CREATING AND MANAGING INFLUENCER RELATIONSHIPS
After working through the identification process, you’ll have a pool of influencers you want to work with. These are the ones to begin to create a relationship with. Focus on them.
Like sales, creating relationships with influencers is a percentage game. Not everyone you want to engage with will do so. Not everyone you reach out to will fit. Sometimes the timing isn’t right for whatever reason. From the pool you have, you will convert some of these influencers to advocates. Some you won’t.
SENDING SOCIAL SIGNALS
First you have to qualify with the influencer. You have to let them know that you’re aware of what they’re doing, and that you’re into it. It’s a bit like dating. Eventually you reach out to them to gauge mutual interest. It’s the first contact. First impressions count.
A social signal is any action you perform on social media that will result in your name appearing in the notifications of the person you are engaging with. It could be as simple as a follow or like of their content or as deep as a comment or repost of their image. Influencers look at the engagement they receive from their community, so you would hope to be noticed if you engage with them.
IT’S A NUMBERS GAME
Not all will engage back with you, but some will. These are the ones you contact in the next stage when you reach out via email or otherwise. Not all of these influencers will want to work with your brand. When negotiating the terms of the partnership there will be another percentage who don’t click with you. Being relevant and influential yourself as a brand gives you an edge here too: Given a choice, influencers will want to work with a well-known brand. It gives the influencer credibility and helps their resume to be able to say they’ve worked with large brands. If you’re a smaller brand then the respondent pool might be lower and a different kind of work will have to be done. This is where existing brand affinity goes a long way at the start of the relationships for smaller brands. Building your own influence is essential on more than one level, and in this case it can shortcut some of the introduction. (This will be covered in more depth in Part Four.)
THE FUNNEL
The framework in developing relationships with influencers and converting them into brand advocates can be viewed as an eight-step process (see Figure 12.1). It’s a funnel of engagement. At certain points there will be a way to gauge who fits you best. There will be points where influencers, or even you, will decide that you’re not compatible. The process will not go further with that influencer and it’s not a bad thing; why continue with someone who wants different things? Move your energy elsewhere.
Figure 12.1
Identify—This is the process covered in the all of chapter 11. It means finding the pool of influencers who you wish to engage.
Send Social Signals—Working with the power of social networks, you begin to form a relationship and engage with the influencers, sending social signals, just as social media users would.
Influencer Engages—This stage is up to the influencer. After engaging through social networks, they follow you back, send you comments, or react in a way that shows they’re interested in what your brand does.
Begin Outreach—In this stage you reach out to them to formally discuss how to work together and begin your collaboration. It’s similar to approaching someone for a first date. Many brands might skip the Relationship and Response phases and directly go to Outreach after identifying potential influencers, but taking the extra steps will give your collaboration the best chance for success and help vet out those influencers that might not want to work with you in the first place.
Brainstorm Collaboration—Like any relationship, there’s a stage where both parties decide that there is a mutual benefit and the partnership should continue. At this point, you establish what you both want. The “official” relationship begins.
Implementation—Where the influencer actually implements the agreed-upon action. While there is incredible work involved up until this point, it’s important to remember that you need to validate that the influencer has done as promised, especially if there is a commercial arrangement involved. Believe it or not, there have been lawsuits regarding influencers who failed to influence according to their arrangement.1
Long-term Relationship—After the first campaign you explore the future. Is there possibility for more work? In what ways will you collaborate again? You discuss the details of how to go forward.
Advocate Conversion—Once a long-term relationship has been entered into, you turn the relationship into brand advocacy. A sign of this is when the influencer begins to talk about you or recommend you even though you have not asked them to do so as part of your arrangement.
This process takes time. It’s not necessarily straightforward. In other models or frameworks around marketing there is often a time frame attached to each action point and a sign of when each element is being executed. Not here. You’re building real relationships with real people. You cannot make demands like other forms of marketing, and you cannot approach an influencer like they’re a digital content creation machine. It will take time, but the results will impress.
GNC
ONLINE CONVERSATIONS HAPPEN EVERYWHERE in social media, not just on Instagram.
