About my influencer marketing content
I wrote The Age of Influence, published by HarperCollins in 2020, to redefine how brands and creators think about influence in the social media age. I have been advising companies on influencer marketing, and teaching it to executives at the university level, ever since. Every influencer marketing article I have published lives on this page, newest first. If you are not sure where to start, these are the posts I send people to first.
Start with the fundamentals
Begin with what influencer marketing is and what actually makes someone an influencer. From there, get clear on the different types of influencers and the influencer tiers from nano all the way up.
Run influencer marketing for your brand
Build your influencer marketing strategy, then plan the actual campaign. Learn how to find the right influencers, the tools I use to do it, and the FTC disclosure guidelines you cannot skip. Want proof it works? See these influencer marketing examples.
Become an influencer or creator
Start with how to become an influencer or how to become a content creator, understand how influencers actually make money, and learn what it means to work as a UGC creator.
Build an Amazon influencer business
The Amazon Influencer Program is one of the most practical ways to earn from recommendations. Learn how to become an Amazon influencer and how to set up and earn from your storefront.
By the numbers and what comes next
See where the industry stands in my influencer marketing statistics and creator economy statistics, then look at where it is heading with virtual and AI influencers.
If you want the full strategy in one place, it is all in my book, The Age of Influence.
Ask ten marketers what the creator economy is and you will get ten answers. Half of them describe a market size. The other half describe influencer marketing wearing a new name tag. Neither answer tells you what to do differently…
Ask ten marketers what a brand ambassador is and you will get several different answers. One pictures a celebrity in a fragrance ad. Another pictures the person handing out samples at Costco. Both of them are right, which is exactly…
TikTok has just under 2 billion monthly active users, which makes it the fifth-largest social platform in the world, according to Sprout Social. For brands, the real question was never whether to show up on TikTok. It’s which creators to…
Most brands run their first TikTok influencer campaign the way they run Instagram. They sort creators by follower count, write a tight brief, ask for a polished product mention, and wait for the reach to show up. Then the video…
You’ve built an audience that trusts what you recommend. So when someone asks which camera you shoot with or which book reshaped how you think about marketing, you send them a link, and that link earns Amazon a sale and…
You post about a product you love. Someone asks where you got it. They buy it. And you get nothing. That is the gap the Amazon Influencer Program closes. It turns the recommendations you already make into a storefront that…
Amazon runs one of the biggest affiliate programs on the internet, and the Amazon Influencer Program is the version built for social media creators. If you have an engaged following, it gives you your own storefront on Amazon and a…
Most brands still pick influencers the way they pick billboards: by size. The bigger the following, the better the buy. But the data has pointed the other way for years, and nowhere is that clearer than at the bottom of…
Whenever I speak on influencer marketing, one question comes back more than any other: which tool should I buy? Marketers want a single name. A shortcut. The one platform that finds creators, runs the campaign, pays everyone, and proves ROI,…
People ask me some version of the same question almost every week: what is influencer marketing, and is it actually worth the effort for a business like mine? I wrote a whole book about it, The Age of Influence, and…
The creator economy was worth roughly $250 billion in 2024 and could reach $480 billion by 2027, according to Goldman Sachs Research. A big slice of that money flows through apps that connect creators with brands. Pick the right one…
Scroll through Instagram or TikTok long enough and you will follow someone who does not exist. Not a filtered human, but a fully computer-generated persona with a name, a backstory, brand deals, and millions of real followers. These are AI…
When a brand tells me they want to “work with influencers,” my first question is always the same: which kind? Because the word covers a creator with 2,000 followers and a celebrity with 20 million, and the right answer for…
You have seen the word everywhere. You have probably called someone an influencer, or rolled your eyes when someone else did. But if I asked you to define the term in one sentence, could you? Most people can’t. And that…
Influencer marketing stopped being an experiment a while ago. Global spend on it reached $32.55 billion in 2025, the platform and software market behind it is on track for more than $116 billion by 2033, and brands keep handing the…
The creator economy is worth roughly $250 billion in 2025, up from $210 billion a year earlier, according to the 2025 Creator Earnings Report from Influencer Marketing Hub and NeoReach. That is a serious number. But it hides a harder…
Influencer ads are now the single ad format buyers most want to grow. Creator and influencer ads or partnerships are the type of advertising the most buyers (57%) plan to put increased focus on in 2026, up from 48% a…
I originally wrote about this topic years ago, back when Instagram was the dominant platform for influencer marketing. Fast forward to 2026, and the landscape has changed dramatically. Now, influencers are making money on TikTok, YouTube, Twitch, LinkedIn, and even…
Finding the right influencer marketing agency can feel like navigating a maze blindfolded. Every agency claims they’ll deliver “authentic partnerships” and “viral campaigns,” but when you dig into their actual track record, the picture often gets murky fast. I’ve cut…
The creator economy has opened remarkable opportunities for people who love making content. One area showing particular promise is UGC creation. The authentic voice of regular people using products has become marketing gold for brands. As someone who has worked…
Mom influencers are more than just social media personalities—they are community builders, entrepreneurs, and trendsetters shaping the way we see modern parenting. Whether they’re sharing real-life motherhood moments, business success stories, fitness tips, or parenting hacks, these influencers offer valuable…
With all the benefits of influencer marketing, it’s no surprise that most up-and-coming ecommerce brands are experimenting with it. Established brands, too, have fully embraced influencer marketing, often leveraging affiliate networks to drive sales. But for many business owners, getting…
I always say that influencer marketing is the least understood yet most powerful type of marketing. I think that one of the reasons why this is the case is because business leaders and marketing executives fail to see the ROI…
