Today's Booze: Podcast Episode 2 - How to Be an Online CEO

For our second Social Booze podcast, we have invited Niya Kotseva who is the CEO of the most popular influencer platform in Bulgaria – INFLUENCER.BG.

Niya is a dynamic person who along with running a company also runs her own podcast and is an amateur DJ. She studied law and worked in the European parliament, before entering the media industry. The busy CEO responded to our invitation with enthusiasm and shared some of her experiences and knowledge with us.

The "light bulb"

Niya says that before starting INFLUENCER.BG she worked at a small PR and advertising organization. At some point, the clients began to ask about new ways to promote on social media and most specifically about influencers, which were still not such a popular thing back then. When she started organizing meetings between clients and potential influencers, Niya found a gap between them. Businesses were waiting for statistics from the influencer’s profiles, however for influencers, this was a new thing, and they were not prepared yet. “This was like a light bulb”, she says. Niya offered the potential influencers a partnership in which she represents them.

INFLUENCER.BG

Niya never studied marketing. She learned along the way by organizing events, festivals, and working as an intern at a big TV station. Niya says that to be a successful marketer you have to know people and analyze them and that social media is a tool to analyze a wider audience. Furthermore, she gives a great explanation of what an influencer is: “For me, an influencer is not a person who has 10k, it is much more important to have an engaging audience which trusts you,” she says. At INFLUENCER.BG people can register on their website as an influencer and if suitable will be matched with a company.

The company not only creates a link between the business and the influencer but also makes a marketing plan and coordinates the communication between them through the whole process. Furthermore INFLUENCER.BG manages some of the influencers and works exclusively with them by helping them publish books and negotiate prices with clients, as it is sometimes hard to keep a steady price in this business. Many brands that Niya worked with tried to lower the price offer. Niya says that this is where her law degree comes in hand. In the first two years of INFLUENCER.BG she focused on making the best contracts possible, in order to keep the interest of both sides and create a good relationship that can possibly lead to further collaborations.

A common mistake

From her work experience, Niya has learned that some brand managers or marketers make the mistake of choosing an influencer based on their personal likes and based on the fame of a person. They think that if they don’t know the influencer, he/she is no good, she says. It is essential to look at your brand and what fits best and not be driven only by your personal likes, she suggests. "Analyze your audience and how they react to partnered posts," says the CEO.

Why creating a story matters

Storytelling is very important in Niya's opinion. She adds that a product must fit the influencers' lifestyle, posing with a product and saying it’s good is not enough nor effective. INFLUENCER.BG begins with a creative brief and develops a story with it, furthermore, they aim to share their story in more than one post. The key is dividing the story among platforms. The reason for this is that it broadens your audience and engagement with a post, explains Niya. If people decide to work on only one platform, Instagram would be the best choice as it offers a variety of content and different ways to present it: story, feed, and IGTV.

Instagram in Niya's eyes

Niya explains that Instagram is no longer a place to showcase your work and it is important to involve your audience and engage with them. Good influencers are always looking for feedback from their followers. People seek fun on Instagram, they like answering questions, giving opinions, and even playing games. The more you create and make use of the functions provided the more of your content is shown, like a "roller-coaster" she says. You have to make people care and ask yourself, 'why would my audience care'. It is important for people to relate to you and be curious about you.

Niya's opinion about Tiktok

Niya believes that as a marketer she would not allow herself to be influenced by her own opinions. However, she believes that Tiktok is a genius platform, and what makes it genius is how engaging it is and how it constantly pushes new content. Tiktok is a trend-based platform and if you are one of the first people to do it you will get a lot of views. Niya bases this statement on research she is currently working on where she found that some Bulgarian Tiktok users are able to grow with 30k followers per week. Niya notes that many Instagram influencers are not on Tiktok, which she believes is a mistake. No matter how cringy or silly you think it is if it is growing you have to watch the content and understand what is driving people in and analyze the users. Niya explains that Tiktok prefers to manage advertising on the platform themselves and do so by creating filters and sound for brands and then distributing them to influencers, this way the money flows through them and the platform is controlled in an easier way.

Response to the global pandemic

During the lockdown INFLUENCER.BG set a Zoom and Skype room where people could join and get a free consultation on how to develop their business during the pandemic. The idea was to support and comfort the people who are struggling in these difficult times.

The future of social media

Niya says that social media exists because it is a reflection of how people communicate in society. People have a need to stay connected and social media is the perfect tool to satisfy our needs and that is why it is not going anywhere. Furthermore, it also supports businesses and helps them make money. People have always looked up to other people and social media makes it easier for followers to feel closer to the people they like. That’s why there will always be influencers, but the type of people who are influencers might change in the future, based on the needs of the audience, she says.

We hope you have enjoyed listening to or reading about the insightful and inspiring discussion with Niya. We also hope that the highlights of this podcast will stay with you and will be helpful for your future business. Special thanks to Niya Koceva for her time, good energy, and social media lessons!

Cheers!