10 Community Management Tips Learned MINI Cooper Road Rallying
As with most skills, we learn by doing. This has been especially true for me when upping my community management game. I’ve been managing an online community—the Forward Network—for nearly 10 years. But, all the community management tips I really ever needed to know I learned road rallying across the US with 4,000+ MINI Cooper…
Read More10 Business Leadership Lessons Learned From Love and Marriage
Today is my 21st wedding anniversary, which is odd since I’m still 29 years old (#IWish). Twenty-one years in a relationship is a long time to create memories, take advantage of opportunities, and learn from the ups and downs. As I reflect on these past few years (21 “few” years to be exact), I find…
Read More5 Ways to Guarantee ROI on Back-to-School Campaigns
Nothing shouts “Hello, first day of summer!” in the influencer marketing world like feeling behind the eight ball on planning back-to-school campaigns. Yet all the creativity in the world won’t improve your company’s bottom line if you don’t take a results-oriented approach to your campaigns. So how can you craft sure-to-go viral activations that guarantee…
Read MoreHow Many Exclamation Points Are Too Many?
I overheard two women talking about exclamation points recently. The one said to the other, “If I receive email outreach that includes an exclamation point, I immediately hit delete.” The other woman agreed and said, “Right? Aren’t they annoying and unprofessional?” I cringed, thinking how most of my email outreach included salutations like, “Hi, Sally!…
Read MoreCommunity Management 201: How to Build a Successful Community
Community management 101 focuses on building a solid community management foundation. It includes tasks like setting community management goals; determining your strategy; and identifying resources, roles and responsibilities, and a hiring process. Additionally, it spells out tasks like deciding on connection guidelines, creating an editorial calendar, and setting up a metrics system. Most importantly, it…
Read MoreCommunity Management 101: How to Create a Solid Foundation
Social media makes connecting with customers, fans, activists, or a network of like-minded individuals easier than ever. For example, raise your hand if you belong to at least one Facebook Group. My neighborhood alone has five groups for various niches. You could say we’re tight. However, thriving online and offline communities don’t just happen overnight.…
Read More8 Ways In-Person Brand-Sponsored Events Drive Results [Brand Highlight]
Looking for ways to get your brand’s product in the hands of just the right target audience? At the same time, do you want to both amplify online buzz while driving sharing of evergreen content? And, do all of the above via credible, authentic testimonials while building super fans? Easy peasy, right? It actually can…
Read MoreFirst-Ever Influencer Marketing Trade Organization Forms [Announcement]
FORWARD continues to be an Influencer Marketing industry leader. Today, we announced the first-ever Influencer Marketing trade organization. Alongside leadership from other pioneering influencer marketing agencies (see our leadership team), the Influencer Marketing Association aims to act as the voice of the industry, providing counsel around influencer marketing trends, measurement standards, transparency guidelines, and best…
Read More6 Benefits of Talking Metrics Before Tactics
Have you ever been tempted to jump ahead and brainstorm Influencer Marketing campaign activation ideas before tackling the upfront planning steps? If you have, who could blame you? Talking tactics is a much sexier albeit distracting first step than getting on the same page about goals, budget, and metrics. Am I right? But, what sets…
Read MoreHow to Avoid Fake Followers: Top 10 Tips for Vetting Influencers
In a January New York Times article entitled “The Follower Factory,” it stated: “Celebrities, athletes, pundits and politicians have millions of fake followers.” Since that time, popular news outlets like Elle, Forbes, Mashable, Newsweek, The Atlantic, as well as influencer marketing powerhouses like CLEVER and Sway Group, have jumped on the “fake” followers hot topic…
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