The influencer marketing landscape shifts rapidly. Strategic marketers must stay ahead of these changes to maximize their ROI and competitive advantage. As brands refine their digital approaches, understanding where influencer marketing is headed and staying ahead of the latest influencer…
When I wrote The Age of Influence, the definitive book on influencer marketing, a few years ago, the word “collaboration” was not commonly used in the industry. Many brands opted to treat influencers as programmable ad units, and terms and conditions…
Marketers often throw around the terms content creators and influencers without much deep thought, but they serve distinctly different purposes despite often being confused for one another. As author of the definitive book on influencer marketing, The Age of Influence,…
Most brands chasing big-name influencers are overpaying for reach they do not need. The smarter play is often a micro-influencer: a creator with roughly 10,000 to 100,000 followers and an audience that actually pays attention. I wrote a book on…
Choosing between influencer marketing and affiliate marketing? Here’s what you need to know: Quick Comparison: Aspect Influencer Marketing Affiliate Marketing Main Goal Brand awareness Sales and revenue Payment Often upfront fees Commission-based Content Control Less control, more authentic More control,…
You probably found this blog post because you were also looking for advice on influencer strategy or specific influencer marketing examples to inspire your next TikTok or micro – influencer campaign. When I embarked on writing The Age of Influence,…
One of the most common questions I get asked from businesses is how to find influencers. If you’re hoping to take advantage of the influencer marketing trend that I write about in The Age of Influence, one of the toughest…
While there are plenty of larger influencers who have broken their way into the market and demonstrated the value of influencer marketing, fewer people talk about micro-influencer marketing, and how micro-influencers have the ability to draw in truly engaged audiences.…
Running an influencer campaign is hard without the right tools. This is why many businesses introduce databases into their workflow. With this type of application geared towards indexing influencers, you can browse content creators from various niches that use different…
Instagram is where influencer marketing went mainstream. With a huge base of active users that includes many types of influencers, Instagram has become a central platform for not just influencer marketing but social media marketing in general. This makes it…
The celebrity status of influencers on social media platforms has been used for many years to cater to audience sizes from large to small. Before celebrity influencers were commonly seen on social media platforms, smaller influencers (now called micro influencers)…
It seems as though just about everyone is using TikTok, from your child’s 4th grade friends, to your grandmother with an eye for viral cleaning tips. Although there are plenty of people using the app, becoming a TikTok influencer is…
Blogger outreach campaigns may initially seem complicated, but they are a common form of marketing that can widen your audience reach, lift engagement, and open the door to future campaigns. So what exactly is blogger outreach and why is it…
More than half of Gen Z would become an influencer or content creator if they got the chance, compared with 41% of all adults, according to Morning Consult. Wanting to create is the easy part. Turning it into something people…
With influencer marketing and the creator economy in all its forms being as popular as ever, many companies and agencies are looking to collaborate with content creator talent. After all, the right influencer can dramatically increase sales and exposure for…
So who exactly are the top Instagram influencers today? And what can we learn from them? There’s no question that being an influencer can be very competitive, especially in popular niches. Fortunately, both marketers and influencers alike can learn from…
Have you ever wondered how to become an influencer, whether it is to get free products from the brands that you love or to launch a speaking career in your industry? You’re not alone. With influencer marketing becoming such an…
By now, almost everyone in marketing knows the importance of influencers and developing an effective influencer marketing strategy. A recent take on the use of opinion leaders and celebrities to sell goods and services, a quality influencer program is a…
If you have been building your online presence for long enough, chances are that you have quite a following. People love your content, have fun sharing it with other people, and take your suggestions seriously. Now, brands are asking you…
Before we talk about what is a sphere of influence and why its critical for many in business, let me first give you a short history lesson to provide you a useful analogy. If you’re old enough to have lived…
One of the challenges we marketers face is legal compliance, and the influencer marketing industry is no different. One report suggests that FTC influencer guidelines are violated by 93% of social media endorsements. Unfortunately, the burden of FTC compliance falls…
Is influencer marketing pricing as easy as simply finding your influencer and using an Instagram influencer calculator to calculate how much you should pay them? If only influencer marketing was that simple! Nobody questions the value of influencer marketing these…
These days, influencer marketing is more than just a passing fad. Instead, it has become one of the most important aspects of consumer marketing. Consider the statistics. A whopping 92% of consumers find influencers more trustworthy than celebrities, and 33%…
These days, many businesses are under pressure. Lockdowns and other restrictions have made it more difficult to sell products and services, and many people are out of work. This contrasts to 2019, when the economy was going strong and everyone…
If you’ve found the right influencers to collaborate with, it’s time to reach out. As with so many other things in business, influencer outreach can seem intimidating. After all, you’re asking a complete stranger to help you with a business…
As one of the oldest social networks still in existence, Twitter has a relatively storied history. As part of this history, Twitter has been a major source of news, thought leadership, and political wrangling. However, like its younger counterparts, Twitter…
Because influencer marketing is such a new medium, many of us aren’t quite sure how to go about it. While I and many other marketers have spilled a lot of ink on the more creative how-tos of influencer marketing, legalities…
Make no mistake: the days of social media being nothing but a fun environment to hang out in are over. While many of us can still have lots of fun on social media, it has still become highly commercialized. Scrolling…
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