An Innovative Approach to Influencer Marketing with the American Lung Association with Maxine Tatlonghari and Nick Lynch

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Have you considered using influencer marketing for your nonprofit marketing campaigns?

Leveraging influential content creators, celebrities, and internet personalities, AND your board members can SIGNIFICANTLY boost awareness and fundraising for your organization.

So how did the American Lung Association do it back in 2021? You’re about to find out.

Nick Lynch, co-founder and CEO of Collidescope, and Maxine Tatlonghari, Development Director for the American Lung Association, are here to reveal the secrets behind their Champions Unite event, which evolved from a traditional gala into an online talent show. 

In today’s case study, we’ll get into the nuts and bolts of creating successful virtual events and the critical role of data measurement in tracking influencer impact, even if you’re starting with an “ugly” spreadsheet! 

Maxine and Nick share the importance of unique tracking links and aligning content around influencers’ busy schedules. 

They also discuss how their collaborative efforts helped educate and involve the board in this new digital approach, and how they selected influencers who were already mission-aligned, leading to a more cost-effective and impactful event.

P.S. Don’t forget to register for my Monthly Giving Summit coming up on Sept 5-6 from 1-4 pm ET – the ONLY virtual event designed to help nonprofits build, grow, and sustain subscriptions for good. RSVP for FREE here!

SNEAK PEEK

Resources & Links

Can we meet in Nashville? The 8th annual Raise fundraising conference, hosted by OneCause, will be held at the Country Music Hall of Fame & Museum in Nashville, TN September 9-10, 2024 Use code MISSIONS200 to receive $200 off registration, Register: https://bit.ly/4bNqihi

Connect with Maxine on LinkedIn and follow @californialung on Instagram.

Connect with Nick on LinkedIn or via email at nick@collidescope.io. 

Learn more about Collidescope on their website. 

Check out Nick’s new book, Impact Redefined: Transforming Partnerships, Social Moments, and Personal Connections to Drive Change.

Join The Sustainers, my Slack community for nonprofit professionals growing and scaling a recurring giving program.

Want to make Missions to Movements even better? Take a screenshot of this episode and share it on Instagram. Be sure to tag @positivequation so I can connect with you. 

Additional resources for nonprofit digital marketing

• How To Create Community on Social with a Controversial Topic or Cause
• How Upstate Caring Partners Attracted 2,000 Applications Using A Digital Campaign
• What Does a Community-First Marketing Approach Look Like with Andi Kay

Transcript

An Innovative Approach to Influencer Marketing with the American Lung Association with Maxine Tatlonghari and Nick Lynch

Maxine Tatlonghari: When it comes to a special event like this and you’re creating something, there’s a little bit of alchemy, a little bit of magic. I feel like all those things aligned at the same time. And also I’m kind of a different type of development director, right, Because I had that background of working with influencers. So Nick and I were just really like how do we maximize this person’s influence? How do we get the baseball influencers involved? How do we get the business community? Then we treated our board like business influencers themselves. Right, they’re like I’m not an influencer, I don’t have a million followers like Chantel Van Santen, who’s one of the influencers we work with. We’re like, yes, but thanks to this measurement, you can see you are a business influencer and you actually convert and your dollars are associated when you put up a LinkedIn post. So there’s top of funnel awareness and then there’s conversion and there’s all those pieces in between.

Dana Snyder: Hey there, you’re listening to the Missions to Movement podcast and I’m your host, Dana Snyder, digital strategist for nonprofits and founder and CEO of Positive Equations. This show highlights the digital strategies of organizations making a positive impact in the world. Ready to learn the latest trends, actionable tips and the real stories from behind the feed? Let’s transform your mission into a movement. Hello, hello, welcome back to another episode of Missions to Movements.

