviously you did your job well in really looking through in the details of connecting the needs, the product, and how you can help. So I do see it as it should be a conversion based focus. Just measuring on impression says really nothing, especially if you're investing a lot of money, at least for me, right?

Just speaking on behalf of what our team is doing, but just showing impression base. Yes, it's great to show brand awareness and I am a very huge believer. And sometimes you really can't quantify emotional connections or emotional value or even brand awareness and aspect of, I know that our brand is everywhere, but how do you put that in a factual number? But I think it definitely does help you showcase the value of influencer marketing if you're focusing as top level conversions and then obviously other measurable things will be like emotional value, brand awareness, etc, etc.

But the answer in short is yes, absolutely. And obviously you need to just nurture the audience very well in order to see those conversions come through. It's not going to be like a one-off, especially when you're working in B2B, and, yeah.

Crystal Carter:

So B2B is a great point because the lead time on B2B can be very, very long. If you're talking to people, so you work in a SaaS team, if you're talking about people adopting a new SaaS platform, that could be months, negotiation, discussion, deliberation. And when you're talking about the conversions, can you just get into a little bit of the details of some of what a conversion looks like for an influencer marketing campaign? Because I think a lot of people think a conversion is a sale, but that's not necessarily the case, particularly for a long tail campaign or for a long sales cycle, for instance. Are you able to talk about some of the things that might make a conversion?

Nicole Ponce:

Yeah, so our main top funnel that we would basically measure is traffic. So anybody that lands onto Semrush's website we consider as not obviously a directly conversion, but a conversion for us is a first-time payment. So somebody that is going to, has not used Semrush at all and now is a new Semrush user, or even is potentially a Semrush user and has upgraded to one of our new apps, or is testing a new tool or a new add-on. So anything that converts into a new payment of some sort is considered a conversion for us. So it really depends on the campaign. It really depends on what the focus of the goal is in general for the company and as a whole, but we as a SaaS platform have so much to offer.

We have 56 different apps, we have over 20 over tools, we have upgrades, we have add-ons, we have different tiers. And the way that we can see an increase of conversion is understanding your tool in and out and what that audience needs in order to educate them enough to say like, "Hey, you have this problem and we actually have something that can help you fix this," or, "We have something that you potentially might not know that you need, but it'll help you save X amount of time. So maybe upgrade or maybe test it out and see it as something that will help you in your workflow," and maybe they didn't know.

And this is what's something that's interesting for me that we've been testing and I've been just talking about, because before we would just really directly work with SEOs, and we still do, but I've been testing working with influencers outside of the SEO space, but that are also in marketing. So they don't actually know the level of different tools and apps that we have to offer. So potentially, let's say they're just content marketers and they've just, I don't know, worked in our content toolkit, and then I share with them different apps that we have to offer and they're like, "Oh, wow, I didn't even know that you guys had this. I've been looking for something like this." So now it's just showing the value of all in one toolkit, which is what we are.

But again, we're all marketers. We are so busy, we're just stuck in our every day. Sometimes we need to allocate more time to test something new, but if I'm already there in their face showing and making it easier for them to test it out in an easier, faster, all-in-one solution, it's just going to help that conversion aspect in terms of the life cycle, let's say. So obviously it's going to take a longer time, but it's just mostly like, and we're okay with that and we understand it's kind of like an investment. And we need to just be more present at all times because it's just how it is. We lose now attention with everything, like in a spam.

Crystal Carter:

One of the things you mentioned was picking up on lots of different parts of your platform. You've worked with Mordy, I worked with you when you were working with Mordy at Semrush, and I've had a relationship with Semrush for a while. I spoke at your fantastic Spotlight event recently. I've done one of your courses, I've done influencer marketing things where we did videos and things like that. We've done a webinar recently with your colleague, Eric, shout-out to Eric. And I think that what you're talking about there is that relationship of that long-term that with an influencer, it might not be just one thing that you're going to be marketing with them, but you might be marketing with them over a long period and you might be evolving with them and they might be evolving with you. Are you able to talk about how you maintain those relationships?

Mordy Oberstein:

That's right, really quick, that's so interesting because when we were working together that was one of the things we consciously tried to do is say, "Okay, let's not just go bing, bing, bing to all these different people, but let's find people and work with them over the course of many, many, many, many projects." Okay, sorry Nicole.

