B2B Influencer Marketing From The Influencer’s POV w/ Goldie Chan

Reading Time: 23 minutes

How would you like the low-down on what a B2B influencer is really looking for when they work with brands?

Wouldn’t it be nice to know what might make an influencer truly excited to partner with you?

All too often, brands approach influencers assuming that they only care about money#, or that the prestige of working with the brand will suffice. And while those things can be important, they’re not the sum of what it means to be an influencer and partner with brands.

What else is important? What is a B2B influencer actually looking for?

That’s what we’re covering in today’s episode of Partnership Unpacked.

Welcome back to Partnership Unpacked, where I selfishly use this time to pick the brains of experts at strategic partnerships, channel programs, affiliates, influencer marketing, and relationship building… oh, and you get to learn too! Subscribe to learn how you can amplify your growth strategy – with a solid takeaway every episode from partnership experts in the industry.

I’m Mike Allton and today we’re going to turn the tables on you in the first of a series of episodes where I’m talking, not to another brand or partnership expert, but rather to someone who is actually in the trenches, doing the work, and might be the kind of person you want to target with your brand’s partnership program.

Look, it’s one thing to take a course or read a book on B2B influencer marketing, it’s something else entirely to actually apply that framework to your own brand and the influencers you’re trying to work with. Coming up with an approach for outreach and marketing campaigns that gets an influencer’s attention and interest is a challenge.

And listen, I get it. I’ve been on both sides of the equation and have seen some of the attempts other brands have made to get me to work with them.

I bet any brand would love the 411 on what influencers really think about their pitches and campaign ideas.

That’s exactly what our guest today, my great friend Goldie Chan, is going to talk to us about.

Goldie has been working directly with B2B brands for years and is a global speaker, strategist, author and advisor. She’s known as the “Oprah of LinkedIn” by Huffington Post and her video channel won LinkedIn Top Voice.

I knew her incredible experience working with brands, and her tremendous business savvy, would make her the perfect influencer’s voice to bring to the show.

Partnership Unpacked host Mike Allton talked to Goldie Chan about:

♉️ The best, and worst, influencer marketing campaigns

♉️ How brands should structure influencer marketing programs

♉️ Why and how brands can empower B2B influencers

Learn more about Goldie Chan

Resources & Brands mentioned in this episode

Full Notes & Transcript:

[00:00:00] Mike Allton: Hey, listen, I’ve got some secrets for you. How would you like the low down on what a B2B influencer is really looking for when they work with brands? Wouldn’t it be nice to know what might make a B2B influencer truly excited to partner with you? All too often brands approach influencers assuming that they only care about money or that the prestige of working with their brand will suffice.

And while those things can be important, they’re not the sum of what it means to be an influencer and partner with brands. What else is important? What is a B2B influencer actually looking for? That’s what we’re uncovering in today’s episode of Partnership Unpacked.

This is partnership unpacked your go-to guide to growing your business through partnerships quickly. I’m your host, Mike. Each episode unpacks the winning strategies and latest trends from influencer marketing to brand partnerships and ideas that you can apply your own business to grow exponentially.

And now the rest of today’s episode, welcome back to Partnership Unpacked. Why? Selfishly used this time to pick the brains of experts as strategic partnerships, channel programs, affiliates, influencer marketing and relationship building. Owen, you get to learn too. Subscribe to learn how you can amplify your growth strategy with a solid takeaway.

Every episode from partnership experts. In the industry, I’m Mike Allton, and today we’re gonna turn the tables on you in the first of a series of episodes where I’m talking not to another brand or a partnership expert, but rather to someone who’s actually in the trenches doing the work and might be the kind of person you want to target with your brands.

Partnership program. Look, it’s one thing to take a course or read a book on influencer marketing. It’s something else entirely to actually apply that framework to your own brand and the influencers you are trying to work with. Coming up with an approach for outreach and marketing campaigns that gets an influencer’s attention and interest is a challenge.

And listen, I get it. I’ve been on both sides of the equation and have seen some of the attempts other brands have made to get me to work with them. I bet any brand would love the four 11 on what influencers really think about their pitches and campaign ideas. And that’s exactly what our guest today, my great friend Goldie Chan is gonna talk to us about.

