Influencer Marketing Guide: How to Work With Social Media Influencers

Are you struggling to get the desired results from your influencer campaigns?

You have done everything by the book and spent a lot of time and effort, but it is still not as effective as you thought. And, reading all of those influencer marketing success stories and articles doesn’t help.

If you can relate to this then you have reached the right place. In this post, you will learn seven of the most important tips for working with social media influencers and running successful campaigns.

Ready to find out what these tips are?

Let’s get started.

1. Find the Right Influencers

The first step towards working with social media influencers is to find the most relevant ones for your business. You should not get stuck on vanity metrics like followers and popularity when choosing social media influencers to work with.

In fact, your first priority should always be relevance. Always work with influencers who are relevant to your brand and it will look more credible when they recommend your products. 

The next most important metric for influencer selection is the engagement rate. Choose an influencer who gets good engagement on their social media content.

You can use one of the numerous tools to find influencers that are easily available online. Just make sure that you use the right metrics to search for and select influencers to work with.

2. Ensure that You Both Know and Follow the Rules

Another important thing to keep in mind when working with social media influencers is to follow all regulatory guidelines. This includes the rules to disclose brand-influencer partnerships and tag sponsored posts to inform your audience.

In the US, the main regulatory body for this is the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). So, you have to follow the FTC guidelines that include using #ad or #ads for sponsored posts and a few other rules.

Also, you should discuss these guidelines with your influencers and ensure that they also follow them for all of your branded content. Make sure that they always disclose brand partnerships and let their audiences know that they are collaborating with you. This will help increase their credibility and trust with their audiences.

3. Set Clear Expectations

When you finally start your collaboration with an influencer, make sure that you set clear and realistic expectations. You should tell them exactly what you want from them and within what time frame.

The type of content, end goals, frequency/number of posts, etc. should be clearly communicated right at the beginning. You should also be clear and transparent about the payment terms and be on the same page before you start your collaboration.

Clear expectations will help the influencers understand your requirements better and also help you avoid any sort of confusion.

Also, you can use tools to manage social media campaigns to help you track each influencer’s work, progress, and results delivered. This will ensure the collaboration goes smoothly and make sure that everyone involved is on the same page.

4. Give Some Creative Freedom

While you should set clear expectations in terms of what you want to achieve, you should still leave some creative control to the influencers. If you put too many constraints on the type of content you want, you might miss out on something better.

Influencers are creative people who know what they are doing, so, just trust them to do a good job. This does not mean that you don’t need to supervise them, but that you should let them create innovative content on their own.

5. Send Them Gifts

Brands often send free goodies and gifts to influencers on their birthdays, anniversaries, or for no reason at all. The purpose of these gifts is usually to maintain good relationships with the influencers.

However, there is an added benefit that it provides. Most influencers repay this kindness by posting a picture of such gifts on social media and thanking the brand that sent them the gifts.

So, you get a shoutout from a popular influencer without much investment. This is a neat trick that you can follow, especially for those influencers who are too expensive otherwise.

It is a good idea to nurture influencer relationships with influencers that you have worked within the past. Sending them gifts is a good way to show your appreciation and such influencers are more likely to show their appreciation back by posting about your gifts.

However, do not keep sending gifts to an influencer who is non-responsive or not interested in your brand. It is a waste of money for you and might actually be annoying for the influencer. So, only use this strategy for influencers that you know and have a relationship with.

6. Run a Giveaway Together

One great way of working with social media influencers is to run a joint giveaway or promotion. How this works is that you ask people to participate by following your brand and the influencer. Then, you pick a winner from among those participants and send them the giveaway prize.

This is a mutually-beneficial collaboration where both you and the influencers that you work with can get more social media followers. You can both promote the giveaway on your respective social media channels to get the maximum participation.

You can also ask the participants to tag their friends and get them to follow your profile(s) as well. This will further increase the number of followers you have and will benefit both you and the influencer that you work with.

Here’s an example of a joint giveaway by a restaurant and a food influencer. Both have promoted the giveaway on their respective Instagram accounts and the rules of participation require people to follow both profiles. Moreover, they have also asked the participants to tag two friends in the comments to get more reach for their posts.

Image via Instagram

7. Ask them to Do Product Reviews

Product reviews are one of the best ways to work with social media influencers. Detailed and honest reviews lend an air of credibility to your products and encourage more people to try them.

Social media influencers may be limited by the character count allowed for social media posts but they can always overcome that by making a video. A product review video that details all of your product’s features and ways to use it is extremely useful and effective in getting more customers.

So, when you work with social media influencers, do not forget to include product reviews in your strategy. Also, make sure that even your paid product reviews sound honest and credible, otherwise, the whole effort will be futile.

Conclusion

If you plan on working with social media influencers then follow the tips above. These are seven of the most important tips on how to work with influencers to run successful campaigns.

Try these and get better results from your influencer marketing campaigns. 

Do you still have questions about how to best work with social media influencers? Feel free to leave your questions in the comments section. 

Author Bio:

Shane Barker is a digital marketing consultant who specializes in influencer marketing, content marketing, and SEO. He is the co-founder of Attrock, a digital marketing agency. He has consulted with Fortune 500 companies, influencers with digital products, and a number of A-List celebrities.