Week 11: Marketing with Twitter, LinkedIn, Social Influencers

Jon Golding 

  I might be wrong but twitter sort of has the feel of myspace in decline.  I have been studying other tutorials on marketing and they rarely use twitter to market.  Most of the fuss in marketing tutorials are about how to place yourself in google searches, using influencers or youtube channels, and facebook ads among other methods like posting on multiple sales platforms without having an audience.  Not only that there is a whole lot of politics and issues within twitter I would rather avoid it altogether.  

 I have a LinkedIn account yet it is irrelevant to the Niyama Gear brand. I could use it to recruit however at the time I am not hiring.  It is useful for professions like investment bankers, people that work in office environments., or other formal matters.  Usually the crowd in LinkedIn is lost in procedures that are totally off from my process.  I guess perhaps I could use it to contact DEF JAM records however I am not running a show where I need headliners at the moment (probably would have better communication calling the label). It could be more relevant to a yoga school's business page. 

  Social influencers are critical in creating trends, before this term even existed you could see how for example professional skateboarders sparked a musical trend. The first time I heard Wu tang Clan rap group was through a Kareem Campbell skate video. Then Wu tang blew up.  Also skateboarders started wearing the baggy pants in the 90s, then the rappers followed then the raver kids took the pants to the extreme bagginess, so skaters counteracted with extra tight pants and now a kids try to emulate the 90s again with the baggy skate pants (rendering a wierd new baggy cut).  Now you have the baggy pants with hunting beany clones all over the world.   

  My first sponsor for skateboarding was Emerald City Pro Shop, and the manager was our friend but he told us:  "You guys are on the team not because we are cool guys, you are on the team because it is a business and it makes good publicity".    A good thing for my business would be to have professional athletes wear the brand as well as online yoga instructors.  I could in theory sponsor Yogis to wear the brand and look for influential athletes who practice yoga that could wear the brand to expose it in media.  

 This type of thing could be challenging to count math on results, it does not always work to have and ad posted on a YouTube influencers page: I saw on a tutorial how they spent $500 on an add in a YouTube  page and got 0 sales from the ad. The long shot for a yoga clothing brand would be to create a channel about wellness through yoga, diet, etc.  I do have a YouTube channel with 3 videos on it that are total exercises on using the platform and have nothing to to with the Niyama brand.  The yoga channel is about a years work of posting media and promoting the channel it is another biz plan to be developed in congruence with a clothing brand.  I have friends who have "influencing " deals on YouTube but it is like the one person I reached out to do an ad on the page is playing hard to catch now. (he is not very good at monetizing his channel I guess since he also claims he is broke with no money).   If I contact an agency with a top influencer that gets 500k view within an hour of posting a video they charge 50 grand for an ad that lasts one day.  I'd have to negotiate with agency how much for them to wear the clothes in a video.