Goldie’s been working directly with B2B brands for years, and as a global speaker strategist, author, and advisor. She’s known as the Oprah of LinkedIn by Huffington Post and her video channel. When LinkedIn, top Voice and I. Her incredible experience working with brands and her tremendous business savvy would make her the perfect influencer’s voice to bring to the show.

Hey, Goldie, welcome to the show.

[00:02:58] Goldie Chan: Hi, Mike. I’m so excited to be here and to talk about something that I completely agree is often misunderstood. [00:03:08] Mike Allton: Thank you. This is gonna be so much fun. And let’s start by. Talking about you cuz I’d like to know if there was a particular moment when you began to actually think about yourself as a B2B influencer.

Was there a particular moment when you began to think about yourself as a B2B influencer?

[00:03:20] Goldie Chan: I think that. My journey as an influencer and I’ve worked in both B2B and B2C as an influencer. That journey really started when brands started to approach me with what they thought would be a helpful. Thing to offer. So I think it’s great, Mike, that you mentioned early on that it’s not always money that motivates an influencer or ambassador to come work with your brand.

Sometimes it’s something really helpful for their career. One of the early brands I work with, I’m not going to name names here, , but you might be able to infer which brands I work with was a pretty famous coworking space and they offered me a global membership to use their space and they were incredibly supportive of me hosting meetups in their various spaces around the globe.

Now for me, this. So useful when I was already traveling to do a ton of speaking all over. So now I had dedicated spaces that I could use with support staff all around the world where I could host my meetups, I could meet with clients on the go, and that was an incredibly useful thing to get as a B2B ambassador or influencer for that particular brand.

[00:04:47] Mike Allton: That is so cool. I love that they were giving you something that you actually needed, and I know you mentioned that was one of your first mm-hmm. brands that you worked with. I’d love to know it, and particularly if you’re willing to share who, who was the very first brand that you worked with and how did you actually get that gig?

What was your first brand client as a B2B influencer, and how did you land that gig?

[00:05:03] Goldie Chan: So that was. Probably the very first brand that I ever worked with that, or, and I will shout out a brand that I, I have worked with a lot in the past, Adobe, so it was either the brand I just mentioned, , or it was Adobe and. One of the ways that Adobe reached out to me is they, they literally just found me based off my content on LinkedIn, and they reached out for their business ambassador program, their influencer side for their business, enterprise Cloud, and they said, Hey, why don’t you come to Adobe or a big Adobe conference and check it?

Learn some stuff and be part of this program and we can offer X, Y, Z. So they really found me and reached out based off my content. So they were saying, okay, so you talk about branding and marketing. That works great within the sphere of our ambassador program because we have other folks, , who work in branding and marketing and own their own agencies too.

[00:06:13] Mike Allton: definitely wanna underscore the point that you were creating content and that’s how you were discovered by that particular brand. They used that to gauge what you were talking about. They used that to determine brand fit, which is a topic I talk about quite a bit. Mm-hmm. , and they saw that there was alignment between what you were talking about and who you were talking to.

Right. And who they wanted to reach. What was that experience like working with Adobe?

[00:06:39] Goldie Chan: So I have to say Adobe is one of my favorite brands to work with. , uh, which I guess is a good thing to say if you work with them as an ambassador or a B2B influencer. And one of the reasons why I love working with brands like Adobe is because they offer support and they try to.

I guess perks, , they try to offer help in ways that are outside, once again of just monetary compensation. So they’ll make sure that say if I want to do more speaking, then I get to speak at one of their major conferences, or if I have a small business that I want to promote. So I worked also with another part of Adobe promoting small businesses in Los Angeles that I think are.

And they were incredibly supportive of that. And so I think really listening to what your ambassadors or what your influencers want to promote can be a great way to offer an extra added benefit. That, once again, is a. Hopefully above and beyond simply paying an influencer.

[00:07:48] Mike Allton: That is so cool, because what you’re talking about is a brand using their platform mm-hmm.

to help support the individual influencers. Right. It’s not about, you know, oh, send me another Yeti cup with your logo on it, , but that doesn’t get me excited, but, If, yeah, if I as an influencer, if I want to speak more.

[00:08:06] Goldie Chan: Well, Mike, I’ll say the first Yeti cup I got was very exciting. [00:08:14] Mike Allton: well, not a knock on Yeti cups, but that, you know, that isn’t the thing that you thought of. No. When you thought about, you know, what is it that I really enjoyed? What made me feel like I belonged to that brand? Right. So is that a good way of saying it? [00:08:28] Goldie Chan: Absolutely. I feel like when you are also on the influencer side of things, and I will keep saying influencer slash ambassador because I love using these two terms interchangeably.

