James Nord is the visionary CEO behind one of the top influencer marketing companies in the world, Fohr. Co. With over 80,000 influencers in their network and state of the art tech advances in the market, James has super accurate and targeted information about trends in this space.
Christy Keane: 00:00:04 You are listening to motherhood ignited a podcast for mompreneurs creatives and influencers who are rocking the beautiful balance between working passionately and nurturing. Presently I’m your host, Christy Keane and every week I interview inspiring mom, bosses, brands and industry experts to bring you the knowledge, tools and strategies to grow your influence in business through purposeful online content creation. So come in and cozy up mamas and get ready to ignite your goals. So today I am interviewing James Nord who is the founder of fohr.co that’s f o h r . c o, which is a self serve influence and marketing platform that connects brands with influencers based on verified analytics. And you guys, they can even tell if an influencer has fake followers. So I’m super proud of the fact that I am for verified account and I’m super excited for James to c ome on today because he has such an expertise on the trends in the influencer marketing space and working with brands and influencers alike and kind of how that relationship balances. So thanks for coming on to talk to me today. I feel like we are similar and that I feel like you’ve lived so many different. Yeah,
James Nord: 00:01:15 that is true. I feel like I definitely have.
Christy Keane: 00:01:18 Yeah. So I think you started out like on a year of a New Yorker. That’s the one thing you are in New York right now anyhow. And you started out in Wall Street and I know you talk a lot about how you ended up as Oscar de la Renta as photographer, which is just crazy to me as a little small town Virginia girl right now. And then now you’re the founder and CEO of such a huge successful marketing company. And then you also have a podcast, a drink with James. So it’s just, you do so much and like as that, it feels like a thousand different lies. And I’d love for you to tell listeners a little bit more about who you are and how you got started in this space.
James Nord: 00:01:53 Yeah. So again, thanks for, thanks for having me on. I’m always happy to talk about myself and influencers in general, but, um, yeah, I mean to keep it short, I mean, you kind of, you kind of, you know, hit the nail on the head. I, I’m, I’m from Georgia actually. I was born in Queens, but like when I was six months old, we moved down to Georgia. So, uh, I can claim like that im a New Yorker, uh, mostly I was, I was raised in the south and moved to New York after college and yeah, I think I wanted to work in marketing or advertising, but, um, I’ll graduate in 2006. The economy was a little soft. I ran my own business in college. I didn’t have any internships or anything. I thought, uh, I thought employers thought would think that was kind of cool. Um, they didn’t think that was very cool.
James Nord: 00:02:42 Uh, so what was Your Business in college? I, uh, well like when I was in high school, I worked at Cinnabon for like two months and like, you know, just like serving 2000 calories Cinnabons to people in a mall, right? Yeah. And I was like, okay, this is not for me. I’m like, just standing behind the cash register is just like not, you know, for, for f whatever it was, $5 an hour. It wasn’t really working for me. So I had this vintage car in high school, um, my parents that I had to have an SUV and I was like, what if I get a huge car? Um, so I actually, I drove a 1957 Chevy Bel Air when I was in high school and I used to, yeah. And I used to, uh, I just detailed people’s cars. I would drive, um, you know, I would detailed people’s cars in their driveways.
James Nord: 00:03:36 Um, and I did that for like five or six years and made enough money to, you know, not have to work that much. Um, and I really love washing cars and I still love washing cars. I miss being able to do it. Um, in New York there’s just like this instant gratification of going from like a, you know, dirty car to a clean one. But, um, so yeah, I, I did that all throughout college and um, couldn’t get a job in marketing or advertising and uh, yeah, I got a job on Wall Street cause like they were always hiring and, and, and uh, essentially you’re just cold calling. I was making 225 phone calls a day, uh, and it was, it was truly, truly terrible and I hated it. And then I kind of bounced around in, you know, pretty unimpressive jobs and when I was 26, kind of looked at my life and it was just not what I expected.
James Nord: 00:04:31 Uh, I think I expected to come to New York and, and do something special and different. Like that’s why you come here to see kind of how far you can make it, what kind of person you can become and the person I was becoming or, or certainly the life I was living was just not, um, one that I really wanted. And I, I then started a tumbler, which was very, very new with it goes, started the tumbler few months after the platform launched. And that was kind of fun to just like, you know, throw photos up and, and, you know, I mean, nobody cared about it. It was very small. Um, and then as tumbler grew and I started taking photography more seriously and getting into that a little bit and, and that found out how to, you know, modicum of talent for it. And so I was shooting more and more, and, you know, this was maybe back then, 2009, 2008, 2009.
James Nord: 00:05:26 There just weren’t that many people putting photos on to the Internet in that way. Um, and so I was like a recommended user on Tumblr as a photographer and that, you know, that grew my following quite quickly. And I think in 2010 maybe I had like 50,000 followers, which was staggering at the time. Um, you know, Instagram maybe had just launched. Um, but that was one of the largest followings on the platform. And, uh, and eventually, I think, you know, a couple of years later, it was, uh, in the mid 100 thousands on Tumblr. And, um, you know, that totally changed my life. I, I all of a sudden was kind of like good at something for the first time I was doing something interesting. I was kind of starting to, I think, live the life in New York that I had had wanted and a lot of ways expected for myself.
James Nord: 00:06:20 And so that was really exciting. And I, uh, I saw the, kind of the value of, of what I was doing and what the value brand saw that I was, you know, after Wall Street I went into marketing, advertising. Um, and I could kind of see how this could eventually be a really interesting thing for marketers and advertisers to have access to is these, you know, we weren’t called influencers at the time. We were just bloggers. I think Tumblr bloggers we call ourselves, I’m not sure. But, um, yeah, I, I felt like, you know, that maybe in the future that was going to be, could be a bigger part of advertising. Uh, and, and then kind of started this company to see if that was going to be true. Uh, the idea was to create a platform where brands could find new influencers, bloggers, whatever you want to call them to work with. And once you found them, be able to actually understand and validate their following. Um, so that you could be sure or a little more sure about what you were going to get if you worked with this person.
