These days, there’s a social media influencer for every niche you can think of. And staffing is no different! Joining us today to unpack exactly how staffing firms can harness the power of influencer marketing is Brianna Olson, Social Media and Influencer Marketing Manager at Buildertrend. She shares how she successfully brought influencer marketing into the staffing space during her time at Fusion Medical Staffing, along with her tried and tested strategies for connecting with influencers, even on a tight budget. Brianna offers practical advice on finding the right influencers for your niche, negotiating contracts, creating effective briefs, and measuring ROI. She also highlights the growing role of video content and why authenticity matters more than ever. Tune in for a grounded, practical look at where social media is heading, and how staffing can keep up!
[0:01:14.3] David Folwell: Hello everyone, thank you for joining us for another episode of The Staffing Show. Today, I am super excited to be joined by Bree Olson, who is a social media and influencer marketing manager at Buildertrend. Bree, really excited to have you on the show. This is a topic I’m passionate about that you are an expert in, and I’m excited to have this conversation about how influencer marketing works and how it’s worked in the staffing industry.
To kick things off, give the people a little bit of your background, and understand how you got into staffing and kind of where you’re at today. Why don’t you just go ahead and tell us a little bit about your background?
[0:01:47.5] Brianna Olson: Yeah, absolutely. Well, also, very excited to be here. I love a chance to be able to geek out about influencer marketing and this kind of stuff, so yeah. So, I started in staffing five years ago. My previous experience was at Fusion Medical Staffing. I had a wonderful experience. I gained so much knowledge working there. I was their social media strategist, so I did the social media side, and then the influencer component came a little bit later.
But I quickly became very passionate about it, very passionate about growing our brand, growing our brand awareness, utilizing these influencers in this very niche market to get Fusion’s reach out there, and was an awesome experience, and now I’m super excited to be moving over to Buildertrend, where I will get to continue doing social media and influencer marketing in a whole new space.
[0:02:35.8] David Folwell: Awesome, that’s amazing, and so you were there at Fusion through the marketplace days, and helping to build that, which is really cool. So, tell us a little bit about, you know, I think when people hear influencer marketing, sometimes they think, “Oh, that’s for consumer brands.” They think it’s maybe not necessarily for the staffing industry. Tell us a little bit about how you define influencer marketing and some of the things that you’ve worked on in the past.
[0:03:00.0] Brianna Olson: Yeah. So, I remember even before I started at my previous role, I worked in an advertising agency, and I remember one of the businesses was motor oil, and there was an influencer marketing program that they did for –
[0:03:15.8] David Folwell: For motor oil?
[0:03:16.2] Brianna Olson: Promoting motor oil because there’s car influencers, but really, that’s where I began to realize there is an influencer in any market you could possibly think of. It’s not just the beauty brands and the fun sodas. It’s anything you could think of; you could go and find an influencer that could help boost your brand’s awareness and recognition, and find a very targeted audience.
So, that’s really where it started, and then, like you said, Fusion Marketplace, when that came along, it was a very new business. I literally created the handles myself, like, on Facebook, and they were like, “We want influencers to help promote this.” So, starting from ground zero, zero followers, to me DMing these nurse influencer saying, “Hey, we’re this new company.” I even got kicked off of Instagram for like 24 hours because they thought I was spam. So, you learn –
[0:04:10.9] David Folwell: [Crosstalk 0:04:10.3]
[0:04:12.0] Brianna Olson: Yeah, you learn, and just starting small with micro influencers who have anywhere from like, a thousand to 5,000 followers.
[0:04:20.7] David Folwell: Yeah.
[0:04:21.7] Brianna Olson: You just kind of work your way up, and it’s really cool to see, like, once you kind of get one person, usually that niche community of influencers is very small, and so they’ll see that and be like, “I want to work with them,” or “I could work with them.” And my email got passed around by these healthcare workers, because they knew that we wanted to build this brand.
So, it’s really cool that you just kind of have to start, and you might get kicked off of Instagram, and you might work with very small influencers, but that’s how you build.
[0:04:50.5] David Folwell: That’s amazing. So, you were doing kind of the direct one-to-one outreach, and what were – and I know, the Fusion brand, obviously, they’ve expanded so much over the years. What are some of the results that you saw, and maybe if you could dig into some of the best practices as well?
