Want to know how to best use influencers in your social media strategy? We’ve got you covered! With major changes to the Instagram algorithm, influencers have now become the forefront of any social media strategy. So, how do you make your own?
Step 1: Identify your campaign objectives
Firstly, identify what you are trying to achieve from this social exercise or campaign. Remind yourself of your initial business goals and work your way from there. For example, if your goal is to boost sales through social then you’d need to work this into your strategy by giving your influencers promo codes to push out to their followers. This way, you’ll be able to track sales from your campaign using unique promo codes, used by each influencer.
Also, think about this: What’s your budget? This will dictate how many influencers you use and the magnitude of following they have. For instance, if you only have a small budget, you could opt for a handful of smaller influencers, or just concentrate on one large influencer. However, if you have a large budget, this will open a lot more possibilities because you can use a range of micro, macro, and mega influencers.
Here’s a rundown of the average followers for all three:
- Micro-influencers: 2k – 10k followers
- Macro: 10k – 200k followers
- Mega: 200k – 3m followers.
Anything beyond these numbers is out of the scale, but if you’ve got the budget for it -why not?
Step 2: Find your influencers
Now you’ll need to find the influencers you’ll be using for the campaign in mind. You can do this manually by searching related hashtags and locations on Instagram. If you were an interior design company and you wanted to find influencers who post about their homes and interior design inspiration, you could search the #homeinspo hashtag. Or, you could search for the specific location you’re targeting to find an appropriate influencer in that area.
Another option would be to use an influencer tool, where you can filter out all your specific requirements to find the perfect influencer. This would be my go-to option, so I’ll list some platform recommendations below:
- Not wanting to lift a finger? There are platforms available that put out an ad to influencers and create a specific type of content or post. Influencers will then come back to you with the content made and ready to go. You just need to pick out the ones you want to go for and then process the payment.
- For our client, thortful, we identified five TikTok users to amplify our dad dancing challenge across this popular platform. This involved finding five influencers with the relevant audience and a range of followings:
@lewisleighh #duet with @thortful My dad is the best dad-dancer around! Show me some of your dad-dancing moves! #ThortfulDadDancingChallenge #fyp
Step 3: Make sure your influencers are right for your brand and campaign
You want your influencer collaboration to be a match made in heaven with the brand you’re working with. To do this, you’ll need a good understanding of your brands’ current audience and prospective audience to match this with the influencers in question.
It’s also important to vet your influencers; this step is vital to mitigate any PR crisis. You want to make sure your influencers haven’t had any political fumbles in the past, or even worked with a competitor. Social listening is a great method to do this and vet your influencers before the campaign. Plus, you can monitor your influencers during the campaign.
An example of this was our Mother’s Day campaign for thortful, where we collaborated with poets @allontheboard. They were a perfect match for the brand, due to their post’s caring nature and sentimental messages. Not to mention, they had excellent engagement!
#AD Together with thortful we held a competition to put your mums’ best piece of advice turned into a poem on our board for Mother’s Day! Here it is. Happy Mother’s Day.
Love @allontheboard #thortfulcardsVisit thortful to see the other wonderful entires: https://t.co/ZckvrSmlqz pic.twitter.com/Iun1N7AeXI
— All On The Board (@allontheboard) March 14, 2021
Step 4: Outreach and management: communication is key
To contact your influencers, you can either send them a direct message through Instagram, TikTok or any other social platforms that provide this option. You can contact their agent, too, as you’ll usually be able to find their agent’s email on the influencer’s Instagram bio.
When contacting influencers, you need to be friendly, authentic and clear about what the collaboration will entail and what will be required from them. It’s also important to communicate with them continually throughout the campaign. This reminds them what they’re required to do and when they’re scheduled to upload a post. And of course, this will ensure a smooth-running campaign.
Top tip: If you’re not getting many responses (your D.M will most likely go straight into their message requests), simply comment on your influencer’s post to give them a little nudge!
Step 5: Contracts and reporting
When dealing with influencers, it’s good practice to have a contract prepared beforehand. After all, sending this over ensures both ends of the collaboration are fulfilled.
Make sure you communicate to the influencer that they’ll need to sign the contract and invoice you for payment after the campaign ends. Finally, when the campaign is over, you’ll just need to show off your amazing results – simple!
To gather the analytics from your influencer’s posts, ensure they’ve tagged you as a paid partnership, then you’ll get access to their analytics. This lets you showcase the impact of the campaign by showing the impressions, reach, link clinks (or sales if you’ve given out unique influencer promo codes).
Another way you can measure the impact of your influencer collaboration? Create UTM parameters within your links. UTM parameters are a simple, straightforward, and reliable way to track traffic online. They’re not affected by changes to third-party cookies or the Facebook pixel. Plus, they work with Google Analytics. Essentially, if you’re sending any traffic at all to your website as part of your influencer collaboration, UTM codes should be a critical part of your social media efforts.
UTM parameters are great for three reasons:
- They help you track the value of social marketing programs and campaigns and measure ROI
- They provide precise data about conversion and traffic sources
- They allow you to test individual posts head-to-head in the classic A/B testing style.
So, there it is, now you know the best practices when using influencers in your campaigns! For more information on our social media services, or how to find the best approach to utilise influencers for your brand, get in touch with us, today.
