![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/11\/collective.jpg\")
<\/a>Collective Bias, a Bentonville, AR-based content marketing company, helps brands such as Elmer\u2019s, Starbuck\u2019s, Walgreens and others reach these influencers. It does more than simply connect them. Rather, it has created a proprietary community of more than 1,200 shopping-focused bloggers and other social influencers called Social Fabric, which reaches more than 40 million people and creates more than 200 million monthly impressions.<\/p>\nThe goal: have these bloggers create the kind of authentic, interesting content that amplifies a brand\u2019s attributes and creates deeper relationships between the brand and its buyers. In turn, this social content can be used by brands to glean insight about the shopper\u2019s journey and help them better understand what exactly drives the purchase decision.<\/p>\n
As Collective Bias sees it, success in content marketing is often less about buzz and more about relationships. People are looking to brands, retailers and their ambassadors for useful advice that can help them get more out of a product. \u201cMost brands feel if you have something on Facebook and Twitter, it\u2019s social,\u201d says Brad Lawless, the company\u2019s VP of strategy. \u201cBut those are just tools. What really matters in social is the relationship you have with people.\u201d<\/p>\n
Collective Bias\u2019 model is to maintain a true community for its Social Fabric bloggers and for those bloggers to keep a strong and transparent relationship with their readers. \u201cReal stories about family, budgets, the ease of shopping and incorporating products into someone\u2019s day-to-day life emerge in each program as Collective Bias encourages creativity and integrity,\u201d says Lori Pace of ADayinMotherhood.com and campaign leader for Collective Bias.<\/p>\n
But Collective Bias is not looking for a product review from its blogger community. Instead, says Lawless, \u201cWe want them to talk about something else and integrate the product into that discussion. It\u2019s the human experience\u2014how certain products can make that better.\u201d<\/p>\n
For example, this past summer, Nestl\u00e9 was looking to create enthusiasm for both Drumstick ice cream and Tombstone pizza brands in its \u201cGrab Summer Fun\u201d promotion at Walmart.<\/p>\n
Using Social Fabric, Collective Bias reached members, with the resulting posts incorporating the idea of using pizza and ice cream for \u201cgrab and go\u201d summer parties. But each blogger brought a unique spin. One showed a pizza and ice cream party during a family vacation at the beach. Another turned it into a pool party celebrating a toddler\u2019s swim lessons. Yet another made it part of a Fourth of July luau craft project. They also were asked to help promote separate #GrabSummerFun \u201cparties\u201d on Pinterest and Twitter.<\/p>\n
Overall, Nestl\u00e9 saw a double digit increase in net sales of the products. Collective Bias and Nestl\u00e9 estimate the campaign netted more than 15.8 million impressions for the brands. In addition, it enhanced the search engine optimization for nine different keywords, including \u201cNestl\u00e9 Drumstick Ice Cream.\u201d Finally, because the bloggers documented their path to purchase, Collective Bias shared shopper insights, including the number of pizzas each person usually bought and what incidental purchases were made.<\/p>\n
This kind of shopper dialogue, notes Lawless, is how content marketing can provide brands with what Ted Rubin, Collective Bias\u2019 chief social marketing officer, calls a \u201creturn on relationship.\u201d \u201cThey do something that adds value to their lives,\u201d Lawless says. \u201cOur role is about creating connections between brands and their buyers. It\u2019s making them aware of how products are integrated into their lives.\u201d<\/p>\n
www.collectivebias.com<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Collective Bias influencer community creates shopper content By Stuart Feil Septemer 10, 2012 ADWEEK Shopping is, by its very nature, a social activity\u2014people always want to know what other people are buying or discuss what they\u2019ve bought themselves with friends and other shoppers. Nowhere is this more evident than in the blogosphere, where brand … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[137,7],"tags":[1370,1727,1458,1184,1413,1781,480,479,1782,1691,796,1783,516,3],"class_list":["post-4530","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-all-posts","category-tedrubin","tag-ronr","tag-collectivebias","tag-tedrubin-2","tag-collective-bias","tag-featured","tag-path-to-purchase","tag-return-on-relationship","tag-ror","tag-shopper","tag-shopper-marketing","tag-social-commerce","tag-social-fabric","tag-social-shopping","tag-ted-rubin"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4530","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4530"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4530\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4537,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4530\/revisions\/4537"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4530"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4530"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4530"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a>-Originally posted at:\u00a0 http:\/\/www.adweek.com\/sa-article\/social-path-purchase-143351#1<\/a><\/p>\n