[0:05:04.6] Brianna Olson: Yeah. So, I think something to always think about when you’re starting with influencer marketing is you’re talking to a person who, this is their job, and so you have to remind them that you are a brand reaching out to them, but you’re a person that’s doing the reaching out. So, I always try to give a very personal aspect, like, “Hi, my name is Bree, I’m the social media strategist at Fusion, and I saw your content.”
“And I love what you stand for, what you do; we also stand for those things, and we would love to partner with you.” So, really tailoring it to each influencer that you’re speaking to usually really helps because sometimes, there are just spam or whatever, and the influencer cannot be interested, but if they’re like, “Oh, I’d be working with a person that’s behind this and they believe in me.” That always helped me get my foot in the door.
So, that’s definitely a best practice, is to remind them that even though you are representing a brand, you’re the person that’s behind it.
[0:05:58.2] David Folwell: Yeah.
[0:05:58.8] Brianna Olson: Forming those relationships.
[0:06:00.7] David Folwell: Well I know, you and I have talked previously, it sounds like you’re not only building the personal relationship, but like, really focused on making them feel good about what they’re doing, and making it so that, like, were you doing the one-to-one contracts then? Were you negotiating each individual one on up, kind of an individual level, from that perspective?
[0:06:19.4] Brianna Olson: Yeah. So, that was really fun and really interesting because every influencer has a different media kit to offer. So, some will charge this amount for an Instagram reel. Some will make you bundle, so it will be like, “We’ll post three Instagram Stories, and Instagram Reel, and I’ll put this link in my bio for this amount of money.” And so, then that kind of becomes that money dance, where you can negotiate.
If you, as a company, have a smaller budget, you can say, “We have a smaller budget, what could we get for this amount?” And they’ll usually work with you on that. So, money is something that’s always negotiable, and you’re offering also, as a brand, what you have. So, whether that’s followers or it’s brand recognition, so kind of using that too, like, “We would love to work with you, we can offer this amount.”
“We could send you this box of swag, or you’re also going to be introduced to our audience.” So, you can find different ways to make it beneficial for both parties.
[0:07:17.1] David Folwell: Oh, that’s amazing, and did you have any specific stories about influencers that you worked with where you saw amazing results? Any fun stories to tell on that front?
[0:07:26.9] Brianna Olson: Yeah, I would say that one of the biggest wins we had, specifically, obviously, in the healthcare community, was getting Nurse John, who is very influential in this community. He is a huge creator; he creates a lot of humorous content that really resonates with healthcare workers, especially when being a healthcare worker is such a hard thing to do. He always found the humor in it.
So, getting his contact information, of his team, and being able to negotiate, and get content made with him promoting our brand, seeing that live was so awesome because he has millions of followers.
[0:08:02.6] David Folwell: Yeah.
[0:08:02.8] Brianna Olson: And to see thousands of comments of people being like, “I didn’t even know this was an ad, I’m checking out this brand now, this is hilarious.” It was just a great opportunity to promote the Fusion brand as like, “We are fun.” We love to work with healthcare travelers and make their experience the best that we could, in partnership with Nurse John. It was a huge win.
It was definitely one of those things where it was brand awareness, so it was lots of followers that we gained, but those followers can easily turn into leads once you have them. So, that was the big deal; it was a good chunk of money, but definitely loved it.
[0:08:35.6] David Folwell: Yeah. Yeah, and one of the areas that I, when I think the influencer marketing, I know a lot of CEOs, and marketing in general sometimes, because under the microscope of like, how do you actually measure the ROI here.
[0:08:47.2] Brianna Olson: Yeah.
[0:08:47.5] David Folwell: What were some of the ways that you guys actually did measure ROI? Were you able to get to hard numbers in terms of the impact that it had?
[0:08:53.8] Brianna Olson: Yeah. So, every campaign, it was always like, “What is the goal here? Is the goal more followers? Is the goal more, lots of views, or is the goal link clicks in our bio? Is the goal to drive them somewhere else?” And so, I always tried to figure that out before we had a campaign. One of the best ways we saw direct ROI was creating an affiliate program that went hand in hand with the influencer program.
