Best Influencer Marketing Platforms for the year 2017

Australian marketers and brand managers who have run influencer campaigns know that making a successful Influencer Campaign can be a difficult, time-consuming and tedious challenge and can cause issues if not managed correctly.

The influencer marketing industry as a whole is vastly unregulated, which ultimately causes many challenges to marketers looking to run Influencer Campaigns.

There is no a global agreed benchmark of:

• Who actually can be officially considered as an  influencer,
• How influence should be measured. Different platforms measuring it differently.
• How much influence an influencer has,
• How much they should be paid
• any guarantee that a particular collaboration will be successful.

Added to this, marketers are just starting to understand the power of influencer marketing and what’s involved in running a campaign from start to finish.

After working in the influencer marketing industry for three years we know the challenges when it comes to implementing influencer marketing campaigns for our clients.

The goal of this article is to list the best Influencer Marketing Platforms that can help you in the process and strategies for dealing with the challenges of influencer marketing so you run a successful Influencer marketing campaign.

Let’s start with influencer marketing platforms.

WHATS AN INFLUENCER MARKETING PLATFORM

A paid online tool that allows you to search, contact, negotiate, manage, communicate with the influencers; measure, optimise campaigns and present results. Each platform has different pricing options allowing you to choose the best for your needs and budget.

BENEFITS OF USING AN INFLUENCER MARKETING PLATFORM

• You can find influencers, add them to a targeted list of bookmarked profiles and contact them all from one dashboard.
• You can filter your influencer search by location, audience size, platform type, topic and to find the perfect fit for your campaign.
• You can also see all of an influencer’s social channels, their bio and a selection of their content so you can get an idea of what they post, and what their style of content is.
• The platforms takes hours out of influencer discovery and research and makes it easy to track and manage collaborations, so you can keep your campaigns organised in one single dashboard.
• A great Influencer platform will help you define how much you should pay an influencer, what you are actually going to be charged and what deliverables will be received.

WHAT TO LOOK WHEN CHOOSING AN INFLUENCER PLATFORM?

• Tools available to niche your influencer list. What tools and metrics the platform offers to discover and filter out influencers so you get a great sample to use for your campaign.
• Influencers quality control. Does the platform accept anyone with a big number of followers even if those accounts are just copying popular content or does the platform focused on high-quality creative content from authentic creators?.
• Briefing mechanism. How is the briefing process and how easy is to ensure your selected influencers present work against brief. Does the platform offer proven mechanisms to inspire their influencers to deliver high-quality work? Does the tool send auto responses to influencers who submitted content to be reviewed?
• Deals negotiation process. How does the platform set prices from each influencer? Do they have an algorithm in place to set the price in relation to their influence rank? or any o their method? How easy and fast is to negotiate deals with all your selected influencers and make correspondent payments.
• Project management tools. What tools the platform offers for project management and communication with each influencing.
• Campaign results and insights. What tools, metrics (aggregated reach, audience engagement, influencer audience data, engagement to a topic, contribution to the overall brand conversation, sentiment, share of voice, top content, affinity to the brand). Do the platform offer visually friendly dashboards that present your campaign results and offer you insights you can then apply for next influencer campaigns? Does the influencer platform offer an app to see real-time results?
• Copyrights. Does the platform help you have clear copyrights agreements with your influencers?
• Productivity. And finally, does the influencer platform really reduce your time it takes to do all of the above?
• How influencer platform measure Return of Investment (ROI). What type of results can be guaranteed: sales? number of visits to advertisers website? number of mentions? brand recognition lift? recall lift? number of views on the influencer branded content? an increase in e-newsletter subscriptions? or grow the brand social following to XXX numbers?

AUSTRALIA’S BEST INFLUENCER MARKETING PLATFORMS 

• Collabosaurus connect your brand with Australian influencers that matches your target market, their list of influencers are actively seeking collaborations and can get you the exposure you need. Collabosaurus cuts down the research, reach out and negotiation time it takes to source partnerships the old-school way. Different Factors: The organisation differentiates itself through offering extended services like events, workshops and marketing strategy sessions. Collabosaurus influencer database is approx 2.800 members located in Australia, New Zealand, America, Canada and the UK (according to their website by Dec 2016). Founders: Jessica Ruhfus. Featured on: the Daily Telegraph, The Huffington Post, News.com.au, Business Insider.