Nicole Ponce:

I was going to say, I 100% agree with this, and I think it showcases also not just the impact of the relationship with the actual influencer, but also with our audience. And it's just like now they're embedded as a, hey, they actually are an advocate for Semrush. It's not just, oh, I just see an ad and it removes the importance or the value for me as an audience. It's just seeing an ad one time is just, I'm going to forget about it. But if this person's actually continuously mentioning to their audience like, "Hey, I'm using this for this," or, "Hey, now I found out about this. Oh, look, now they've launched this." It's just now we're both working down the same avenue and it's kind of like an embedment, and now they're considered basically a brand ambassador, in our case. And the trust of them, by them is the audience of the influencer, is definitely what we need in order to see these type of conversions.

But the way that we, sorry to answer your question Crystal, but basically the way that we build these long-term relationships is, I'm a huge believer in, if I can help wherever I can, I will. And then hopefully at some point when I need help, hopefully you can help me back. And that has helped in such a great aspect, and I know Mordy believes in this because we're huge advocates of this, but we believe in growing together. Not me running and then hopefully you can jump in the lane when I need to. That does not work at all. We're working with professionals, we're working with people. We're both trying to get at the same end goal.

I'm very cautious also of the influencer's audience. There's sometimes I've gotten pushed back with the influencers like, hey, this does not align with my audience even though I love Semrush but we're talking about the PC, but I talk about SEO. By all means, I'm like, please tell me, push back because obviously we want it to be authentic. We want it to be real. We want to make sure that we're giving value to your audience. We don't want you to lower your engagement and the way that you actually interact with your audience because if you lose trust, we lose trust, and that obviously doesn't help me in my results. So, let's both work together to make sure that we keep whatever we need to do in a well road and then everyone wins. That's kind of like my motto. If you win, I win vice versa, so yeah.

Mordy Oberstein:

It makes the whole thing come off, it's so much more organic, it's so much more natural. And it makes it believable, it makes it that you can probably get a conversion out of it, because the audience, it's all very subtle. If the audience kind of feels like, wait a second... Because they know what's going on, everyone knows what's going on. This is part of, this person and Semrush, they're kind of together. But if it doesn't feel authentic, you focus on that part and not on the actual authentic part of it. So if it's too noticeable, you can't get the message across. So having that relationship, having that whole integration with them is what allows, I think, for eventually there to be a conversion.

Nicole Ponce:

Yeah, I 100% agree. And again, it goes all back to the basics. I feel sometimes that we overthink about how we can do our job properly when it's just the basics that it's people are going to buy from people. And a lot of people overthink the creative like, we need to make sure that we are like, bam, we need to make sure that we make a lot of noise. Yeah, but just go back to the basics. If you understand the need of the audience and you have a solution because you understand and you believe in your platform, just talk to the influencer. Be honest, like, "Hey, we have Z, Y, and Z. How can we work together? You know your audience best."

And sometimes I do have an empty approach to an influencer like, I love what you're doing, I love your content. I don't know if we could potentially work on something together that might help because maybe they know about plans that I don't know about and vice versa. But a lot of people just automatically think like, okay, this person has 1,000 followers, sorry, 100,000 followers, almost a million followers and have great engagement. I'm just going to stick my tool in there and invest my whatever budget I have for influencer marketing and I know it's going to work. And a lot of brands do that when they work with athletes and it's just like, you're not speaking to the right audience/choir. So even though you're spending, I don't know, half a million dropping like a Superbowl ad, let's say in quotations, you really think that you're going to see the conversions if you're actually talking to the right audience? I don't know, it's a question mark.

But if you understand how to communicate when get asked the right questions to these influencers to make sure you understand what the right audience that they're speaking to, I think it definitely does help a lot with your plans in terms of seeing these conversions long tail wise.

Mordy Oberstein:

I'm curious, on the conversion side, do you find that there's certain types of influencers who are better able to get certain types of conversions? Or in general, do different kind of assets convert better with influencer market? Like a sign up versus getting them to click to a blog? What works in terms of the conversion? Is there a difference between what your goal is? Are you trying to get a lead? Are you trying to get a click? What actually works for the conversion or what doesn't work? You're not going to get them obviously to influence a market and spend a million dollars right away, that ask wouldn't work. So what actually works to convert?

Nicole Ponce:

Right, that's a great question. It really depends on a lot of things obviously, because based on what we've tested, two things. Educational content, obviously because we're a platform and they're able to showcase the value of what they're going to be getting out of it helps a lot. Absolutely. So, educational content really helps. And if you're working with a thought leader that has been talking about this specific topic does help a lot because it just showcase like, hey, I want to be this person. I want to be at this educational value level, and if that means I need to benefit based off this tool that will help me get to that place, then potentially that will help. That's just the content aspect.