I think when you are on the influencer side, it’s really nice when a brand actually knows. For example, if you create content, which you really should, what kind of content you create, and from that they know a little bit about you and your career goals, and I think that that is so, so helpful. For example, do you talk exclusively to C-level executives?

It would be helpful for brand new that, and then they gave you access so you were able to talk to more. People in that particular niche. I think having brands know what it is you like and want to accomplish in your career is so, so helpful.

[00:09:20] Mike Allton: Couldn’t agree more. Now when you think about. The campaigns that you’ve worked on with brands, you know, over the years, Adobe and so many others, which one kind of stands out as one of your favorite campaigns and and what did that look like?

What was that campaign?

What’s been the best influencer marketing campaign you’ve worked on, and what made it so special?

[00:09:36] Goldie Chan: Oh gosh. There are so many campaigns that I’ve worked on and I will say one of them that surprisingly was really fun. That I really enjoyed was one where I did a ton of branding tips for leaders, and instead of offering it in a traditional format, what I did was I used the site itself.

So the site is a site where you can hire consultants and you can hire them for doing small tasks. And so, Filtered my tips through literally hiring people off of this site and made some really odd and fun videos , uh, in a series for the brand. But what I love is that the brand, let me do this. So they said, here’s a budget for using the consultants on our site, and then obviously here’s your fee.

But the support they gave me, Run wild, make what you want to make and we’ll put it out on our social channels. And I thought that that was really such a lovely way to support a creative influencer who wants to make content in their style, but also who wants to do something really different that maybe people haven’t seen before using the.

[00:11:03] Mike Allton: I love that you mentioned the word creative because , you are so right, and I love that you brought out this example of how they gave you the freedom. To basically do whatever you want. They gave you the freedom to create, and if anybody has any experience working with creators, they’ll know. The more guardrails, the more rules and regulations, the more restrictions you put on that creator, the less they’re able to create and the more they’re just connecting the dots and.

Coloring within the lines, and it’s not creative at all. Right?

[00:11:35] Goldie Chan: Yes. And I think that of course in this day and age, we have massive legal teams, , uh, that are on the brand side to make sure that nothing absolutely terrible and horrible is said about the brand or with the brand. But at the same time, there is so much appropriate leeway that you can give your influencers so they can once again, Speak in their voice.

They can make content in their own voice. Or if you are hiring writers, they can write in their own voice. So really allowing. If they’re creative, allowing influencers to make what it is they want to make within, of course, appropriate boundaries. .

[00:12:20] Mike Allton: Well, it’s so interesting because I was talking to Tim Hughes, who was also a B2B influencer, and it was just an informal conversation, but he’s the one who gave me the idea of talking to you and him and others as influencers in your experience being influencers, because he was sharing the story about he, he had been working for a brand who had.

Paid him to try out their services. Mm-hmm. and create a review. And while he was going through that process, the person who was responsible for the influencer program left, somebody else came on board. And the original understanding was that Tim was going to write his honest, authentic opinion, his review of the services.

Mm. and their services were crap. And he wrote that in his review. I mean, he didn’t use that language, right, but he was very authentic that, you know, they had some issues and the new person didn’t understand that, didn’t like it, and wanted him to change it. They wanted to put that guardrail in place that as a creator, You’re only allowed to say nice things about

the brand.

Right?

[00:13:23] Goldie Chan: Right. And I think that that’s where people misunderstand, , the power of a B2B influencer. So when they force you to just say positive things, only a. About the brand. I think that’s when you can run into issues, especially when it’s generally understood that there are concerns, that there are certain things that the brand could be doing better, and in fact, I believe that’s a time when it’s really great for a brand to then address.

Some of those issues directly. One of the courses that I teach on LinkedIn Learning is brand reputation management, , and I think it’s helpful for brands to acknowledge sometimes, especially if it’s something that is on the roadmap, and they can officially announce that it is on the way to being fixed that already looks proactive, even if they weren’t going to change it based off one review.

Just telling the audience that it is on the way to being fixed is a really great way to interact with an audience.