• Fanfuel is a highly reputable company that connects brands with the suited influential athlete. They are “a digital first, sports media company” (Business Insider, 2016) that continually keep active in the happenings of the sporting world, while maintaining a close eye on marketable trends. Fanfuel provides a unique influencer management software for those wishing to use athletes to become a living icon of your product through specialisation. Different Factors: Fanfuel is data driven and KPI based, allowing them to provide social media ROI reports and profile valuations. This directly allows companies to determine which marketing strategy creates the most reach. Fanfuel goes the extra mile by in many cases actually producing photos and videos for the client. Pricing: pricing with Fanfuel is based from quotes given and requests made. Featured on: AdNews, BRW., Business Insider, COMPUTERWORLD, Startupsmart, Startup Daily.

• After only being launched two years ago, HooZu is the purveyors and perseveres of influential marketing. HooZu has risen to the top through choosing the correct technology, talent and management style that is appropriate for your business and related objectives. HooZu gains a competitive edge in the way they are able to manage multiple campaigns to build flight to the frequency of messages transmitted to targeted customers. Different Factors: HooZu goes beyond and continually tracks the success of campaigns to offer real-time reporting and gain customer insights. The company holds unlimited potential as it has access to all levels of online influencers across all social media channels. Pricing: highly competitive rates as deemed by the influencer requested. CEO: Nathan Ruff. Influencers: Kerrbox (Rod Kerr), Ministryforstyle, Ashleigh Jade, Lote Tuqiri,

• Launched in early 2014 ad coming out from the Melbourne Accelarator Program, Hypetap is a platform that connects brands and agencies with social media personalities and celebrities. You can set up a campaign and manage it end to end on the HypeTab platform that includes negotiating with all your influencers, managing all the posts and even having and recording the conversations you have with each influencer within the platform. As a marketer you get all your aggregated campaign results metrics into one single dashboard that includes how each social media platforms perform for your campaign and get a good insight on how each influencer performed on your campaign. In 2016, founders mentioned they have a network with over one thousand influencers with an aggregate reach over 85 million. offers curated influencer marketing – a marketplace for brands, agencies, influencers and talent managers. Differentiator Factors: Unlike other platforms that use a contest or marketplace approach, where influencers produce content with the hope of having it selected, often without return, Hypetap enables brands to work with influencers to ensure a higher quality of content. Additionally, the platform gives users full approval of the process and access to reporting in real-time, enabling brands to have a more genuine and predictable set of KPIs. Pricing: It is free for brands or agencies to set up campaigns on Hypertap. However, there is a 10% fee on paid campaigns from the client and another transaction from the influencer. Where do their influencers come from? They come from Instagram, YouTube, Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, and blogs. Other tools and services: Full creative agency taking all the work from brands and Instagram influence rank tool that measure how “influencing” is an Instagrammer. Founders: Detch Singh and Nikhil Madhok. Clients: G, Nestle, Nine West, Holden, Tripadvisor, Shoes of Prey and Disney.

• Nuffnang is an influencer marketing service provider that is centered around blog advertisement. The company focuses on building strong relationships with brands and global bloggers that are constantly being engaged with by followers. Nuffnang hosts and supports a Global Community of over 966k Blogs with the aim of connecting influencers with suited brands as Nuffnang understand that all campaign are unique. Differentor Factors: Nuffnang differs from other influencer marketing services in that all thoughtfully-crafted campaigns are aligned with designated budgets. Nuffnang plans the creation of authentic opinions of their bloggers to drive optimal media coverage while maintaining desired relevance. Influencers: Cheree, My Poppet and Imogen Lamport. Clients: Cadbury, Coles, Dove, Samsung, Westfield, SONY, SHARP, Jetstar and Clarks.

• An influencer marketing platform that enables brands, retailers, and agencies to connect to online platforms, giving them access to over 20 million global influencers. They minimise the risk of partnering with the wrong people by using data to analyse and rank influencers from top performing to least engagement. Based in Brisbane, Australia. Clients can track their campaign on a dashboard. The dashboard lists the top performing influencers, showing their social reach, post engagement, and website traffic. Clients can see whether influencers have produced any content that’s driving a return on investments for their business. The platform monitors social media conversations from the campaigns and aggregates activity for every post to see which one is having the most impact. Different Factors: Scrunch influencer search capabilities include the option of filtering down by people talking about a specific brand or their competitors, in a particular location, on a particular marketing channel, this way brands can find the right influencer to work with. Founders: Salvatore Garozzo, Danielle Lewis and David Novakovic. Investors: Scale Investors.