But in terms of what else helps, it really depends on where we launch the campaign, so on the platform wise, especially because we're a SaaS platform that it's easier for us to work on desktop. And most of the influencer marketing campaigns that we launch our own social platforms. So the way and the user experience, for example, if you see a campaign on TikTok and then they have to actually go on the landing page to trial, and then we see the balance, how they're going to have to use it on Semrush's desktop, it's going to be a little bit harder, of course, as it is opposed to potentially on LinkedIn. But LinkedIn's another whole other story we talked about because of the way that traffic works on there.

But yeah, it really depends, and this is why I believe in not just working with an influencer one time and then multiply working multiple content pieces for one specific campaign. And just so you can see the retention of the audience actually going from mobile to desktop. But yeah, it's things that you don't think about, but especially when you're working in SaaS and if you're working with an audience in social media, in order to see the trials come in.

Crystal Carter:

I think also, one of the things that from my experience of working with Semrush is that you very much take an approach of... I did a course, go check it out in the Semrush Academy on Mobile SEO. And like I was in the platform and I use Semrush regularly and if you are a Wix user and you're listening to this podcast or Wix studio user, then you can also use Semrush because it's built into your CMS, by the way. And basically, as part of it, I was like, well, I need to make sure I've got the latest thing. And so I upgraded, I had an upgrade during the time I was doing the course and so I could do extra stuff on top of that. And the thing that happens with that, when you have somebody who is speaking at conferences regularly, who's writing content regularly, who's doing content regularly, is that because we have the relationship that we are using the product and we're showcasing the product in those spaces with professionals, just again, an organic way.

Mordy writes for Semrush regularly and does reports and uses Semrush data very often and has had a couple of things that are both on Semrush and on other platforms as well, where they're talking about things that are happening with Google updates and things that are happening with different keywords and how they're performing and things like that. And that is an ongoing visibility that comes from people using the platform genuinely in a genuine way. How do you identify someone who might have that kind of relationship with your product? And are those particularly valuable for the sort of exercise of working with an influencer?

Nicole Ponce:

The way that we actually look for potential influencers is, I do a lot of deep dive, and even though I don't post myself, which that's my bad on me, but I'm always everywhere, in the sense of conversations, what's happening, who's talking, what are they talking about? And that's how we recruit new influencers as well. There's a lot of people that they talk about Semrush as just an educational content piece, and I'm like, oh, I'm going to jump in your DMs and ask like, yeah, absolutely. And this is how the relationship starts. And I just, even sometimes people that talk about other competitors and Semrush and I just drop a conversation and say, "What are you lacking that we could potentially maybe have and you don't know about this?" So giving also educational value in terms of conversational wise directly and DMs, doesn't have to be in public, but privately. And also, yeah, being in the search that if your actual customers and users are your number one criteria of influencers, absolutely, they're going to be your advocates forever.

And if you potentially help them in the sense of, hey, we have a new update and we can help you get first access and actually get your feedback. I love, love, love, and sometimes I feel like influencers feel bad and they're like, "Hey, sorry to bother you, but this is not working. This doesn't make any sense. You're making my job harder." I love when I get those messages because I'm like, thank you. You're taking time out of your day to make sure that I go back to our developers, make sure that I make your life easier, because if I make your life easier with our product and you're going to talk about your audience and you're also going to have a better relationship with us in sense, wow, they actually listen to me actually speaking out other the feedback and it just goes on. Yeah, exactly.

Mordy Oberstein:

I literally sent something in yesterday to Anna on the data team, like, "Hey, can we do this in Semrush? They're like, "No, and it might be really good if we could because it be super awesome, super helpful. So there you go. Literally having yesterday.

Nicole Ponce:

Exactly. I love that.

Crystal Carter:

I think that comes to something, and we had the SEO board, the Wix SEO board, and we've seen this, and that was lots of people who have influence in the community because that's the other thing. We say influencers, but these are people that have influence in the community and they have influence for a reason. And essentially, if you build a good relationship, then as you're saying, people can help you make do what you do better. So even if you were a restaurant owner and you had some local influencers, they might be like, "Oh my god, there's no place to take a selfie in this restaurant." And the restaurant owner might be like, "Oh, you're right. I should put some plants, fix the lighting, sort myself out," and then that's better for the business overall. So what you're saying is great, that you have a good relationship with people where they can help you make it better for everyone. That's amazing.

Nicole Ponce:

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that's our job in the end.

Mordy Oberstein:

Speaking of making lives better, if people wanted to connect with you and make their lives better by interacting with you on social media, where could they find you?

Nicole Ponce:

Ah, thank you. Well, best place I would say is LinkedIn. I'm under Nicole C. Ponce. And yeah, I think that's where I'm most active.

