Trucking Firms Using Social Media Influencers for Promotion

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Trucking marketers looking for a leg up on social media are turning to AI software that can quickly surface the absolute best influencers in that medium to promote their brand.

For many, the virtual space is perfect for recruiting new drivers — as well as picking up new customers.

“Social media influencers have become partners in our efforts to recruit, brand and positively impact the trucking profession,” said Kris Rzepkowski, vice president of marketing and communications at trucking and logistics firm Bennett.

Bennett International Group, based in McDonough, Ga., ranks No. 43 on the Transport Topics Top 100 list of the largest for-hire carriers in North America.

Jane Jazrawy, CEO at driver training firm CarriersEdge, also sees value in working with social media influencers.

“If a carrier wants to reach existing or potential customers this way, it can work really well,” she said.

Even so, Jazrawy said scoring a home run with an influencer hinges heavily on your campaign’s execution.

Unsurprisingly, a number of fleets have had especially good results tapping social media influencers to recruit new drivers — especially younger drivers.

It makes sense. Many ­younger truck drivers have grown up with social media and have become “influencers” simply by virtue of continually posting about things they are truly passionate about.

“We have found that many content creators are younger generation drivers,” said Bennett’s Rzepkowski. “They are sharing about their journey getting into the profession and advancing to their next step. Prospects see their own journey — and their own age — in these influencers and feel comfortable asking them questions.”

Sourcing drivers as influencers enables a trucking business to “sell” valuable aspects of truck driving that have nothing to do with a paycheck.

“An industry influencer can be a great way to showcase the lifestyle,” said Bruce Outridge, host of “The Lead Pedal Podcast” for drivers.

Meanwhile, other truckers are scoring great results by teaming up with social media influencers who are outside the industry but still have a great deal of pull.

Sean Schnipper, director of marketing at Transervice Logistics, recommends reaching out to NASCAR drivers or country music singers to expand brand awareness for a company beyond its typical borders.

Forming partnerships with such influencers, Schnipper said, “is an engaging way to bring our brand to their follower base that we typically wouldn’t be able to reach.”

Transervice, a provider of truck leasing and dedicated contract carriage headquartered in Lake Success, N.Y., ranks No. 97 on the TT100 list of for-hire carriers.

No matter your goal — attracting new business or new drivers — you’ll find that new AI tools designed for finding your best bet when it comes to a social media influencer are a far cry from traditional methods that generally involve little more than guesswork.

Specifically, the traditional, shot-in-the dark approach has been limited to guessing which influencers might be a good fit to promote your brand, trusting — without verifying — the number of followers that an influencer claims to have, and assuming followers are actually engaging with the content produced by that influencer.

Thankfully, the days of this “let’s-hope-for-the-best” approach are over.

Instead, using the latest in AI influencer search and management software, trucking companies can often leverage 20 or more advanced filters to ferret out proven, highly effective social media influencers who are working in virtually any country and any niche category.

And they can further customize their search by using filters to select influencers to promote their brand by age, gender, location, interests, engagement rate, brand affinities, content type and more.

Trucking marketers will also find they can use the AI software to drill down and find scoring on “depth of ­affinity” — the actual engagement that influencers truly share with their audience.

And they can also use AI to unearth any “follower padding” that influencers may be using to falsely inflate the true number of followers subscribed to their channel.

You’ll also find that the latest AI influencer selection and management tools have the ability to forecast the kind of return on investment your brand can expect to reap by choosing one influencer over another.

And you’ll be able to pinpoint influencers who are leading conversations on social media that you consider to be the most important conversations for your trucking brand.

Also available with this kind of AI software is the reassurance that you can avoid influencers who happen to be working with one or more of your competitors without your knowledge.

That also goes for influencers who may have had a previous relationship with one or more of your competitors and are still strongly associated with those competitors in the minds of their followers.

With AI-powered in­fluencer search tools, you’ll also find that you can sometimes bypass the most popular — and most expensive — social influencers to find a less expensive alternative who nevertheless may be better for your business in the long run.

Plus, AI search tools can also tell you if it might be a good move for your brand to go with a new spin on social media influencing: the “virtual influencer.”

These completely digital influencers are in fact nothing more than computer-generated fictional characters, which are wholly fabricated creations of the marketers behind them.

“Virtual influencers have become increasingly popular in recent years, popping up all over social media both on their own accounts and as a part of bigger, more established brand accounts,” said Candice King, a marketing writer at HypeAuditor.

Granted, such influencers may not dazzle baby boomers.

But among younger aud­iences, many of these virtual influencers have been wildly successful for certain brands in certain circumstances and among certain social media audiences.

Once you’ve used AI-powered selection tools to sort through all your influencer options and settle on one or more social media influencers to engage with, you’ll be happy to find that most social media influencer tracking and analysis service providers can also offer you direct access to those influencers through the software’s own internal messaging channel.

Bottom line: Given that sophisticated AI systems now exist that bring an entirely new level of comfort when assembling the absolute best collection of social media influencers to promote your brand, considering the alternative — flying blind and hoping for the best — seems archaic.

Here’s a representative sampling of AI software specifically designed to help you find one or more social media influencers who could really be a good match for your trucking brand:

• Affable.ai: Unlike social media influencer marketplaces or agencies, Affable.ai’s goal is to index every influencer on social media for your evaluation. After pinpointing an in­fluencer you think will work for you, Affable.ai goes on to track the campaigns you design for your influencer and measure their campaign performance. It also includes a tool to enable you to track the influencer campaigns of your competitors.
• Meltwater: Meltwater is designed to ferret out influencers who are leading the conversations most relevant to your brand. Influencers are tracked across 6 million topics. Meltwater also analyzes a social media influencer’s reliability and the potential that in­fluencer may post to your brand.
• Addepto: Like other AI-­powered influencer search and management software, Adepto enables you to drill down to the specific attributes you’re looking for in an influencer’s audience, including age, gender, interests, location and similar. It also detects “fake” engagement statistics claimed by unethical influencers.
• HypeAuditor: In addition to offering standard, AI-­powered influencer search and management tools, HypeAuditor enables you to unearth influencers already talking about your brand. It also boasts a searchable influencer database of 68 million and counting. i

Joe Dysart is an internet speaker and business consultant based in Manhattan. Voice: (631) 233-9770. Email: [email protected]. Web: www.dysartnewsfeatures.com.