[00:14:31] Mike Allton: Yeah, I couldn’t agree more. And we’ll actually have Tim on this show and a couple more episodes from now to share more about that experience. I can’t wait for him to dig into that cause this is a really great story.

But I also wanna know, Goldie, we’ve talked about your best experience. Let’s go the other direction. What’s been your worst experience with a brand or your worst campaign?

What’s been the worst B2B influencer marketing campaign?

[00:14:52] Goldie Chan: Oh gosh. It’s so much easier for me to come up with what are my best campaigns and stories, because Mike is a good friend of mine, and Mike knows I’m an incredibly positive person,

But when I think about negative, which of course I’m not going to mention any brand names here, , when I think about. Negative brands that I’ve worked with are just negative experiences with brands. I think about brands I’ve actually not worked with. So brands that I’ve chosen to not partner with is usually the case because there are red flags that pop up for me before even working with a brand.

So I’ll pull up a couple of those red flags. One of them is on my end, especially if a brand is like, we will pay you X amount of money, and we. You know, we need two videos out and they have to look exactly like this and you know, we need to do three to 12 edits, or some insane number, right? Three is not an insane number, but it will go on and on and on.

And you know that because they say there’s unlimited edits or they’ll. They’ll say something that feels like they don’t quite know what they’re doing. So when I talk to a brand that feels like they don’t quite know what they’re doing, I tend to step back from that because, and now I’ll say an experience I worked with one brand that I was so excited to work with.

They had approached me, they seem so great and on the ball, enthusiastic, but there were so many red flag. Coming into that experience and one of the red flags that bloomed into, I don’t know, a red pirate ship on the horizon, um, was when we worked together, there was, and I created videos for this project as well.

There was literally unlimited edits. So it would be Saturday morning and they would say, here’s an edit we want on the video. And I’d be like, great, I’ll do that edit right away. And then it’d be Sunday afternoon and they say, here’s an edit we want on the video. And I’m like, okay, well I already did that other edit.

Are there any other edits just so I can make sure I do all them? They’re like, no, no, no, we’re done. And then Monday morning they’re like, so we sent it to a couple other. Always a bad sign. Uh, , they’re like, here’s a few more edits. And it just went back and forth. And I think we had, we spent two weeks in edits and two weeks doing edits is not a long time, but two weeks doing constant edits that my team was not prepared for that I was not.

Budgeting for was not my most fun experience, especially when they would do things like, can this pink image be more like a red image ? Um, and they would be really granular, tiny notes like that. And once again, I have no problem with notes, but what it would have been helpful in that case, working with me as someone actively creating the content is to say, here’s 35 notes.

And we’d love you to address all 35 notes in one go. And to be honest, that would’ve been much easier for me to do than here’s three notes at a time for a total of 35 notes. And I think that that’s often where brands maybe get a little muddy, especially when they haven’t worked with creative influencers before.

Because they’ll go back and forth constantly, and once again, a few times back and forth is totally fine. But when. Over 10 times , uh, that is something that makes an influencer like myself not want to work with a brand again, because it’s just not worth my while.

[00:18:39] Mike Allton: Yeah, I felt that like deep into my core and it’s totally ok.

You didn’t name names Cause what I was hoping and, and you definitely helped me deliver, was some cautionary tale or tales for brands. So, you know, obviously. Be upfront, be energetic, be enthused, be interested in the influencer when you’re approaching them, make them want to work with you. And then when you start working with them, be very clear.

This is how we’re going to work together and have some self-restraint on things like edits in those guardrails that we mentioned earlier. And then you mentioned notes. And I had this flashback to when I was dancing with my girls. We did a ballet performance in Q4 last year, and I was the one. The producer kept having to give notes to after.

Oh no.

[00:19:28] Goldie Chan: Oh no. My God. [00:19:29] Mike Allton: So the running joke was, Hey, it’s been four hours since Dr. Coppel had any kind of notes given to him. But that was okay cuz she did that right way. Right. We ran through the whole thing and then she gave me all the notes she went through and she came all once. So that was fine. So moving forward [00:19:45] Goldie Chan: a little, A little denting for the ego, but [00:19:48] Mike Allton: That’s right, that’s right. My girls snickered at me and that was fine. So the brand has you, you’re excited to work with them. How should they structure. That program, how should brands be, you know, building out their influencer marketing programs in a way that really works well in your experience?

