Meltwater Klear on how they pinpoint the most influential voices
Patrick Whitnall
Hello and welcome to the AiMCO Podcast. Today we welcome the team from Meltwater, one of our sponsors of the AIMCO Awards. Meltwater helps companies make better more informed decisions based on insights from the outside. They believe that business strategy will be increasingly shaped by insights from online data. As organizations look outside beyond their internal reporting systems to a world of data that is constantly growing and changing their customers use their insights to make timely decisions based on real time analysis.
Meltwater is dedicated to personal global service built on local expertise. Today, we are talking about Meltwater Klear, which is an end-to-end influencer marketing tool delivering everything marketers need to take charge of their campaigns in target markets by using their integrated social solutions. They help find the right brand partners with a holistic approach to influencer discovery, vetting, management and reporting. Their tool can pinpoint the most influential voices in any space and verify their audience is genuine. They have a centralized hub for team collaboration and their proprietary technology means that they can truly measure the success of campaigns and know which influences made that happen.
Joining us is Georgina Bitcon is the Enterprise Director of Meltwater. Georgina helps companies throughout Australia New Zealand measure conversations about their brands across owned and earned media channels, providing them with a framework to measure the success of their communications and marketing plans. Georgina has over seven years experience in the media and data industry and specializes in consulting on social media crisis communications and data visualization.
Alex Mair works across the Australia New Zealand cloud base with account managers to build social strategies recommended best practice and consult on up and coming social projects. She has over three years experience consulting on the best uses of data and technology to scale business, social media and influencer marketing strategies. So Georgina, and Alex, welcome to the AIMCO in the frame podcast, Georgina, do you wanna tell us a little bit more about Meltwater and Meltwater Klear.
Georgina Bitcon
Yeah, absolutely. Thanks so much for having us. Meltwater is really the world's leading media intelligence company. When we say media intelligence, we use that as a really all encompassing term for what we do. We were actually founded in Norway as per your introduction as one of the world's first digital focused media monitoring companies. So back in those days, the media intelligence industry really worked as paper clipping companies. So, our CEO and founder wanted to create one of the world's first software to in a real time and in an unlimited fashion, track what was happening in in online news. That product was really successful. And then a few years later, a major disruption to the media landscape happened, which was the growth and evolution of social media. So, we became also one of the first companies to monitor social media.
So, I guess where that left us a few years later, is that we had this really comprehensive product for the monitoring and analysis of news and social content. And we decided that if we were going to give companies the ability to monitor and analyse, we should really also give them the opportunity to engage and influence. About 10 years ago we created our first media contacts database. And I would say it was probably about six or seven years ago, around the time I started at Meltwater seven and a half years ago, that a lot of our clients were saying, it's fantastic to be able to interact with journalists. But we also really want to understand who the key social influencers are that take part in those conversations. At that point in time, we decided, well, we need a social influencers database that can cater to our 30,000 global clients in all different pockets of the world and we partnered with a company out of Israel called Klear. We did that with Klear because we thought that they were really the only company with a depth of product that matched ours and our client base. And that product really works across both the discovery of influencers, the vetting of influencers, and the execution and measurement of campaigns. We acquired Klear in March of this year, in what has been a really productive partnership. So now Klear is part of Meltwater and we’re really pleased to tell you a little bit more about it today.
Patrick Whitnall
Fantastic. Yeah, please, please tell us a little bit more about a Klear it's obviously so new, but let's get into you know what you guys understand already. And I guess what's in the future for Klear?
Georgina Bitcon
Yeah, we've actually been working with a Klear product for about five years now. So, we first worked with them as a partnership and then acquired them in March, I think that what they've always been very strong at is that they have really the world's largest database of influencers. So, it can be used by clients, and the core use case from foundation was always around influencer discovery. And then also giving clients the ability to use a whole array of really rich data, to vet influencers in the database for things like how relevant they are to your business or cause, of course, how relevant their followers and audience are, and then the likely return on investment that your business might get from working with them. So that's really the database element. It also has a very Klear component of management of influencer relationships. So, for example, you can run contracts and payments through the Klear platform. And then of course, the next piece is really around the insights and the measurement, so understanding for an influencer campaign, what the achieved reach impressions, ROI, and actions are, that’s where Klear is going moving forward. Over the past few years, we've seen them adding influencers from new platforms like TikTok, without a crystal ball, we can anticipate that that, you know, TikTok and new social media platforms will come in the future. So, I think that will be one future innovation. And then the other is really expanding the ways in which businesses can actually recruit or interact with influencers. For instance, we've recently introduced influencer recruitment tool within the platform, where you can do a call out to the influencer community to see those that want to work with you. So always a lot changing and we're really excited to see where it goes.
Patrick Whitnall
Absolutely, and it seems both of our businesses were born from traditional roots, media auditing, AiMCO started out from via the AMAA and Meltwater originally starting in Norway as a media monitoring service. So, given the increased scrutiny on influencer marketing, what can be learned from I guess, our traditional roots of traditional media? And how and how are you leading the way in this category?
