Become besties with your social media influencers
Managing Influencers during an Influencer Marketing campaign can be difficult, however taking these steps will aid getting the best results from your campaign.
The recipe for a successful influencer marketing campaign requires a lot of TLC, trust and clear cut guidelines. You are working with content producers who need to be on the same page and know your vision.
Following our how-to guide makes influencer relationship management that little bit easier (and 60% of the time, it works every time).
1. Set Expectations First
One of the main problems marketers often have with managing their influencer campaign is getting their influencers to do what they want, when they want it.The best way to avoid this is to clearly outline exactly what you expect from them as early on in your campaign as possible. Set a visual brief compiled of likeminded imagery, set dates and times you expect content to be posted, and if you want to control this content, send through submission dates and times.
Where relevant, include the following:
Accounts or hashtags you want tagged in any posts
Key information you would like shared across social media about business/product
Any promotional codes they may need to share
Example imagery of how you like your product to be framed
Example copy or style of writing you prefer
Words/phrases/claims you like to avoid
Any other information you think is important for influencers to know BEFORE posting
Confirm these expectations have been received and signed off by your influencer to guarantee that you are both on the same page
2. Share your Objectives
9 times out of 10, your influencers will be the ones talking to their audience on your businesses behalf. For this reason alone, it is critical that you share your campaign objectives with them to help them frame their content appropriately.
That way you are more likely to get amazing content that hits all the targets of your brief including the visual content and the post correspondence.
3. Tell Them Who You Are
Providing your influencers with a detailed background on your business can give them better insight into your goals, interests and the USPs of your campaign that may be of interest to their followers.
This ensures that your influencers fully understand who you are as a brand and can reflect your objectives in a desirable way when they share content on social media.
4. It’s All in the Timing
Sharing your campaign timeline is critical to ensuring that your campaign goes off without a hitch with your influencers as it gives them increased understanding and accountability when it comes to meeting campaign deadlines.
5. Get Contact Details
Sometimes, although very rarely, an influencer can switch their account name, stop replying to emails and not answer direct messages. When this happens, it can put a serious hole in your campaign plan and its projection.
For this reason, it’s best to obtain multiple contact details for your influencers to ensure they are contactable. If they don’t want to share a phone number, try a second email or personal social media account handle.
You may never need it but if something goes wrong, you’ll be thankful to have another means of communicating with them.
6. Send Your Best
In a large majority of influencer marketing campaigns, your business will send product out to your chosen influencers to photograph and share across their social platforms.
If sending product is part of your campaign, you should make sure what you’re sending is carefully curated and well thought out. You want your products to look visually stunning when shared on social and reflect the calibre of your business.
Consider presenting the product in nice packaging, sending complementary items that will translate well on social media and including a personalised note to drive the fact that there is a person behind the brand.
The goal here is to give the influencer as much opportunity as possible to capture and create beautiful content that will represent your business in a positive light.
7. Keep up Constant Communication
It is important to keep up consistent communication with your influencers throughout the campaign.
This way you can keep tabs on what point of the campaign your influencers are up to and you are also on hand to solve any issues they may have quickly and efficiently. As a result, this will assist in avoiding campaign delays.
8. Always say Thank You
This may seem like an obvious one but once a campaign is done, be sure to thank your influencers for participating.
It is highly likely that you will want to do another influencer campaign in the future and having an ongoing relationship with the influencers will be extremely beneficial should you wish to use their services again.
9. Compensate them
Along the same lines, if a campaign falls through and you have already reached out to influencers, try to compensate them in whatever way you can.
The influencer relationships you’ve built in the lead up to that campaign are still important and must be maintained for the future.
Always apologise, explain the situation as well as you can and consider sending influencers a small thank-you gift for understanding.
It’s all about going to extra mile to make sure that when you need them, your influencers are happy to work with you.
10. Follow through with your promises
If you promise to do something, always do it. Trust is the absolute key in influencer marketing and as soon as trust is broken you’re unlikely to get it back.
Always follow through on promises, and again if you can’t for whatever reason apologise, apologise, apologise.
11. Meet face-to-face
If you have a good working relationship with a loyal, long-term influencer or a new influencer who you really want to impress and keep around, consider meeting them face-to-face.
Putting a face to a name will help personify your brand and further build the relationship with the influencer.
Taking these steps will ensure that your Influencer Marketing campaign is always in control and set for smooth sailing! And if it’s not, give us a call. 😉