So, we took those influencers, and instead of just getting them a unique URL to our website, we created them a landing page, where their followers could go if they were interested in us, and fill out a quick application, and that quick application automatically went to recruiters. So, it literally was two touchpoints, and we already had them in where we wanted them to be to turn them into a lead.
So, that was really beneficial, that was really fun to stand that up and to take our influencers who had already had these trusted relationships, and say, “Hey, I have this even better opportunity for you. It’s going to help you get some extra money in your pocket, and it’s going to help us turn directly the followers that you had into leads.” So, again, showing the win-win with working with an influencer usually helps.
[0:10:03.3] David Folwell: Yeah, and what type of content did you give to them to kind of empower them to share? How do you get people to stay on message, or do you even try to do that? What’s your approach?
[0:10:12.1] Brianna Olson: Oh, no. Oh no, you want them to stay on message, and I think that’s something that can be a little scary about working with an influencer. That’s like an outside party to your business, is like, how are they going to stay on brand, how are they going to know our voice? But providing a creative brief is the best way to do that. “Here’s direct talking points that we like to hit.”
“Here’s our tag lines, here’s our demographic. Here’s how we like to talk to them.” Providing all of that information upfront helps the influencer, then, when they’re making the content for you, know what you’re looking for because it’s always such a painful thing when an influencer sends you their content and you have to be like, “Can you try again, and try these things,” you know?
[0:10:56.7] David Folwell: So, you actually had that. There are times where you have the ability to actually review the content before it would go live. Is that always the case, or that depend on who you’re working with?
[0:11:04.8] Brianna Olson: Oh, I definitely recommend asking the influencer to provide the content. It could be a couple of days before.
[0:11:10.2] David Folwell: Yeah.
[0:11:10.4] Brianna Olson: It could be a week before, but always review the content before it goes live, get those approvals. Maybe have a clause in your contracts that you send them that say like, “We get a round of edits,” because sometimes, they just – maybe they’re having an off day and they just don’t create the quality of content that you want. So, being able to have the power and be like, “We would prefer as a brand, if you try it again and tried XYZ.” Usually, they’re very receptive, and they’re like, “Oh my gosh, I would love to try again.”
[0:11:39.6] David Folwell: Yeah.
[0:11:41.0] Brianna Olson: So, that was always nice to be able to do that.
[0:11:43.7] David Folwell: Yeah. No, that makes a ton of sense. I haven’t even thought about that part of having the creative edits. I always assumed it was pass the content over, and you know?
[0:11:51.3] Brianna Olson: But it’s usually them, sharing the content themselves on their platform. So, you definitely want to make sure it aligns with everything before it goes out into the world.
[0:12:00.1] David Folwell: Yeah, and do you have any kind of biggest fails, mistakes, any lessons learned, things to avoid that you’re able to share?
[0:12:07.2] Brianna Olson: Allowing yourself that time for the edits, because sometimes it gets down to the wire, and I would be messaging an influencer right before, and say, “Hey, please, don’t post. Remember, we need to see it again.” Because they’re busy. Sometimes, these influencers have other jobs, and they’re healthcare workers or whatever it is, and sometimes they’re like, “I’m so sorry, I worked today, I can’t refilm.”
And then you’re moving around your social schedule to make it fit. So, the biggest thing I can say is give yourself time for those edits. I would rather be sitting on a piece of content for like a week waiting for it to go live, than be scrambling the day of.
[0:12:43.6] David Folwell: Absolutely, that makes a ton of sense, and kind of jumping over to the strategy side of this. So, if you’re – for a lot of our listeners, they’re looking for ways to drive social media influence to drive engagement, ultimately, drive in placements, and lowering the cost of hire. What are some tactics, whether it be tactics, whether it be from an influencer perspective or just generally on social media strategy?
What are some things that you would recommend if you’re a healthcare staffing firm, or any staffing firm listening to this, that they should go out and implement some first steps that they could take to kind of enhance what they’re doing today?
[0:13:17.0] Brianna Olson: Yeah, that’s a great question. I’ve actually had a lot of conversations recently with some different healthcare staffing companies, and helping provide some of those touch points, based on looking at their social medias, and a lot of it is, I don’t think some companies realize the importance of video content.
[0:13:36.3] David Folwell: Yeah.