When GNC was exploring ways to engage with influencers they realized the power social media brings in being able to open communication.2 As a health food and health lifestyle brand, GNC recognized parts of their demographic had not been engaged. The niche area of GNC’s clientele communicates widely on internet forums. Engaging a brand-wide campaign would still miss these sectors. But opening conversations individually and engaging the influencers in each niche could open dialogue.
The brand realized that many newcomers to the field of health and bodybuilding sought answers on these forums. However, the jargon and tone of much of the advice wasn’t welcoming and informative to beginners. GNC engaged influential voices and encouraged more informative discussion. The campaign was backed with traditional influencer approaches such as gifting product in return for published reviews.
The same approach was used to find the niche groups discussing areas where GNC products would fit but the people weren’t necessarily exposed to the brand. This included yoga and women’s fitness areas who had perhaps dismissed GNC by traditionally linking the brand with male bodybuilding supplements.
Over several months, GNC noted that influencer involvement brought more than 383,000 fans on Facebook and 60,000 followers on Twitter. The brand also noted that there was significantly higher traffic to the online store from social media networks. The results were impressive enough that the marketing campaign planned more involvement at this grassroots level for the next calendar year to build on the organic engagement.
WHY WOULD INFLUENCERS WORK WITH YOU?
Understanding what you can bring to the table begins by understanding just what motivates influencers. A CrowdTap study showed that, outside of money, a whopping 75 percent of influencers were motivated by either having an opportunity that was relevant to their audience, being able to give a unique experience to their audience, or simply that they liked a brand.3 Another study by Taplnfluence revealed that the number-one factor influencers consider when approached by a brand is alignment with the brand’s core values and only 11 percent said that payment was the most important factor.4 Perhaps they want unique product access or discounts for their community. Perhaps they want a shout out or a promotion on your channels. Perhaps you have the ability to open doors and make introductions that can help them. Perhaps they want increased traffic on their channels and networks. By doing the research involved with identifying influencers, you will ensure that the opportunity is relevant to their audience. Interestingly enough, the third most common response in the CrowdTap study—that they liked the brand—shows how powerful existing affinity is: another element covered in your groundwork for identifying influencers.
A separate study by VentureBeat showed that 72 percent of influencers responded that inadequate compensation is the biggest mistake made by brands when starting to work together.5 This is often the difference between a social celebrity and an everyday influencer. Approaching a social celebrity for a shout out on their social media, or to use your product, comes with the inferred understanding that there’s a fee. There is a more transactional nature to the approach. They are a celebrity, of sorts, and so they run their social media accounts as a business. The flipside of this is that it might lead you to undercut the micro-influencer by thinking that they would be flattered to be approached and that a $20 Amazon gift card would suffice. The mistake here is not having the conversation that you need to have.
There is a pyramid-type shape to influencers and followers, with a few at the top with millions of followers, and increasing numbers as the audiences get smaller. Where micro-influencers can have an advantage is that they have a higher engagement rate with their audiences. This is why the process of identification is so important. Becoming involved with an influencer who is still at the micro-influencer level also gives you the chance to work with them while they grow.
The influencer marketing platform company Klear (https://klear.com) has published an Influencer Marketing Rate Card which states that those with followers in the range of 500 to 500,000 charge between $100 and $507 per Instagram post. This gives you a general feel for the baseline of the financial aspect of engagement. Some influencers list their rates on their sites or profiles. Shoutcart, another site used to engage with influencers, lists influencers and shout outs with the price, the deals and conditions on the post, and the amount of time the post will be kept visible. At this point, it’s worth comparing these costs with your own paid social costs and the return on your own spend. Ideally, they are complementary.
