The Effectiveness of Micro-Influencers to Promote Regional Brands

We talked to Andressa Griffante, founder of RSbloggers, on how it brings content creators together and increases their visibility in the regional and national market and here is what she said about it.

First of all, how are you and your family doing in these COVID-19 times? 

Andressa Griffante: We are doing well, fortunately. Some members of my family, like my mom, aunt, cousins, and even my grandmother (each one living in different cities in Brazil), got the virus, but with very slight symptoms. So I feel very grateful for that. They are all fine now. 

Besides that, I could keep most of my work routine at home, remotely, still wearing masks and respecting social distancing.

Tell us about you, your career, how you founded RSbloggers.

Andressa Griffante: I work as a PR for more than 10 years now, and during this time, I always invested my time studying and trying to understand the new media and innovative ways to promote the clients. In 2016 I started my own company, RSbloggers, with a project that today is consolidated as a subscription club for digital influencers to accelerate their digital business, offering exclusive content, courses, and online events and discounts. 

Since that, I started creating another service that could connect brands and influencers, especially the regional ones, with a smaller audience but more potential to convert and engage their followers. Now the company has two customer profiles: the influencers and the brand owners or marketing professionals.

How does RSbloggers innovate? 

Andressa Griffante: I believe the main innovation we do here is to adapt the digital opportunities strategies to small and regional companies, proving that it is possible to start the digital transformation they need with no significant investments, mostly using influence marketing skills.

How the coronavirus pandemic affects your business, and how are you coping?

Andressa Griffante: Until the pandemic, I invested my time and money in offline experiences. Even though I understand that face-to-face meetings and speeches to an audience offline will continue to be important, now our goal is to create more hybrid events, connecting people from all over the world but still promote face-to-face (with masks) experiences whenever we understand it is possible and safe to do that.

The pandemic brought us more knowledge about our online sells, and the potential we had to increase them. We learned how to achieve different audiences from other cities. And we made more effort on our educational projects, investing in consulting programs and launching new online courses.

Did you have to make difficult choices, and what are the lessons learned?

Andressa Griffante: The most difficult part was needing to abandon our workspace, where we shared ideas and brainstorming with other startups and professionals. I had an intern I had to dismiss, which was very hard too. And now the work is more concentrated on me, except for some projects co-created with other partners. The volume of work and new decisions has increased. So what I learned most is how to organize the priorities and be more productive. Online tools, apps, and different platforms were amazing to discover in this process. 

What specific tools, software, and management skills are you using to navigate this crisis?

Andressa Griffante: Well, here are some: Todoist (for productivity), Hubspot CRM (for my landing pages), Zoho Forms (to organize customer data and new subscriptions), Asaas (for recurring payments), Hotmart (for online courses and consulting), In Shot and Clipchamp (to edit videos), Canva (for social media material), Anchor.fm/Spotify (to host and monitor my podcast) and many more…

Who are your competitors? And how do you plan to stay in the game?

Andressa Griffante: Since I work with a variety of services, now I compete with other PR agencies, also with Influencer Marketing platforms and startups, and a lot of different marketing professionals investing in new courses and mentoring programs. But, only a few of them will have this 360-degree view of the customer. Our plan to stay in the game is to keep improving our digital presence, offering new solutions to influencers and brands, performing a personalized diagnosis of each client, and expand our business market through online experiences.

Your final thoughts?

Andressa Griffante: The pandemic accelerated the innovation that was about to come anyway for all companies. We had to prioritize digital solutions during this difficult time, be more creative, and exercise our resilience.

Your website?

www.rsbloggers.com