The Age of Influence: The Power of Influencers to Elevate Your Brand

by Neal Schaffer

If today’s brands want to succeed, they have to be in the conversation, and influencers make that happen. The Age of Influence is an essential guide for marketing professionals and business owners who want to create and implement a highly effective and sustainable influencer marketing plan.

We are in the midst of an unprecedented digital transformation and tapping into this change is vital to any brand in today’s climate. Social media has democratized authority and influence, and information is created and consumed in ways that are constantly evolving.

In The Age of Influence, Neal Schaffer, an internationally recognized social media marketing expert, explains how that shift plays a significant role in online marketing in the Influencer Era. Influencer marketing is about establishing relationships, turning fans into influencers and leveraging that influence to share your message in a more credible and authentic way. This is a handbook for anyone who wants to successfully spread a message in the age of social media.

Schaffer teaches entrepreneurs, marketing executives, and cutting-edge agencies how to:


Identify, approach, and engage the right influencers for their brand or product.
Determine what resources to put behind influencer campaigns.
Manage the business side of influencer marketing, including tools that will help measure ROI.
Develop their brand’s social media voice to become an influencer in its own right.
This book is the definitive guide to addressing the issues disrupting marketing trends, including declining television viewership, growing social media audiences, and increasing usage of ad-blocking technology.

Genres: Business, Nonfiction

288 pages, Paperback

First published March 17, 2020

About the author

Neal Schaffer is a leading authority on helping businesses through their digital transformation of sales and marketing through consulting, training, and helping enterprises large and small develop and execute on social media marketing strategy, influencer marketing, and social selling initiatives.

President of the social media agency PDCA Social, Neal also teaches digital media to executives at Rutgers University, the Irish Management Institute (Ireland), and the University of Jyvaskyla (Finland).

Fluent in Japanese and Mandarin Chinese, Neal is a popular keynote speaker and has been invited to speak about digital media on four continents in a dozen countries.

He is also the author of 4 books on social media, including Maximize Your Social (Wiley), and his latest book, The Age of Influence (HarperCollins Leadership), published on March 19, 2020 on educating the market on the why and how every business should leverage the potential of influencer marketing.

Neal resides in Irvine, California but also frequently travels to Japan.

Engage with Neal:

[Web] https://nealschaffer.com
[Podcast] https://nealschaffer.com/podcast
[Community] https://nealschaffer.com/community
[LinkedIn] https://linkedin.com/in/nealschaffer
[Instagram] https://instagram.com/nealschaffer
[Twitter] https://twitter.com/nealschaffer
[Facebook] https://facebook.com/NealSchafferPage
[YouTube] https://youtube.com/nealschaffer

Reviews

[D.S. Marquis · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book! It was a gift from my son. It totally made me realize that authors are social influencers too - including me. I am truly inspired by Neal Schaffer's The Age of Influence, which focuses on leveraging social media relationships that translate into potential sales. I gave some of the book's strategies a go. Specifically have found one from Chapter 8 to be a great way to build relationships on line. And this was how my Weekly Book Feature Team Collaboration project started. It kicked off on the first weekend of March 2022. We are 45 Authors strong. 

Here's what we do:  Each weekend all 45 of us feature the same book at the same time in our Instagram feed and story. In other words, we post only once a week, giving the featured author a blast of 45 posts from 45 different accounts. The project requires a long-term commitment of 45 weeks plus. Our current weekend posting schedule is booked through January 2023.

I'm so grateful to everyone on the team, who believed in this project based on the idea that there is strength in numbers. After almost a full year of posting, this long term collaboration will be coming to a close.

[Shavon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good resource. Because social media is still only a decade old as a marketing tool, I think it is important for entrepreneurs and executives to get information from those immersed in the space. The Age of Influence (which, by the way, is an apt title) provides a knowledge base or crash course in the latest in B2B social media marketing. I think it is especially useful for entrepreneurs endeavoring to develop intentionality around our online activity.

The book includes case studies that inspire ideas for creating brand awareness that can warm up outbound sales calls. But we still must be creative, and not just copy other people's ideas, because this medium moves at a rapid pace and what's right for one brand and community of followers won't necessarily work for your brand and community of followers.

[LeeAnn · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an EXTREMELY repetitive book. There are some nuggets of useful information in it, but you have to have the patience of a saint to dig them out.

Don't read before bed. Unless you're an insomniac.

[Tim Hughes · Rating 5 out of 5]

Full disclosure: Just be aware that I was part of a program that Neal Schaffer produced at Rutgers Business School.

Knowing Neal, I purchased a copy of “The Age of Influence” as soon as it appeared on Amazon. Neal has been in the Influencer Marketing space as long as I can remember and being an Influencer himself he can speak from both the brand side and the influencer side. In this book, he does both.

So what is the book like? Neal gives a great background too Influencer Marketing basics. From what it means from both the Business to Consumer (B2C) and Business to Business (B2B) point of view. He describes how social media has changed society and changed the world of business. He then goes on to describe, how you can create your own influencer marketing campaign. From working out which influencers to target, how to contact them, how to work with them and how you should measure (there is a list of tool) the influencer program.

For me, the important point that Neal gets across is that through the whole process the influencer (if they are any good) will be in charge. If you think that an “advert” will be created and put through an influencers network, that isn’t influencer marketing, that’s advertising.