Georgina Bitcon
Yeah, it's a really good question. I think that to start with, I mean, while Meltwater started in traditional media, being news media, we were always, our position in the market was always to give, you know, digitally disruptive solutions to that landscape. As I mentioned in our introduction, we wanted to monitor online news, as well as print media, because of the increase that that would have. And I think that in the influencer marketing space, you can see that sort of mimicked right? What used to be in print is now online, what used to, you know, be in the hands of journalist is now often in the hands of, of influencers and digital voices. So, I think that what can be learned from traditional media, first of all, is that we need to be really timely, the speed at which content and messaging can be created and dispelled is faster because of the new digital and social influencer reality. And the other one is that there are more key opinion leader or subject matter experts in more places. So, for example, back when the media landscape was more traditional and print focused, you saw that we obviously had, you know, newspapers, publishing the news, and then magazines focusing on particular subject areas. Whereas today, you know, in our industry, for instance, we have trade publications that are digital only, like Mumbrella, or B&T. So, it's really diversifying and there are more places in which we can, you know, we can see content and information. and I think the social influencer landscape really replicates that,
Patrick Whitnall
With this amount of data, lots of clients have so much data at their fingertips and find it sometimes hard to think about how they apply it. And given the number of companies you work for, given the amount of data at your fingertips. How are you using data to help make clients make more informed decisions?
Alex Mair
Yeah, I might jump in on that one, Patrick. It's a really interesting one. I actually think, although there's a lot of data available for our clients, sometimes it's not the right data. So, I think one of the biggest challenges the social marketers that I work with says is actually up to date and accurate data specifically in relation to influencers. I think there's a real need for data, you know, that goes deeper than just face value. So past just number of followers likes maybe how pretty the content is. There's a real need for that kind of transparency. You know, particularly with the rise of fake followers, bots, influencer pods, you know, paying some influencers even paying for engagement on their profiles, I think it's become incredibly hard for the social marketers we work with, to actually tell a manufactured following from an authentic one. You know, I was looking it up this morning, and even when looking at some of our favourite celebrities, I read an article about this. I'm not saying our favourite celebrities are paying for their following, but it's estimated that approximately 28% of celebrity following is actually bots or dormant followers.
So, when we translate that to the influencer, marketing side of things, you know, working with clients like Chobani, when they're trying to find influencers at scale, you know, they launched a 500 Strong influencer campaign late last year. You know, it was really important for them to find influencers at scale that really aligned with their brand and also had an authentically engaged following past those vanity metrics I talked about earlier. So, they relied really heavily on Klear's AI powered algorithm, engagement rates, you know, specifically compared to similar influencers they were targeting micro influencers. They also really, really focused on their true reach, our true reach algorithm AI powered algorithm is actually able to determine fake or dormant followings that an influencer may have, whether they've paid for them or not, you know, most influencers have at least a small portion of fake or bot following. It's just the nature of the industry. But essentially, through that true reach formula, we're able to understand what the predicted real reach or eyeballs each influencer may get on one of those partner posts. So how authentic is their audience? And how many eyeballs may we get if we partner with that influencer, which you are not able to see, you know at face value on Instagram. To them it was also important to find influencers that are not just influential, full stop, you know, there are a lot of influencers that are incredibly influential and have a very high, highly engaged audience and highly authentic audience. But if they're not influential over the right target audience they may not be the right influencer for you. So, you know, in Klear, we have a Klear score, which essentially gives every influencer a score out of zero to 100, which tells you how influential they are full stop. But then we've also built a technology, which is called our brand score. So essentially, what we're able to do there is look at, yes, how influential they are full stop, but also how influential they are over your target market.
So, for Chobani, they were looking for active young people. They didn't really mind which gender, but we were able to look at gender, age breakdown interests of the following. And so, we were able to not just find out how influential each influencer was, but also helped influence influential each influencer was over their target market. Another example of that is we've been working with quite a high-profile women's only fitness at brand where they have one kind of celebrity level fitness influencer, who owns the company, as you'd imagine, the nature of the female-fitness influencer industry is that a lot of those influencers tend to have quite a large male following. For that particular brand, they were a women's only brand. So through Klear, they were able to really quickly identify the potential influencers that had at least a majority female audience. So obviously, you know, better targeting the right target market.
Patrick Whitnall
So much to consider, and so much to think about, and really useful, I think for some people, when they're thinking about how they approach and think about influencers. Some of the things that you said there around actual reach and authentic reach as well. How does some of that go into your EMV (Earned Media Value) estimation tool? Because when clients think and want to work with influencers, it will also come down to well, how much is that person going to cost me? So, there's a lot of that factor in? And then secondly, I'd love to ask you about how this perhaps helps with the influencer pay gap that people are talking about at the moment where there might be really expensive influencers on one side and lower-level influencers on another. How does that combat to?