Dana Snyder: I am your host, Dana Snyder, and if you have ever put together a virtual event, this is going to be an episode that is going to bring back some memories to your soul and the power of bringing on influential content creators, celebrities, influential personalities to raise awareness and funds for your organization. And how did the American Lung Association do it back in 2021? So we’re gonna go back into this case study. We have Nick Lynch here with us. He is the co-founder, CEO, and Nick is now an author of Impact Redefined. We’re going to get all the goodies about his book that just launched recently here in May. And then Maxine Tatlonghari welcome. She’s the development director for the American Lung Association and was crucial in leading the efforts around this virtual event. Welcome to you both.

Maxine Tatlonghari & Nick Lynch: Thanks for having us.

Dana Snyder: Absolutely, okay. So I want to do some quick introductions. Let people get to know you and please share where they can reach out to you. After listening to this episode, Maxine, I’ll go to you first.

Maxine Tatlonghari: Yeah, thank you. So I have been the Development Director for the LA Market of American Lung Association for about five years, but long time in nonprofit American Cancer Society. Before that took a little hiatus to launch a brand and sell it in the beauty space, an e-commerce brand called Vandy Girl Hollywood, working with influencers, which I think really helped gear me up for working with influencers in the nonprofit space. I serve on the West Hollywood Chamber Board of Directors, have run special events with them and digital marketing. So a little bit of my background and create content for fun, because we all don’t have enough to do. It’s less than that, but we all have, like you know, a few of the different projects and passion projects we’re working on.

Dana Snyder: That’s right. That’s right. I used to live in LA, so I remember, and Nick.

Nick Lynch: I’m Nick. I’m the co-founder and CEO of Collidescope. Collidescope is a technology-enabled business that supports impact organizations, both for-profit and non-profit, and really sits at the intersection of media marketing and measurement. So anytime there’s an impact initiative that really requires a unique or a forward-thinking media marketing measurement strategy or plan, that’s where we’ve kind of built our niche over the last four years. But from a personal standpoint, I’m a cancer survivor, I’m a Make-A-Wish kid and I’m a diehard fan of anything nonprofit, so anything I can do to help is always something that I get excited about.

Nick Lynch and Maxine Tatlonghari partner together with the American Lung Association for the Champions Unite event

Dana Snyder: And I am a big fan of yours and so excited that you brought Maxine to this conversation and that the two of you met. So, Nick, will you kind of share how did you and Maxine and the American Lung Association first decide to kind of partner together?

Nick Lynch: Yeah, so it’s all rooted back actually in Make-A-Wish. Ironically, the executive director of the American Lung Association here in LA was actually the head of development for Make-A-Wish when I first started working with them personally eight, nine, 10 years ago. Her name’s Frances. She’s awesome, and the first person that I actually one of the first people that I actually went to with this crazy idea of Collidescope was Frances and just was kind of like hey, I want to help, I want to give back. I’ve, you know, COVID’s happening. This is kind of crazy. So this is like mid 2020, late 2020. Told her about Collidescope and she thought it was a great idea, gave some really great feedback and then when, as they were starting to develop sort of their first virtual event they meeting American Lung Association she connected me with Maxine and Maxine and I started to sort of brainstorm all the fun and amazing things that we could do for this event called Champions Unite, which I’m excited to dive into today.

Dana Snyder: Yes, okay. So Maxine, Champions Unite was it always a virtual event? I’m guessing no, because no one will virtual events.

