Even if you don’t know the correct name for it, almost everyone is aware of influencer marketing. Kim K has become the reigning royalty, along with her sisters. Fashion, makeup, and lifestyle tend to be the key areas focused on by the Kardashian and Jenner clans, but every niche and industry has people who are known for their expertise – behind and in front of a camera.
The elements of a successful influencer marketing campaign include using relevant hashtags – but whether they are unique and catchy or common descriptions will depend on the social media platform. Using more than one influencer and sharing those influencers’ posts keeps your campaign alive and progressing. Setting the price for the influencer’s work and working out the details of the contract including length of time the influencer will work with you are the final steps necessary as you set up a campaign. But what is needed once you are actively working with influencers?
Goals
You’ll need to set your goals and decide what you want to accomplish with the campaign – that’s a good idea even if it isn’t an influencer campaign. If you don’t know that, you won’t know when you’ve reached a successful conclusion, or if you accomplished all you wanted. Know your target audience, your budget, and your key performance indicators (KPIs) such as impressions, views, audience reach, sales, chat box subscribers, increased followers, and more.
Social Media Channels
This may take some research because you’ll need to know which platforms will be the best vehicles to reach those goals you set. You’ll want to know which channels get the most impact with your target audience, in some cases, one platform may have more of your audience, but less engagement, so you want the one with the most engagement (from your chosen KPIs) and audience together.
Influencer Choices
Do more research. Again, you want someone with a lot of followers, but you also want someone who has a similar value system to what your company represents. Using Kim K again as an example, if you had the budget and ability to use her voice, but your target audience is women in retirement and Catholic nuns, then Kim K could do more harm than good for your brand. Check out their social media profiles, Google them to see what kind of reputation they have; do they treat other with respect, and do they discuss topics you never want associated with your brand? Answering those questions will allow you to eliminate some possibilities.
Next, do a hashtag search for your brand name to see what influencers are already mentioning your brand. Check with your customers to see who they follow, use an influencer app, and try some keyword searches for similar products and values you want to express with your brand.
Determine a Publishing Schedule
Set up a schedule for social media content on all platforms you’ll use, events, blog posts, press releases, photos, and more.
Check Content Before Publication
Verify any content to be published aligns with the requirements of the campaign and your advertising expectations. Also, it won’t hurt to proofread for any typos. You want professional quality efforts so you can share without embarrassment. Once the content is posted on the influencer’s accounts, share them within a day or two, and then set up a time to share them again at a workable interval.
What Are Your Results
After reviewing your initial goals, strategies, and KPIs, find out if you made progress in those areas, learned new information to help connect deeper with your target audience, and what worked best and worst with the posts and content.
After you’ve studied the results, then use what you learned, create content on your accounts and website related to the posts that got the best results. Comment on customers’ social media from what you learned about them to build a deeper connection, and when they come to make comments on your accounts, have quick conversations with them there about what they say, ask a question here and there about what they like, get to know them. That brings them back to your product time and again.
Read more from Ronn Torossian:
Ronn Torossian on Forbes
Ronn Torossian on SoundCloud
Ronn Torossian on LinkedIn
Ronn Torossian’s Professional Profile on Muck Rack
Ronn Torossian on Business Insider