In your experience, how should brands structure programs around B2B influencers?

[00:20:09] Goldie Chan: So I think there’s two ways to handle this and two ways that I’ve worked that I’ve enjoyed.

One is, And I’ll say the one that I’m most familiar with, one is usually in a cohort. So in a group of other influencers or ambassadors, we maybe have similar deliverable goals. And there’s something really nice about that because you know that there’s say five other people who are working on a similar project, but obviously, Doing it in through their own lens or doing it in a different way and the deliverable all happens at the same time.

So that’s one way that I’ve certainly worked. And then the other way is one-on-one, just directly with the brand. We have a very, hopefully not very complex deal, but we have a somewhat more complex deal that’s highly tailored to what it is that I do well, and what it is that the. Brand needs. And oftentimes this makes more sense for the brand because they know exactly what they’re getting for X amount of money.

They know what the timeframe is on that one B2B influencer. And if it’s a special campaign for say, releasing over a holiday, then they know, okay, this one influencer is going to deliver. X, Y, Z for that day and we’ll have it. But what can be helpful, I think, for brands on the brand side is sometimes having a safety net of, okay, we’re gonna work with two influencers.

So in case the first B2B influencer can’t deliver, then we have a backup, which I know that some brands definitely do. And on my end, I really enjoy. Both ways. So I’m a pretty friendly person, , so obviously I enjoy when I meet other people who are doing similar things to me. Ak other influencers who are working on a similar campaign.

And then I obviously enjoy working directly with the brand as long as it’s really clear and. Really easily laid out for me what it is that I am doing and what the timeline is, and there’s reasonable expectations set on when I’m delivering back things.

[00:22:24] Mike Allton: I’ve definitely seen you do that and I’ve always thought it was very cool, like I think I saw you do a series of articles in the virtual event space.

Mm-hmm. , when you were working with, was it Hubilo last year, which was really cool and I love when you mentioned. The word cohort, because I’ve taken a very similar approach when I’m working with ambassadors at a Gore pulse where we’ll have a launch, like we released a TikTok support in in 2022, right? So we had this big launch and we had a bunch of influencers lined up who were creating content.

And I would say, you know, Keena Kelly, go create a TikTok video. You know, Jamie Turner who’s talking to CEOs, go create, you know, some vertical video for us. When you use the word cohort, that triggered something a little bit different in my mind because cohort implies that there’s more interactivity, engagement in between.

Mm-hmm. the influencers, which I’ve never done. Right. I never got Kenia and Jamie together on a call. To say, let’s talk through together what you’re each doing, and maybe there’s some overlap, maybe there’s some cooperation and collaboration. So I love that you said that. That’s really interesting for me.

Thank you.

[00:23:32] Goldie Chan: Of course. And I will say this completely unprompted, working with Agorapulse is wonderful. So if you ever have a chance to work with Agorapulse, for those listening to this podcast, please. Uh, especially if you get to work with Mike. I am biased of course, but I think that, yes, working in a cohort for B2B is really unusual.

So I think that I’ve been lucky in that brands that I’ve worked with have done that. Certainly working in a group is more typical in the B2C format, but b2b, I think it’s great. Honestly, if you are a influencer in the B2B arena, either you’re working in-house somewhere or you’re running your own shop, you’re running your own agency.

So it is really helpful to meet other people who are also, let’s throw this word out, influential , and to really facilitate those people meeting each other. . The best part about that is if you are a brand doing that, they will remember you fondly as the connector. They’ll remember you as the friend at the party that took them out of the corner and introduced them to someone

[00:24:48] Mike Allton: Yeah. Right. Having that impact is hugely important. You mentioned the difference between B2C and b2b. Mm-hmm. and not using cohorts, and one of the differences I’ve noticed that you kind of just kind of brought up earlier was you were talking about how Adobe. With supporting you in your support of local businesses, and I see a lot of B2C brands supporting their influencers and empowering them with their interests, their passion projects and that sort of thing.

I don’t see it quite so often in the B2B space. What advice would you maybe have for some B2B brands on how they could better empower the influencers that they wanna.

How can brands better empower a B2B influencer?

[00:25:27] Goldie Chan: Gosh, I think it is really helpful for B2B brands to have at least one sit down call, one Zoom, one virtual call with their influencers to hear about any goals, and it doesn’t have to be goals for the next five years.