Maxine Tatlonghari: A great question. I just want to also note, Dana, I’m a huge fan of Nick as well, so whenever he invites me to speak with him, it’s always a yes, and I just think that really speaks to who Nick is. You know, and just this business. It’s really about relationships, right, and the things you’re able to create together. So I’m so excited to meet you, Dana. So back to your question. Champions Unite was not always a virtual event. It actually started as a traditional gala in Los Angeles at the Skirball and in San Diego I’m not sure which venue, but very traditional, an honoree, perhaps a chicken dinner, maybe some salmon silent auction and COVID happened. And so we had some relationships in the baseball space with the Padres most notably, and the Dodgers, and so the thought was let’s create something online and leverage the two markets. So now it became a Southern California event go to who we know and then it evolved into a talent show, an off-field talent show, so people showing off. You know, yeah, I might play baseball for a living, but here’s my Philly cheesesteak sandwich or here I am bowling or juggling or whatever that fun talent was. And it was just. It was a really fun. We were moving fast, we were creating, we were building the plane as we flew. But we had two strong boards of directors that were involved. We had Nick on the digital marketing that could work with me in terms of how we put it together. Francis really was the driver behind working with the consultant to wrangle the talent and get all that piece down and produce a show and produce it online in a way that was captivating and allowed us to work with these amazing baseball players who were donating their talent, which then evolved into multi-sports in the following year, and create something that hadn’t been done before.

Developing an influencer marketing campaign for a nonprofit event

Dana Snyder: So fun. Okay, talk about going from traditional. I’m sure it was still a fun event, but completely different concept, and I guess that comes from having great leadership that’s open to pivoting and taking some risks and doing something that’s really innovative. How did that new event come about? Who came up with that idea?

Maxine Tatlonghari: I want to say part of it was the son of our regional vice president, so someone really young, I think he’s in his 20s. That was Christian Hickey. And then just also a little bit of board buy-in. You know that existing relationship with the Padres and Francis’s existing relationship with Steve, who is a talent wrangler that she’s worked with for many, many years at Make-A-Wish. So I think Frances really went to her Rolodex of Nick and Steve. These were people she knew and trusted. And then Rita, who’s the executive director in San Diego, tapped into her board. I think when it comes to a special event like this and you’re creating something, there’s a little bit of alchemy, a little bit of magic. I feel like all those things aligned at the same time. And also I’m kind of a different type of development director, right, because I had that background of working with influencers. So Nick and I were just really like how do we maximize this person’s influencer? How do we get the baseball influencers involved? How do we get the business community? Then we treated our board like business influencers themselves, right. They’re like I’m not an influencer. I don’t have a million followers like Chantel Van Santen, who’s one of the influencers we work with. We’re like, yes, but thanks to this measurement, you can see you are a business influencer and you actually convert and your dollars are associated when you put up a LinkedIn post conversion and there’s all those pieces in between. But it was a lot of education. Nick and I did a lot of dog and ponies and PowerPoint presentations just to move people along the concepts of it, and then we were kind of creating concepts as they happened because we were in COVID. Yes, it was actually a really exciting time. Now that I talk about it, you know, you’re like you live it and you move on to the next thing, but when someone does this, you’re like forced to remember it and hopefully say it in a way that some of your listeners and viewers take something away and can take that to their organization or their project. So it really forces us to kind of think about that.

Identifying key metrics to measure the success of an influencer marketing campaign

Dana Snyder: Yeah, reflect, back on it so. Nick, you know I love data and all things measurement, and I love, Maxine, what you just pointed out, where you might have a top of funnel, more celebrity contact, but they don’t necessarily drive conversions, whereas somebody closer to the organization might. Nick, what are you looking at to assess that when determining who steps in where? What’s the value of this person’s channel or relationship?

Nick Lynch: The short answer is we measured everything, like we built and this is why I always say like it doesn’t need to be pretty, like it just needs to be on paper. Like we built the most ugliest spreadsheet you have ever seen. I mean it had multiple different tabs, it was ugly and large and you had to scroll. I mean there’s like 40 different calls, but we measured everything from email inboxing to open rates on emails and then the clicks on those specific emails. We measured and provided and created unique URL or unique click links for each individual influencer so we could see like their activity on when they posted and how many clicks they generated and the traffic that was generated from those clicks on Google analytics, right. So we we literally measured everything and I think that if I were to summarize, the most important thing other than measuring everything, is if you can create those unique links or those tracking links for each either a specific yeah, specific tracking link from a bitly and added specific UTM to it, or even, at bare minimum, just a UTM but like really see where your traffic is coming from, because we knew that when somebody did a post or an email went out, we could sort of see the full funnel activity, how many clicks drove to the website, how many signups or donations happened when that traffic came, so we could like really see really clearly who was contributing to the traffic and who was ultimately converting into the KPIs that we ultimately needed.

