6 Tips For Working With Influencers
Should I work with influencers?
I’ve had the opportunity to work with influencers over the past decade, from when bloggers were emerging as a civilian, consumer-saving army to what it has become today, populated with diverse voices across multiple social platforms.
When clients ask about working with influencers, it is a loaded question. I’ve built a blogger ambassador program that lead to a 20% increase in my client’s sales across Canada, showing a clear return on investment for my client’s brand.
But I’ve also seen influencers going on a narcissistic rampage, demanding more and more from us and in return giving us very poor content, that to be honest can be compared to a disappointing one-night stand.
If you are contemplating this process, here are 6 tips for working with influencers:
1. Know Your Audience
Choose influencers who speak to your desired customer base, not just because they have high numbers of likes or can rock the latest style. If you sell a niche product, find your niche audience, even if it offers a smaller following.
2. Numbers do lie
Followers can be bought…and in some cases are bots. Don’t just look at an influencer’s following. Look at their engagement. Are they getting a lot of comments and are they responding back? You don’t want someone who ignores their followers representing your brand.
3. Payment required
When it comes to working with influencers, you will usually have to pay a fee. View it like an advertising or marketing campaign. You wouldn’t expect to advertise in a magazine for free, so don’t anticipate the same with influencers. If you have a high value product, you may be able to work out a contra-partnership – product for promotion.
4. Be realistic
If you are working with a small budget, don’t go after someone with over 100k followers. Consider working with “micro-influencers.” What exactly constitutes a micro-influencer depends on the person, but I use the metric of 10k followers or under. They often have loyal followers and are helpful when reaching niche or regional audiences.
5. Ask for proof
Once you’ve narrowed down who you want to work with, don’t be afraid to ask them to see past campaigns they’ve worked on. Don’t only look at the content they created – ask for the analytics. Review how many comments they received. If they posted affiliate links, what was the click-thru rate? If they’ve contributed to successful campaigns in the past, they shouldn’t be afraid to share their successes.
6. Contract
If you’ve gone through the whole process and you’re ready to launch a campaign, make sure to draw up a contract. Outline specifically how many posts you expect and the timeline for those posts to be completed to avoid uninvited surprises down the line.
By following these tips, working with influencers will hopefully be less daunting and something you can approach with confidence to help your brand grow.
Looking for other marketing tips? Get inspired here.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Bria’s a creative, entrepreneurial spirit with nearly a decade of experience in public relations, event management and content creation. As a freelancer for the past three years and throughout her career, she’s worked with fast-paced agencies and festivals to impactful not-for-profits. As a natural extrovert, she excels at building relationships and has an underlying curiosity that drives her to continually uncover new strategic opportunities, contacts and ideas. In her free time she enjoys cooking, losing herself in a good book or podcast and mastering the art of belly dancing.
If you’re interested in working with influencers or exploring other forms of PR, feel free to reach out to Bria Weaver, Freelance Event Manager, PR Maven & Content Creator. You can learn more about Bria and reach out to her using the links above.
