I’m Declaring Myself THE Caged Bird Keeper’s Influencer for the Internet.

Last Updated on October 11, 2024 by Mitch Rezman

(no one else wanted the gig)

If you follow digital trends as I do, it’s impossible to not recognize “the next big thing in marketing” called influencer marketing

something that’s actually been around since 1940.

All the “experts” in the many LinkedIn groups I follow and blogs I read coming across my crowded inbox have very precise instructions on how to achieve influencer marketing.

Search for influencers, connect with influencers, reach out to influencers, tell the influencers what great stuff you have, offer cash and gold bullion with the goal of a said influencer with 3 million followers on Instagram happily talking to their fans and followers about what remarkable stuff you have to say. It’s nice you have an instruction document.

I see two problems with this whole “influencer marketing” theory. According to the latest statistics, 86% of digital marketers are going to embrace influencer marketing in the near future which begs the question are there enough influencers to go around? And can social media even move forward with an influencer deficiency? I don’t think so on both fronts.

mitchr and peaches his Senegal parrot

I’ve actually been attempting influencer marketing before it became a really hot topic this year. About 18 months ago I began reaching out to people who had large subscriber bases on YouTube, or appeared in mainstream sites like about.com, the Huffington Post or I knew them from watching and reading their content for years.

I purviewed parrot wizards and bird whispers (you’d think you wouldn’t want to whisper to be an influencer). Behaviorists that specialized in birds but would be more than happy to give you pointers on training your pig or rabbit or horse. Behaviorists that are employed by zoos and teach veterinarians how to teach animal behavior.

I found all of them protected their turf more than a monkey whose hand slipped into a small hole carved into a coconut to grab the warm rice, hunters had planted. Gripping the rice with a fist meant the monkeys could not extract their hand from the coconut making them easy prey for the monkey hunters.

Not one influencer I interacted with, would let go of the rice.

Further, when I looked at all the things that these influencers were “teaching” in the avian niche, I saw a circle of redundancy. It was all about behavior. I teach behavior but bring a whole lot more to the party.

I explore environment in and out of the cage, nutrition, enrichment sanitation and that humans with standing heart rates of 80 BPM should eat human food and birds with standing heart rates of 200 BPM (and can fly) should eat BIRD FOOD made by scientists who spend years and tens of millions of dollars on the research and development of BIRD FOOD.

Feathered factoid: kale which is a popular ingredient in homemade bird chops offers 4.3 g of protein – per 100 g serving. Peaches our Senegal weighs 108 g. I’ll leave it to you to do the nutritional math.

I’m a “where the rubber meets the road” kinda guy and cannot get even a minority of caged bird keeper’s that I interact with to spend $2 on a clicker let alone expect them to learn some esoteric notion of psychological behavioral modification – for a cockatiel.

So I stood back, took a 360° view of the avian influencer landscape which led me to the most logical decision.

Declare myself THE caged bird keeper’s influencer for the Internet.

“Can he do that Martha”?

Nobody says I can’t (I googled it). I’ve got more than 1/4 million Facebook fans. My Pinterest page is seen by 100,000 pairs of eyeballs monthly. My Instagram follower base is growing and I’m approaching 500,000 views on YouTube.

I operate the largest website on the web dedicated solely to the care of pet birds. I post thousands of words of relevant content (to cage bird keepers) weekly on Twitter, Facebook, Google plus, LinkedIn, Xing, Tumblr, Torial, Instagram, Pinterest, Flickr, Diigo and Delicious.

Posting all those words has created a library in my blog (you are here) of literally more than 1000 posts about bird care totaling greater than 1 million words (yes we did count them when we moved the blog last year).

I think I just defined “niche social media influencer” and by golly – it’s me and now it’s official.

Good, I can take that off my to-do list.

739 words written by mitch rezman

your zygodactyl footnote

If I ever get rich enough to buy a town, I will name it “you are here”.