Working with influencers on a nonprofit marketing campaign

Dana Snyder: Was the ask of the celebrity to contribute their talent so I’m assuming a pre-recorded piece of content and to share a link for people to sign up and attend the event. Maxine, how did that work?

Maxine Tatlonghari: Yeah, so that’s a great question. So we had talent in each of our markets, that sort of that top of funnel name recognition. So for us it’s Chantel Van Zanten, who also just has a deep passion for this mission. She herself, as a celebrity, has raised over $200,000 for this mission, which is rare in this space. Oftentimes celebrities need to get paid. Not only does she not get paid, she actively fundraisers, so she’s very unique. And San Diego had Tony Gwynn Jr, who is a baseball player. So both of them were fantastic. And Tony also raises money and lends his time and talent and serves on their board. Both of them serve on the boards in the local markets. So they both did that. Chantel was our mission ambassador in the program so she could put a face to our very complex mission, and Tony tapped into his baseball contacts and really worked that angle.

Maxine Tatlonghari: But again to your point, Nick and I looked at who we had. What was their talent? How do we best figure out their content? Play Then, how do we produce it? How do we distribute it? What makes it easy for them? I think people need to realize people are busy, like oftentimes it’s a texting situation Like don’t send them this link, that they have to download everything and make it easy. How do they like to work? When do they like to work? Work when they work. You know they’ve got time right here in between recording the baseball game and then getting onto TV and Chantel in between takes on set. That’s when you do it.

Maxine Tatlonghari: I want to say one of the procedures we also implemented, in addition to Nick’s very ugly spreadsheet, which I found out I loved we would have a weekly marketing meeting. So, being a national nonprofit, two markets, you know we needed to get everyone on the same page very quickly. So that was a weekly Tuesday meeting, and then Nick and I would meet the day before, go through all the dashboard and analytics and literally say where are we pivoting? What do we focus on? What’s working, what’s not working, what do we table, what do we double down on? And we did have a very supportive national team behind us too, because they were looking at us like does this work? What’s working? How do we replicate that across 40 markets in the country? What pieces of it do we replicate. You know, while we were building the plane, while we flew it, we were looking at everything Like nothing was haphazard. It was all very intentional and with that goal again of scaling and replicating where we could.

Data points to use when analyzing the performance of an influencer marketing campaign

Dana Snyder: What did work? Was there something that surprised you in terms of the people you partnered with and success, or is there anything that blew you away from expectations and building this versus a more traditional gala approach?

Maxine Tatlonghari: I think what probably blew us away, I would say, was this ability to turn board members into influencers. I think that was fun, and then also being able to really start tapping deeply into potential sponsors, marketing dollars you know you’ve got a philanthropic budget and then you’ve got a marketing budget and I think when, if charity can speak, marketing dollars, that’s a whole other way bigger budget yeah, but to be fair, you have to show so much more ROI. So that’s where I think nick’s dashboard and those data points. They’re really important, because now you’re not just talking about a feel good moment or a CEO’s passion and commitment to a project. You’re like is this really doing what we need it to do from a marketing lens?

Dana Snyder: Yeah, Nick. What data points were they most interested in?

Nick Lynch: The biggest ones are always how far and how many people? Are we seeing this right? So, like reach, impressions, awareness, those sorts of pieces and then are people engaging in it? Is that engagement equaling impact right? And so we’re able to see not only from like a full funnel marketing perspective top, middle and bottom but also impact, like the how many people are actually understanding or knowing what it is that we’re doing and how many people are actually engaging and then ultimately doing what we needed to do, whether that was sign up for a newsletter or I think we were selling. Was it baskets? I think we were signing like baskets.