• The Social Folio App is a differentiated influencer marketing service that solely focuses on supporting the  influencer. The App acts as a management tool for the influencer to seamlessly manage their social media platforms in order to maximise frequency and reach per upload. Social Folio makes content importation very easy through merging software like Dropbox, Gmail and Google Drive to consistently sustain data. Differentor Factors: the app becomes a bargain as it includes 3 main features in a single purchase: 1. Multiple Portfolio; 2. PDF/URL Support; 3. Video Support. Combining these features creates the ultimate self-management platform for sole traders. Featured on: the Australian Business Review, BRW., Herald Sun, Marie Claire, RUSSH. Customers: Natalie Rose, Frank BODY, Elyse Knowles, Tully Smith, Tim Sharp.

• Social Soup was founded through the realisation that influencers are the most powerful advertising sources of new ideas and innovations. The organisation focuses on testing prototypes and early-stage concepts before other companies through all social media channels. Social Soup feeds off connecting brand new products and campaigns with leading influencers. Differentor Factors: One of Australia’s largest influencer community with over 170k ‘soupers’ and over 450k products that have been trialed. This organisation differs in the immensity of being able to handle multiple projects coherently by building personalised customer profiles. Social soup aims to build relationships with influencers to aid their relationships with targeted customers. Founder: Sharyn. Clients: Nutella, BONDS, Dyson, Fitness First, Veet.

• TRIBE is a relatively newer influencer marketing platform that recognised a fault in the market. The organisation’s leading entrepreneurs recognised that influencers had less power to manage themselves and communicate to brands to advertise their products. In light of this, TRIBE created a marketplace where influencers can more easily engage with brands and audiences on a 1:1 basis. Different Factors: Brands create campaign briefings and content ideas for the influencer in case they are short of innovative thoughts, however they still leave the power with the influencer as only they can construct their post. Pricing: For brands, TRIBE charges a 20% commission on any post they purchase; for Influencers, TRIBE is a free service. Founder: Jules Lund.

• Visual Amplifiers (VAMP) is a rapidly growing digital advertising start-up that now has offices internationally in Australia, Singapore, Hong Kong and the UAE. The organisation has experienced phenomenal growth through their motto of having big ideas, with bigger results. Their aim is to hit all social media topics related to demographic product placement through matching the correct brand products to the correct influencers to maximise reach. Different Factors: Vamp goes beyond the typical influencer marketing platform by providing regular articles that update and inform consumers about changes in social media, and about topical matters that are high in demand. These articles are created in the ambition of further educating influencers to become bigger and better, ultimately creating instabosses. Clients: Lagavulin, Nude by Nature, MasterCard, eBay, SAMSUNG.

GLOBAL INFLUENCING MARKETING PLATFORMS

• As a US based company, Brandwatch truly does bring Orwellian aspects of the past to a reality. This influencer marketing platform acts as a digital database through collecting vital insights surrounding customer word-of-mouth. The software brilliantly identifies the next market opportunities by observing millions of conversations every day as they happen globally. Through gaining customer insights, Brandwatch helps brands drive product innovation through gathering hidden opinions and identifying product threats as they arise. Brandwatch also allows you to identify social media influencers by topic. The organisation currently offers three products that aid the consumer analyst process: Brandwatch Analytics, The Vizia Platform and Brandwatch Audiences. To run a trial and see the power of this software, try the demo. Clients: Walmart, ASOS, Unilever, eBay, IKEA, Microsoft, Pepsico.

• Instabrand describes themselves as “the ultimate influencer platform” as they have continually proven to make immense impacts with their campaigns and movements. This US based social media marketing organisation truly shines in the competitive scene and differentiates itself through its humanistic approach. Instabrand creates captivating content and leverages authentic audience relationships through giving brands a human voice. They focus on building stronger, deeper and long-term relationships between brands, influencers and viewers through making campaigns realistic so that viewers are on equal terms. Instabrand famously withstands and connects with 100,000+ influencers across all mobile social media platforms. Clients: Hyundai, Levi’s, Marvel, McDonald’s, Airbnb, Calvin Klein, Colgate.