[0:13:37.0] Brianna Olson: And how much that is going to resonate more and longer with your audience. I’m not saying that you know, graphics are gone, and no, don’t post photos anymore, but you will see better results, and you’ll have more opportunity to reach more people if you do post more video content. It could be ten seconds, it could be 30 seconds, it could be a minute, but that was one thing that I kind of kept noticing.
With these staffing companies I was talking with, I just kind of said start throwing some video in there, start –
[0:14:06.1] David Folwell: Yeah.
[0:14:06.9] Brianna Olson: Start concepting a little bit, and that’s kind of your first stepping stone to working with influencers because if you do influencer campaigns, it’s never really anymore, at least, you know, them holding up a product in a video. It’s them using the product, or it’s them talking about a business. So, that’s kind of your first stepping stone is diving into video content a little bit more.
[0:14:29.1] David Folwell: Yeah, and was a lot of the influencer content, was it mostly Instagram, TikTok? Did it vary? Did you have, you know, bigger wins with different channels?
[0:14:37.4] Brianna Olson: Ooh, that’s a really good question. It really depends on the influencer and where you find them. There are some influencers who have, you know, 50,000 followers on TikTok and have 400 followers on Instagram, like it’s funny.
[0:14:49.9] David Folwell: Yeah, yeah, yeah, so it’s more of just like you are looking at both platforms, kind of reviewing –
[0:14:53.4] Brianna Olson: Yeah.
[0:14:53.8] David Folwell: Who you’re looking at, who do we align with, who do we like their content, who has a ton of followers in the space, we’re kind of manually going through and identifying them. So, yeah.
[0:15:01.3] Brianna Olson: Yeah, I did find myself doing a lot of manual work, but that’s, I think, where some of the best work happens if when you’re just –
[0:15:07.9] David Folwell: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[0:15:08.6] Brianna Olson: Doing that with them.
[0:15:09.3] David Folwell: Trying to do that at scale could be rough, so.
[0:15:11.3] Brianna Olson: Yeah, absolutely.
[0:15:12.6] David Folwell: Yeah. What are some of the biggest mistakes that you see agencies make? And I don’t think a lot are doing influencer marketing. I think that’s going to be an ongoing adoption and trend. I think that the influencer market is supposed to be growing out like 20-some percent annually, and I think it’s like, it’s going to be where the future of marketing lives, I believe, especially in the micro influencer world.
But what are some of the mistakes that you’re seeing just generally from social media strategies with agencies, things that maybe they’re not thinking about, or where you’re just like, “Wow, I can’t,” you know, they haven’t really pieced these things together, and that’s maybe not landing or not having as big of an impact as it maybe could if they had just tied these elements together?
[0:15:55.0] Brianna Olson: In the conversations I’d had recently, I also found a lot of fear of just starting, and I think there’s some quote that’s like, “Create it now, make it good later.” So, just starting with that video content or posting at least three times a week, doing those like little things, and it’s not going to be great. I remember my early days of even posting on Marketplace. I looked back, you know, a year later, and was like, “What is that graphic that I made?” or “What was that Reel I made?”
But that’s how I learned and how I grew and how I made it better. So, you know, even if you don’t have a dedicated social person, which is very hard to come by, having someone who has any form of, like knows the platforms in any way, and have them just start to create things that align with your brand, and align with, you know, the people you’re trying to staff, you can always make it good later.
[0:16:49.3] David Folwell: Yeah.
[0:16:50.1] Brianna Olson: But being in that space is where healthcare workers are. If you think about it, you know, even if you’re going to a new restaurant, you don’t really go to the business’s website first to see –
[0:17:01.4] David Folwell: Never.
[0:17:01.9] Brianna Olson: what it’s like there, you go to their Instagram. So, when someone learns about your business, you want them to go to your Instagram and be able to see who you are.
[0:17:11.0] David Folwell: That makes a ton of sense. I feel like that is – I never thought about that, but for us, since I go to Yelp, I go to, you know, anything but their website.
[0:17:18.4] Brianna Olson: Yeah. Honestly, yes, very much so. You want to see pictures, and then you also want to see what people are saying. So, and not to leave that with, you know, Instagram or TikTok is you get those photos, videos, and then you go to see comments, and see people interacting.
