10 Ways To Have Engaging Influencer Marketing Content

You don’t just want boring, bland content as part of your Influencer Marketing campaign. Instead, you want content that is authentic, genuine, and honest. When strategizing your campaign plan, make sure the end result is engaging Influencer Marketing content. Brands have turned their focus from traditional promotion to online strategies as it gives 11x the return on investment (ROI) than typical advertising. However, consumers are increasingly becoming aware of the sponsored content they see online, which poses a challenge for brands and influencers to keep followers interested. Innovation and creativity are the keys to making sure your brand’s campaign thrives against competitors.

It is expected that by 2022, influencer marketing will hit $15 billion. It’s not hard to believe that this number alone makes most brands pour a huge budget into social media marketing. If you want to compete, then your brand needs to level up the Influencer Marketing activations.

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Benefits of Engaging Influencer Marketing Content

If you are a brand that is seriously considering the Influencer Marketing game, then check out the following tips to help you be a total game player. With engaging Influencer Marketing content, you can:

Drive Results

Consumers today aren’t sold on products or services by straight brand marketing alone. What drives them are stories and relationships. Influencer Marketing allows brands to become credible to the audience simply because the audience values the opinion of the person who promotes the brand. In doing so, this type of marketing activity drives the exposure, relevance, awareness, and eventually sales into your brand.

Increase Engagement

Brand loyalty is the end game. Partnering with an influencer who has built a strong relationship with his/her audience might be the revolution you’re looking for in your brand. Being able to build a strong emotional connection with their audience will give you instant buyers of and advocates for your brand.

Get Real-Time Data

Influencer Marketing gives you the raw data you need to decide if your campaign is working in light of the goals you want it to achieve. From demographics to content, you can make the adjustment immediately to maximize your Influencer Marketing campaign.

10 Ways To Make Sure Your Campaign Stands Out

Now that you know the benefits of running an Influencer Marketing campaign, the next thing you need to consider is how to keep your campaign interesting and engaging. Check out these tips to ensure that your campaign will be the talk of the town.

1.) Be Clear with Influencers

As a brand, you should be the first one to understand the kind of campaign you want the public to see. Influencers have an audience who will most likely judge them for any poor quality content. You need to be clear of the campaign goals and messages before approaching any influencer. Create an Influencer Contract that provides campaign requirements, messages, do’s, don’ts, and other campaign-related information. You want to give the influencers creative freedom to create what they want, but also manage the campaign messages.

2.) Simplify Your Pitch

If you want to get noticed by your chosen influencer, you need to reach out first. In doing so, make sure you follow the K.I.S.S. directive—keep it short and simple (yes, we know it’s keep it simple, stupid … but we changed it up). Remember, you are probably not the only one who wants to partner with your chosen influencer. Be straightforward in introducing yourself and your pitch to them. While you’re at it, it never hurts to butter them up a bit!

3.) Make It Long-Term

Surely you chose your influencer based on how they embody your brand, right? Have you considered partnering for the long run? If your brand is just starting out or has been around for a while, an ambassador program might be the way to go. Influencers can be more organic and authentic and provide more engaging content for you if they’ve seen you grow.

If you’re focused on finding the right influencers, your brand will be represented by people who truly believe in your product or service. If it’s a great partnership, then the influencer will become a lifelong fan and ambassador, continuously sharing how much they love your product or service. Not only will the influencer promote your product online, but in real life as well.

At Forward Influence, we managed a campaign for Shutterfly with a few influencers that turned into a multi-faceted campaign with the same influencers. During two separate 7-month campaigns, the brand ambassadors created monthly projects and shared with their readers unique and creative ways to use Shutterfly home decor products. The ambassadors even participated in a SoHo New York City loft design event. They also hosted in-home events, shared posts, and encouraged followers to enter giveaways. The loyalty that the influencers had to the Shutterfly brand resulted in incredible engagement with their followers and ROI for the brand

4.) Provide Writing Angles

What makes influencers successful is their ability to keep their audience interested. As a brand, you can always pitch ideas on how you want your campaign to run. However, you need to trust your influencer on how to captivate their audience simply because it’s their audience. In your Influencer Contract, provide writing angles to get the creative juices flowing. From there, your influencers will have a better understanding of what you want to see as a result of the campaign. They should then be given the able to create freely.