Christy Keane: 00:07:24 Gosh, just to have that foresight with the tumbler phase. Obviously it would have been super nice if back then marketers understood the value because, well, you know, you know what, if they understood at that point then maybe you wouldn’t have started four and you wouldn’t be in the position you’re in now. But that’s such a huge thing to like understand what’s going to be huge and to, to make a bet on that by starting a whole company around it is just, it’s huge. You, I mean, you, you, the timing was great. Your
James Nord: 00:07:53 timing was very good. I was very lucky there. I mean, I think a lot of ways it was lucky, you know, I mean, yes, it was very personal thing. You know, I wasn’t, I wasn’t, uh, I don’t think I, I guess I just don’t want it to sound like I was as visionary. I think as, as maybe it would sound like I, I just had this personal experience where like I, I kind of fell into having this following and I saw the value in it and I saw brands struggling to find more people like me and, and I wasn’t happy with my professional life. And so it wasn’t a huge, you know, it didn’t feel like a really big risk, um, to give this a try. And, and again, it, it, it came out of just, hey, like a, like again, a very personal experience that I had had and said, okay, well this changed my life.
James Nord: 00:08:42 Um, you know, when I had that following before I started working with Oscar and other brands like that, I was, I was trying to get work, I was trying to talk to brands and tell them why, you know, what I was doing was interested in interesting and none of them were listening. And then I started working with Oscar and Tuma and a bunch of other big brands, and then they all kind of came around. And so I, I could kind of see, you know, that again, if I could take my personal experience and expand it that like maybe that could be interesting. And I think, you know, we’ve been very fortunate that, um, this industry has continued to grow. I, uh, it, it certainly is, has, I don’t think it’s exceeded my wildest expectations, but I’m very pleased that it happened this way for sure.
Christy Keane: 00:09:26 Oh, definitely. And I think you’re not giving yourself enough credit on being at the visionary in this space because I mean that whenever that mindset came to you, it’s kind of before people were doing the whole four hour work week and quitting your jobs to pursue influencing influencers again, just weren’t even necessarily a thing when you dream this all up. So. Okay.
James Nord: 00:09:49 Well, yeah, the worst definitely did not exist.
Christy Keane: 00:09:54 And now it’s like a bad word. It’s like crazy. Well, it’s not, and that’s part of the reason why I was so passionate about starting this podcast because I’m like, influencer, like all of a sudden people are like, oh, you know, influencers who are making, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars are like, oh, I hate that word influencer. I’m like, it’s not a bad word. Like you’re making some good money doing it and you know, it’s all about what’s your messaging is too, and what you’re influencing. But yeah,
James Nord: 00:10:22 I mean, if influencer, if I hear influencers being like, ah, I don’t like the word influencer, I’m like, oh my God, shut up. Like what is wrong?
Christy Keane: 00:10:31 I know it’s just a word. It’s like the I word, you know?
James Nord: 00:10:34 Yeah. I mean, it is what they are, so I don’t, I don’t really pay much attention to it, but yeah. Um, it’s been a wild, you know, it’s been a wild few years. I, you know, I always think about this Keith Richards quote and he’s the lead guitarist for the rolling stones. And I read his book, which is incredible. I can’t, you know, shocked that he could remember his life given the amount of drugs he did. But, um, it’s an incredible book. And He, you know, he, he was saying that like in an interview, someone was like, could you ever have imagined, like, could you ever have imagined that this was going to happen? Like you’re, you’re now the biggest rock star in the world. You’re in the biggest, at least rock band in the world. Um, and he was like, I imagined it every day. I just didn’t think it was going to happen.
James Nord: 00:11:22 And that’s in some ways what I feel like, like, yes, I like, this is what I wanted to happen. I just never actually thought it would necessarily. Um, so it’s a pretty big trip, uh, in general. And then, um, uh, you know, loving life and feeling very fortunate to now have 30, I dunno, six people, um, working on the company. Wow. Here in New York. Um, and, uh, 80,000 influencers on our platform and ethic will run 400 campaigns, this, uh, and, and maybe have two or 300 clients who use the self serve platform. So it’s, it’s certainly, you know, grown so far beyond me and I have now all these incredible people working on this every day and I get to meet incredible influencers such as yourself who are, you know, going out and creating the life that they want. I think that’s, for me, I think what was so like personal and important to me was that like I really was unhappy with my life and social media totally changed it.
James Nord: 00:12:26 You know, like I was on this kind of mediocre path and then I built a following and it allowed me to build a, like a new network of friends and, and uh, and colleagues and people that I could build relationships with. So it changed by like friendship groups. It, it helped me dive into passions that have shaped my life, like photography and cycling. Uh, those are super important. Um, and definitely something the Internet helps like fuel. Uh, obviously it helped me create this business and so I really, when I started this, wanted to do that for more people because I, I think that bad jobs are like to generate diseases. They just kind of like, if you’re doing something that you don’t like or if you look at your life and you’re not happy that starts to eat away at what makes you you, right.
