Organic reach on social media is incredibly limited. Since over 3.6 billion people worldwide use social media, you can no longer post owned media and hope that somehow your audience will find it on their own.
Influencers excel at creating communities and driving engagement. When you work with an influencer, you gain access to the committed audience they’ve built, along with the influencer’s creativity, charm, skill, and voice. They’ve built that following by creating a brand for themselves, with a unique style, perspective, look, or skill set.
What influencer marketing looks like
Influencer marketing takes a lot of shapes, with some being much more effective than others. The best influencer marketing campaigns give talented influencers creative control to do what they do best: be themselves. Since influence is made up of things like authenticity, likability, kindness, consistency, and entertainment value, influencer marketing is most effective when influencers are telling a story with your product or brand, rather than posting your ad copy without any feeling behind it.
Steps
Create a campaign brief tailored to your brand that outlines influencer campaign objectives, influencer type, and budget.
Influencer campaigns need thorough planning to succeed. By creating a campaign brief, you provide your campaign direction, purpose, and actionable ideas.
Choose short and long term social media goals and brand objectives to measure the success of your campaigns.
Mine influencer campaigns to spark ideas, and analyze real influencer campaign examples to learn from other brands’ mistakes and victories.
Some influencer campaigns perfectly leverage the influencer, while others fall short – for example, using an influencer with a large audience who is not relevant to the brand’s audience or using an influencer who does resonate with the brand’s audience, yet is not credible about the product they are promoting.
Find influencers for your campaigns by using influencer marketing platforms to identify those who reach your target audience and fit your campaign goals.
Not every influencer is the right fit for your brand, and an influencer’s audience is often comprised of people who are different than the influencer. Influencer marketing platforms can help narrow down influencers who have a high representation of your audience amongst their followers and can speak authentically about your product. These platforms can often flag influencers with large numbers of fake followers.
Assess influencers’ brand fit: examine their past content and engagement and assess their creativity, tone of voice, authenticity, and work ethic.
This should also include noting how many brands influencers work with and how often they post sponsored content.
Provide enough value to influencers to ensure you get high-quality content that goes beyond the superficial.
Study influencers’ past campaigns to understand how they typically work with brands, and communicate clearly from the outset what your campaign goals are and what you can offer to find the right balance in your value exchange.
State compliance as a requirement for your campaign and check past content to make sure influencers adhere to applicable rules.
For example, FTC or ASA guidelines or platform specific requirements for disclosing branded or sponsored content.
If an influencer doesn’t follow compliance rules, liability often falls on you as the brand. Avoid legal trouble, distrust, and wasted resources by having your influencers sign detailed contracts, and check posts for compliance.
Share and engage with content for your influencer marketing campaigns. Boost your influencers’ reach through paid social media advertising.
Track and measure influencer campaigns against your key metrics to gauge their success and determine how to iterate in the future.
Last edited by @hesh_fekry 2023-11-14T10:44:37Z