Mordy Oberstein:

All right. Oh, we'll link in the show notes. Nicole, thanks so much for coming on. It was really, really fun to chat with you about this.

Nicole Ponce:

Thank you both for having me, and it's such a pleasure to always chat with you both.

Mordy Oberstein:

See you out there on social. Again, thank you so much, Nicole, for coming on. Make sure to give her a big follow on social media.

No one is more transparent about their influencing marketing tactics than our own Head of Partnerships and Influencer marketing, Sarah Adam. Just have a look at her LinkedIn profile, it's downright epic, which is why we thought we'd talk to Sarah and pick her brain as we travel across the Wix-verse.

Speaker 5:

Three, two, one, ignition lift off. Lift off.

Mordy Oberstein:

Welcome to the show, Sarah. How are you?

Sarah Adam:

I'm great. I'm so excited to be here.

Crystal Carter:

We are so excited to have you. We were doing a piece on influencer marketing and I was like, we have to talk to Sarah because you've become an influencer marketing influencer.

Mordy Oberstein:

That's so TV inside of TV…

Sarah Adam:

It's very meta.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah.

Sarah Adam:

It is. Yeah, cool. So what are we talking about?

Mordy Oberstein:

Well, we're talking about, first of all, how did that happen? We're talking about, first we're talking... This is free association where you kind of just go.

Sarah Adam:

Yeah, okay.

Mordy Oberstein:

How did that happen?

Sarah Adam:

What, me becoming an influencer of influencers?

Mordy Oberstein:

This influencer for the influencers.

Sarah Adam:

I don't know, somewhere in, actually, no, I do remember now that you asked me. It was January of 2024 and I was sitting on my couch, it was a Friday night, everyone was asleep. And I was going through my LinkedIn feed, refusing to go to bed, and it must have been like midnight. And my LinkedIn feed was full of posts of empty AI new year resolution posts.

Crystal Carter:

Oh, yeah, oh, yeah.

Sarah Adam:

It just me off and I was like, you know what? I've had it. LinkedIn on one hand has the best audience as far as I'm concerned, if you're in the professional working world. But on the other hand, the content is just so boring, so low. And I thought, you know what? People post about, people are busy telling other people what to do on LinkedIn. You should do this, you should do that, but they don't share what they do. And it could be that what they're talking about is real and it's not from ChatGPT and it's something that's based on a real thing that happened to them and these are their lessons learned, which is cool. But sometimes it's just missing that personal story, that real thing, what actually happened to you. And I always felt that's really missing.

So I thought, you know what? I'm going to try and I'm going to post and I'm going to see how it goes. And every post I'm going to give something real, something that people can actually say, "Oh, wow, can relate to, can give credibility to the lessons learned, etc." So then instead of writing a New Year's resolution, I kind of summarized the 2023 and I said, "With numbers data, this is what I did in terms of influencer marketing. These are the numbers of influencers we worked with. We plan to scale in 2024 to X number," I can't even remember now what I wrote. And then I did have lessons, my top lessons learned from that year. And I just pressed publish and I went to bed, which is bad practice. You need to hang around, but I didn't.

And then I remember waking up and I saw I had 20 new followers and I was like, oh, this is cool. So then I decided, okay, I'm going to take two weeks and I'm going to dedicate these next two weeks to posting, and after two weeks I'll decide if it's something I want to keep going at and I enjoyed it. So here I am, almost a year later, and I have, yeah, so it's been fun.

Crystal Carter:

And I think that, so it's one of the reasons why we were so excited to have you on this for the Across the Wix-verse first thing is because we know inside and out. We see the work that you're doing, we know you, we read your feed as well. And what's great-

Mordy Oberstein:

We're on the same team for a month.

Crystal Carter:

Yeah, right?

Sarah Adam:

Back in the day.

Crystal Carter:

What I think is crazy is I'm in a group chat and I remember seeing one of your, somebody shared one of your posts in the group chat. They were like, "Oh, is Wix doing all of this?" And I was like, yeah, Sarah, that's right. Okay. But I think that what I think is really great about the information that you share is you share money. You're like, first deal, I'm looking at one post from a month ago, first deal, 300 or $3,500 for three Instagram reels over one month. Second deal, $20,000, 20 reels over six months, that sort of thing. You're sharing money, you're sharing. You have a great one about LinkedIn versus TikTok. I'd love to hear what you can say about that. So in LinkedIn versus TikTok, you're saying that LinkedIn and TikTok had similar but TikTok had higher views, LinkedIn had higher engagement, things like that. How are you finding TikTok as a channel for B2B influencers?

