Ensuring content is authentic isn’t just a nice to have, it’s the key to soaring sales and long-term loyalty between your brand, the creator, and their audience.
In this blog I’ll outline the five steps to achieve influencer content.
1 Choose the right influencers
Finding the “right” influencer is key to a successful collab. Key criteria include:
• Interest: The influencer has a genuine interest in your product.
• Crossover: There is easy crossover between their content and your product, creating synergy for natural integrations.
• Expectation: Expectations are aligned from the start, leaving both parties satisfied and creating room for future collaborations.
My preference for finding and connecting with creators is to search and discover them directly on the platform. However, tools such as HypeAuditor, BuzzSumo, Upfluence, or AspireIQ also exist to aid this process.
2 Define your expectations and guidelines
Expectation setting occurs during preamble negotiations, contract negotiations, and the brief.
During the preamble, a broad outline of the work to be completed is informally agreed upon. Then, a contract is made to formalize expectations and clear up any gaps. Finally, a brief provides the framework for video creation.
Content creators like to retain creative control over their content, so if the brief is poorly done, it becomes a source of frustration for the creator.
Working with brands day-to-day, we see three types of brief:
A. Rigid: Overly detailed, rigid brief, usually mandating things that the creator would never normally do (15%).
B. Flexible: Some must-haves, some suggestions, with room for negotiation on how the creator can approach certain points (80%).
C. Open: Complete freedom for the creator to do/say whatever they like with minimal guidelines (5%).
Best practice sits somewhere in the middle, and I’m happy to say that most brands float around this area.
Looking for a brief template? You can find our preferred format for a brief here.
3 Review and approve the content
Normally, our creators commit to making content that meets brand guidelines according to the brand’s brief.
Conversely, the brand commits to providing feedback on that content that is reasonable only.
Reasonable feedback relates to omissions or gaps in the content as it pertains to the brief.
Reasonable feedback does not relate to:
• New requests outside of the original brief; and,
• Stylistic changes contradictory to the nature of the channel.
Don’t risk damaging your relationship with a creator, and your reputation with other creators, by providing unreasonable feedback. Instead, take lessons from each collab and improve your review process as you progress.
4 Monitor and measure the results
No matter what you’re tracking, relate the result to a metric that clearly connects back to your original aim. For example:
• Brand Awareness: Reach and impressions
• Brand Consideration: Website traffic
• Conversion: Revenue, profit, ROI
Across all of these you can compare the Cost Per Result (e.g. CPM, CPC, etc.) of each creator to benchmark who is performing best/worst and who you increase/decrease investment in.
UTM links are essential to tracking mid-lower funnel activities such as traffic and sales. You can then use tools such as Google Analytics to review and analyze.
5 Build long-term relationships
Whether or not you can/should build long-term relationships with influencers depends on factors such as:
• Working with micro-influencers at scale vs. a handful of macro influencers;
• Whether you’re working with influencers directly or indirectly via an agency;
• If the influencer is relevant and/or valuable to your customer.
If you are trying to build long-term relationships with specific creators, try the following:
• Go at their pace - don’t message them daily if they’re not showing interest;
• Celebrate events - send a card, gift or present on important dates such as follower milestone, birthday, etc.;
• Go co-branded - if you’re really serious, create either limited edition or long-term co-branded products.
Written by Lawrence Smyth, CEO and Founder of TopTechTubers
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