I think none of us maybe at this point know what we’re doing the next five years, but it is helpful to know, okay, what are your goals for the next couple of quarters and how can we support that? So maybe your influencer is looking for more clients in a certain space. Maybe that is something the brand can help support or nudge along, or.

Maybe the influencer has a nonprofit that they love working with and they love to do something partnering with that nonprofit or promoting that nonprofit. I think these are all ways that b2b. Companies can borrow from the best practices of B2C companies. And I do think that adds a little bit of freshness to influencer campaigns that honestly are, can be quite stayed and quite boring , because B2B is not always the most exciting thing.

[00:26:45] Mike Allton: Yeah. And it shows that they. About you that they care. Taking the time to listen, which we’re gonna come back to that in a second. But one of the questions I wanna ask you real quick was, when you’re working with these brands, how are you measuring success? How is the brand coming to the conclusion that they’re actually seeing some ROI of this activity?

How have you measured the success and ROI of your campaigns in the past?

[00:27:06] Goldie Chan: I think it depends on what you’re creating and what are the goals. So obviously there’s things. Just brand awareness in general. So with brand awareness, helping people out in your network as the influencer know that that brand simply exists. And of course, we can measure brand awareness using social metrics, KPIs, and then there are things like.

Conversion, which is of course always very sexy to brands and knowing that that UTM link has been clicked on and knowing that they’re getting new customers or new interest into the door. So those are two typical funnels that I work with brands. To generate interest through. When I worked with the City of London as one of their entrepreneurship ambassadors, one of the things that we were really pulling attention to is one of my passions, which is focusing on female entrepreneurs.

So I created a video series for them. Where I went around the city of London and I talked with all these really amazing women entrepreneurs who are creating change within the city of London, some of them who are also working internationally. And so that was a great example of a B2B case where they were supporting what I’m passionate about, but also in a way that clearly is helpful for brand awareness.

[00:28:32] Mike Allton: That is so cool and I love that you mentioned London. That’s one of my favorite cities. And listen folks, I hope you’re paying attention cuz Goldie Chain is dropping some amazing nuggets here. This is the kind of show you should send to your C M O to help make your case for more influencer marketing. In fact, Go ahead and do that.

Now. I’ve got a message from my own CMO Outplay, while we wait for you to come back.

It’s the Arch de Triumph. Can you imagine if you’re in charge, if you’re the CMO of marketing Paris, what are your main channels? Wow. There’s the Arch de Triumph, there’s the Eiffel Tower, there’s the Louvre. Those are your channels.

You’re gonna use the drive tourism dollars in. Okay, now, but you’re not the CMO of Paris. In fact, you’re the CMO of your company product service. So what are your main channels? So I’m gonna. There things like paper click, maybe trade shows, events, maybe content. Those are all pretty predictable, right? Let me ask you this question.

Are you treating social media as a main channel? By the way, only 1.8% of you today measure social media and can prove an ROI in that investment. HubSpot and Gartner say, social media’s the number one channel to invest in this. Are you doing it? If not, I can tell you why you’re not doing it, because you don’t have the tools.

If you don’t have the mentality. And that’s okay. We’ve got you covered. You changed the mentality. We’ll give you the tool. Agorapulse tracks all the ROI for you. One place to manage all your social media activity, your number one channel, change your success. Treat social media as a channel one CMO to another.

My name is Daryl. I’m with Agorapulse. I’ll talk to.

One question I always love to ask my guests is, how important has relationships been to your success?

How important have relationships been to your success?

[00:30:24] Goldie Chan: I wanted to answer sarcastically, which I almost never do, and be like, relationships never . But I will say, obviously relationships have been incredibly integral to my success without relationships and without developing partner.

With brands, I would not be as successful as I am today. And sometimes these relationships come out what seems like outta the blue. But what I love about our truly interconnected world is relationships never come out of the blue. They never come completely cold. There’s. Someone that, for example, especially when I was creating daily videos on LinkedIn, there was someone that say, sent my videos over to somebody at Adobe and then there was somebody else that sent more of my videos, over to Adobe, and there was a third per, you know, there was many, many people who were sharing my content, who were talking about my content, and that’s.