• Instagramers.com was founded by CEO Phil Gonzalez with the main aim of trying to help people share their experiences and ideas through instagram. In recognition of Instagram’s potential, Mr. Gonzalez began the global movement in recognition of its unique communication effects as it “is like Twitter but with pictures”. This online instagram forum allows ‘instagramers’ to share their life, feelings, sensations and advice with other users to build followings and maximise reach. Mr. Gonzalez created the forum as a basis to organise meet-ups for influencers within the same industry or sharing similar passions. Now, Instagramers is one of the most popular Instagram communities worldwide with regular meetups, tutorials, and instagram information.

• Klout is a US based influencer marketing platform that helps users be known for what they love. Their aim is to build client followings through creating and sharing great content that the influencer is passionate about across social media platforms. They make content suggestions to influencers that is original, makes an impact and gets a reaction from responders. Klout differentiates itself from other influencer marketing platforms by having its own social impact ranking scale; this is a definitive rank that lists brands in each industry according to who has the largest impact socially. Klout’s influence is ginormous and continues to grow with 620M+ scored users, 1M+ Klout Persk delivered, 12B daily social signals and over 200K businesses using Klout. Featured on: Barclays, WIRED, Business Insider, Mashable, CIO.

• In recognition that brands names want to capitalize on the true value of influencer marketing, NeoReach was founded as a software solution to this. However, NeoReach did not want to hand over all of the power to brands, so they created a self-service influencer marketing platform; where agencies and influencers can manage their own relationships with brands while paying no commission.  Currently, NeoReach has a basis of 3M+ influencers to connect with brands and market campaigns. Additionally, on top of all this, NeoReach’s software also offers Influencer Analytics, Exportable Reports, API Integrations and a Client Portal to make it easier for both brands and influencers to maximise reach through building brand loyalty. Need more information? Talk directly with NeoReach. Featured on: The Wall Street Journal, ADWEEK, Business Insider, REUTERS.

• Since 2010, Olapic has cemented itself in the international influencer marketing services industry as a major contender. Their mission of using creative content that relates to the viewers’ lives has allowed them to continually prosper as an organisation as they envision communication between the influencer and viewer as a relationship. They use their content platform with precision to amplify every possible touchpoint with responders. Hence the organisations pride itself off three keywords: curate, activate, and analyse. The software also offers a plethora of user abilities, from posting content and tagging products to monitoring click view rates, revenue and performance. Founders: Pau Sabria, Luis San, Jose De Cabo.

• At last, the international market has seen a relationship building social media platform that prides itself off its matchmaking capability. Seen Moment has developed a sustained competitive advantage in the influencer marketing scene through being analysts in the way they match the correct brand with the correct influencer. They identify the suited influencer through data and problem solving, to maximise the impact of every marketing effort foregone. They understand that marketing begins from the consumer’s process of problem recognition. From this awareness stage, the organisation aims to build trust, loyalty and community with their clients to ensure that the consumer’s post-purchase behaviour and thoughts is nothing but positive. Seen Moment also goes beyond the typical influencer marketing service by providing resources that enhance business know-how on topics like Snapfluences, Moment Marketing, Instagram Insights and Tourism Marketing. Clients: Hilton, Reebok, Barnes & Nobles, Pepsi, Microsoft.

• For influencers and brands that are looking to advertise across all social media platforms, Collective is for you. They transform power into passion across the fashion and lifestyle influencer channel. Collective has emerged as a key player in the influencer marketing industry through extending its capabilities in terms of empowering its influencers. They offer additional help and tools for influencers to extend the reach of their audiences. They ensure that all social media platforms are efficiently and effectively used by influencers to monetize everything. Collective differentiates itself through the introduction of the new marketing strategy called ’emoticodes’. This strategy allows influencers to directly monetize their snapchat stories through viewers. The Collective never falls short of content ideas for their influencers as they have access to thousands of retailers and brand partners. Clients: Sephora, H&M, FOREVER21, TOPSHOP, NORDSTROM, asos.