Influencers can bring incredible value for a potentially small investment. I was invited to attend an Adobe Summit in Las Vegas along with a number of influencers.6 I wasn’t paid for the conference, per se, but the travel expenses were covered by the brand. We received exclusive access and content that we were able to share with our networks. We were able to interview people in the company and produce our own content. At no cost to Adobe, we told the story of the event through tweets and Instagram posts. A Forbes article about the event revealed that the top nine influencers there generated more than 227 million impressions for the summit. In advertising costs, taking an eCPM of $20, this reach would have cost $4.6 million. Beyond just that, value was added to this information simply through the fact that the news came from trusted people with interested audiences who were already predisposed toward the information, not just advertising or self-promotion from Adobe. The information was presented by influencers in ways that they knew would engage with their audiences, making Adobe look good in the process. That is a huge amount of promotion and value for very little spend. Understanding this potential is key to maximizing your engagement of influencers.
Lastly, concerning budget, consider that different media require different things. A 500-word blog post is different from a 2,000-word one. Producing a ten-second video differs from five minutes. YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram content options all have different demands on the influencer’s time and intellectual property.
BUILD THE RELATIONSHIP FIRST
Start by engaging with your identified influencer on their preferred social network. Follow them. Look through their content and share it. Engage through relevant comments. This is the step to take to see if they will reciprocate the attention. It’s sending social signals, then seeing how they react to you reaching out to them.
Brands often don’t realize just how much they can connect with influencers on social media. Part of the confusion is over the difference between profiles and accounts. There are two kinds of social networks. The first are those where a brand or company creates a company profile. These include Facebook and LinkedIn. It’s a pay-to-play scenario, and because of this it’s difficult to get any organic interaction. The algorithms heavily favor people, and brands struggle. The second kind are those with accounts where the experience is more or less the same if you’re a brand or a person. These include YouTube, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram. The way these networks are set up allows different types of interactions. While we can’t follow people on our Facebook page, we can use a brand account to follow people and influencers on Instagram. We can retweet or follow in Twitter. We can comment on posts. Our engagement can be much more proactive. It’s because of these possibilities and the way these networks function that causes brands to shift efforts to Twitter or Instagram. When working in B2B environments, Twitter is essential for building rapport and sending social signals to the influencers you’ve identified because of the limitations LinkedIn puts on company pages.
At this point, it’s important to think about a long-term plan. The benefit of having it already devised is that the questions you address then will be asked by influencers later. If the decisions have already been addressed, then you’re ahead of the game. Once you’ve developed a pool of influencers you can work with for a variety of situations, you can begin looking at short-term goals. The points you cover in devising a longer term strategy will be the basis of the agreement you come to with the influencer, so thinking about it beforehand can save time.
These points include:
Background information about your company, including strategy, why you have this program, and why you want to work with influencers
Deliverables, and what you expect from influencers you engage with in terms of content or posts
Calls to action and other elements including hashtags and strategic links
Creative elements from the influencer including images, and which networks you want them posted to
Timing and frequency, including when you want certain hashtags or images to begin circulating, and how many times a week or month you want the influencer to mention it
Think of these things before having the conversation with influencers so you can move rapidly when the influencer indicates she is on board.
THE U.S. FEDERAL TRADE COMMISSION, AND MANY other government departments globally, have introduced guidelines to protect consumers from misleading content. Essentially it comes down to: If you’re being paid for talking about a product then there are guidelines about endorsement. Beginning in September 2017, the FTC contacted brands and influencers with warnings about their content.7 The general FTC guidelines indicate that any sponsored or paid content should be clearly marked on the post, not on a click-through link. Any non-monetary sponsorship arrangements should also be mentioned. The sponsorship disclosure should be hard to miss and not ambiguous through hashtags like #collab, #thanks, or #spon. Laws are changing globally, and it’s the responsibility of both brands and influencers to ensure their work remains on the right side of the law. For this reason you should check with the requirements of the relevant commissions in the regions where you’re operating.
THE OUTREACH
The power of influencer marketing lies in the human and personal nature of how influencers communicate. The initial connection and engagement with influencers is the same—it’s human. You have to contact them personally. Some tools grab email addresses and can send out blanket emails, but this often ends up as spam. Sometimes the email address is out of date or irrelevant. It’s impersonal. Connecting with an influencer after they’ve returned your initial interaction involves looking at their profile and finding their contact details. It’s more than likely they have contact information there, along with their preferred method of interacting with you. They are influencers. They want brands to contact them.
