Hey there, welcome to take away with Sam Ocas, a podcast from Nation's Restaurant News.

I am Sam Ocas, editor-in-chief here at NRN, and this is the show where I give you an all-access

pass to the restaurant industry's most influential decision makers.

This week, I'm talking with Kate Finley, the founder and CEO of Bell Communication,

a PR and social media firm that is particularly focused on influencer campaigns.

As you may know, we just launched at NRN our Power List.

And this year, we featured 25 leading restaurant chain marketers as well as 25 food influencers who are building buzz and driving traffic to restaurants.

We enlisted Bell and a few other firms to help us build the list of influencers.

And Kate and her team were a tremendous help

in identifying some of the leading influencers on social media today. Kay joined the podcast

to talk more about influencer marketing and how restaurants can properly tap into this creative

community in an authentic and profitable way.

In this conversation, you will learn more about why influencers aren't just here to talk about your new product, why you need some clear KPIs with your influencer strategy, and why

size doesn't always matter with influencer audiences.

Jumping now into my interview with Bell Communications, Kate Finley.

Also, don't forget to stick around after the interview as I will share my five takeaways from this discussion, actionable insights that you can take with you on the go.

All right, Kate Finley, thank you so much for joining me today to talk about influencer marketing.

This is something I feel way over my head on a subject that makes me feel so old, but it's exciting, nonetheless, and certainly important for the restaurant industry.

So thank you for joining me today to talk about it.

My pleasure. This is an exciting topic, and it's very relevant to our industry, and it's been changing a lot,

especially recently.

So I'm excited to talk about it.

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