• Starngage is an influencer marketing service provider that solely focuses all marketing efforts towards Instagram. With a phenomenal amount of over 18,000 and still growing influencers from 132 countries, Starngage allows brands to partner with key influencers to customise, manage and launch powerful marketing campaigns on Instagram. The organisation works internationally to match the right influencers to the right brand through matching commonalities in brand values like interests, industry, attitudes and beliefs. Starngage differentiates itself by easing the negotiation of prices between the Influencer and brand. The organisation follows a four-step process for their campaigns: (1) target, (2) identify, (3) amplify and (4) track. The organisation works with a continuum of influencers, some with less than a few thousand followers, other with hundred of thousands.

• Tapinfluence is an organisation that has sprouted from the realisation that smartphone technology has empowered influencers to achieve feats that were never before thought imaginable. In recognising the production of an influencer economy, tapinfluence created its influencer marketing network to change the way consumers buy things forever. The organisation understands the significance of maximising marketing ROI and knows from firsthand experience that organisations who are not using expressionists are slowly falling behind. Tapinfluence determines pricing based on categorising their three targeted customers: influencers, enterprises and agencies. You can request a demo now. Clients: Betty Crocker, Volvo, Target, SEIKO, Macy’s. M7M’s, LEGO, Hallmark, Coca-Cola and Canon.

• The Midgame is a simpler influencer marketing service provider that really numbs down the process of matching influencers and brands. They are the managers of publications, taking the initiative to monitor and deduce valuable reports for both influencers and brands. The Midgame truly takes the responsibility and task of developing the marketing campaign for an organisation. As a sunrise enterprise, The Midgame has already impressively gathered a network of over 18,00 influencers and has connected with Fortune 500 companies to promote their products and events. The organisation even provides a search function available for FREE so that companies can research potential influencers according to keywords searched. This search option quickly summarises the influencers engagement rate (as a %) and views per video.

• The rise of the digital economy is at its exponential peak and here is the Influencer marketing platform that has recognised and accommodated for the change in the marketing landscape. Through observation of a changing digital economy, the founders of Traackr realised that brands must transform with the economy, or else face a disgraceful fall and cut to current successes. An example of this inability to adapt was demonstrated by Kodak. From this purpose, Traackr sees their resources and team member as change agents that support clients through their process of transformation .They know that influencers are the key to aiding this transformation battle through firsthand experience. The organisation saves clients’ time by identifying influencer and brand matches according to statistical analysis’ and personality similarities. Traackr maintains impressive reviews through its ability to track both quantitative and qualitative outcomes of campaigns. Clients: L’Oreal, Coca-Cola, Forbes, SAP, intel, MONOPRIX.

CREATIVE STUDIOS THAT WORK WITH INFLUENCERS

• Kvell

TOOLS TO SEARCH AND FIND INFLUENCERS

• BuzzStream Infuencers tool – you type a keyword and BuzzStream will give you top influencers. Most of them seem to be from Twitter though.
• Followerwonk (Search Twitter bios to find who has a great following base – they might be also influencers on other platforms ie facebook, youtube, instagram)

WHY INFLUENCER MARKETING

• Nearly 9 in 10 consumers make buying decisions after reading about a product.
• Influencer marketing drives 5-200x more sales than paid media because consumers trust influencers more than brands, as influencer recommendations are testimonials while branded content seems biased.
• Influencer marketing generates visits, leads and sales. Influencers are crucial to converting leads in the sales funnel. From the moment a consumer sees your product on an influencer’s page, they’re thinking about the product and what it would look like in their life. Now that the product is top of mind, it’s much easier to convert the lead into a paying customer. Influencer marketing campaigns well measured can generate leads and sales. From the minute an influencer talks about your product or service, sales generation starts. Depending on the influencer’s channel and the length of the campaign, sales can be generated immediately, in bursts or over a number of weeks.
• Offer brands Access to their target market. Influencers have a very targeted following of people in the same demographic, which brands can tap into if they are savvy with their prospecting and outreach. Our advice? Work with influencers in your niche as they will no doubt have a loyal following of consumers interested in the topic, which is essentially your target market.
• Optimal content production costs. Influencers are the leaders of content creation.  They have built their audience by creating authentic, compelling and unique content. They can create user-generated content about your brand that can then be used on your own platforms.
• Influencer Marketing can build brand awareness more effective than other channels.  Influencers are the link between a brand and its market awareness, it’s that simple! While influencers do generate leads and sales as well, the brand awareness they build is unrivalled in traditional PR strategies (we’re talking about you, bland press release). Exposure and brand awareness is so important in today’s saturated retail and eCommerce space, so the more brand awareness you can achieve, the better.
• Influencer Marketing offers a trusted voice.  Consumers are more likely to trust the opinion of the people they follow than brands, so partnering with an influencer can get your message to be far more listened.
• Influencers offer authority and influence. They have built an audience for a reason. The influencer has a great insight into their followers and how to best engage with them. it might be because they are an authority on a specific niche topic and make them earn celebrity status that can influence purchase decisions. 84% of consumers make a purchase after learning about a product or service from other people.
• Influencers help you build Relationships with audiences who have never bought your product or service. Influencers make it easier for brands to build relationships between their followers and your brand.