James Nord: 00:13:20 You just, you start to become this kind of shell of who you are. And if you could do what you, if you could love your job, um, and you could be really happy or you could just be, you know, more satisfied in your life, I think it totally changes everything in your life. So it’s been a really, you know, it’s been a trip to be able to do that, to have people, you know, come up and say how, you know, they quit their job because they were able, you know, they were able to put their job because of the money they were making from our campaigns or you know, that since joining the platform, they’ve been getting more work and they were, you know, able to afford that vacation or something else. Like that’s pretty, that’s pretty cool. Um, it’s cool to, to be able to empower it, kind of new class of, of entrepreneur. Um, who doesn’t, you know, who can kind of live life the way they want, which is, which is as you said, um, obviously becoming more and more of a, of the goal for people. I think
Christy Keane: 00:14:16 it’s so true and you guys do such a great job of that at four. And for listeners who don’t know what four is, which for most of them I hope they do, but I would love for you to tell them a little bit more about what four is and, and the analytics that you guys give to influencers I feel like are so great. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had a brand reach out to me and want to know certain demographics or analytics. And you know, Instagram just wasn’t giving those to me. So the first thing I always do is go over to my four account and pull up my profile and you guys basically give everything you need for a media kit or to reach out to brands right there. And then you guys also do the for verified accounts, which I mean, I remember when I got the email back with my little four picture that said I was for verified. I felt, I don’t know, it just felt good. And I would love to see other people’s, and I know brands appreciate the fact that you, you know, are giving them valuable influencers to work with who are authentic and it just adds more value to the work that they do together. So I’d love for you to tell the listeners a little bit more about,
James Nord: 00:15:24 well you know, at its, at its core, it is a platform, you know, an influencer marketing platform. So influencers sign up, it’s free to sign up, you connect your accounts through platforms, API APIs, Instagram, youtube, Google analytics, Facebook, Pinterest, et cetera. And a, and then we pull data from those platforms and presented in a way that makes it really easy, as you said, for influencers to understand and really easy for brands to understand who is this person, what do they talk about, who are they talking to? And, uh, you know, what value could they potentially be bring to that brand? Um, so we do that in certainly a number of ways and in different ways for brands and influencers. Um, but that was kind of the, the, you know, beginning for us was yeah, I was trying to make influencers make sense to marketers. Uh, so that, uh, if even if you weren’t super familiar with the influencer space, you could look at these numbers and feel like, oh, I get it.
James Nord: 00:16:24 So she is a mom, she’s living in Virginia. It looks like she’s mostly speaking to other moms that have this kind of income bracket. And this is how many the kinds of brands she talks about. Now I can kind of understand who you are and put you and give you context, right? Because if, if we also try and show like, here’s, you know, here’s this influencers performance and here how here is how it looks in relation to other influencers. They’re same size, right? Because if you say to a normal person, oh, hey, you have a 2% engagement rate. Was that good or bad? Because you know, to a normal person that doesn’t sound very good. But if you see that the average is 1%, well then you’re doing twice as well as most people. Now that’s really great. So, um, you know, we’re constantly trying to, you know, pull in new data, uh, so that brands and influencers can have better understandings of their following and their account and what makes them special.
James Nord: 00:17:24 And then also provide context for that data so that, um, brands and influencers can understand where they stand on it. And, you know, and, and the verified accounts were a big part of that, which was, you know, three or four years ago, people started talking more and more about fake followers. And I was like, well, this is, you know, this sucks for influencers because if, if the idea spreads that everyone’s buying followers, it’s going to de legitimize the entire industry. And I believed on a whole, most people were not buying followers. And so I created or recreated our follower health tool or verified authentic following tool, um, not to catch cheaters and call them now, but to celebrate the people that have a real authentic audience who’ve done the hard work of building a following over years and, uh, and you know, and doing the hard work to, to kind of, um, build that following in an authentic way. And so that’s been really cool to see that become kind of industry standard and something that, uh, we see brands asking for, even if they’re not our clients. So they’ll ask an influencer, you know, to see if they’re verified on fourth, they have a real following. So as the industry grows and as brands spend more money, they need more ways to make sure they’re spending their money in the right ways and with the right people. And that’s a pretty big, pretty big focus of ours.
Christy Keane: 00:18:53 And another thing that I noticed that you guys do just by being, um, uh, for influencer is I will get emails that say that I’m the number one influencer for a certain brand that I’m, I don’t think they are one of your brands. I think it’s just a brand that I had worked with and it is that, how does that work?
James Nord: 00:19:13 Yeah, so we have, you know, kind of the top 500 brands that we’re tracking and we’ve look at all 80,000 influencers and we see who in certain following tiers, whether you’re, you know, zero to 25 k 25 k to 50, 50 to 100. I, I’m not actually sure what the tiers are. Um, in that tier who talked about the brand the most that month, you know, who, who kind of organically mentions them a lot. And you know, those have been great because I think as a s, especially if you’re an influencer who has, you know, 30,000 followers, you can feel like that’s not a lot, but that’s actually a lot of people. 30,000 people is bigger than any basketball stadium in the country. You know, it’s, it’s for sure the size of most baseball stadiums. It’s huge. That’s a lot of people following one person’s life. And, uh, and so we wanted to give influencers that all tears away to brag and to say, hey, like x brand that I love.
James Nord: 00:20:16 Um, you know, that brand may not be paying as much attention to you because you may not have, you know, 2 million followers. But being able to say, Hey, amongst my peers and amongst people at my following size, I’m talking about you more than anyone else. Um, and we’re, you know, we’ve, we really want to, I guess I should say, when I started the company, I didn’t want to keep brands and influencers apart. You know, if you think of a traditional influencer agency represents the influencers. They make money by being a gate between the influencer and the brand, right? They don’t, the brand can’t just go to the influencer. Um, so they have to go through this agent. So it’s almost like you’re paying a toll or attacks to get to this person. Um, and we didn’t want to do that. You know, we wanted to bring these two groups together and, and kind of understood that that is what the internet does in general is trying to bring these groups together.
James Nord: 00:21:19 I mean, just look at the whole influencer space in general. What it’s done is cut out the middleman between content and people who consume concepts. So that middleman used to be magazines or newspapers or television or whatever it might be. Um, we just got rid of that, right? Because it used to be like if you, if you had the best tips for about motherhood, right? And you want it to be able to talk, speak to other moms 20 years ago about that, you would have to, you know, kind of become a contributor to a magazine that was read by mothers because there was no way to get scale. You know, there was no way to directly reach the people who wanted access to what you knew to your knowledge. And so magazines became these gatekeepers to that advice and that content that people wanted and the way they made money off of that, it was obviously that to sell advertising against it.
James Nord: 00:22:23 So now the internet comes along and now you don’t need vogue or you know, l or GQ or any other magazines because the people who want to consume content and the people who create content can just connect directly. So that is the trend. The Internet like always takes with everything as it cuts those, those middlemen out. Um, and so some of the tools that we build, like the top brand mentions is in an effort to, you know, continue to bring those groups together. And so if you have a brand that you love, let’s say it’s Nike and you’re the top influencer for them, we want to give you tools to go to Nike and say, Hey, look at what a great job I’m doing for you. We should kind of deepen this relationship.
