We often hear from businesses who are sold on the idea of influencer marketing but aren’t quite sure where to begin.
How do you find the right people? Which social platforms and techniques are right for your campaign goals? Is it better to partner with an influencer marketing agency or have your own in-house influencer marketing strategy?
It’s always best to start by asking questions, so if you’re still in the information-gathering stage, that’s great! Hopefully, we can help you out with a few of our top tips for working with a social media influencer — and once you’re ready to learn more, be sure to download our FREE Starter Guide to Influencer Marketing.
Influencer Marketing and 5 Simple Tips For Working With Influencers
1. Start with What You Know
The good news is that you don’t have to be an expert in order to get started on your own. Try diving right in with direct engagement. Pick your platforms and start talking to people on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and more!
Seek out a few influencers in your target demographic, pay attention to who they’re talking to, and focus on building your community with organic conversations.
Once you have some influencers in mind, you can branch out into sponsorships — but don’t jump in only when you have a campaign to run. Stay present and be open to feedback.
If you feel like you’re running out of ideas, take a look at what your competition is doing in the influencer marketing space. Get inspired by their success stories — and learn from their mistakes.
2. Find Your Soulmate
Ideally, you want to partner with an influencer who not only relates to the product you’re trying to promote, but also matches your brand’s core messaging. After all, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to hire a vintage-decor design influencer to promote your brand’s new line of ultra-modern office furniture.
It can be time-consuming work to find an influencer (or 25) that perfectly matches your brand, but you can start by looking at your most enthusiastic customers. Where do they spend their time online? Knowing that will not only give you some ideas for who to approach, but where to focus your social media efforts.
3. Give Them Time
It’s vital to give content creators time to work with your product. Let them live with it and decide how they would genuinely incorporate it into their daily lives. This way the storytelling will come far more naturally.
The end goal is for your sponsored post to seamlessly blend into their feed rather than coming across like a blatant advertisement.
Of course, influencers must disclose when they’re being compensated to work with a brand (this isn’t just good form, there are requirements and FTC guidelines for influencer marketing), so let’s be clear: no one’s trying to fool audiences. Great sponsored content is both transparent and effective because the authenticity shines through.
Today’s consumers are tuning out traditional ads more than ever, but they’re listening to their peers and social communities. By allowing influencers enough time to not only familiarize themselves with your product or service but to craft the kind of messaging they know their audiences respond to, your influencer marketing campaign has a much better chance of success.
4. Let Them Put Your Brand’s Message in Their Own Words
In support of the above tip, give influencers some room to convey your brand message in their own tone and style (which is why it’s so critical to find influencers who align with your values)!
Ideally, you should be flexible with your influencer marketing campaign requirements so your content creators can tell your brand’s story in their own unique way. They didn’t grow their audience by copying and pasting brand slogans and sales pitches, and you shouldn’t ask them to do so.
5. Work with an Influencer Agency
Okay okay, we realize we’re a little biased here, but we started Sway Group to bring great brands and talented influencers together in one place.
Brands and agencies who work with us and our amazing network of influencers spend less time on the busywork of identifying, activating, and managing the right creators, and more time reaping the rewards of our award-winning campaigns.
Some of our clients have very specific campaigns in mind and rely on us to provide the influencer outreach, project management, QA, and measurement in order to ensure everything runs smoothly.
For those who need more, we offer everything from research and strategy to influencer marketing workshops.
Talk to us today to learn more about our years of experience and our campaigns that consistently outperform industry benchmarks — and what we can do for YOUR brand.