5.) Diversify Partnerships

To reach a large audience—regardless of the tiers of influencers—you’ll want to make sure you work with a wide variety of influencers. You’ll want to create a set criteria for the influencers and then vet against the criteria when reviewing influencer options. However, keep in mind the diversification aspect. In doing so, you’ll reach more people from various demographics based on your influencer criteria.

6.) Boost Content

Once you are able to track your campaigns, you can now determine which content resonates with your audience. With the help of your influencers, take note of the factors that made your campaigns successful. By doing so, you’ll have evidence of what worked and what didn’t (you’ll want to keep this information handy for future campaigns).

7.) Create Digital Events

An average person spends about two hours daily on social media. Why not maximize that time by creating events where your influencer and their audience can interact with each other? Creating ways to have their audience reach out to influencers will personally strengthen their trust and loyalty which can translate to your brand loyalty.

8.) Mix Platforms

If you want the most out of your Influencer Marketing campaign then make sure you use the correct social media platforms. Mixing platforms and the content your influencers provide on each one helps you stay on top of the latest trends and gets that content in front of their audiences where they’re at.

Let’s say you have your heart set on a Facebook Influencer Marketing activation and you want to increase visits to your website. In your mind, that would be the ROI golden ticket. Do you know for certain that Facebook is the right place for your brand? At the end of the campaign, do you think you’ll be happy with the results? Will all of that hard work pay off?

Crafting an influencer marketing activation may get your creative juices flowing, but without focusing on results for your next sure-to-be-award-winning campaign, you’re not likely to improve your company’s bottom line. The last thing you want to do is run a Twitter campaign when your goal is to increase awareness on Instagram.

The onslaught of social media platforms combined with the constant shift of Influencer marketing strategies can make any marketer feel a bit confused. What social media platforms are best for your Influencer Marketing campaigns? Well, the final decision can either make or break a brand and Influencer Marketing campaign.

The social media platforms and the influencers play a vital role in the success of any Influencer Marketing campaign. However, no matter which social media platforms you choose to promote your brand, important factors such as platform audience, format, and pricing will play a role in maximizing your resources while achieving your return on investment (ROI).

9.) Encourage Creativity

When you’re confident enough, you can try to let your influencers market your brand in their own manner. They know their audience very well which means they can help you scale your brand exponentially. Have trust in your influencers and their decisions since they know their followers best.

However, if doing so makes you nervous, then you can review the drafts before they go live. Try to provide as little edits as possible to the drafted content to keep the content true to the voice of the influencer. Also, be sure to include the “draft submission and review” process to the Influencer Contract. You want to make the influencers fully aware that their drafted content will need to be reviewed, edited (if need be), and approved prior to going live. Creativity will result in engaging Influencer Marketing content.

10.) Include a Call-to-Action

Be clear on what you want to achieve at the end of the day. Do you want more followers on Instagram? What abut more product sales? Is increasing your newsletter list a goal? You are still in business regardless of how much you put out for your marketing campaign. Therefore, you need to get your money’s worth and hit campaign goals while driving traffic and increasing sales.

Wrap It All Up

Influencer Marketing bridges the gap between traditional advertising and digital resources. As a brand, what you budget for Influencer Marketing is still considered an investment and should leverage your business one way or another.

To ensure that your Influencer Marketing content is engaging, make sure to remember these tips:

Be Clear With Influencers
SImplify Your Pitch
Make It Long-Term
Provide Writing Angles
Diversify Partnerships
Boost Content
Create Digital Events;
Mix Platforms
Encourage Creativity
Include a Call-to-Action

When strategizing your campaign plan, make sure you include ways to make sure the end result is engaging Influencer Marketing content.

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