Speaker’s Corner: Featuring Chanelle G., Founder & CEO at Social Lens Media

Tell me about your company – it’s work and projects…  

Social Lens Media is an influencer and social media marketing agency specializing in maximizing your ROI, community building, through quality content, strong CTA’s, and minimizing your time spent searching for quality influencers within your budget and niche. 

We aim to make each campaign as seamless as possible by creating influencer marketing strategies tailored to each brand and client. As a one-stop-shop for everything influencer marketing, we handle influencer outreach, negotiations, contracts, management, posting guidelines, hashtag branding, follow-ups, and more, so you don’t have to. We have also accumulated an influencer roster of over 500 and growing influencers worldwide so we are able to find the right influencers for you fast. We connect you with the top social media influencers, bloggers, and content creators to help you engage your target audiences. We link brands with influencers for TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, and more on a global scale. 

Our Services  

• Campaign design, development, and execution
• Influencer matchmaking 
• Affiliate management 
• Social media management 
• UGC style content creation  

The Marketing industry is vast, what are the challenges that most affect your business? Are you engaging in any kind of problem-solving?   

As most have witnessed over the past 2 years, digital marketing has developed and continues to develop rapidly. You must stay on top of trends, movements people are making in their video content to capture people’s attention, call to actions, and duration of content that pushes people to purchase a product or service, if you aren’t aware of this, you will fall short on your marketing efforts.   

We have yet to come across a problem that we weren’t able to solve. We work with our influencers to make sure their videos and photo content is successful by providing them with the freedom to connect with their audience but also incorporating psychology methods to keep their audience engaged and drive them to the desired landing pages. In our own marketing efforts, I try to show my face the odd time to humanize Social Lens Media so when people come across our social media they feel as though they already know us and can trust us.  

The COVID-19 and the pandemic has mandated change in the way we go about business and operations. How has this time influenced you? What are the trends you see within the sector?   

We are a fully digital/remote business, COVID hasn’t affected us much, but one of the reasons why I started Social Lens Media when I did was because I saw how it affected other businesses that relied on foot traffic. My goal was to help these businesses create a social media presence and still profit through online efforts. It really broke my heart to see so many businesses being shut down at the beginning of the pandemic and I wanted to help in a way that I knew I could make a difference for a lot of people. 

What is your biggest objective as a speaker?  

My biggest objective as a speaker is what is the value I’m providing, what do people want to learn about, what are they interested in, what are some pain points I can help clarify and put that into a presentation that is entertaining and educational.  

Could you share with us the points of discussion (the input that you provided) during the panel(s) at the DX3 Canada?  

I did two presentations during the DX3 Canada marketing summit, my first one was a workshop that walked through strategy planning, do’s and don’ts, expectations of influencers, and also expectations of brands and how the influencer industry has changed over the years. I made clear that whatever you knew from 2-3 years ago has completely changed. I also did a panel with other wonderful speakers, and we spoke on influencer campaigns done right and wrong, what to avoid and how the industry is shaping into what we know now.  

As a leader, what are the factors both professional and personal that drive you? What keeps you going?  

Personally what drives me is being able to make a real change for businesses. I live and breathe all things social media, and it’s not something I ever thought I’d make a career out of, but something that no matter where I worked or what I did I always navigated too. I could be working as a waitress then all of a sudden I’m doing their social media marketing or bringing in influencers for events, it’s just been my unconscious calling and it only took me until 2 years ago to figure out how I can make that a career.  

In your opinion, do digital events give you a similar level of feedback/result vis-à-vis the live versions? What would you say were the biggest pros and cons of both formats? Which do you prefer?   

I have had the same experience with digital and live events. I feel more comfortable doing digital events only because I have really bad stage fright and tend to freeze up more than I do during digital events, but I love to attend in-person events and meet new people. I’ll be better able to answer this if I’m welcomed back in person for a live event next year!  

What is your take on in-person events? Do you prefer in-person events as compared to hybrid or virtual? How soon do you think in-person events would return? 

I prefer in-person events for networking purposes, only because nothing beats face-to-face interactions and actually getting to meet the people you are talking to or other panelists at the event. I’m hoping in-person events open up soon, but I do know there are a lot of people who are concerned about interacting with large groups of people, understandably so. I believe having hybrid events will be the best way to navigate this moving forward. 

In your opinion, what are the top 3 challenges to returning to ‘In-Person’ events? How could we mitigate risks?  

I think the top challenge will be large gatherings, some are still not comfortable with large gatherings, and also the past 3 years showed that we can do all the things we did before in the comfort of our own homes. I think hybrid events are great for people who are comfortable with interacting with people and also for people who are not yet comfortable with attending large events but still want to gain that knowledge.  

Eventible.com is a review platform specially catering to B2B events. Given how review-driven our lives have become today, do you think reviews will bring in a level of transparency to the events industry? Would you rely on event reviews from other speakers if you had to make a speaking decision?  

Yes absolutely, a lot of time is put into presentations and panels. If I were to dedicate my time to speaking at an event I would want to know the full details of other peoples experiences to know if it is worth it or not.  

Finally, do you have a favourite mocktail or drink? We’d be delighted to know.  

I love a good spicy margarita!  

About Chanelle: Chanelle Garrow: Founder & CEO of Social Lens Media a digital marketing agency that specializes in Influencer Marketing.  

To view DX3 Canada, click here. To write a review, click here