I got to work with all of these amazing, amazing brands, is that these. Invisible relationships that I had formed through creating content. Were becoming real relationships, and I know that Parasocial has a terrible name in the internet industry because it can be rife with a lot of negative connotations, but sometimes parasocial relationships can be wonderful.

They can be the thing that leads to someone reaching out and saying, oh, I found your content incredibly intelligent and relatable. We’d love to work with you because we’ve been watching you for a while, and that feels like that’s the beginning of a relationship with a brand.

[00:32:18] Mike Allton: I love that so much. I know this is gonna be one of the clips that I take out and share over and over again.

This is something I’ve talked about many times. I would not have the career that I have today if it wasn’t for the relationships that I’ve built almost entirely on social media. So thanks for reaffirming that. Now, for those of you who are listening who might be wanting to become an influencer, This question’s for you, goly.

What advice would you have for somebody who wanted to be an a B2B influencer? Specifically? How would they, how should they get started?

What advice do you have for individuals who are looking to become a B2B influencer?

[00:32:52] Goldie Chan: So, I think the beginning of this, we talked about content creation, and I think one of the easiest and. Lowest lift. Things you can do is start creating content around your niche specialty for b2b.

So whether that’s talking to C-level execs or for me generally branding and marketing in small to medium business and enterprise solutions, I think you need to understand, first of all, what is your narrow niche? So focusing in on. Well understood , hopefully niche within the b2b. And then creating content around that.

And that content can be in a variety of forms. So I myself write for Forbes, but I also create videos, and then occasionally I create graphics. But there are people who, for example, just do, just infographics. There are people who create really wonderful vertical videos because now we live in a TikTok.

There are people who just do a variety of different kinds of content. So to me it’s two elements to make it incredibly simple for you, it’s finding the niche and then finding the right content that fits that niche and that expresses who you are easily.

[00:34:16] Mike Allton: Love that. And if you think about your own history, the channels, the social networks, the types of content, what would you say, and you can answer this however you want, what would you say has been your best source of new influencer marketing work?

RELATED: Join the B2B Influencer Incubator to level-up your authority and revenue.

What has been your best source for new B2B influencer marketing work?

[00:34:32] Goldie Chan: Oh gosh. I think the best source of new B2B influencer marketing work for me has really been off of two social media platforms. So the answer to that is social media For me, because I am a creative influencer, I tend to create a ton of content. I tend to write a lot about subjects that interest me and a lot of my.

Most of my clients and most of the brands that I work with come from social media and two platforms that I would say have obviously impacted my career, my life. Uh, one would be LinkedIn and then the other one would be Twitter.

[00:35:17] Mike Allton: Yeah. That’s so cool. I don’t know how much we’re hearing Twitter in a positive light these days, so I’m glad that you’re able to bring that to the, to the conversation from that perspective.

I love Twitter. I’m on it every day. I’m not as active as others, but I do enjoy hopping on there and it’s definitely been a source of, of positive things for me. Goldie. You are amazing. This has been such an important, such an informative interview. Thank you. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate you and love that we’ve been able to work together so often over the years, like you’ve mentioned.

Can you tell folks where to connect with you and learn more?

[00:35:52] Goldie Chan: Absolutely. So you can find me tweeting nonstop until Twitter. Falls apart, and Goldie Chan. You can also find me at LinkedIn. I’ll look up my name Goldie Chan, and you can find me on other social platforms pretty much under my name, Goldie Chan, or under a version of that handle, for example, on Instagram.

I am Goldie Cylon because I am a huge battle star, Galatica fan. And feel free to connect with me to also talk about Battlestar Galactica and b2. Marketing .

[00:36:28] Mike Allton: So say we. All right, so say and make sure you follow Goldie on Forbes cuz her content there is fantastic. And that’s all we have for today, friends.

In our next episode I’m gonna be talking to you, Farzad Rashidi from Vis Me and Roone about how to find and reach out to the most incredible affiliate partners. For your brand. In a later episode, we’re gonna come back to this influencer’s perspective, like I mentioned, and we’re gonna bring Tim Hughes right here into the studio.

So don’t forget to subscribe to the Partnership Unpacked podcast and drop us a review. We’d love to know what you think. Until next time,

thank you from listening to another episode of Partnership Unpacked, hosted by Mike Alton. Empowered by a Agora Pulse, the number one rated social media management. Which you can learn more [email protected]. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe on your favorite podcast player. Be sure to leave us a review.

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