Sarah Adam:

So that's exactly why I wrote the post, because I speak to many marketeers that are either already doing B2B influencer marketing or considering it for 2025, and TikTok usually does not come up in conversation. And I always kind of feel a need to prove those people wrong. And I also used to think that back in the day when we just started, I thought, it's not B2B, but it is. I mean, I don't know, I use TikTok. I don't know if, do you guys? Are you on TikTok?

Crystal Carter:

Yes, I TikTok.

Mordy Oberstein:

I just got on Instagram, give me some time.

Sarah Adam:

Okay, so you'll get there too. So many people I know that are B2B use it. And the truth is, and that's what I say to people who are skeptical, I say, "Just go on TikTok and search for the keywords within your niche. Search for your competitors, search for your brand name, and you'll see you're going to get results. You need to be there too." So that's why that specific post was to compare between LinkedIn, which is obviously B2B, to TikTok, which people think is not. And to just show that I kind of think in a way that they complete each other because we are seeing... I mean, and that was just analyzing, I think it was based on a specific month, I can't even remember. But we see the volume in TikTok, which is very valuable, and we see the engagement on LinkedIn, which is very valuable, so.

Crystal Carter:

Just for people who are curious about this. The stats on it were that they did in September 16% of their B2B influencer posts were on TikTok, 16% were on LinkedIn. Number of views was 960% higher on TikTok, but engagement rates were 20% higher on LinkedIn. Number of comments were 200% higher on LinkedIn. And the sentiment analysis, 55% positive on TikTok versus 80% positive on LinkedIn. And Mordy, I know you've got a question, so I'll let you jump in.

Mordy Oberstein:

No, I was just going to ask by the great stats, do you find that the overlap between or the unification of LinkedIn and TikTok has to do with the fact that I think that there's a move towards emotive branding B2B? Like what used to be so awkward to do B2B is now kind of okay, right?

Sarah Adam:

I think that-

Mordy Oberstein:

If people are not familiar with this, really, really quick. A lot of brands are going very emotive marketing, very emotive branding, B2B, and it's resonating. Okay, now that you've gotten the context, that was the reason why I asked the question.

Sarah Adam:

Yeah, no, I think it's particularly true with LinkedIn introducing their video feed this year. I think more and more, I mean, I see it among us also internally and with the influencers we're working with. More and more tendency to upload videos to LinkedIn that they wouldn't beforehand. So I can give example, if we are working with an influencer on Instagram and TikTok and I see that they have a LinkedIn and they have a decent following, it doesn't even have to be huge. Like 2,000 followers is enough, really. So we'll often pay them to reshare that same video on LinkedIn and kind of see how that performs. So I think so, yeah.

Mordy Oberstein:

I have 15,000. You can pay me, I'll repost your stuff.

Crystal Carter:

I think also, I think that there's, in terms of TikTok LinkedIn, TikTok is having a big influence on LinkedIn because LinkedIn has started putting videos really very much in the form of their algorithm, certainly on mobile. They've got a whole video feed that's very, very prominent and so I think that that's helping as well. One of the things, you talked about follower numbers, and you very often share in your information, the number of followers people have and rates and fees. People talk about micro-influencers and macro-influencers. Do you find that there's actually a difference when you're working with influencers for Wix Studio?

Sarah Adam:

Yeah. Yeah, huge difference. So we actually work with nano-influencers, which is smaller than micro, and micro-influencers. So our influencers can be anywhere between 2K followers to 500K. The thing is, is that followers is not that important. What really matters is the engagement that they're getting, the impressions that they're getting on their content.

It's like just the other day I had a call with someone from a FinTech company, someone who works with a friend of mine, and they shared with me a list of people they think are relevant influencers, because they wanted my opinion. And these influencers were all the same. They had a very big following, but when you actually dive into their content, they're not getting any likes or any comments, nothing. So you're not going to pay some... That's just a very bad business decision, you're not going to work with someone like that.

And then on the other hand, and I often see this, especially on LinkedIn and on platforms like Instagram and TikTok, where you have, let's say you're watching, you've come across a video that's gone viral, and then you're curious to see who the creator is, and you go into their profile to find that they hardly have any following. It doesn't mean following is important. It's some sort of indication that does show that people over time see value in following that individual, which is obviously based on the content that they have produced, but it doesn't mean that they're suitable for your campaign right now.

Crystal Carter:

Right, right. It's the same with like SEO things. People are like, yeah, we're going to get lots of traffic. It's like, yeah, but is it the right traffic? If you posted a blog that said free chocolate bars-

Mordy Oberstein:

Where?