Christy Keane: 00:23:09 And I can say I’ve gotten a couple of those emails and I, I get so excited when I sit down. I was like, oh my gosh, I did so good this month with this particular brand. And I’ve reached out and it has created opportunities for me based on just getting that email and, and sharing like that along with the posts that I did or some stories that I did that would have corresponded with it. And I love that expanding the conversation. So, yeah, you, you’ve helped me out there. So I appreciate it. And I, and I love the texts. I don’t know, I’m just, I geek out over maybe what the tech side of making these, um, different, like just doing the fair fide accounts and, and doing the brand, the top influencer brand posts. Like it just, yeah, that’s your team is awesome. Whatever they’re doing. I just think it’s so awesome. It’s, it’s, it’s like you have a tech company to, on top of doing influencer marketing, which is really neat. Yeah.
James Nord: 00:24:06 We started as a technology company. I never, you know, and so, I mean, we’ve probably spent in salaries and stuff. I mean, I don’t know, millions, millions of dollars, um, building this technology. Um, so they are amazing and they’re, you know, we have, I think, I don’t know, it was eight or nine people in our, our technology on the technology side of the business, uh, here in New York, putting stuff out constantly. So that’s pretty, you know, I think that that’s pretty unique and certainly a differentiator for us is that we’re not buying other people’s technology. We’re not, you know, we’re not just doing things without technology. Everything we do, we think about how can we, how can we do this more effectively with technology? How can we use technology to help us see things that we couldn’t see with our, you know, feeble, human brains, um, and, and use those stories to, uh, to kind of augment the really human side of the business, which is you guys are people and you’re people with personalities and with viewpoints.
James Nord: 00:25:10 And, um, some of that stuff can’t be captured by a computer. And so we need to make sure that we also have, um, you know, the human kind of art side of the business. We talk about it like an art and science a lot of times. Um, and you really need to kind of bring both of those together, which is why, you know, I, you know, we could make so much more money if I got rid of my technology team, I could certainly have a much nicer apartment and pay myself a lot more because this is so expensive to build this stuff. But the, the end goal for, for me and for, for is, uh, is very much that technology is going to be the difference maker in this, in this industry. And that we, um, by investing in it for so long and investing so much and having such great people will eventually emerge as the, you know, the kind of undisputed leader of the space. You know, I, I want to have, uh, you know, I want a thousand people to work at this company. I want to be massive. I want, I want to see like, when you think of influencers, I want you to think about us in the same way. When you think about, you know, ordering something online, you think about Amazon, that’s kind of how dominant we want to be.
Christy Keane: 00:26:24 Well to me, I do think of when I think of Amazons or marketing companies, I do think of you guys at the top. But I love that and I want you to stay connected to me when you are the Amazon of influencer marketing. I’ll give a shout out to your tech team right now, the men behind the curtain, because you know, people don’t think about that stuff in it. It is huge. It’s gonna pay so big for you guys in the future. And I am so here for it. And I want to switch gears a little bit and dive into the trends you’re seeing right now and social media and influencer marketing or anything you think could help people in this space. Who it’s a, it’s a hard time right now on at least on Instagram and trying to grow and all the changes they’re making. So I would love to hear some trends that can help us out in this kind of plateaued stage. And we’re trying to keep the amplification up working with brands and growing our own personal brands.
James Nord: 00:27:16 I mean it’s, it’s really hard, you know, and, and if you look at our platform right now, um, I think when you get over 50,000 followers at that level, over 50% of our platform is losing followers month over month not gaining. So one is like, if you feel depressed, if you feel like, oh my God, this is like what is going on? What’s happening? Like I’m losing followers almost again. Almost half the platform for us to 80,000 influencers are losing following month over month. Um,
Christy Keane: 00:27:47 okay. That makes me feel better right off the bat because I feel like hitting 100,000 followers was the worst thing that happened too. It’s my Instagram.
James Nord: 00:27:56 It is. Yeah, it’s really hard. And, uh, I think, you know, just to kind of understand that, I used to do a good amount of email marketing at a, at an old job. And what was interesting about, you know, marketing was if, if you sent one email or 10 emails a week, your rate of unsubscribing didn’t go up. Um, which was kind of surprising, but every time you send an email as a business, you lose subscribers, I believe. I think, well, no, this is just true. Every time you post on Instagram, you lose followers. And so if you go back three years, people used to post once, twice a day. So let’s see, you know, you were posting between 30 and at the high end, 80 or 90 times a month, but now you’re posting once a day on your feed, but maybe you’re posting five to 10 stories a day. So that could be between 150 and 300 stories and 30 in feed. So you could be posting up to 330 times a month. That’s 330 opportunities for somebody to unfollow you, which they absolutely will. Um, which is a big, which is part of the driver of why people are losing followers. It’s just you’re giving people so much more opportunity to lose the following and then it’s gotten so much more competitive when, you know, when did you start your Instagram?
Christy Keane: 00:29:17 Oh, I started my Instagram back in 2011. Okay, so you were involved,
James Nord: 00:29:23 you were early. Maybe there’s 50 million people on the platform. There’s a billion, billion people have Instagram accounts now. You know, like it’s, it’s so hard. And, and when I built a following online, I don’t got, I mean, 15 years, not 15 years ago, 10, 12 years ago. Um, there just wasn’t that much competition. I had a professional camera and I walked around New York City taking photos and there just weren’t many people doing that. And there certainly weren’t many professionals really talented people doing that. So if you were interested in New York and you wanted to see photos of it, you know, I, I was doing that and not many people were, but now the best photographers in the world are putting stuff online so it gets harder for the amateurs to compete because the, you know, the, the bar has been raised so high. And then another problem that, you know, um, I think some influencers are facing is that they’re getting older and they’ve been doing it for a long time.
