Marketing

nashville influencers

20 Top Nashville Influencers (and what makes them so important to brands)

Image by Style Blueprint

Merriam-Webster defines an influencer as someone who inspires or guides the actions of others, or more specifically, as someone who is able to generate interest in something by posting about it on social media. Brands have taken notice and influencer marketing is now a key component of social media strategy. How do they help and who are the top Nashville influencers? Find out here.

The Influence of Influencers

According to We Are Social, 3.484 billion people actively use social media (that’s 45 percent of the world’s population if you’re counting!). What we can pretty much all attest to is that we’re sick of being marketed at from every direction, no matter how targeted it may be. Enter influencers.

Early on, influencers were primarily celebrities. Anyone ever bought anything a Kardashian plugged? You don’t have to admit it, The Guardian shares the proof. But celebrity endorsements can be hard to come by, and can cost you big. 

Luckily, there are plenty of “regular people” who have built a reputation for their knowledge and expertise on specific topics or specific categories through regular social media posts. They’re seen more as trusted friends and peers and are able to generate an engaged following that pays close attention to their recommendations. While they may not have the millions of followers, these influencers can potentially drive an average of 16x higher engagement rates than celebrities , according to The Realtime Report.

Top Nashville Influencers

If you’re a lifestyle brand in Nashville looking to connect with consumers and establish trust, influencer marketing may be just the way to go. Here are our top 20 Nashville influencers (in no particular order):

Nashville native Hunter Premo is the daughter of one of the city’s most sought-after makeup artists. But she’s more into fashion, sharing her boho style – and her life – with tens of thousands of followers.

After competing in Miss America as well as The Amazing Race (and gaining a following from that), Ervin is an influencer on topics that range from marriage and kids to fashion and female empowerment.

Born out of a desire to share her love of Nashville’s culinary scene, Davis’ Instagram has now become the place to inspire foodies or anyone exploring local restaurants to try.

This influencer and blogger shares her tips on food, fashion, and family plus offers tons of “swipe up” retail codes and life hacks.  

The Happily Grey founder posts beautifully curated pictures from her life as a fashionista, businesswoman, wife, new mom, and dog lover.  

Tomiko provides all kinds of travel tips and she also works to help brands shift the culture on diversity in tourism.

This yoga instructor and doula posts fitness and beauty tips as well as body-positive messages and book recommendations.

Husband to Hunter Premo, this photographer/videographer is an influencer in his own right on topics that include adventure, style, and chivalry for the modern gentleman.

She’s a trainer to local celebrities with a feed that shares workout tips, healthy recipes, and videos from her weekly Saturday night dance party with husband Sean.

This photographer came to Nashville by way of Austin and posts snaps of everything from walks in the park with her pups to front yard hangs and the beauty of everyday life here.

This power duo of Michelle and Dan came to Nashville by way of New England and we are all the more hungry for their food photos for it! Their posts and snaps of recipes, top lists of fab food finds, happy hours and more are not to be missed! 

Holly is a nurse practitioner who loves exploring some of the hottest restaurants and dishes in Nashville. She also shares some of her own dishes on her feed.

Josh’s blog reviews the best restaurants in Nashville and offers fun insights into the dining scene while all the mouth-watering finds are shared on Insta.

Ashley is a girl mom (and a dog mom) with a lifestyle blog that dishes on food, the latest fashion trends, parenting tips and life in Nashville where she’s lived for 10 years.

Blair overcame hunger herself and now shares her foodie experiences across Nashville and beyond.

This native Nashvillian blogs about food and lifestyle as she brings us along on her epic travel adventures near and far.

She’s your go-to girl for all things Nashville sharing delicious food as well as local clothing and cool snaps of our awesome city! 

Brittany is a creator, influencer and stylist who delivers daily inspiration for luxe plus fashion on Instagram and YouTube. 

Melissa is a digital strategy expert who brings authentic storytelling back to social media. In her spare time she shares the best plus size fashion trends and tips.

Chef Laura Lee has a background in health-related cooking and shares healthy, delicious recipes, meal plans and insights into her. 

For R help with influencer marketing, click HERE to schedule a FREE Discovery Call today!

Image by Nashville Lifestyles

by R Public Relations Firm

virtual events in nashville

R Checklist for Creating Top Virtual Events in Nashville

virtual events in nashville

It’s pretty much inevitable at this point that if you’re planning to host an event anytime soon, you gotta go virtual. But it’s not as easy as it sounds. Unless you have R checklist for creating top virtual events in Nashville, of course!