Crystal Carter:

... for everybody and you sell, I don't know, watches. You might get a lot of traffic but that's not the right traffic. So just because somebody has a big falling doesn't necessarily mean that they're right for you.

Mordy Oberstein:

Where are the free chocolate bars? I'm so confused.

Sarah Adam:

You lost him on chocolate.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah, and free.

Sarah Adam:

He's not listening anymore.

Crystal Carter:

I think the other question is, so what about conversions and what about those sorts of things? So when you do an influencer campaign, how do you make sure that it gets tied to some of your business deliverables and things like that? How do you connect those?

Sarah Adam:

So this is a very interesting and hot topic, right? Because, so we see for us, influencer marketing is for sure and always has been, and I don't see it changing, is a brand awareness play. So we're not measuring conversions, which I know is uncomfortable for people to hear, but it's, that's what it is.

Mordy Oberstein:

Amazing, right? I've talked about, because we do the same thing on our side, but we're all about the brand and less about the conversion. People looking at me like I'm nuts.

Sarah Adam:

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, especially smaller companies with smaller budgets, they don't like that, but it's true. That's what's so beautiful about working with influencers is their impact in terms of brand awareness. So we measure each and every asset that goes live. We measure that success in comparison to the same influencers' previous content, to content from other influencers, maybe from the same campaign. So we get some sort of idea. We're able to look at a piece of content and say, "Did it serve the goal or not? Did it meet the KPIs that we set or not?" And also if it did, and if the influencer was professional and fun to work with, then that's the reason to work with them again.

But then we also look at results at a much higher level where it's another, what we do, what my team does, the content that goes live, how it performs is another kind of piece of a bigger puzzle for brand awareness where we check things like search. We want to see that month over month, more and more people are searching for Wix Studio. So scaling influencers is aligned with the other very many brand awareness activities that we do. So it's very difficult. It's impossible even to just select one piece of content and say, "Hey, did this work or not?" It depends. It depends what you're measuring and etc, etc. So, it's interesting.

Mordy Oberstein:

It's such a good point because influencer marketing, to me, partnerships of which influencer marketing is a type of, to me it's all about generating cadence, momentum, and it's a way of distributing yourself. It's a way of getting yourself out there to new people in new ways and leveraging all of that to get a certain kind of cadence and inertia or momentum. So looking at it from a conversion point of view, to me, looks at influencer marketing as not really what it's really all about, which is, you expanding out of your own self to create new possibilities based on the momentum that you didn't have before.

Sarah Adam:

Yeah, although there are, there are many companies that use it for conversion, and they're not measuring. They're just measuring the sales they get from those specific things.

Mordy Oberstein:

There's also a lot of people who watch cricket, so.

Sarah Adam:

Exactly.

Crystal Carter:

Cricket's a great game, though. Cricket's a great game.

Mordy Oberstein:

Of course you could hit the ball though. The bat's flat. If I had a flat bat, I could hit anything too.

Crystal Carter:

Cricket's an amazing game. It goes on for three weeks. You can be like, I'm sorry, I'm busy for three weeks because you're playing cricket. And also, they have a-

Mordy Oberstein:

And with that, our audience has gone cricket, cricket.

Crystal Carter:

Okay, so my question to you, Sarah, is if you were say, managing cricket brand and you were looking for an influencer for your cricket brand or your cricket team and you were going to knock it for six with a new influencer, what are the signs that it's a good influencer for your project? You open up their page and you're like, no, or okay, what do you look for?

Sarah Adam:

So I always look for, it's naturally in the order of the page almost of the profile. The first thing I look at is the bio, the title, the bio. What's this person's profession? What do they do? Have they played cricket before? Do they cricket? Is it cricket coach, train? I don't know what the right terminology is. Do maybe they somehow specialize in the world of cricket? Maybe they're like a cricket therapist. So that's the first thing, and that's like a deal breaker or maker if it's someone who's not in cricket, so I'm just going to move on to the next person because if they are, then okay, chances are their content is as well, which could also not be... it maybe you'll have a great potential influencer that looks great, but their content is about their personal life or about politics. We don't want that.

So we want to see that the actual content is consistent and relevant and of decent quality. It doesn't have to be... We all know what TikTok and Instagram looks like these days. It doesn't have to be something high quality. It has to be good enough. And the most important thing, which is a deal breaker or maker are the, how is that content performing until today? Not even until today, just to look at their last, say, five, eight posts. What's the engagement like? What are the views like? And the most critical thing for me is the bio and the performance. If those two match, then that's enough to reach out.

Mordy Oberstein:

So if people want to reach out to you and they're not just on LinkedIn, where else besides LinkedIn, might they find you, if anywhere?