Maxine Tatlonghari: Year one we were doing, you know, we wanted to replicate some of that being at an event feeling. So we were selling boxes with beer and candy and just signed memorabilia so that people had something physical that they could interact with. And that was year one.

Nick Lynch: Yeah, and then like donations, right? So all of those pieces we were able to show and this is actually like, really, where we phrased or created the phrase double ROI it’s really show that the return on investment from a co-marketing or a dollar perspective for the partnerships, but also return on impact, which is really able to show does the input equal the outcomes that we were doing or wanting to achieve, which was really important.

Nick Lynch: The other thing I just to add on top of things that surprised us is, I think Maxine and I both, even though we were really excited and bullish on the influencer piece, I think we both went into it saying okay, we have tens of thousands of people on an email list, this is going to be our gold, this is going to be what drives everything Clicks, traffic to the site, donations, signups, all of it and it was completely the opposite.

Nick Lynch: The first week of influencer stuff eclipsed everything that we were doing with emails to the point where we were spending more time on optimizing influencer content. I even think that we ended up not even spending any dollars on a planned physical mailer. I think there was going to be a physical mailer that was going to go out and we ultimately said we don’t need to spend that money, let’s just focus on influencers and continue to build that way. So for me, like it was and I’m excited I mean I’m the influencer guy I was excited and surprised by how well the influencer pieces actually worked, on top of what they normally would.

Working with influencers on a nonprofit marketing campaign

Dana Snyder: Yeah, okay. So I want to break this down because for a listener might be saying, well, how do I even get somebody influential and that could be a micro influencer, that can be somebody as big as a celebrity to say yes? And then, once they say yes, what am I giving them that is actually going to convert and is going to work, and or what am I asking them that is actually going to convert and is going to work, and or what am I asking them to create? So I guess, from the standpoint of Maxine your experience working with individuals of impact and influence before, no matter if it’s small or large what is your advice for somebody who might be interested in building some sort of influencer ambassador community to either get their word out or generate event awareness like this I think it’s twofold.

Maxine Tatlonghari: In the case of Champions Unite, we did have existing influencers, right, we had Tony and Chantel. So meeting with their teams or them directly, figuring out what their schedule is, what it would allow. How do they like to receive information? What is their best channel? Is it Instagram? Is it TV? Is it radio? When do they want to work? When do they like to receive information? What is their best channel? Is it Instagram? Is it TV? Is it radio? When do they want to work? When do they have their pockets of time?

Maxine Tatlonghari: And then just creating those toolkits. So it’s easy, Like in the case of Chantel, she likes to have bullet points, but she doesn’t want to be scripted. Right, that’s her work style. She likes to be given a choice of images that she can use and then she will create a lot of her own. If it’s going to be something like where she’s speaking to mission, she will need a proper crew With Tony. He likes to be scripted. He will use bullet points as well. He’s a little more like can shoot on the fly. Also, Chantel could self-shoot, it just depends on her schedule. Also, Chantel could self-shoot, it just depends on her schedule.

Maxine Tatlonghari: So, I think, just working out all those production pieces also are really important. Who’s going to edit? You know what’s the timeframe that you have. And then to be really efficient with their time I think is incredibly important. If you don’t have influencers, looking at who you do have your board could potentially be influencers and then going out and just coming up with a hit list, you know, sliding into people’s DMs, it works. Finding out who represents yeah, there’s a website who represents. Finding out who their publicist is, who is their team, who’s putting content out in your space already, like who cares about air quality, who cares about lung cancer health, who cares about youth. Getting into producing movies so that you’re at least aligning on the mission side, and then coming up with a well-crafted, fast pitch and then taking an exploratory meeting that’s how I would approach it. I think nothing beats getting on the phone and getting in front of someone, even if it’s really quick, and then send the deck.

