Learning how to work with influencers can work wonders if you can grasp the basic do’s and don’ts – so how do you get it right?
Generally, influencers is the term that we give to people who have built a large following on one or more social media platforms, and are regarded as experts in their field or ‘niche’. As such, they are able to ‘influence’ their audience – and in turn, work with businesses and brands through affiliate marketing.
However, the right influencer for your brand may not necessarily be the one with the most followers. Mega influencers, or those who have an excess of one million followers, have their own brand. As a result, they usually cost a great deal more to work with – but their engagement levels are actually also proven to be much lower thanks to a broader audience. An example of this is a public figure like Kylie Jenner, who is known to charge upwards of one million dollars for one meagre sponsored post to her Instagram page.
On a day to day basis, small and medium size businesses in Australia fare much better when they partner with micro influencers, which is a term given to those usually with less than 100,000 followers. When it comes to navigating how to work with influencers, the good news is that there are many options available depending on your influencer of choice, the nature of your business and the size of your budget. Just a handful of these options include:
- Giving the influencer a free product
- A paid product shoutout
- Running a giveaway
- Recruiting influencers into their affiliate or referral programs
- Giving the influencers a promotion or discount code to distribute
- Creating content together with the influencer
- Inviting influencers to your brand events
- Product collaborations
However, it’s important to understand the target market of both your own brand and that of your influencer in order to reap the potential rewards. Once you’ve found your winner, there are also a few key factors that need your attention if you want to land the collaboration of your brand’s dreams.
The Basics Of Partnering With An Influencer
When learning how to work with influencers, communication and transparency is often key. If you pitch to an influencer that is ‘too big’ for your brand, you run the risk of them ignoring you. If you go ‘too small’ though, you might be investing in an avenue that simply can’t deliver the results you’re hoping for. Having said that, in order to get it right – here are a few of the basics that you need to cover.
Know Your Audience – If you don’t know exactly who you’re trying to reach from an influencer collaboration, then you run the risk of falling flat in your marketing efforts. Consider the age, location, gender, occupation and hobbies of who you’re trying to connect with, along with a clear vision as to what you hope to achieve – is it sales, brand awareness, or even subscriptions?
Do Your Research – When tracking down the type of influencers that are deemed to be the ideal fit for your brand or business, it’s going to take a little bit of research. If you’re stuck on ideas, check out what your competition is up to. Start making an in depth list that includes not just the amount of followers, but the influencer’s engagement rate to calculate potential ROI.
Be Professional – When you’re ready to start approaching potential collaborators, remember that they may get hundreds of requests just like yours every day. Start by following them, engaging with them, and even adding backlinks to their site if appropriate. Build the relationship, and approach via email as opposed to sliding into their DM’s whenever possible.
Make Your Pitch – Keep your initial pitch short, sweet, and to the point. Be extremely transparent on what you’re offering, and don’t assume that they will work with you for free. Avoid excessive flattery, but don’t be afraid to outline why you want to partner with them in the first place and why you think the collaboration could be a suitable match.
Have A Contract – If your influencer of choice agrees to work with you, then the final step is a formal contract or agreement. This needs to be in place not just to protect both parties involved, but it’s also great to refer back to for things like agreements surrounding image sharing, the number of posts required, which hashtags to use, and what the mutual expectations are.
When at it’s best, working with influencers gives business exposure to entirely new audiences, great content without the leg work, increased brand awareness, a boost to your credibility, and can even work wonders for your search engine optimisation. However, this is just one aspect of what a solid digital marketing strategy should look like, as nothing can ever replace having your own high quality content.
Outsourcing Your Content To The Professionals
Producing quality, consistent and on brand content takes time, effort, experience and resources – and you’re not alone if you can’t quite commit to that. Avoiding blogging for business altogether may actually be doing your brand a disservice. Thankfully, investing in a solid content marketing strategy has never been easier.
Here at Content Hive, producing top quality digital content is exactly what we do best. We have itemised a list of digital content services, and allocated credits next to each of these. This means that each month, you can use your credits with us to produce digital content such as blog articles, social media posts, videos and even animated Instagram stories. By using this model, we believe that it enables us to produce high quality content with faster delivery times. It also means that because you have a monthly credit, you are going to want to make sure you use these up – and so do we – meaning that your digital content is always consistent.
If you aren’t quite sure where to start on your digital marketing journey and would like to speak to a professional, why not book a free discovery call with us at Content Hive today to discuss how we can get your brand buzzing online.