James Nord: 00:30:26 I think that some influencers probably are not realizing it, but like they have lost the passion for what they’re doing. You know, when I was growing my following, I got out of bed and every day my main focus was, I used to say I want to take five great photos today, like five really, really great photos and I would, you know, take a diff, I would walk a different way to work during the day so I could see something different. I would, I would be, you know, up to date with what was going on in the city so I could go shoot something. If there was a protest or there was an event happening or prayed, I would go to different landmarks at night. I would, if it was snowing, I was up out all day shooting. If it was raining, I was out all day shooting. Like if it was the first day of spring, I was like, I need to get a photo that like is, you know, just totally quintessential spring in New York City.
James Nord: 00:31:22 And then I got more successful and I got busier and I stopped caring as much. You know, I stopped being as passionate about the photos. I stopped, you know, going to these parades and events and shooting it and, and like the content just got worse. And, and you know, now I sit in the conference room, you know, sit my office 10, 12 hours a day. Um, and it’s impossible for me to, to kind of create content I think that people are interested in. Um, but I think a lot of influencers who’ve been doing this for awhile, you just, you have fatigue and then your audience has fatigue. You know, if I’ve been following you for five years, I may really like you. Uh, and I may still find what you have to say valuable, but I’m not, it’s like any relationship. I mean, how much different is the first six months of a romantic relationship then five years in? It’s not to say that, it’s not to say that, that, that relationship is weaker five years. In a lot of ways it’s stronger, but it’s not as, you know, it’s not as passionate maybe. And, and I think that like that is also kind of contributing to um, to this. And when you started your Instagram, there was no money in this.
Christy Keane: 00:32:44 None. Yeah.
James Nord: 00:32:45 And so like your, your intentions and the reasons for doing it were pretty pure. But now again, you’re, you’re constantly, it’s a business, right? And so it just changes the fabric of what you’re doing because you’re trying to make money on it, not just, Oh, I’m, I, this is just really fun. I mean I remember, I don’t know if this was true for you, but when I first started to get a following even 500 people, it’s, it just felt so cool. I was like, this is amazing. 500 people following me. Like that was such a trip for me. And
Christy Keane: 00:33:16 I know I keep, I actually was talking about it earlier today. I was like, I don’t even know exactly what the point was. And I started out in fitness, so it was really easy to grow. And the popular page was like everybody saw you there was on the platform and you got on the popular page. You kind of forget that now you’re just showing the same kind of feeds over and over and over again. But you could grow really fast back in 2012 and it was just, I got a kick out of it. Like I just loved. Yeah, I don’t even know what the, what was the perk? I don’t know, like self people leg in your big,
James Nord: 00:33:47 I was like, it was, it was just fun, right? It was something to do. And you’re like, and, and it’s exciting to have people excited about what you want to do, but then, but then money gets involved or you know, a lot of influencers now they’re so focused on brand partnerships, which I understand, right? You gotta make money. But I think they fail to realize that like brands aren’t your customers. You know, your customers are your followers and if you’re so focused on getting the next follower, I think you’re doing a disservice to your existing followers. Like are you, are you doing what you can to keep them happy? I mean, if you, especially if this is your career, you know, if you are making money on this, um, and these people who’ve hit follow randomly and started, decided to follow you have literally changed your life.
James Nord: 00:34:38 You know, and they are the entire reason for your success. And without them, you have no business. Right? Um, because advertisers are really only paying for access to your following. And so if you as an influencer aren’t focusing on what am I doing to keep those people who are already following me happy, keep them engaged, uh, you know, go out of my way to create content that doesn’t glorify me, doesn’t make me look awesome, doesn’t just get me paid, but actually helps them. And again, I think that like as influencers get more into sponsored content, they lose sight of that and they start to think, my client, my customer is the brand and I’m going to make the brand happy. And they do that at the detriment of their audience. And once you lose your audience is trust, uh, and once lose their attention, you have nothing to sell because again, you’re selling, you’re selling access to attention. Um, you’re selling access to eyeballs and I think you hit you really, influencers have to focus more on keeping, you know, keeping their audience happy and doing things for them, um, rather than just for themselves.
Christy Keane: 00:36:00 And it’s hard to balance that sometimes because like you said, it is a business and once you get to the point where you’re monetizing you, you also want to make brands happy. But who’s like somebody in the space who’s doing a good job monetizing but keeping the brand first or keeping the audience and following first rather because I just am always looking at, I would love to see people who are doing it right as an example because it’s just so hard to navigate and balance when you’re not. It’s also new to everybody. It’s just not, it’s not how, how advertising or how business or how I, I mean I was a nurse by trade, so, you know, I, I always loved to look up to people who are doing it the right way.
James Nord: 00:36:40 Yeah. I mean, I think that, uh, you know, like areo something navy. I think she’s like, while her life has changed drastically and dramatically as far as how much money she makes and everything, I think her feed has kind of stayed pretty similar. Um, and she’s kind of stayed true to what she does. Um, I think that there’s a lot of influencers out there who are doing a great job and we try and, um, we try and suggest keeping the sponsored content under 25% as a general rule of thumb. Um, because beyond that it starts to feel like just too much sponsored content. Um, but, uh, I mean, who else is, who else does a great job? I mean, some of the kind of traditional bloggers that got, I just had grace at what, on the show. Um, she’s a smaller Instagram following, I mean smaller.
James Nord: 00:37:30 That’s again, she has like you as like 100,000, which is a shitload. Um, but um, but I think she’s done an awesome job of staying connected to her audience and has like you t has a podcast now that is doing really well and uh, she’s found that to be really helpful but it feels like she’s very audience focused and I think that like that that can be for people listening. I think that can be a mindset shift, you know, to just say if you feel like you’re in a Rut and you know, brands aren’t reaching out or you know, you’re getting really stressed with like all the brand collaborations and it’s, it’s kind of making you not like what you’re doing anymore. You could take a week off, you could take two weeks off, you could take a month off and say, I’m going to recommit myself to my audience and I am going to try and go back to like why I started this and I’m going to go back to creating content that you know, I think will be really helpful and valuable and I’m going to go the extra mile.