Dana Snyder: A misnomer or like myth in the space is that you think you always have to pay influencers for content. And I will say I worked with Movember on three years of their campaign and they have a rule they do not pay anyone. And we did full on video shoots where they were coming in and giving their time and being a part of it or posting, and we had everybody from the Rock to Ryan Reynolds to I mean, name it to Bachelor people. No one got paid and people were giving their time. So I think it’s again having that mission alignment and then they’re happy to do those things. Nick, I don’t know if you remember this, do you remember what piece of content drove the most event registrations? Or Maxine? Do you remember?

Nick Lynch: It was Tony Gwynn, I think drove a ton at least measurable, I would say, Chantel. I mean we don’t have like direct data, we have some. Sometimes she added a link, sometimes she didn’t, obviously like you know it’s organic. So but in terms of measurable Tony Gwynn and we saw this like week over week when Tony Gwynn would use images of so he’s a I don’t know if you’re familiar with the baseball player, but he is actually the son, he’s Tony Gwynn Jr. His dad, tony Gwynn, is like a hall of fame Padre.

Nick Lynch: Everybody, like anybody who follows baseball, knows Tony Gwynn is like one of the best hitters of all time.

Nick Lynch: Whenever Tony Gwynn Jr would post content with his dad, like an image of him and his dad, and then talk about why it’s important to him and all these and you know the mission and why the event is important that combo of image with him and his dad and the information about the event always shot up in terms of metrics and performance.

Nick Lynch: And we tested this, we saw, you know, when he would do a more mission-centric image and text right where it was, maybe like an image of the event, flat or low, or when he would do like an action shot of him or an action shot of him and his dad, or him and his dad hitting, or him and his dad talk like we just saw it every time just to see these big peaks of traffic. And so we talk about it a lot. And I think maybe we talk about agnosium, about like authenticity and being sort of natural, and everybody knows when it’s forced and I mean this is a direct example of that Like Tony would when junior would normally talk about or show pictures of him playing baseball and him and his dad, and so when you’re able to sort of weave the narrative of something that they would naturally say or naturally share with the event, it produces results.

The cost of an influencer marketing program versus traditional marketing

Dana Snyder: So I like thank you segued into results. So, from the gala year which was previous, was there an expectation or hope of what you would raise and the cost to put on a virtual event versus a gala Can you talk a little bit about? And the cost of doing an influencer program versus maybe more traditional marketing for the gala, can you talk about the difference of I guess the first year of the event was at 2021 and then you did it again in 2022?

Maxine Tatlonghari: Yes, and, to be honest, Dana, I don’t have those numbers on top of my head, but I can say some things that might work. I will say that the event financially, like gross dollars, it was pretty solid with the years before when we did traditional galas. However, the cost to execute it went down to 5%. What it used to be galas, however, the cost to execute it went down to 5%. I mean, we really do try to stay in that 25%, and that was 2021, because I do galas now with, like, the chamber of commerce where I serve on the board and costs have just skyrocketed. You know, everything is more expensive, but even us, when we crunched the numbers and we saw that we’re like whoa, it was just way more. You know, going virtual and then the talent being so generous, with us not having to pay them and not having this overhead, it just really allowed us to put more dollars into the mission.

Dana Snyder: That’s amazing. Yeah, so, and then you replicated it in 2022. We did. Did you still run an influencer program the following year?

Maxine Tatlonghari: We kind of I’ll be honest, Dana we run influencer programs on everything we do now. Whether it’s a nano influencer whether Chantel has the time to step in and leverage her 1 million followers. We started working with a consultant who helps us in development, but he also runs an influencer marketing program. So he secured an influencer. 17 years old he just had a birthday bilingual. Also an actor with a platform very passionate about youth anti-vaping, so entering the mission from a different entry point 4.3 million followers. So to Nick’s point. You know earlier he’s a top of funnel guy. He does raise money but his money is coming in $1, $5 at a time. These are 16-year-old girls who are his bread and butter. But he supported us in Champions Unite.

