Leveraging influencer marketing for authentic engagement
By now, you’ve probably heard about influencer marketing, from brands sending PR boxes to select influencers, to massive campaigns like Tarte taking influencers on lavish trips, to Poppi sending influencers $25,000 vending machines for Super Bowl weekend.
Influencer marketing is important for brands because it allows brands to reach a wider (and targeted) audience through a creator who has already established trust and credibility with their loyal followers. This can help brands increase awareness, lead to more sales, and more.
With all of that in mind, let’s talk about how you can leverage influencer marketing for authentic engagement.
Getting started
Before you jump into working with influencers (AKA creators), there’s a bit of ground work you need to do first. It's important to understand who your brand is, such as your messaging, your voice, and your values. These should help guide you when choosing influencers to work with, the right people should align with your brand.
You also need to select the right people for your brand, and again, understanding who you are should help as a guide when selecting influencers. Typically, many people think of massive influencers, those with over 100K followers and while it might be amazing to work with them, it’s not going to be right for every brand, either because of budget, a difference of values, or for some other reason.
This brings us to point #1…
Don’t overlook nano or micro-influencers
While these influencers have fewer followers (1000 - 10000 and 10,000 - 100K), they are typically more connected to their audience and engage more frequently with their followers. This means that they are building valuable relationships, trust, and authenticity. Which is exactly what you want!
If you want to learn more about micro-influencers, check out our article Who are micro-influencers and why are they effective?
Speaking of building valuable relationships…
Working with an influencer shouldn’t be a one time deal
If you’ve selected someone and worked with them, you should keep building the relationship over time. Engage with their content - even when you aren't featured in their content or working with them. Like, comment on, and react to their posts. Continuing to build the relationship through engagement, helps create a long term relationship which can lead to more authentic relationships and more authenticity when it comes to them being brand ambassadors for your brand.
Give up control and let creators create
One of the keywords throughout this post continues to be authentic, and in order to create authentic (and hopefully positive) engagement, we believe that you need to give up some control and let creators create. You’ve connected with your selected influencer because you like who they present themselves to be and you enjoy their content - so let them shine! They know their audience so they know what will resonate with them and letting them create and put their own touch on things will help lend authenticity to their content.
Check out our blog Influencer Marketing: The magic happens when you let content creators create to learn more.
Use User Generated Content
Another way to leverage influencer marketing for authentic engagement is to use User Generated Content (UGC). UGC is content created by consumers and creators on social media, it can include images, videos, and more. UGC can help build trust and authenticity and can help create a sense of community and connection. Want to learn more? Check out our blog 6 ways to harness the power of User Generated Content.
A few extra things to remember
There are a few more things we think you need to consider when looking for ways to leverage influencer marketing for authentic engagement once you’ve started working with influencers.
Be transparent: Creators should be transparent when working with you, this means that their posts should be labelled as ads or partnerships or they should disclose if the product was given as PR.
Monitor their content and engage with it: If an influencer is posting about your brand, you should be taking a peek at what others are saying in the comments. If necessary, reply to comments and answer any product related questions.
Remember to track your influencer campaigns: If you’re working with influencers on a campaign, it’s important to track important metrics, this may include likes, comments, and more. You may require a little help from the influencers you're partnering with and can ask them to share screenshots of their insights with you, these will include things like views, likes, shares, comments, and much more.
We hope you have a better idea of how you can leverage influencer marketing for authentic engagement and if you’re hoping to work with influencers on a budget, check out our blog Influencer Marketing on a budget for more tips.