[0:17:30.9] David Folwell: Actually, I haven’t dug into this, but I think I saw that Instagram was going to be doing something different with – I think, more of those are going to show up in Google search. I don’t remember exactly. I read the headlines. I didn’t dig deep as well –
[0:17:41.0] Brianna Olson: Yeah.
[0:17:41.4] David Folwell: But I was like, if that’s – if that’s the case, then I think that make into your brand has a good reputation, good people talking about it, it’s going to have a big impact down the road as well. One of the other areas that I know you and I just discussed briefly was the idea of macro influencers versus micro influencers. Maybe if you could explain the difference between the two, and what are some of the different outcomes that you saw by working with those different types of influencers.
[0:18:05.5] Brianna Olson: Yeah. So, my social strategy with influencers was to always vary. So, not just only working with those macro influencers who have anywhere between a hundred thousand to several million followers, and thinking about those micro influencers that have 5,000 to 25,000. I’m not even sure what the ranges are anymore that’s considered micro and macro, but having a good social mix of those is very important.
Because with micro influencers, one, they will be cheaper and nicer on your budget, but if you think about it, their audiences are going to be smaller and more targeted, and that audience is going to trust that influencer just a little bit more, because you know that they’re working with brands that they really believe in, or that what they’re sharing is things that’s actually important to them.
Or sometimes, when you have macro influencers, people who have these large followings, who knows what they’re even promoting or what they’re sharing about, and their audiences could be, “I follow Nurse John. I’m not a healthcare worker, but I follow him because he’s funny.”
[0:19:05.6] David Folwell: Yeah.
[0:19:06.4] Brianna Olson: So, if I see something that is healthcare staffing, that is a paid promotion, it’s not going to apply to me, and I won’t be that target audience. But say, you know, I’m following a micro influencer that’s talking about a new mascara that they love, I’m probably going to go buy that mascara.
[0:19:25.1] David Folwell: Yeah.
[0:19:25.1] Brianna Olson: So, it’s good to have a good mix of both. I understand, in this market, it’s very hard to find that budget for influencers, but you will find that if you can build relationships with these micro influencers, sometimes they are aligned, and their brand awareness can be even better than working with those big guns, so.
[0:19:43.1] David Folwell: There was a Harvard Business Review article about this as well on the micro side, which I – it was interesting to hear you talk about it because I saw it, it was maybe three or four months ago that it was like a, I think one of the top ROIs was working with the micro because of the authenticity. When you’re working with smaller people, it’s easier, like, “Oh, I believe them.” You know, “I believe that this is real,” versus somebody who has a million followers and kind of just showing the products briefly, that’s really great.
Last question I’ve got on the influencer side of things, I know we’re jumping around a little bit here, but you did talk about how you kind of helped tailor the message and give them the content to provide. If somebody was looking to jump into this, like, what type of content are you – are you giving them a package, are you telling them like, “Here’s a script.” Like, how do you approach that part of the conversation?
[0:20:26.9] Brianna Olson: The first thing I always did was I looked at what type of content performed well on that influencer’s page.
[0:20:32.8] David Folwell: Oh, that’s great.
[0:20:33.8] Brianna Olson: There were some – yeah, so there are some influencers who I worked with, who were super great at, it looked kind of like this, like Facetime style and being like, “Okay, guys, I have this new thing I want to tell you about.” There were some influencers who their thing was to do like the voiceovers of like, whatever trending sound was happening, and so we would negotiate and I would pay them to do a voice-over sound that’s silly, with you know, some text on it that applied to Fusion.
[0:21:03.9] David Folwell: That’s amazing.
[0:21:05.4] Brianna Olson: So, we – when you – when you finally land a travel contract with Fusion, and it was some silly, like, “Nothing beats a Jet2 holiday,” that trendy sound.
[0:21:15.0] David Folwell: I can’t – I’ve seen that everywhere right now.
[0:21:17.6] Brianna Olson: Exactly. So, I would pay an influencer to maybe use that, and then put something about when you land that Fusion contract.
[0:21:24.6] David Folwell: Yeah.
[0:21:25.2] Brianna Olson: So, you have to look at what the influencer’s already good at.
[0:21:28.4] David Folwell: That’s great.
