When you’re thinking about using Influencer Marketing to promote your brand, the first step is to identify the right influencers. Influencers are people who have a large following on the internet or social media, whether they’re a fashion blogger with millions of followers or a respected marketing executive with hundreds of thousands of followers on LinkedIn. These individuals may be ordinary people with a high social media presence, but they have the power to influence the decisions of a large number of people.
As an influencer, your first step is to understand the platform and its users. This process will require a great deal of time and effort, so the best option is to partner with influencers who have experience with the platform in question. By collaborating with them, you can gain exposure and reach, and they’ll be able to teach you the language of their audience. You can also learn about how to communicate with them. After all, they’re the ones who are going to be the ones promoting your brand.
A well-designed creative briefing will ensure that influencers focus on the elements of your brand that you’re looking for. However, be wary of strict briefings; the more freedom an influencer has to create content, the better! The content of the influencers is more likely to be more valuable than the return on investment that you’d see with Google Analytics. This makes it a good strategy for any brand. In fact, according to Adweek, influencer marketing is an undervalued strategy.
Using social media platforms to distribute content has many advantages for brands. While you can work with an influencer on Instagram or a video on YouTube, the content of the video is likely to be short and simple. This will allow your influencers to reach a wider audience. Furthermore, you can leverage the content of an influencer on other platforms to broaden your reach. As the platforms grow in popularity, so will your influencer marketing strategy.
While it’s important to have the right influencers, you should also be aware that some influencers’ content can be too polished and unrelatable to the community. You should always work with influencers who are honest and authentic. For example, the famous vegan Yovana Mendoza Ayres was a great influencer for a while, but when she published a video on YouTube, the content was deemed to contain a few fish. This video caused the Instagram user to lose hundreds of thousands of followers.
It’s important to note that an influencer may not require anything in return. This is to encourage them to fall in love with your brand, and create authentic, organic promotion. After gifting a product to an influencer, you should continue building the relationship. Contact them to find out how the product is working and to answer any questions they may have about the product. This natural exchange will keep the conversation going and the conversation between the influencer and brand continues to grow.