Forbes & Traackr in influencer marketing tie up

Forbes and Traackr take influencer marketing in a new direction for business publishers – writes Scott Guthrie

Forbes, the business publisher, and influencer identification tool, Traackr, have entered a business partnership.

The first-of-a-kind relationship is aimed at making Forbes’ native advertising clients more ‘sticky’.

For a fee Forbes will help brands identify key influencers relevant to their content using the Traackr tool.

Forbes staffers will then sift through the long lists of potential influencers and weed out those with potential conflicts to the brand. Forbes will also sense-check the list to determine whether identified influencers will be receptive to marketing outreach.

By connecting its BrandVoice clients with relevant influencers the aim is to get these journalists, academics and bloggers to amplify brands’ native advertising content.

From amplification the relationship between brand and influencer may evolve into the influencer producing more native advertising content on Forbes. The benefit: both an authoritative and authentic voice in the content.

Many large scale publishers such as The Atlantic, The Wall Street Journal and Buzzfeed operate successful native advertising offerings. These publishers recognise the economic imperative for blurring the so-called church and state within mastheads where journalists work within advertising departments to create compelling native advertising.

The twist here is that by helping BrandVoice clients identify relevant influencers Forbes is also helping these native advertisers find content creators who are authoritative, authentic and who bring their own audiences.

The end goal is a double-whammy for Forbes:

BrandVoice clients pay $100,000 a month. Keeping them happy is good for business. According to The Drum native advertising currently accounts for around 30% of Forbes’ total digital advertising revenue.
Identifying more content creators with expertise relevant to their advertisers. These influencers might then write for Forbes in an authentic voice producing useful content rather than brand-centred sales content.

Scott Guthrie is a professional adviser within the influencer marketing industry. He is an event speaker, university guest lecturer, media commentator on influencer marketing and active blogger. He works with brands, agencies and platforms to achieve meaningful results from influencer marketing. That tells you something about him but it's not giving you a lot of detail, is it? So, read more here.