The message must be personalized. There are many tools that have increased the ability to connect with many people with a short investment of time, either through email or otherwise. To garner the support of the influencer, you have to work in the opposite direction and invest the time for just one contact. The entire reason you’re contacting them is because you think they will be important for your company for a long time going forward. So it’s important to invest the time in a personal message.
Influencers are often contacted by several different companies. That’s the nature of their position. It’s important to follow the contact advice on their Instagram profile, other social media profile, or website. You have already made some connection on social media and sent the social signals. Following up with an email is an extension of this. Hashoff published a study called “State of the Union” which showed that of the influencers they interviewed, 35 percent work full time, 25 percent were students, and another 22 percent work part time.8 Many of them could be classified as a one-person startup or solopreneur. They’re busy. If you frame your communication to them in the way they’ve suggested, then you make it easy for them, and they might be more willing to reply.
If the influencer prefers you to DM them (send them a Direct Message through that particular social network), then you should be more conversational but to the point. An example DM might read: “Neal, we love your content and would love to collaborate. If interested let me know the best email or phone number to reach you at.” DMs are meant for shorter conversations, so it just might be the perfect medium for you to begin the outreach. Don’t overthink it. Keep it as simple and straightforward as users using DMs would.
Outreach by email, even if you know their email address from their response or profile, creates a larger challenge because you’re already competing for their attention with all of the other emails they receive. First, a clear subject line that makes them want to open the email is essential. This may take some testing, but it must feel personalized.
The purpose of the email must also be clear and personal. Explain how you found them and why you’re reaching out to them. The email must contain genuine praise and respect for their work as well. It must be authentic. With the early work done, they already know that your brand liked or shared the content. Following up those posts with this email ensures the praise is authentic. Why did certain posts resonate with your brand? Point out any specific content that you found enlightening or that has cultural affinity to your brand. These are points that you highlighted in the process of influencer identification. These are the things that made them stand out in the first place, so you should already have examples at hand.
Finding common points of connection is another way to instantly personalize the communication. Find any common friends or colleagues through their profile. Perhaps you can see they attended your alma mater on their LinkedIn profile. It’s a transaction and like any other social transaction, you want to underline common elements. Investing time early in the process in personalizing the message can go a long way later.
Inspire interest in their mind by highlighting the value you can provide them. What is in it for the influencer? This is the benefit you want to highlight and show them, along with demonstrating your track record and the work you’ve done with influencers in the past. It’s a sale but it’s also a proposal of a partnership. Showing that you understand this is a good sign that you know what you’re doing. Showing that you understand how collaborating with influencers works inspires trust and leads to the next step, which is when they respond. Having a clear next step allows them to answer easily. Perhaps you want to set up a call. Perhaps you’d like to talk over Skype or have them respond through email. Whatever it is, make it clear.
Here’s an example letter. It’s short and personal and I’ve found it works well for opening a collaboration discussion utilizing email. Personalize it for your own needs if you don’t already have a similar template.
DEAR INFLUENCER,
We here at Acme Brand have been looking for influencers to work with long-term as part of a new initiative we’re developing. Everywhere we look, we find your content. Your blog posts/images/videos such as _____ and _____ really resonated with us—so much that we also shared them with our community!
We are trying to establish a deeper relationship with the types of people in your community, so we would love to find a way to work together with you. We know that you are busy and probably already work with other brands, but we are confident we can establish a relationship that is mutually beneficial and help you do more of what you love to do: Educate/entertain/inspire your community!
Would you have time for a quick phone call to explore how we could work together? Looking forward to your favorable response.
Yours sincerely,
Neal Schaffer
Director of Influencer Relations
The introduction is formal. You’re making a business connection here. A conversational tone probably isn’t appropriate (although it might be depending on the branding and demographic of the influencer or your brand). You draw attention to their content and point out what resonated with your brand and why. You play to what they want to bring to their community, showing that you have an understanding of their goals. The letter shows that you both want same things and asks the question: How can we work together? The more you’ve engaged with them online before reaching out through email, the better received it will be. The relationship will have begun in some degree before you’re asking for something.