Sarah Adam:

Yeah, I'm only on LinkedIn.

Mordy Oberstein:

Oh, wow, wow.

Crystal Carter:

You said you were on TikTok. You've got an account somewhere.

Sarah Adam:

So I tried. I tried TikTok, and there's too much maintenance. I couldn't take it, it was stressing me out.

Mordy Oberstein:

That's how I feel about my kids. Tried that, it's too much maintenance.

Crystal Carter:

See that candor, that is what we come to appreciate about Sarah Adam content. That's what we like. Real talk.

Mordy Oberstein:

Follow and connect or just follow, whatever Sarah wants, on LinkedIn.

Sarah Adam:

Yes, I'll be waiting.

Mordy Oberstein:

Thanks so much and see you there.

Speaker 5:

Three, two, one, ignition. Lift off. Life off.

Mordy Oberstein:

Again, thanks so much, Sarah, and make sure to give her a big follow on social media to be influenced by all of her marketing. You know who's really influential in my life.

Crystal Carter:

Who's that?

Mordy Oberstein:

Barry, legitimately. Barry has been very influential in my life.

Crystal Carter:

Aw.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah. No, I didn't mean in a good way. No, I'm kidding. Barry has actually helped my life tremendously. He helps me each and every day with his coverage of the SEO news, which means it's time.  Very valuable and very concise, which is why we're moving into this week's Snappy News.

Snappy News, Snappy News. Snappy News. So the November 2024 core update is over and now, and now there's a December 2024 core update. Okay, so from Barry Schwartz over at SE Roundtable, December, Google, December 2024 core update is live. What we're seeing, what we're seeing is madness. That's what we're seeing. So Google, this is on December 13th, Barry is writing an SE Roundtable. Google announced the 2024 core update. They said it'll take two weeks. And then they wrote, "If you're wondering why there's a core update this month after one last month, but technically still this month because November one ended in December. We have different core systems. We're always improving. This past blog post explains more." Well, that clarifies everything. I have no more questions. I have a lot of questions.

People in the industry, Barry covers it in his article. We're not exactly happy. He covers the charts showing the increase in ring volatility. Greg Finn from It's New, which used to do Monday through Thursday to get the SEO news and we'll talk a lot about that this week, has a whole segment on his podcast Marketing O’Clock, going through Barry's charts that I found very insightful. Anywho, there's been a lot of chatter. I mean, Willie Ray, SEO, great SEO legend, wrote WTAF. That kind of sums it up for me. It's interesting.

Okay, so part of this, Google announces they had some kind of meetup in Zurich and Danny Sullivan came on the screen and they announced this as something's kind of big moment. I don't know, it's not a big moment, it's kind of confusing moment. And they said expect more core updates this year. Something I would've liked to known yesterday. My issue with this is, okay, if there's going to be more updates, it's very confusing to now go through and analyze and see what was impacted and when it was impacted. Sidebar, Barry covered on searchengineland.com, what the data providers said about the November 2024 core update, one of which of those providers was Semrush, and the person who handled the Semrush data for Semrush was me.

So I sent Barry the data and Semrush, and I said to Barry, I think he quotes it in the article that also linked to it in the show notes. "It's very confusing to try to analyze these updates because forget two core updates. The baseline period where you're trying to compare what happened during the update to a normal period of rank volatility, normal doesn't exist anymore. It's all bonkers and high. So how do you compare?" All right, there it is. I wrote, "As with the August 20 24 core update, this update saw an extensive period of high levels of rank volatility proceeded. This makes analyzing the update relative to its proceeding baseline period almost impossible, Mordy Oberstein told us." And Mordy Oberstein is telling you now the same thing. There are a bunch of charts in there also. You have a look at it, but now it's even more confusing because now you have a second core update all on top of this.

I think this first off, it's really bad timing because you had a core update go over Black Friday, Cyber Monday. Now you're having one going over the holiday shopping season itself. Over the holidays probably, itself. It's going to make it to understand what exactly happened to who and when and where, which was the culprit, which may or may not makes such a practical difference, I guess, very difficult. And the optics are just really bad. And I usually don't put my thumb on the scale on this podcast this way, but if you knew there's going to be more updates coming, I think the better way to have communicated would've been before the November update saying, "Hey-o, listen up," it's my inner big man, "Hey-o, listen up, everybody. We're going to have a whole bunch of updates. So yes, the November one's rolling out, but don't be surprised if there's more to follow this." That's kind of getting ahead of the narrative. I feel Google sometimes loses the narrative because they don't get ahead of the narrative and narratives are important. Narratives are important, and on that, I'm going to end the news.