Maxine Tatlonghari: We came up with a really cute reel where he’s taking the ball and then he throws it to Robert Ori and he throws it to some of these really big legends and TikTok style. The ball comes in, it’s a new person, ball goes out, it’s another person. So just even executing something like that was really fun. And then it ended with one of our staff members’ daughters who’s like nine years old, spicy little girl saying I care about my lungs. So it was just a really nice way to weave mission, leverage all these different influencers in different markets, so definitely maintaining the low cost per event.

Maxine Tatlonghari: One of the challenges and I think this is always something to look at players donating talent. You might run out of people willing to show their off-field talents. So we’re kind of revisiting that, just like a lot of people, where I think we’re going to definitely replicate the pieces that work and we might have to reinvent again. You know, jury’s still going through that process right now, but we always want to deliver a quality event with the market that’s in front of us and then take all of these learnings really around digital marketing and how do we keep overhead low so that we can deliver more money into the mission and still raise awareness? That’s just as critical for us as raising dollars, but they go hand in hand.

Finding and partnering with the right influencers for nonprofit marketing campaigns

Dana Snyder: Yes, absolutely. And I mean, Nick, from your standpoint and just the overall, the influencer space and all the campaigns that you’ve worked on for different size organizations. And understanding measurement I think we talked a little bit about, like the UTM links, what is important in the outreach of finding them and then making sure that they are doing the best that they can to track so that you know that it’s working.

Nick Lynch: Yeah, no for sure. So from an outreach perspective, I always say the first place you should look is like your followers who’s already following you on social media that already has. That means sort of the checks the box of who already is like mission aligned, and those followers could be somebody who has 10 followers or 10,000 followers or 10 million followers. I mean, you never know who’s following you. So I think that’s always one of the first and best places to start and then, from an outreach perspective, especially if they’re already following you, be really thoughtful about what the ask is and what you want them to do and what you think or what you believe their inclusion or their integration in something would mean to you and what it would yield.

Nick Lynch: You know we’re batting like 99 whenever we reach out cold to somebody and we say this is why we like you, this is what we’d like you to do, and this is what it would mean personalized message yeah, a really personal message, because obviously it shows that you’ve taken the time to see who they are and what they do and why you think it would be important to them and it’s not some just general like hey, put a post up, like it’s like really specific, like if you mentioned these three things, we’ll send you this and that and the other, and then we can do that. So make it really personal and make it really specific and have a very specific ask to it. I think is a crucial part. And then measurement at the bare minimum. If you can create a tracking link for them, that’s like you can go to bitly. You know bit.ly. You can Google tracking links. There’s probably five dozen different places that you could put in your URL and it would spit out a custom tracking link.

Nick Lynch: But just give each partner you you work with some dedicated tracking link at the minimum, so that way you can at least see did they actually drive any type of action or not? And if they didn’t, that’s not necessarily a throwaway or a bad partner or a partner I wouldn’t work with again. Maybe ask them to share their post data like how much reach did that post achieve or how much engagement did that post achieve? And maybe they might be a great partner to get the word out about something and just get overall eyeballs on it. Maybe work with some other influencers or influencers you’ve worked with that have shown good results in kind of this mix of top funnel, bottom funnel influencer activation.

Dana Snyder: I love it. I have two quick examples on totally opposite spectrums. So, on the large side of things, when I worked on American Idol and I was working with Katie Perry, Luke Brian, Lionel Richie, Ryan Seacrest and Bobby Bones on their content for the show, and we had the Nielsen social ratings tool, and so something that I took kind of from my agency days is, every week for the show, it would gauge who’s the most social influencer of TV, and I would not only put them up against the rest of the talent across all TV, but I would pin them against themselves, and so there was usually Katie. She has the largest presence and normally she’d be first. However, I will never forget there was a week where and we as the social team, we knew we would clip what we would think would be viral moments from the show. And so there was this moment in the show where Luke took off. There was a kid on stage who had really worn cowboy boots. Luke took off his cowboy boots, went on stage and gave his boots to the kid and I clipped that piece and that’s what I sent to, plus other things. But I clipped that piece, sent it to Luke’s team and they posted it ahead of the show and that piece of content skyrocketed him and I was able, I messaged, like both of their teams, and I was like Katie, Luke beat you and she’s like what, and so she’s like I’m going to tweet like five more times. It creates this fun competitiveness around those people and so that’s one instance of using an influencer and that was to drive, obviously, viewership to the show.

