Discovering the Next-Level of Influencer Audience Building with Branded Apps

If you look at what is happening with the upper echelon of social media content creators --- influencers if you will --- they’re beginning to seize opportunities to return to the older mediums. Vikrant Mathur is facilitating that return. His company Future Today partners with high-volume YouTubers and content creators to build branded apps for distribution along channels most people consume on their home televisions as opposed to mobile devices or computers.  Think about all the apps you probably haven’t heard of on your SmartTV, Apple TV or Roku. Those apps often include ESPN, National Geographic, Netflix and content channels mainstream consumers are familiar with. But they also include apps like the custom one for Lego. Or one called Kabillion. And a food one called The Food Channel.  Future Today has just launched new apps for these distribution networks for Pink Fong - the South Korean education channel most known for the Baby Shark song. The’ve also added a channel for YouTubers Nastya, Gabby and Alex and Ruby and Bonnie. The last one—Ruby and Bonnie—is two little girls to post videos with their cats. So these are individual content creator channels, not big media companies. Think about that for a moment from the perspective of an influencer. They can get big enough on YouTube to launch a custom channel that appears on Roku, Apple TV or on SmartTVs all over the world? Think about it from a brand perspective. The influencers you partner with could be available in hundreds of millions of households for those incidents of longer viewing consumption, as well as on the shorter, snackable content platforms online.  Or, like Lego, what if your brand can build its own content platform that is big enough to have that kind of direct to consumer penetration! Vikrant and I chatted about the mechanics of it all, the opportunity and challenges for content creators and for brands and how branded content channels are a powerful mechanism to take influence to a different level ---- ironically via the good, old, trusty television. This episode of Winfluence, the podcast, is sponsored by Julius. If you’ve read my book, you know I’ve depended on Julius for influencer discovery and campaign management for some time now. When I’m looking for the right influencer for my clients, Julius allows me to search across Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, TikTok, Twitch, Twitter, Pinterest, Blogs and more. When I click into an influencer’s profile, I can see their audience demographics, what other networks they have reach through and quickly scan their recent posts to decide if they’re a right influencer for my brand. All the pieces of campaign management are there, too. Julius allows you to reach out, document contracts, share and approve influencer content and, of course, measure the ROI of each campaign, influencer or post. You owe it to your brand or agency to do a demo of Julius today. Go to jason.online/julius and request one. That’s jason.online/julius. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices