A guide to influencer marketing
Jordon Rooney has what some might consider controversial views of marketing: He doesn’t think a traditional degree holds much currency anymore, and he believes the future lies in social media.
Maybe that’s because the 28-year-old has had success generating interest — and clicks — on social media websites.
After he interviewed neo-Nazis in Charlottesville, Va., last year, exposing some unsympathetic viewpoints following the killing of a peaceful protester in a vehicle ramming attack, Mr. Rooney’s social media channels passed the 160,000 mark for social media followers and received more than 20 million video views with 260,000 shares.
Now, he wants to help kids gain similar traction through positive messaging. In the process, he thinks he can build out a boutique marketing firm.
With a $20,000 grant from the Buhl Foundation, Mr. Rooney’s nonprofit organization, Never Fear Being Different, is hosting a three-week summer program called “Vlog University” for 15 students from Baldwin High School and Perry Traditional Academy.
The workshop, which wraps up Friday, aims to turn high school students into both effective social media influencers and role models. The kids are paid through Partner4Work’s “Learn and Earn” job training program.
“We don’t want to just talk about an issue,” Mr. Rooney said last week during one of the sessions at CoLab18 on the North Side. “We want to add relevancy that makes it consumable and shareable.”
Influencer marketing — when a company works with an impactful or wellknown personality on social media to promote a product, service or campaign — has exploded in recent years.
In a survey of 272 marketing managers, 28 percent reported that influencer marketing was the fastest-growing method for customer acquisition at their companies, according to a 2017 report compiled by Influencer Marketing Hub.
Kylie Jenner, the youngest of the Kardashian reality television family and a well-known social media influencer, made headlines last week after Forbes put her on the cover of the latest edition of the magazine, touting “America’s Women Billionaires.”
Ms. Jenner, who is 20, could be on track to surpass Mark Zuckerberg as the youngest so-called “self-made” billionaire, the magazine claimed. It’s largely through her makeup brand, Kylie Cosmetics.
Through Vlog University — which teaches students about the technical elements of social media — Mr. Rooney said he
wants to make his students more aware of the careers they could pursue through social media marketing.
During the program, the kids created real marketing campaigns for Moop Shop, a Downtown boutique that specializes in handmade canvas bags.
Jonah Berger, a marketing professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business, said it’s important to make the distinction between marketing and influencing.
“I’m a big fan of internships, I’m a big fan of teaching people things early ... [social media marketing] is a skill that is valuable in today’s economy, but social media isn’t the only thing that’s important,” he said, adding that people have lost jobs following the dream of becoming a successful influencer.
Studying social media as a portion of a marketing education makes sense, he said, because it takes advantage of the fact that companies want digital content, and legacy organizations aren’talways great at that.
Diana Bucco, president of the Buhl Foundation, noted that a program like Vlog University could bridge the gap between companies that need a “next gen workforce” and kids that know how to use social media instinctively “but don’t know how to direct that energy into a career.”
Mr. Rooney envisions expanding Vlog University training into a paid marketing internship and sees Never Fear Being Different expanding into a boutique marketing firm. “I’m willing to argue 15 high school kids can have more impact on social media than a marketing team.”