If you're looking for more commentary on this, have a look back by the time this episode comes out, and what we covered on It's New, over on the Wix Studio SEO Learning Hub, or on the RustyBrick YouTube channel, probably on Monday the 16th, because I'm recording this on Sunday the 15th. We are definitely going to cover this then. I can't imagine is not covering it, and there'll probably be some interesting takes from myself, Greg Finn, Barry Schwartz himself, and Chris LaCarter. So until that time, this is the Snappy News.

You know what's funny? On SMX, one of the recent SMXs, Barry wasn't on the banner. I'm like, dude's got 100 and gazillion followers, put him on the banner. So I fixed it, I added it in into like, here's Search Engine Land. I fixed it, here's Barry on the banner.

Crystal Carter:

Nice, nice. Totally.

Mordy Oberstein:

Barry, everyone just forgets about Barry. How do you forget about Barry?

Crystal Carter:

People shouldn't forget about Barry. Barry's like, you know he's that dude.

Mordy Oberstein:

No. No one puts Barry in a corner.

Crystal Carter:

He does have a corner office though. He kind of, he prefers it.

Mordy Oberstein:

He does. His whole setup is very corner-y looking. Yeah.

Crystal Carter:

Yeah, I think so.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah, if you want to take a look at it and take a look at It's New every day, you can see Barry's corner-y set up.

Crystal Carter:

Right and his collection of button down shirts as well.

Mordy Oberstein:

Is it a collection or is it one he watches every day?

Crystal Carter:

I don't know. I've never seen him wear a T-shirt, let's just put it that way.

Mordy Oberstein:

I wonder if he sleeps in them.

Crystal Carter:

I don't know.

Mordy Oberstein:

Now we're getting too far down the rabbit hole of Barry. What we should be doing is going down the rabbit hole of who you should be following this week, and your follow of the week is Mary-Anne Da'Marzo, who runs Firebelly Media and has a massive TikTok Instagram account. You should absolutely follow for some great information. On SEO marketing in general, tons of stuff. We've worked with her before with the Wix team a bunch of times. She's really, really, really, really a great follow.

Crystal Carter:

She's a great follow. She's really, really active and she has some great grasp on her audience and what her audience needs from her, and she's really, really good at connecting with them. And I think that that's something that shouldn't be underestimated when you're thinking about working with influencers, is whether or not they have a good understanding of their audience and a really strong respect for their audience, which I think she absolutely does.

Mordy Oberstein:

She did a cool thing, I think she wrote about or posted about and wrote about it, you don't write anything on Instagram, really. She deleted her LinkedIn account and made a new one because her audience, for that reason, I think she felt her audience on LinkedIn and wasn't aligned. She wanted to redo it and restart from scratch. Super interesting.

Crystal Carter:

Wow.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah, have a look at it. It's somewhere either on TikTok or Instagram or maybe even on LinkedIn if she talks about it. So we'll link to her profiles in the show notes, so you can go check it out.

Crystal Carter:

Yeah.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah. I'm really feeling influenced. I'm under the influence.

Crystal Carter:

Don't drive anywhere, please. Find a designated driver or server or whatever. Whatever you need to do for your things.

Mordy Oberstein:

I need to write a bunch of emails.

Crystal Carter:

Yes. Don't write emails under the influence.

Mordy Oberstein:

My social media posts.

Crystal Carter:

And certainly don't call any of your exes under the influence, that's not a good idea either.

Mordy Oberstein:

I don't think, I know I do not have any. I've been married for 17 years. I don't have exes anymore.

Crystal Carter:

What happened to them?

Mordy Oberstein:

I don't know. Maybe they deleted their LinkedIn accounts. Who knows? I remember one time years ago on Facebook, one popped up trying to friend me, I'm like, nope.

Crystal Carter:

That's healthy. That's also good life advice. Can we just say that?

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah. What? Are you serious? Why? Nope.

Crystal Carter:

Yeah, that's good life advice. Just let it go.

Mordy Oberstein:

Well, if you want more life advice, tune in for next week SERP'S Up podcast, because are you going to miss us? Not to worry, we're back next week with a new episode as we dive into, can you ever have too much SEO data and/or marketing data? The answer is, yes, I think. Anyway, we'll talk about it next week. Look for wherever you consume your podcasts or on the Wix Studio SEO Learning Hub over at wix.com/SEO/learn. To get a little more about SEO, check out all the great content and webinars on the Wix Studio SEO Learning Hub at, you guess it, wix.com/SEO/learn. Don't forget to give us a review on iTunes or a rating on Spotify. Until next time, peace, love, and SEO.