[0:21:28.4] Brianna Olson: And then, when I would email them, I would send them examples of their own work, to show them, “Hey, I see you,” I-
[0:21:34.5] David Folwell: That’s great.
[0:21:36.0] Brianna Olson: And be like, “Can you create something similar to this?” And sometimes, I would provide an idea and say, “Hey, I was scrolling, I saw this idea, can you do this?”
[0:21:43.5] David Folwell: Yeah.
[0:21:43.7] Brianna Olson: And they’d be like, “Yup,” and they love that. They love – it’s less work for them if I’m like, “Hey, do this,” or they’d be like, “I saw something, I want to pitch you this idea,” and they would share it and that was always really fun, was just the back and forth of like, the creative. So, you really have to look at what the influencer is already doing because if it’s not authentic to them and their brand, it’s not going to feel authentic to what you’re sharing.
[0:22:09.1] David Folwell: That’s an element that I’ve never thought about, but that’s really smart because you could then also be like, “Well, this got tons of traction with their audience.”
[0:22:16.1] Brianna Olson: Yeah.
[0:22:16.4] David Folwell: And we know that this resonates with their audience. So, how do we connect to that and connect our brand, the element that’s really strategic on that front?
[0:22:23.1] Brianna Olson: Yeah.
[0:22:23.3] David Folwell: That’s great. So, we’re to the speed round of the podcast, so –
[0:22:27.2] Brianna Olson: Okay.
[0:22:27.5] David Folwell: Two last questions for you. What book or books have you given most as a gift, or that has had the biggest influence on your life?
[0:22:34.3] Brianna Olson: I love that question. I actually just bought one of my friends a book by this author for her birthday. The book is 101 Essays that Will Change the Way You Think, by Brianna Wiest, and it’s just little, little essays that you can just kind of read here and there, but my copy is covered in annotations, highlights, and it just kind of really makes you think about life. I found it at a time where I was going through a lot of change. Maybe I should read it now? Because I’m going through-
[0:23:03.8] David Folwell: I’m like, I’m – I want to read that.
[0:23:04.8] Brianna Olson: I should maybe read it again. I found it at a time where I was going through a lot of change, and it helped me remember to like be present and just be trusting of the path of your life. She’s a great author. So, I have purchased that a couple of times for my friend’s birthdays, and it’s just a nice little gift to give; it’s not a huge commitment, she’s a great writer, it’s a great book.
[0:23:25.2] David Folwell: Awesome. Great one.
[0:23:26.1] Brianna Olson: And she had a great name, Brianna.
[0:23:28.5] David Folwell: Great, great recommendation. I’m excited about that. What’s the habit that has changed your life the most in the last three to five years?
[0:23:36.6] Brianna Olson: Oh boy. The first one that comes off the top of my head, especially working in social media and this industry, is staying off my phone first thing in the morning. You know, your alarm goes off, you turn it off on your phone, and then you open Instagram, and then, you know, it’s hard because you’re starting your day, seeing what the rest of the world is doing, instead of focusing on what you need to do for the day.
So, I’ve really tried to be off my phone in the morning. I’m not perfect, I still sometimes find myself scrolling, but the days when I just get up and not look at my phone for like, the first hour of the day, I’m more productive, I’m more relaxed. So, that’s something I’m still working on, but highly recommend if you’re one of those people that’s a – early morning scroller.
[0:24:20.9] David Folwell: I think that is one of those habits that I – can be really detrimental. So, it’s a good one to get rid of, and it’s also so easy to roll over in bed and be like, “Oh, what’s going on?”
[0:24:29.4] Brianna Olson: Yeah, and like, having it be my job, sometimes it’s hard to like, separate and turn it off, and if I can have that peace in the mornings, that’s usually great, so.
[0:24:40.5] David Folwell: Great habit and great change, and well, Bree, I really enjoyed this conversation with you. I’m excited to have you on the show. Are there any closing comments that you have for the audience, anything that you’d like to share?
[0:24:48.7] Brianna Olson: I’m just going to go back to that quote, just, “Create now, make it good later,” and just start social media, just start.
[0:24:55.4] David Folwell: Awesome. Well, thanks so much, Bree. This was a great conversation.
[0:24:57.6] Brianna Olson: Thank you so much.