Dana Snyder: On a much smaller scale, I worked with a much smaller nonprofit in North Dakota and they were just looking to increase their Instagram presence around a campaign that they had coming out. And I, to your point, nick, I looked at who’s already following you that might have a substantial following. And I, to your point, Nick, I looked at who’s already following you that might have a substantial following. And there was definitely some micro influencers, some blue check marks, and I was like, have you ever reached out to them? And they said no, and one of them was a brilliant photographer and I said well, let’s reach out to these people and I think we got maybe 10 or so people out of the group I pitched that said yes, we sent them like a video piece of content, a couple of different copy options, obviously tweak to what feels meaningful to you and it was just an ask of sharing content and to follow this organization If this is also a mission aligned with you. And they saw, I want to say it was like a 500 person boost in followership like in 24 hours, and that was massive, massive and organic of people.

Dana Snyder: So there are so many ways that you can partner and work with influencers and I know we think of influencers as celebrity scale and so many different elements, but you can go very grassroots and see a very compelling impact with your organization. So I just really wanted to thank you both for the work that you’re doing. I think the measurement point is so, so, so crucial and the strategic elements of what makes something compelling that somebody is going to share. And then, Maxine, what you’ve done with the American Lung. I mean that’s just, it’s incredible. And bringing on new, innovative, youthful voices is so important as well. So thank you both for coming on the show today. I do want to ask how can people connect with each of you? Maxine, I’ll go to you first.

Maxine Tatlonghari: Yes. So thank you, Dana, this was really fun. Thank you. I always like the moment to, you know, to kind of nerd out on these pieces that we do, and I hope someone does find something to take away that’s actionable, like one small thing, and just to kind of back up on what you said. You know we did see an increase, a 30% increase, in our followership too after year. One Amazing old he ended up donating like a surfboard to our silent auction that year. But again, you know, going back through like who’s responding to Tony, and then DMing them, say, hey, you know I saw this and so that’s a gold mine that people definitely shouldn’t ignore. So anyway, how people can keep up with me, if you’re looking at California American Lung Association, it’s at California Lung on Instagram and then if you’re looking to connect with me, it’s MerciMaxine M-E-R-C-I Maxine, I’m a Francophile, I know I’m a nerd, but that’s how you can keep up with me personally.

Nick Lynch: Sometimes technology fails us and unfortunately, Nick’s audio cut out at the end of our interview, but I wanted to make sure that you knew how to get in touch with him so you can check out his website at collidescope.io or he was very gracious to share his email. You can email him directly at nick at kaleidoscope.io or head over to LinkedIn. And if you are interested and please do in purchasing his book. It’s on leveraging social moments, partnerships and empathy for building and scaling impact. It’s available on Amazon. Just search for the title Impact Redefined and we’ll also link to it in the show notes. It’s the big red cover and you can’t miss it. And that’s the end of our episode today.

Dana Snyder: Thank you so much for tuning into this amazing conversation and next week I have a treat for you. I’m going to be doing an interview with Amanda Young. She is the marketing and philanthropic manager at Kendra Scott and we have a couple of things we’re working on together that I can’t wait to share as well. So with that, I will see you next week. Can you tell I love talking all things digital? To make this show better I’d be so grateful for your feedback. Digital to make this show better I’d be so grateful for your feedback. Leave a review, take a screenshot of this episode, share it on Instagram stories and tag positive equation with one E.