A Virtual History Lesson

We get it; nothing truly replaces the experience of meeting face-to-face with prospects, clients, and colleagues, but since COVID-19 began virtual events have been as much of a necessity as our daily coffee fix. In fact, virtual events have been around for longer than you may think for that very reason. The first webcam was actually created in 1993, by University of Cambridge computer scientists who were too ‘busy’ to physically check to see when the coffee, located in another lab, was ready. So, they created a webcam to livestream its progress. Priorities, right!?!

Virtual Events Today

In all seriousness, today’s virtual events can range from small groups to thousands of attendees, and the most common types of events include:

  • Question and answer sessions
  • Tutorials and/or classes
  • Training
  • Tours
  • Interviews
  • Performances
  • Conferences
  • Networking events

R Top Virtual Events Checklist

Anyone who’s ever planned an event knows how much goes into it. Success doesn’t come easily with virtual events either, but that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t look seamless! Here’s how:

Get a Game Plan – And start early! Think about: 

  • What you want to achieve
  • Who your audience will be
  • The experience you want to offer
  • What content would be relevant to them, whether you want a live or on-demand event or both
  • If you’ll require registration
  • If you want to partner with advertisers and/or sponsors, as well as how you define success and how you will track those metrics. 

And don’t forget to create an event budget.

Work Out the Right Time – From working out time zones to ensuring you’re not competing with other similar events to doing some research on when your audience is typically online; choosing the right time and date is much more important (and much more involved) than you may initially think.

Pick the Right Platform – This really depends are what type of event your hosting. For live-tweeting events, you might use Reddit or Slack (don’t forget the hashtag!). Webinar platforms include Zoom, as well as Livestorm and YouTube Livestream. Social livestreams include Instagram Live, Facebook Live and LinkedIn Live. For conferences there’s 6connex, HeySummit and Run the World.

Promote, Promote, Promote – There’s so much competing for your audience’s time, including other virtual events. So, make sure potential attendees know the details and WHY they should attend. Then promote far and wide using email, social media, and on sites like Eventbrite. What’s more, ramp up your efforts starting 2-3 weeks out as many won’t commit until then. And don’t forget to enlist speakers as ambassadors for the event in addition to creating an event hashtag and a dedicated landing page.

Test Things Out – Rehearsals are super important because it’s far too easy for attendees to bail if your virtual event is a pain. Test internet connections, prepare backups of presentations, and make sure your speakers are comfortable with the platform. Depending on the size of the event, you might even have some tech support available for attendees should they run into trouble.

Create Opportunities to Engage – Of course we’ve never done this ourselves, but we’ve all ‘heard’ of multitasking or social media surfing during a virtual event. Gasp! The easiest way to avoid people tuning out is to keep them engaged by incorporating a poll or chat tool (make sure to have a moderator) and/or encourage live-tweeting. Don’t forget to ask for feedback at the end of the event so you can improve for next time too!

Virtual Events That Got It Right

With so many virtual events out there right now, there are plenty of hits and misses. But, here are some of R favorite successful events:

  • Skift’s Online Summit - Travel's Path Forward – The first in their series of travel summits, the event had multiple speakers and guests had the opportunity to ask questions. Recordings of the series can be found here. 
  • Lululemon has been hosting a monthly online book club with live discussions on Instagram that feature the authors. Each book club pick focuses on a health and wellness topic and the discussions are moderated by one of their global ambassadors.
  • Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood hosted a series of free livestream concerts on Facebook Live with the hashtag #GarthRequestLive where they played requests that fans put in the comments. We simply had to include a Nashville success story right?
  • Silverado Vineyards came up with the concept of a virtual wine taste test to unveil a new product. They sent wines to their best customers and invited them to a virtual tasting while their experts discussed the wines.
  • Washington Performing Arts Gala – Their gala was scheduled for March and instead of canceling it they turned it into a virtual livestream experience in only 3 days! And even created a webinar to document how it went!

Top Virtual Events in Nashville Coming Up

For R help in planning your virtual events in Nashville or beyond, click HERE to schedule a FREE Discovery Call today!

virtual events in nashville

by R Public Relations Firm

tips to help you reopen

R is for R(e)-opening! 6 Tips to Help You Reopen Seamlessly

Raise your hand if you are a business owner who recently had your entire world turned upside-down? For us, we’ve been in the trenches with R clients as they’ve shuttered their doors, launched take-out menus, and now as many look to Re-open businesses, which in some cases, have been around for more than 20 years. Wow, things can change with the blink of an eye, can’t they? First, we want to say, whether you’re a client, a friend, or new to the RPR blog, we are here with you. Seriously, this is a time to band together and to be flexible, forgiving, and open to the new world we live in—a touchless, mask-wearing world. We see you and your pretty eyes in those masks, and we R here to help! Below, we’ve pulled together six tips to help you reopen and thrive in this ever-changing world. 