James Nord: 00:38:31 You see this a bit with like, um, you know, I don’t know that, I don’t think this is as big of a thing in the, in the mom space specifically, but if you think of like escapism accounts like accounts that aren’t supposed to be like real life, they’re just supposed to be beautiful and, and kind of a magical, I’ve seen a lot of influencers kind of really leaning into that and doing really creative editorial shoots, um, with and with brands but also not with brands and paying for it themselves. And, and again, if any other, you know, media outlet that was making more money, they would be creating more content that hopefully their audience finds appealing so that they can grow their audience. So that they can, you know, charge more for access to that audience. So it’s, it’s a small thing, but I think most influencers I talk to, if they really are honest with themselves, I don’t think they are thinking a lot about their audience and what they can do to keep their existing audience happy.
James Nord: 00:39:34 Because if you’re losing a following, there’s a few ways to kind of grow. Right? And like one thing again that people aren’t thinking about is that like if you can, if you can have, if you can cut down the amount of people unfollowing you by 50%, then your account will naturally grow because every day you’re losing following, you’re also gaining followers every single day. Um, so one way to grow your following is to not lose followers. Right? But, but that’s not, nobody thinks of it that way. They’re just like maniacally focused on gaining a following instead of, again, paying attention to those hundred and 40,000 people or 10,000 people or 500 people who already follow you.
Christy Keane: 00:40:21 Like you blew my mind just now making that statement because I just, it is so true. I mean, you get so focused on the growth and the, and then you see the unfollowing numbers and then that’s, you know, a distraction and you’re wondering what you did wrong. Yeah. And I love your advice about taking a little bit of break from the sponsored post and reigniting that passion for why you started in the first place. I know that’s my hope when I have, um, I’m due August 15th with a little boy and I’m like, that’s my time where I just, I want to re like start creating content that’s has nothing to do with brands, just enjoying that little phase of motherhood. And remember why I started doing this. And the good thing too, for those listening is that then you can get a bunch of content and patched as well that you’re proud of and that is purposeful and that you know, you, sometimes it feels icky when you are doing too many sponsored posts. So it just feels good to create some time, you know, it feels really good to create,
James Nord: 00:41:22 you’re taking a break and a brand reaches out. I can’t tell you. We would love to hear that. Oh, thank you so much for reaching out. Like I’m currently just taking a little from sponsored content. Um, and really just like focusing on, you know, reengaging my audience and all of this. But like I’m kicking sponsored content off again in two weeks. Like any brand is going to love hearing that, you know, and maybe a bit of a frustration cause they want it to work with you on something and sure maybe your, you’re giving up a little bit of money, but I would see it as, as not I’m giving up this money on this activation but an investment in the long term. Cause again, if you, if you start to lose your audience and you start to lose their trust and especially now with like, you know, we don’t even look at follower accounts anymore.
James Nord: 00:42:11 We’re really almost exclusively looking at reach numbers and impressions numbers. So the thing is like, once you lose your audience’s attention, um, it gets, the algorithm gets pretty brutal and starts kind of cutting you down pretty quickly. And if, you know, it’s not just us, I think across the industry reach and impressions are becoming, um, more important than follower account. Um, so you really do have to focus on, um, how you can keep those people engaged, keep them hitting, like keep them commenting. Um, so that Instagram continues to serve, um, you know, serve your content to those people. Do you have any tips for keeping your audience engaged? You know, I, I don’t, um, which may be frustrating, but like there are, every single account is different. You know, what could I possibly tell you about your audience that you don’t intimately know? Um, and you know, I think stepping back and saying, well, what makes, you know, what makes me unique?
James Nord: 00:43:16 Why do people follow me? What do they want from me? What is, what am I providing value to them? And kind of, you know, going back to those kind of core fundamental things. Um, and also watching the stats on your, on your account and seeing what’s working, what’s not, you know, print, print, every photo that, you know, print your 10 highest photos with the highest reach and your 10 with the lowest reach. And see if you can see what are the trends here, what’s working, what’s not working. Um, you know, a lot of influencers that I’ve talked to who are growing really well and who have big reach, they are like every single time I post I want it to be a home run and I won’t post something if, if I don’t think it’s going to knock it out of the park. But then grace Atwoods, she is like, I don’t care about Instagram.
James Nord: 00:44:06 You know, I, I’m focused on my blog. Instagram is great, but I don’t really care about growing on Instagram and I’ll post whatever I want. Um, both of those things are valid. And so I think that anyone out there that, you know, I’ve been doing, I’ve been like, as you said with this podcast and youtube thing, I’ve been, you know, once a week, I think I’m 160 episodes into giving influencer advice, which is funny. Um, but much I like it some, one of my favorites, but like as I guess as you know, if you listen, I don’t ever say like, this is what you need to be doing. You need to have colorful photos, you need to be using an iPhone and not a, you know, um, DSLR. Because you know, when you kind of have the view that I have of, of looking at 80,000 influencers and all of these hundreds of millions of data points, you see that like there are no rules for what works and what doesn’t.
James Nord: 00:45:02 Um, and each person, you have to find your thing and you have to figure out what your audience is or is not connecting with. And so anyone who’s out there being like 10 tips to grow your influencer or your Instagram following this week, you know, I think that’s all just like a bunch of bullshit and uh, I wouldn’t listen to it, but there are fundamentals, you know, uh, of things you should be doing, like paying attention to what’s working, like experimenting, right? If your account’s not growing and you just keep doing the same thing, like what’s the, what’s the definition of insanity? It’s doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. So people who are like, my account’s not growing and it’s like, okay, what have you changed in the last couple of weeks? Nothing. Okay. Like, okay, so do you just expect for the, like it just to magically one day start growing and start working.
