Influence and immersion key to social media success

A social media entrepreneur who has used influencer marketing to build his business as he promotes his clients is to share his secrets in Birmingham today.
Steve Bartlett co-founded Social Chain in 2014 and claims to have turned the traditional marketing model on its head and is engaging with millennials so effectively that they can get any topic trending online in under 17 minutes.
“We were drawn to the idea of influencer marketing when we began to see the rise of a new type of celebrity,” he said. “YouTubers and Instagram influencers are able to accumulate a greater engagement in comparison to mainstream celebrities. There was a great opportunity for us to tap into their loyal following online in order to promote our clients.”
But he warned that marketers have “enjoyed a period of grace” as they have been able to claim “record-breaking engagement, without really querying their impact”.
He said: “To base social media success solely on engagement figures alone would be to miss the point entirely. In essence, it doesn’t matter even if you manage to go viral with a ground-breaking meme.
“When talking about real, quantifiable results, at Social Chain we prefer to shift the focus away from engagement and toward other performance metrics that make a real difference.”
Part of that is achieved by creating a business culture that keeps close to changing trends, he said.
“To not get completely overwhelmed by how fast paced the industry moves, it is essential to become completely immersed in it,” said Bartlett. “As an agency we have an in-house group called ever-changing landscape where anyone can post news and interesting articles about the industry, this helps us all stay at the cutting-edge of what is going on and eventually this fast-paced way of thinking just becomes ingrained.”
Bartlett is speaking at the Growing Your Own Business Conference, which is part of The National Franchise Exhibition, at Birmingham’s NEC.

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