Do and Do not of Working with Social Media Influencers

You'll need to look for influencers who can offer you more than just stats. Like, you should never go for someone just because they have a lot of fans/followers on Facebook. You'll need to make sure that they have a loyal fan following across multiple platforms, like Instagram, Facebook,YouTube and pinterest. The influencer working with you, must connect and resonate with your target market/niche, and should definitely behave as such. Influencers become representatives of your brand, so it must be the right fit.

Let's get this straight, you're investing your valuable time and money for a marketing campaign therefore you should clearly outline all your expectations in return. Clarify the number of posts you expect per day and the target channels that you want them to use. Expectations should all be clarified right from the start, so that nothing goes wrong while the campaign runs.

After spending so much time, finding the influencer and briefing him about the campaign, you'll want to know the sales converted or generated as a result of your campaign. Try using unique group of hashtags, promo codes to identify the customers who bought your product or did business with you because they saw information about your brand on the influencer’s page.

Return the favor of your representative influencer by promoting, sharing, and engaging with their posts on social media. This allows you to highly increase your exposure. It may sound cliche' but the most crucial step for running a campaign is to carefully decide that which influencers are best suited for your brand. The most primitive indicator can be reviewing the existing following of the influencer in all target platforms.

Depending on the type of influencers that you’re looking for, it could either be that they're being approached for the first time ever or they're getting swarming approaches every day. In order to attract the ones with larger audiences you'll be needing to be more creative. The best strategy is, try and send them a sample of your product, that you wish to promote. After some time like a week or so, contact them to find out if they really liked it. If in case they did, ask if they'd like to share a few words about what they think about it.

It's obvious that you're looking to get some response from your influencers. You're waiting for them to write a review about your product or share it with their followers. So, it's obvious that you just need to follow up with them, but keep one thing in mind that is, don’t be so consistent when enquiring them, that they get irritated/ annoyed from you. Have patience, give them some time to manage things at their own pace. There are chances that they'll start ignoring you if you irritate them consistently. So, if you don’t get a response within 48 hrs, don’t go aggressive on them, just because you wanted the content right away.

Even after getting the first influencer for your campaign, you should remember that a continuous legion of influencers is always essential for your campaign. You’ve already developed an indirect relationship with the target audience even before you've approached them to work on specific campaigns.

Business has always been a give and take relationship. Make sure that you remember this theory while approaching the influencers. You should always have something that you could offer them, or any means to support their activity in any other areas, or the value you can provide them.

Till now we've discussed the importance of being compassionate with the influencers. But it doesn’t imply that you ignore the need to discuss and agree the terms of compaign and the way you want the influencer to spread the word to their fan following. Setting specific guidelines on how you want the product to be promoted will greatly help in ensuring the maximum exposure and a fine-tuned relationship with the influencer.

We're all aware of the fact that influencer marketing is a very efficient marketing strategy, but it doesn't mean that you completely halt all other marketing activities. Despite of all their benefits, the influencers shouldn't be completely relied upon for replace all the other marketing tactics. They're merely a piece of puzzle in the bigger picture.

To conclude, You must have a fool-proof plan to measure your success. It is equally important to make sure that the influencer you choose is right your brand. Always Make sure that you have completely briefed the influencer about every aspect of the campaign. Never Ignore the aspect of Amplification of message. It could mean a hell lot of pressure for influencer to meet your expectations, so make sure to retweet, link to the posts, re-sharing the photos etc. above all, make sure not to be irritating to the influencer else nothing will work out properly. Maintaining a healthy relationship with the influencer is a must.