Collaborating with influencers - 5 ways to ensure better engagement
The use of influencer marketing has been growing rapidly over the past two decades. This has made competition between brands much tougher. It is no longer enough just to employ influencer marketing and think that you are ahead of the game. Brands need to find unique ways to design their influencer marketing campaigns, such that they achieve maximum engagement and stay ahead of their competitors. Today, we’ll share some useful tips to enable your brand to create productive and mutually beneficial collaborations with social media influencers.
1. Choose the right influencers
The first step to developing a meaningful and long-lasting relationship with influencers is to select the right ones! Spend ample time on finding influencers who are relevant to your brand and can genuinely add value to it. Try looking for those influencers who are experts in the field your brand is operating in. Your brand should also look out for factors such as style, tone, and image of the influencer to ascertain if it aligns well with the feel of your brand or not.
2. Communicate your goals with the influencers
This is an important step right at the beginning of the first stage of communication with the influencer. Whatever your goal is, you need to express it clearly to the influencer. Your goal could be to improve brand awareness, to boost sales, increase website traffic, facilitating a product launch or simply enhancing your social media presence. Communicating the goal clearly to influencers will allow them to understand how they are required to work and what is expected of them. You should also clarify your goal in working with that particular influencer. It is always a good idea to express a willingness to engage in a long term collaboration with influencers.
3. Establish personalized communication with influencers
Once you have decided on the influencers you want to work with, you need to adopt the right way of communicating with them. It starts with the initial conversation when you discuss the kind of collaboration you are seeking with the influencer. This stage is crucial because it sets the stage for future communication and can play a key role in determining whether your collaboration will be a pleasant one or not. Make sure you don’t start off as too ‘imposing’ on the influencer - you need to demonstrate that your brand is willing to accommodate the concerns of the influencer and isn’t seeking to enter a rigid collaboration with highly stringent requirements. Take time to listen to the influencer’s concerns as well as expectations from the collaboration.
4. Give them room to innovate
Flexibility in your collaboration is essential for creating a pleasant, long-lasting relationship with the influencer. Influencers like to be creative and often act as trendsetters in their niches. A common mistake brands make in influencer collaborations is being too rigid with their requirements and thinking that allowing flexibility to influencers will somehow not portray the brand's product adequately. While it is advised that brands should collaborate with influencers who can align well with the brand’s image, it is not a bad idea to let them innovate and get creative within a broad sphere outlined by the brand. It is this creativity and fresh content that appeals to their followers, and which is ultimately going to bring their attention to your brand and its products.
5. Compensate fairly!
Before embarking on a collaboration, you need to be clear about the budget you are dealing with. The general rule is that the larger the number of followers, the higher the compensation influencers will expect. But the key here is that it isn’t just the number of followers that will determine which influencer you should collaborate with. You need to dig deeper to find out the extent of engagement the influencer has with their followers and whether they are a good fit with the brand at all. If your budget is limited, you can target micro-influencers - those with between 10000 and 100000 followers. Their expected fees are much more affordable and you can often get a much higher engagement rate with the audience. Regardless of who you use choose to collaborate with, ensure that you are prepared to compensate them accordingly since this will be one of the factors leading to the creation of a long term collaboration.
To sum it all up, your brand should not ignore the importance of two-way, personalized communication with influencers, be ready to allow them the flexibility to be creative and be prepared to reward them adequately for their services. Creating successful collaborations with influencers can be made much easier if your brand brings in an influencer marketing agency like Influencer Hub as an intermediary. Influencer Hub helps you collaborate with a wide variety of influencers and allows you to launch your marketing campaign with just a few clicks. It will take care of all the work for you so that you can focus on growing your brand. You can find out more about what Influencer Hub can offer your brand by clicking here.