James Nord: 00:45:56 That’s not how the world works. You know, and what you did a year ago that was successful, that’s not going to work today probably because the world is changing and the things that people want are changing. Um, and you can see that everywhere in culture. I mean look at, just look at like pop culture and five years ago Taylor swift could do no wrong, right? She’s this like cute, like kind of girl next door, very sweet, very wholesome person. Like she’s the biggest star in the world. And now you’ve got Billie Eilish who you know, is like totally grunge kind of punk. I’m very much not girl next door, very much not Polish, you know, no matter what Taylor swift does, she, she can’t do what like Billie Eilish is doing. Right. Um, because culture is just changing and, and what youth, like what youth culture is saying is like, we’re not really interested in polished, perfect Taylor swift anymore.
James Nord: 00:46:58 We’re bored of that. We want something grungier we want something with a little bit of an edge. We want something that feels different. Um, so I think that like influencers need to understand that like, what worked for you in the past is not going to continue to work. And reinvention is your only path to staying relevant, you know? Um, because going back to like my, let’s use another musician, going back to my rolling stones example, like the rolling stones couldn’t stay relevant, right? They’re like the greatest rock band of all time unless you’re a Beatles person. Um, and they eventually fell out of relevancy. So I think like you have to understand that like that is going to happen and the only way to, to kind of continue to have a connection with your audience is to grow to such an enormous scale that you just become a classic and like you’re just like part of the institution or you have to keep, you know, keep changing and keep that keeps switching things up so that that audience stays connected to you.
Christy Keane: 00:48:06 I really liked that. You touched on the reinvention part too, because I feel like people are a little bit afraid to these days or afraid they’ll be punished if they, you know, get reignited over something else. That’s not what people are used to sharing. But I don’t know. I guess if you don’t grow with your content in that way, then it’s just cyclical. Like you were saying, then you’re not passionate about it, then you don’t even want to post and then it’s half-assed and yeah, I love that advice. And so before I hit my rapid fire questions, I do want to ask real fast, speaking of trends and things changing, like the world changes, culture changes, but Instagram also changes and they recently rolled out the creator profiles and I haven’t had any like expert opinion on what the thoughts are on this and what the advice is as far as switching over. I did switch over when I saw the option, um, and my engagement is down like 40%, but I did have, I mean, I don’t know if it’s ironic, but I did ended up getting a verified account on Instagram. So I’m like afraid to change anything right now. Um, but I would just slip to know your thoughts on the creator profiles cause there’s such a mystery right now.
James Nord: 00:49:15 They’re, you know, they’re still testing it and we’ll kind of see where they’re going to roll it out. I switched to they, um, and uh, you know, I don’t, I don’t think it’s changing the algorithm or anything. I think that if, you know, if you’re seeing any change, it’s probably, um, like circumstantial. It’s probably just like, you know, maybe the last few posts that you did just didn’t connect. I don’t think that
Christy Keane: 00:49:41 it’s amazing. It’s all me. I need to own that
James Nord: 00:49:46 thing. Um, I do know that they’re not passing, uh, some of the business data, like the insight, like the reach impressions, stories, they’re not passing that through the API. So if you use third party, uh, analytical platforms that use that data, um, it won’t work if you switch to a creator platform. So I know that is happening. Um, now they may,
Christy Keane: 00:50:10 does that effect for, do you Instagram
James Nord: 00:50:13 with the Cambridge Analytica stuff? Last year they, they revoked, um, business access for all influencer marketing platforms. So unfortunately we lost access to that information, um, through the getting it through the API. We get it through screenshots and stuff now, but we lost access to that, um, last March when they had all that stuff happen. So, you know, I think you can try it. Look, you can always switch back. Um, you could just go to your settings and switch back. Um, I haven’t seen any big change yet, so I don’t, you know, it doesn’t seem like there’s a huge reason to switch and there doesn’t seem like there’s a huge reason not to switch. Um, so I, uh, I think, you know, it’s kind of personal thing, but I don’t think it’s gonna really change your, um, reach or any of that stuff.
Christy Keane: 00:51:00 This is a selfish question as press. Do you ever know to them to like take the blue? I’m like, so I got the blue check mark and I really like it because I feel like when I’m reaching out to a brand or if I’m reaching out to another thought leader, it, they recognize it and I’m getting more responses and getting more good conversations that way. But I’m afraid if I switched, I don’t know if it will take it away.
James Nord: 00:51:21 I think there’s a lot of misinformation about verification as well. Verification is simply like, you know, if you’re a public figure, if you’re someone who, you know, the way they do it is pretty simple. Um, they simply say like, okay, they do a Google search for your name essentially. And like if you have Google results and if you have press pieces on you, then they verify you. It’s not a big, it’s not a big mystery. They, they, you know, it is kind of slow to, to do it and it’s like, can it be frustrating? But um, but yeah, they’re not gonna they’re not gonna take it away. Cause that would mean that like they’re now saying you’re not the person you say you are.
Christy Keane: 00:52:00 Oh, that’s true. It’s just like one of those things like I didn’t, yeah, I don’t know. You know, the blue check marks for it to have it.
James Nord: 00:52:07 They won’t give it to me, which I’m like, what the hell guys? Come on. I need to, I need to apply again.
Christy Keane: 00:52:12 Yeah, you do. I feel like definitely complete check mark. So I did, I’d love to end each podcast asking a few of the same questions to everybody. And the first one is my favorite, which is what do you influence that you’re most proud of?
James Nord: 00:52:26 Um, what do I influence that I’m most proud of? Uh, I mean, I think it’s been really fun to, uh, do this podcast and half to once a week come up with insights and advice for influencers and for all these people who are trying to kind of run their own business. And that’s been really great. It’s been great to talk to people and say that, that anything I’ve said it’s really helped them. So I love giving advice and so that’s been really fun.
Christy Keane: 00:52:56 Yeah. And I can tell you firsthand, I’m one of those people, like when you said you would come on a podcast today, I was like, oh, I’m so excited because I listened to your podcast week after week. And so to hear your voice talking to me is just mind blowing. You give such great advice, everybody tunes into that. And how much time do you dedicate to social media?