ENGAGING THE INFLUENCER’S CREATIVITY
An often-overlooked element of influencer marketing is giving the influencer room to work their own magic on your message. As a brand, it’s natural to feel possessive over your message and how you’re portrayed. Letting go is an essential part of collaborating with influencers. For the influencer to be as effective as they can with your message, you have to trust them to communicate with their community.
There are many examples of a brand being too limited in how it works with the influencer. A TapInfluence study found that 40 percent of influencers felt they were not given the right creative freedoms.9 To expand on this, a study by CrowdTap found that 50 percent of influencers felt that the creative freedom was their favorite part of working with brands.10 It gives them a chance to play with messages, images, and all sorts of other things to a large audience. The creative freedom is essential.
In my own work as an influencer, I was approached by an agency who wanted very specific things. The campaign they were working on required the mention of a certain soon-to-be-released movie that was unrelated to the product, along with very specific lengths of Instagram stories, places where the photos were taken, and other ways the brand was mentioned. The outline read like a paid social post, not something that showed trust in my voice and a partnership. Just from looking at the brief, I could tell that these limitations would take all the fun and creativity out of working with the brand. The content would also not feel authentic and might potentially be irrelevant to my audience, hurting both my engagement as well as the brand image of the ad sponsor.
It’s true that some micro-influencers might undertake a campaign like this. If they do take it on, it’s likely to not lead to ongoing longer term engagement. This brief also looked to me like it was sent out en masse, trying to get a broad engagement without investing the proper time to develop relationships. This is what I strongly believe you want to avoid. This style of brief approaches influencer marketing like a short-term paid media post. It’s not a relationship and not a partnership. It overlooks the reason you want to engage with the influencer—their voice and their style of posts—simply to get at their audience. The result is likely a low-level short-term engagement, if at all.
Some brands like to have a statement they give influencers to paste for their posts. Some influencers like to have this arrangement, too. But if you assume this without having the conversation, particularly with an influencer who enjoys using their own voice, then you will wear out your welcome, and miss the opportunity you’ve worked to create. Engaging the influencer means engaging their creativity and ensuring you have a conversation about the content instead of assuming a cut-and-paste approach. Let the influencer do what they feel is best in order to get the best and most authentic engagement on behalf of your brand from their community. That’s the whole point of influencer marketing, right?
Sometimes there are errors. Markelle Fultz, the number-one pick in a recent NBA draft, forgot to edit a paid post for Tissot when he posted on Instagram that he was “Excited to head to (City) and join the (team name). @Tissot.us is helping me get started with my (team name) watch.”11 Perhaps it was a simple mistake overlooked in the excitement of being drafted, but it’s an error that has ramifications. It’s a mistake that should be learned from. Unfortunately, the number-one NBA pick the next year, Deandre Ayton, didn’t learn from it, posting his own unedited sponsored post when he was drafted.12
Once the terms have been agreed on and the influencer has begun posting, the work isn’t over. Check out the post and see what they did with your message. You might get some ideas of how to reframe your own posts. You can share, boost, and give feedback to the post. Boosting an influencer’s post about your brand will have more reach than boosting your own post with the same message. The influencer would probably like the extra exposure too. Telling the influencer that you like the post, working in some praise, goes a long way to augmenting and growing the relationship. Influencers are human, and we all like positive feedback.
Should you have the right to reuse their content, don’t forget to repurpose influencer content for your organic social or even web properties. It’s not surprising that more than 75 percent of marketers surveyed in a recent ACTIVATE State of Influencer Marketing Study recycle influencer content at least a couple times per quarter.
To some degree, you can think of influencers as customers, and use a similar approach to your customer relationship management strategy. Look at ways to bring them into your marketing initiatives. Perhaps they have ideas too. This is where the relationship moves toward a much longer collaboration. You trust them and they trust you. Interest in both sides helps you both achieve your goals. The continued relationship management will bring dividends over time.