He finished up with explaining how you can become an influencer.

If you are in marketing, thinking about influencer marketing, or any to be an influencer it’s well worth a read.

[Karren Hodgkins · Rating 3 out of 5]

There is definitely well-researched content within these pages so I am sure many readers will get a great deal of value from it.

The notion of brands embracing the various social media platforms and so creating an opportunity for engagement and conversations with their prospective customers, the importance of authenticity and building long term relationships with both the influencer and customer resonated indeed.

Planning, strategising and measuring ROI are also covered with examples.

However, I ddn’t quite click with the style of the author and struggled with the repetitive nature of some of the content, eg the author repeats that brands are not people and people connect to people (not brands) and discovered that my business already has many of the suggested strategies in place.

Perhaps the approach differs by continent as well, I’m unsure how some these approaches would work with the entrepreneurial and small businesses I deal with on a day-to-day basis.

With thanks to #NetGalley, HarperCollins Leadership and the author for my free advanced reader copy to review in exchange for an honest opinion

[Rafael Angelo · Rating 2 out of 5]

Initially I loved this book. Very well written, relevant content, and bring data-driven evidence to support the arguments.
However, I’ve started noticing a pattern of downplaying how much influencers are worth and should be paid. The book reads to me as “take advantage of influencers, they are super cheap.” When in reality, this is a bad way of looking at this market because without the proper structure, influencers won’t survive (they have to pay their bills). If influencers don’t monetize properly, brands will suffer because over time this market won’t mature and professionalize. Long story short, good book overall, but the message of how to treat and value influencers is extremely short term focused and unfair in my opinion.

[Steve Brock · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was Stevo's Business Book of the Week for the week of 10/4, as selected by Stevo's Book Reviews on the Internet and Stevo's Novel Ideas. If today’s brands want to succeed, they have to be in the conversation.

Find more Business Books of the week on my Goodreads Listopia page at https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/9..., and find many more recommended books on my Amazon Influencer page at https://www.amazon.com/shop/stevo4747 or by searching for me on Google.

[Stephanie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I highly suggest reading this book if you are interested in learning more about influencer marketing and how to use that. Neal Schaffer states that building communities can last long and once you have a community built there will be a following. Influencers can be anyone who has an audience or following and platform. Including these in your business can help a lot because of growing technology. Again this was a very good read and it really can help you get a better understanding of how you can use influencer marketing for my business or brand.

[Mary Ellen Barringer · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an excellent book to understand the how and why of influencer marketing. It also has excellent sections on how to work with influencers and how to become an influencer yourself.

For someone like me, who knows she is surrounded by influencer marketing but does not understand how it works, this book is a way to better understand this growing type of marketing.

[Div Manickam · Rating 3 out of 5]

Didn't resonate much with this book perhaps because I'm staying away from social media. I was looking for learning about influencers and didn't learn much other than some terminology and some tools out there.
The examples were more related to Instagram and Twitter and that didn't mean much for me.

[Israel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Extremely information on building communities and working with influencers to expand your brands image.

I particularly like the introduction of AI and how it can improve marketing output and influencer marketing efficiency

Great read

[Shane · Rating 3 out of 5]

From time to time I will pick up something outside of what I normally would read. This is an example. Technology changed so much, likely during the writing of the book, that it feels ancient now. Still was interesting enough to complete.

[Goran Jankuloski · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ako se oduševljavaš konsultantima strendžerima po konferencijama, ovo je knjiga za tebe!

[Patricia Kaniasty · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good but did not teach me a lot................just saying.................

[Wsk16 · Rating 5 out of 5]

great book!

[Bruce Kirby · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very useful, deep insights on influencer marketing which has always been the most effective form of marketing.

[madelyn! · Rating 3 out of 5]

i had to read this for a class that’s all.

[Maven Witch · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well researched, informative, and insightful.

[Sanita Kacuba · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read the book in order to prepare some lectures, and for this purpose it was quite ok because it provides a good enough overview of influencer marketing elements. I believe that this is a good book for marketing beginners as well, stating the main points one should be aware of to build an effecting influencer marketing campaign.
The book is not excessive so professionals could find it lacking in depth.

[Brian Honigman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Searching for a handbook on how to approach influencer marketing with purpose? Here it is! As influencer marketing continues to mature, there’s more options for businesses of all sizes to partner with influencers to drive meaningful results. The Age of Influence is particularly effective at highlighting the most useful strategies for how to partner with influencers, provides tons of examples from companies seeing results, and lots of tools to consider using to streamline the process. Whether you’re a marketer at a Fortune 500 firm struggling to drive long-term results from influencers or a small business unsure if you can afford to invest in influencer marketing or not, this one is for you. With trust in business at an all-time low, influencers are one of the many ways a company can rebuild trust and a genuine connection with their customers again, and this is the book to help guide you through that process.

[Darya · Rating 4 out of 5]

We are in the age of social media. The opportunity to showcase creativity is increased by social media that supports visual means and the likes of photo and video. There are many opportunities to become an influencer today even if you are not a celebrity. The book covers different types of influencers, way to engage with them and to leverage this marketing channel.

[Tom Creasey · Rating 3 out of 5]

3/4 - I enjoyed it, I can’t remember it but I remember I enjoyed it. First book I read fully!