• Take advantage of their communication expertise and influence.  Influencers know how to create and curate messages in a way that their followers will connect and encourage engagement on their platforms, knowing that the number of engaged followers is much more important than the total number of followers as it shows how many people are actually interacting with them influencer being a better indicator than reach and impressions.
• Creativity included! How much does it cost a brand to have their agency bring creative ideas? – Influencers bring you creative ideas in all stages of your influencer campaign content development. They bring their own ideas, perspective and experience, so they can put a new flair on your marketing strategy and uncover a fresh angle. They are used to produce large numbers of creative ideas and executions. They think outside of the box and shake things up. The result? Probably something that really surprises you.
• Influencers offer great value for money. When compared to traditional advertising and PR activity, collaborating with influencers generates excellent value for money. Influencer campaigns and collaborations can generate a return on your original investment (ROI).
• Help you start the conversation. Brands have always had the challenge of not talking too much about themselves. With influencers you have someone else do it for you.
• Great for Search Engine optimisation (SEO). Influencer content not only can send traffic to your website, online store and social media channels; their content pieces can also help to improve your SEO and backlink profile. While social shares are not directly linked to Google’s ranking algorithm, blog links pointing to your website are extremely beneficial.
• Long term means brand advocates. Working with influencers on one-off campaigns is great for raising brand awareness and generating interest, but it’s when they become long-term brand advocates that you truly start to see the value in their work.
• Great for branded content distribution. While influencers are predominately content creators themselves, they can (and do) also distribute other content on their channels. If you wrote a great onsite blog post or created an instructional video, share it with some relevant influencers and ask whether they’d be interested in sharing it with their followers, ultimately widening the reach of your content.
• Support your brand vision. One of the great things about influencers is that they’re quite transparent and genuine, so they will include a disclaimer if they were gifted a product, or paid to promote a product. They’re also authentic when it comes to working with brands and are known to decline an opportunity that is not the right fit. This is good news because it means you’ll only be working with influencers that really support your vision.
• They Grow Your Social Following. Include a request to tag your brand in all influencer collaborations so that your social media channels get more fans as a result of the campaign. It might happen slowly, but worth it.

WHAT TYPE OF MARKETING CAMPAIGNS YOU CAN USE AN INFLUENCER FOR

Influencers are great information providers when you want to get a message out to the masses quickly.

• Introducing a new brand
• Shifting brand sentiment after a challenging issue
• Offering a third party voice who can offer a comparison with your top closed competitors
• Retargeting an old product that you want to give it a boost.
• Distributing information about a sale – promoting a sale end period: discount codes, deals, offers.
• Rewarding brand ambassadors with unique experiences with a top influencer

TIPS FOR MEASURING INFLUENCE

There are no guarantees that someone who has  50,000 Instagram followers have influence. A good way to know whether an influencer actually has influence over their audience and their purchasing decisions is to look at:

• Their average engagement and
• Engagement to a topic.

This will help clarify whether their fans are actively engaged in their content, which is the first step in understanding whether they actually have influence.

An example: To calculate an average engagement rate on Instagram to determine what percentage of an influencer’s followers are actively engaged with their content, you can use the following formula:

• Engagement rate percentage = (Sum of total likes and comments for the 20 most recent Instagram posts) divided by (20) divided by (total number of followers) time by (100).

The industry average is 2-5%, so if their engagement rate is in that bracket, or ideally above it, then you are on your way to understanding whether the influencer actually has influence over their audience.