James Nord: 00:53:17 I’m on it a good amount from more of like a research perspective. Uh, you know, for me, publishing and creating content, a big part of my life anymore. I mean, even drink with James, you know, I mean, we have a team that does this stuff and, and I sit down and they, they show me the three questions they’re gonna ask and then I answer them. Um, so I don’t spend more than the time it takes to record drink with James, doing drink with James every week. And then in my personal life, photography and, and, and that side of things. Like I, you know, I’ve still passionate about photography and I still love it. So, um, I enjoy publishing it, um, just because it gives me a reason to take photos. Um, but it’s not, that’s not a huge focus of mine, but you know, obviously I’m on social all the time trying to understand trends, what’s going on, what’s working, what’s not, what do I like, what do I not like, what can we learn as a business? What can our clients learn, et cetera.
Christy Keane: 00:54:20 I love that. And I feel like even influencers could probably spend a little bit of more time doing research on social media as well instead of getting distracted and the comparison game. And is there a mistake you’ve made in this space that you would go back and change?
James Nord: 00:54:33 Um, I mean, you know what, I change anything. Probably not. Like I’m, again, I love my life, so I’m like pretty stoked on that. But mistake I made, like when Instagram came out, I thought it was kind of a joke. Um, and Tumbler was super dominant at the time and I had a huge following on Tumblr, or at least a huge following for Tumblr at the time. Um, and I did not move my audience over at all. So, and by the time I kind of realized that Instagram was going to kind of be the next thing and the tumbler was, was going to die, it was too late. I, um, I then didn’t have the opportunity to move that audience because they already had stopped logging into to tumblers. So, um, you know, I have 120, 130,000 followers on Tumblr who, and I have 24,000 on Instagram, you know. Um, so that was definitely, yeah. But that was definitely,
Christy Keane: 00:55:37 but yeah, it would’ve been nice to convert them over. But you know, like you said, you just, everything happens for a reason and your timing was so great and now you’re doing something probably much bigger and, and more successful than you probably ever could imagine with just growing a following in that space. But like I keep thinking about your car washing days. If there was Instagram, then you’d be like the best advertise what we know, classic car wash or right now, so everything definitely. Yeah.
James Nord: 00:56:07 Yeah. And I know I didn’t, I think you also have to like understand what you want to do with your life. You know, I actually, I didn’t want to be a photographer full time. It just, for me, it wasn’t, um, it wasn’t very intellectually stimulating. And so I, you know, wow, I could have gone down that path. I, to your point, I am glad that, you know, I didn’t, it didn’t blow up more and I didn’t feel like, oh, you know, I’ve got this all this money coming in. Um, I’m living this kind of cool life and, and I don’t want to give that up to start a business. Um,
Christy Keane: 00:56:44 I love that. And then just finally, I know you are a gear guy. I know you’re a camera guy and everybody always likes to hear, um, what gear people are using, what camera you’re loving right now. Any editing tips or apps that you recommend?
James Nord: 00:57:00 Recently? I, um, I bought a Leica m six, um, film Kara, um, from the, that mine was made in the late nineties. Oh, he’s still fun. It’s incredible. I have a canon five d mark four and a 50 mil one, two and a 24 Mil, one for on my Canon. And I love that camera. And I’ve taken hundreds and hundreds of thousands of photos on, um, I think I had a, you know, a five d mark too. And then I had a mark three and then now a mark four. Um, but I, I essentially haven’t picked it up in six months, um, since I’ve got this film camera. So, you know, I think, you know what, what’s that saying? Right? Like the best camera is the one that you want to take pictures on. So if you’re feeling yeah, I think if you’re feeling inspired with photography, buying a new camera, buying new gear, buying a new Lens, you know, can totally re inspire you and change, you know, changing your perspective can kind of yeah. Get you reignited and wanting to shoot more. But right now, yeah, I’m, I’m, I’m loving it and anyone, if you’re into photography and you, you know, and you can swing it, um, they certainly are not cheap cameras. Um, the like has been pretty amazing.
Christy Keane: 00:58:19 That’s awesome. What, uh, what Lens do you have on that one? Summa crown on it, which is like a 2.0 it’s so much fun. Oh my gosh. We’re going on an hour. I appreciate your time so much. Where can listeners find you and are there any exciting updates for, for that? We knew to be on the lookout for it. Yes. The next couple of weeks
James Nord: 00:58:38 for influencers, we have a bunch of stuff. Collaging, we’re having all new profiles launching that are a lot more visual. Um, so there’s gonna be new profiles. We have a new kind of opportunities page where brands, um, can, uh, can kind of post different opportunities and, and influencers can kind of directly, um, state their interest in those. Now those aren’t like, it’s not like a marketplace, but you’ll kind of see when it, when it comes out, how it works. Uh, we’ve also got a brand testimonials products coming out. So when you finish working with a brand, you’ll be able to send them, similar to kind of how linkedin works, you’ll be able to send them a link even if they’re not a for client and they can leave you a testimonial or review. Um, so that, you know, as you’re, you know, pitching another brand six months from them, they can see these 10 other big brands who are like, oh, we work together. Collaboration was amazing. We loved it.
Christy Keane: 00:59:39 I love that. I was just talking to, I had a gal on the podcast earlier this week who only has like 1400 followers. She’s, I just wanted to get their perspective and we were talking about, you know, getting feedback from your brand so that the, it just, you can share that with other brands is so important. And so I love that. I’m excited you guys are doing that last couple of weeks. That’s awesome. I,
James Nord: 01:00:01 I love for so much. And where can, where can followers on Instagram and, and a, if you follow for.co on Instagram, you’ll get, you know, uh, we’ll tell you when there’s a new drink with James and all that good stuff. Thank you so much.
Christy Keane: 01:00:14 So much for coming on today. Like I said, I, I know you’re in the business of, of influencer marketing and, and changing lives and minds certainly is one that actually has been super affected by, for in such a positive way. So the fact that you would come on today and spend an hour with me is the so kind. So I appreciate it.