Alex Mair
Yeah, it's a really good question. And I think it's a really important conversation to be having in the industry. And it's something that I'm speaking more and more to clients about in my role. I think from my perspective, you know, talking about the importance of pay gap, it's actually very similar to pay gaps in other industries, whether it be you know, the gender pay gap, for example. Obviously, there are plenty of exceptions here. But what I'm seeing is a real lack of knowledge on both, you know, the brand side not knowing what the influencer is worth. But sometimes on the influencer side as well, maybe not knowing what their own worth is, you know, not necessarily, I don't think there's anyone necessarily although there are plenty of examples of this, unfortunately, but I'm not necessarily saying that brands are intentionally underpaying influencers, but I think especially for brands that are just starting out in the influencer marketing game, something like a Klear pricing estimation tool is crucial. It provides, you know, an unbiased data driven estimate of how valuable an influencer is. So, like we talked about before looking at specific engagement rates, the true reach, target audience alignment and brand safety, we're able to take in all of those data points and based on industry standards. Klear is actually able to, I suppose, put a recommended dollar figure or what the value of that influencer is, I know, it's sometimes hard to put, there are some amazing influencers and key opinion leaders out there. So, to put a dollar figure sometime feels a bit funny, but through Clear, we are able to look at all of those, you know, accurate data points and then based on industry standards. Understanding what the value of that influencer is, I suppose it you know, takes out that guesswork, and it means when starting out those negotiations with an influencer, you're starting at a realistic standpoint. I think it's also, you know, really important when we're working with a lot of clients who are doing a gifting first strategy, you know, that's not necessarily a bad idea. But if you're wanting to send, I don't know, a $50 gift basket to an influencer, who would, you know, potentially charge around the $250 mark, or that's what platform estimates they would charge for Instagram story, you may need to be more creative about the outreach, or you know, the value of the gift basket that you're sending, for example, yeah, taking out the guesswork. So obviously, you know, this the dollar figure, the recommended price that Klear brings forward. But I think also on their end of it, so looking at reporting back on the success of campaigns, reporting back on the success of the influencer that you've already worked with, through the reporting part of Clear, we're able to really quickly see the return on investment. When partnering with that influencer and even attribute a dollar figure or estimated media value figure per post or per story, for example, we can also overlay that with some really specific sales data. So if you have been doing any, you know, coupon codes or affiliate links, when engaging with those influencers, we're able to integrate that data and get a full picture of not only, you know, these are the dollars that embarking on that influencer partnership has brought in to the business, but also looking at how effectively engaging with that influencer has reached your target audience. So, I suppose it really sets up both the influencer and the brand that is working with those influencers, really sets them up for a great long term partnership that's, you know, from the get-go based on transparency and accountability.
Patrick Whitnall
Absolutely. One of the things I wanted to pick up that Georgina, I think you spoke about earlier around the beginning of meltwater around publications and journalists, at one of your recent conferences, you spoke about digital creators being the new media stakeholders. How are you seeing this impacting the news and entertainment as an agenda?
Georgina Bitcon
Yeah, I'm glad that you caught that conference. Yeah, I think it's interesting because news because of what I said before news can break in so many more places. Now, it means that often journalists need to be on mainstream media outlets need to be reactive to stories that are broken on social. To give you an example I’ve seen in the last couple of weeks, I'm based in Melbourne, and I'm not sure if you've seen this story, Patrick, but last week, there was an old boy from a prominent private school in Melbourne. This particular school has had some issues with old boys behaving badly. And this man who is a photographer with a great Instagram following, went into the school and created what I think was a very impactful image of him burning his blazer and created a post about his perception of the culture created in private schools and the impact that can have in the world. Now from that, obviously, it got so much engagement on social that the media then needed to respond to that with, you know, follow up stories and receive comments from the school. So, I think that's a really good example of maybe an unsuspecting newsmaker using their digital voice to bring something back into the into the news agenda.
Patrick Whitnall
It must be hard for journalists to keep up with that, you know, it seems like they're not the ones breaking the story anymore. It seems that they need monitoring and working with your business like yourselves to be able to see when things are breaking and be on to report on it.
Georgina Bitcon
Yeah, absolutely. Which I think is both a challenge and an opportunity, right? If you're a journalist, you're just looking to find great stories and great content each and every minute of every day. So while it's challenging to keep up with I also see it as a great opportunity for newsmakers because there are so many more stories being able to be heard.
Patrick Whitnall
Amazing, well look thank you both very much for joining us today it's been really insightful for us to understand your business and how brands can take advantage of working with your business. Also, I'd like to also thank you very much for being sponsors of our AiMCO awards. And we're really looking forward to the events next February judging is currently happening right now. So, we're excited for that. And we're excited to have the big awards night in February. So, both of you, thank you very much for joining us, and we look forward to seeing you at awards night.