WHAT TO DO AND NOT TO DO WHEN WORKING WITH INFLUENCERS

TO DO’s

• Give them creative control. It does not mean letting them go wild with your product. Instead, you can have creative workshops with them ensuring both your brand position and their creative ideas matches nicely.
• See the whole picture of opportunities. not only to get them publish single sponsored posts or make them one of your affiliates. They can also be a long-term ambassador or even getting them involved as content producers with your internal marketing team.
• It is about relationship building. Always be polite, understanding and helpful when finding mutual benefits.Be courteous when following up and offer them as much support and resources as possible.
• Be open to collaboration and be flexible.
• Treat them as Professional Content Creators. They create content as their primary source of income and being an influencer is their primary job. Therefore, many influencers (particularly the top tier ones) will charge a fee for their time and effort if you want a dedicated post exclusively about your brand. Be understanding if/when they decline your collaboration opportunity if there is no exchange of payment or other forms of compensation.
• Be personal. When contacting them, adding a personal touch helps you stand out, appear more approachable and genuine, and they can see that you’ve made the effort to really consider the opportunity and whether they would be a good fit.
• Offer the best experience to the influencer. If you are sending product samples and they arrives late, or with defects (stains, others) on them or in the wrong size, the influencer will have a bad first impression. Ensure the influencer receives all the product samples and support at the right time, the right way and top quality.

NOT TO DO’s

• Control their creativity. Being too restricting and enforce control over the content an influencer is set to create, you can have a very negative effect on your relationship and on the campaign as a whole. Influencers are popular among their followers because of their personal content style, aesthetic and tone of voice, so they know what works best to communicate a message with their audience. If the content they produce about your brand is dictated rather than their creativity, their audience will notice, engagement will drop and their credibility and authenticity suffers, which ultimately has an impact on your brand as content appears as blatant advertorial rather than editorial. Influencers are popular because they are great at creating content that interests and excites their particular audience.
• Never be demanding or take advantage of them.
• Don’t Be Pushy Being rude or pushy to an influencer will not make them want to support your brand, no matter how much $ you are paying them.
• Be conscious about their time. Realise that for them to review a product, photograph a product and post about a product can take some time, so continually harassing them could negatively impact their review of your brand. Influencers often have a lot of collaborations on the go at any one time, so keep this in mind when you approach them.
• Contacting them via generic emails without prior research. Make sure you’ve done your research on the influencer and their platforms before you reach out to them. Ensure you know what they post about, their real name and ensure your brand, product or service is a good fit with their regular content and lifestyle.
• Presenting Vague and Confusing Briefs. Be clear with what you want and expect from the influencer and make sure they understand exactly what you are offering. Whether it is gifting for social media exposure or payment for a blog post, make sure you are clear with your intentions and expectations.

Hope these best practices of working with influencers, help you work with them in a much more streamlined way and help you make a successful Influencer campaign.

TIPS FOR A SUCCESSFUL INFLUENCER MARKETING CAMPAIGN

GOAL SETTING

To understand what deliverables will drive success, you must first outline what the key focus of the campaign, and what the key goal is. Setting the expectations right up front is key. Then, you can start developing an influencer strategy that will hit those targets.

BRIEFING DOCUMENT

An Influencer Brief Document which outlines all expectations, deliverables, guidelines and requirements must be presented and accepted by both the brand and the influencer before a collaboration can begin.

If it is not, obstacles will continue to come up throughout the campaign, and some could have a detrimental impact on the overall success of the campaign. You should present a briefing document as you do when working with any other contractor, freelancer or consultant.

When working with influencers on a contra only strategy (where they are gifted a complimentary product or service in exchange for content or promotion) there are limitations on what you can set as an expectation and deliverable, as it is not an official working arrangement where there is no monetary compensation. When working with influencers on a contra strategy, it is okay to provide examples and ask what type of content may be produced.

Source: eDigital

Another Business Marketing Platform to look for is Top4, The latest Australian Social Media Business Marketing Platform that connects trusted local businesses and national brands with Australian customers who are actively looking for their services or products. Top4 empowers Australian businesses to attract relevant customers and gives brands greater exposure to targeted verticals through an innovative, intuitive and cost-effective digital platform.