Make a plan. For many of you, the new rules, regulations, and stages of reopening are hard to keep up with—they change daily, and just as you seem to catch your groove something new pops up. Deciding when to open, re-open, who to bring on board, and what to do with your furloughed staff can be mind-boggling, let alone thinking about your marketing messages during times like these. First things first, take a deep breath and sit down. Let’s write a plan—a new plan—here’s what we need to include:

  1. Dates and guidelines for your city, what you are going to do, and when you want to do it. Start with a projected date of opening at (25% 50% 100%) capacity and re-hiring (XXX) employees to get things up and going. Call your staff even if they are furloughed, most probably want to come back ASAP. They most likely miss you—and their jobs—too. 
  2. Once you have a general outline, set up a Zoom call with your crew, review the plan you have and let them know, yes, things are changing so please be patient and flexible, and that you are, too!
  3. Share your plan with your staff. This may involve retraining them on new systems for cleaning, for customer service, for everything (it will be like you just opened!). We know it's frustrating, but take the retraining seriously as the last thing you want is a customer to video your staff NOT meeting new guidelines (if you need help in the HR department, let us know—we have resources to guide you).

Make a Plan B. If we can learn anything from the past few months, it’s that we all need a Plan B. There are a lot of what-ifs in the world of business right now, so be PROACTIVE vs. reactive, meaning prepare for things to continue to operate under a “new normal” and/or potentially even revert to stay-at-home orders, but this time you will be ready to make your business marketable!

Prepare for things to be touchless. Many places plan on keeping curbside shopping, free shipping, new website features for online ordering, and more from the past few months. We can say most of our lives are now MORE THAN EVER online, so get those online shops and websites up to snuff. (Psst: we can help here, too.)

Think outside of the box. Now is the time to offer up something new—to your menus, to your websites, to your business. We are seeing some make masks, some make new kinds of menu items (cue in family-style take-out meals), and some make new kinds of lemonade from these lemons. Perhaps this is the time your business thrives in a way it never has before, because, really, why not?

Take this time as a lesson on diversifying your offerings, adding merch, launching new product packaging, making your site shoppable … whatever it takes! Let us know if you need more suggestions or want help executing—we’re here to help!

And, as always, be patient and be kind. Your audience, clients, and customers are all in a state of unknown, and are adjusting, too! Have your social messaging be bright, informative, and positive. Remember your words have POWER, so use them accordingly!

by R Public Relations Firm

5 ways to pivot your business message

5 Ways To Pivot Your Business Message Right Now!

 

Business Message

As we enter a new “normal” in terms of our business world during the time of COVID-19, the word “pivot” has been thrown around as a big buzzword, particularly when it comes to businesses. For us as word-weavers, we want to help, as when you pivot internally and not externally things can go south. Meaning, if your messages are mixed, inconsistent or flimsy (which is easy to do considering the world has turned upside down in the past 90 days), your people may be lost as to what you really are offering and thus move onto another pasture, if you know what we mean. We R here to help with our 5 ways to pivot your business message to communicate your new normal.

1. Google your business and your top employees

Google your business and your top employees and see what has been written and what may be changing for you for the foreseeable future. If you are, for the foreseeable future, going to offer curbside pick-up, see if that is in your current online search messaging, and if not, hire a great SEO company to make it happen (we have friends we can point you to if you need it). People are online now more than ever and most people want to come back to you, but if they see the words “closed,” “temporarily closed,” “laid off,” “furloughed,” or whatever else has come up for you and others in the past month, they may be shy to buy, purchase, or stop by for a visit if you plan on reopening anytime soon. Make a checklist of where you need to re-message your message and get going on that ASAP.

2. Update your social media

Update your social media but know the who, the what, and the when before you do so. 

3. Meet people where they are

Get masks, sanitizer, and so on for your establishment. We even have a client offering sneeze stations, no joke, and anticipate varying levels of comfort for guests. Some people are not going to want to get out of their cars for the foreseeable future even when governments open up. So be prepared for those who are ready to come in and those who want to be met outside.

4. Offer NEW purchasing options

You may want to update your websites (we are happy to help) and offer some additional items for sale. We have restaurant clients that are upping their merch and dry goods on their websites. Furthermore, we have online retailers offering free shipping as a long-term goal!

5. As always be kind!

This seems obvious but when you look at a Yelp review that slams you for whatever choice you may be making. As the world opens back up, be sure to answer when you have cooled off—a quick tweet, Yelp response, or what have you, can have a lasting effect. 

If you need more tips, tricks, or help, schedule a FREE Discovery Call Today!

Business Message

by R Public Relations Firm