Let’s find out what his typical day looks like, then you can go and check out the Econsultancy jobs board and find the role you’re after.

Econsultancy: Please describe your job: What do you do?

Rod Alvarenga: BzzAgent is an influencer-marketing firm, working specificially with ‘everyday influencers’ known as ‘BzzAgents’. It helps brands to harness the power of human interaction and social media to create influencer programs in order to drive sales.

My job is to be the personification of the BzzAgent brand across all our social media channels. This encompasses all content creation and responses to questions and comments, generally acting as the digital voice of the brand.

Not only do I aim to engage and inspire the network of BzzAgents to produce the best content but to build relationships with CPG brands and other social media managers to cross promote and grow the BzzAgent network to its fullest. It’s a tough job, but someone’s gotta do it.

ROD ALVARENGA

E: Whereabouts do you sit within the organisation? Who do you report to?

RA: My role sits within the marketing department, reporting into the director of marketing. As it’s a cross functional role I work closely with other departments, particularly the customer service teams as well as account managers and those in sales and creative.

However, you could say that I have many bosses! In fact, I’d like to think that I have 400K of them. It’s our followers, our BzzAgents who interact and react to the content I work on- in real time-  that I really report to. It’s a great dynamic actually because I can tell pretty quickly whether I’m doing a good job based on my daily social media engagements. 

E: What kind of skills do you need to be effective in your role?

RA: As most people use social media for fun, they often don’t think about the skill that’s needed to make a profession from it. In fact it requires many of the same skills as traditional marketing roles like strategy, planning, tactics and execution, analytical and copy-writing skills.

Other more unique skills needed for this role are community management, understanding how content works on the social web as well as a sound and up-to-date knowledge of the latest digital marketing trends.

Having an outgoing personality really helps too and being able to relate and connect with your followers is key. After all, social media is less about technology and more about sociology and psychology.

E: Tell us about a typical working day… 

RA: A typical working day starts with an unfathomable amount of coffee. I stay up pretty late glued to social media, so my mornings tend to be rough without caffeine. From there, my priority is updating all social networks, ensuring that all posts are up-to-date and all comments/ responses to previous posts have been addressed.

My role requires me to develop content; therefore I plan, write and publish posts. I also source internal and external content, and manage the editorial calendar. Other tasks include reading RSS feeds and catching up on the latest trends, I spend a good deal of time curating and reposting the outstanding content produced by our agent network, they inspire me as much as I hope to inspire them.

I also do a great deal of social listening to better understand the needs and wants of my network. In order to do this, I monitor brand mentions and carry out keyword searches throughout various channels. Engagement in any social media role is key, so I engage our followers diligently to ensure an open dialog.

Finally, a key part of my day is community building; audience outreach and acquisition is the lifeblood of any social channel, so ensuring that I am successfully communicating with our audience is priority. I also develop recruitment campaigns through contests and manage promotions to entice more followers.

The analytical aspect of my role is what really brings it all together, so I ensure that measurement and reporting is complete. I focus on our strategy and tactical plan and create ideas for future campaigns. I am required to problem solve, research and of course, keep our brand in favourable light, which is easy because we are awesome.

E: What do you love about your job? What sucks?

RA: I have the most fun job in the world. I get to represent the BzzAgent brand and not just do social, but be social with a network of over a million highly engaged agents. For an extrovert like me, it’s a dream. I have the awesome responsibility to reach and influence Agents from all walks of life and feel so privileged to see their creative expressions through their posts.

The area of my job that I do not like so much is that there is not enough of me to go round! Working in social can be overwhelming and though I may want to post a Snap Story, curate a new Pinterest board and interact with all our followers every day, it just isn’t achievable. It is consuming; you have an inherit need to respond to everything and be on top of everything (trends etc.) at all hours of the day.

As a Libra, I’ve learnt that balance is power so prioritizing is key to achieve success.

E: What are your favourite tools to help you to get the job done?

RA: As a millennial, my iPhone is my life and I use an arsenal of mobile apps and social media tools to keep our channels alive and flowing. Specific tools are used for different jobs within my role. Hootsuite and Buffer are my go to scheduling and social listing tools, and I use Social Clout which is particularly useful for tracking engagement.

To discover what key influencers are talking about, I use Feedly. To make stunning images for social media posts, I’ll use Canva.

Socedo is used for acquiring targeted leads through different social media channels. Tagboard is used for hashtag management, and I use Edgar for intelligent post rescheduling. I use BuzzSumo for online content research and I of course use BzzAgent!

E: How did you get started in influencer marketing, and where might you go from here?

RA: I was an influencer before I even knew what being an influencer was. Every time I share an opinion or voice a concern I am influencing others sometimes directly or even indirectly.

My more formal influencer marketing journey began working as a digital marketing Manager at IBM. As one of the younger employees, I was given our social media channels and tasked with making it work as a side of desk job. As the world became more and more (digitally) social, it quickly became a full time job. I began to get into photography and design, which helped me with content creation and got into writing by sharing my voice around public opinions. I began to build a large follower base on social media platforms like Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook etc. and quickly became a bona fide influencer as different followers began to purchase what I was advocating for and tagging me in their posts as inspiration.

Naturally, working at BzzAgent was the perfect fit as I take my skills to the next level and work with everyday influencers to leverage social media to share our unique brand experiences. 

E: Which brands do you think are using influencers well?

RA: Almost every brand out there is tapping into the influencer pool, but in my opinion, the brands that are using influencers well are L’Oréal, Danone, Nestlé, Unilever, and P&G.

L’Oréal have had some particularly successful campaigns including its recent Snapchat campaign which led to a 51% increase in sales of its new Pure Clay Masks.

P&G has been an early adopter of everyday influencers and Nestlé and Danone’s influencers tell a story that’s personal and not a fabricated sponsored post.

E: Do you have any advice for people who want to work in this area?

RA: Do it because you love it! I come into work every day feeling like I’m not working at all because I live and breathe social. Start by managing and growing your own personal channels and highlight what you have accomplished to potential employers. Brush up on short-form copy writing and creative design skills, those come in handy when producing content.

Learning from those who are doing it right is essential. In order to do this, read blogs, join Twitter chats, follow, engage and learn from social media influencers. Finally follow me and follow BzzAgent on social, together we can inspire each other to achieve and do great things with the power of influence. 

E: What kind of goals do you have?

RA: My main goal is to build a network of highly engaged BzzAgents that look to us as a source of knowledge, entertainment, and fun. All while helping them become the best content creators and even stronger social media influencers.

E: What are the most useful metrics and KPIs for measuring success?

Here at BzzAgent measurement is critical to optimizing our network. We measure overall impressions so that we can monitor the number of views a piece of content receives. We measure reach so we can assess how many people are interacting with our content. We measure engagement on every post to ensure that our content is resonating.

We don’t just want a high number of followers, we want to ensure we are having engaging conversations with our BzzAgents, which is why the engagement rate is so important. Reach shows that we are gaining popularity. Impressions show that people are viewing our content. But the engagement rate shows that our social media presence is driving conversations.

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