Chapter 5

Getting Creative

IN THIS CHAPTER

Exercising your creativity

Making magic with your personal insights

Avoiding the controversial

Managing “crazy”

Now you’re ready to tackle your influencer marketing programs with gusto! Time to have some fun!

Of course, no one will care if your marketing efforts are “fun” if they don’t produce real results. But the best part about social media marketing is that fun tends to equal effective.

Think you’re ready to have some fun? Of course, you are!

Getting Creative and Letting Go

Social media is a loud, crowded space full of millions of people talking over each other. Standing out isn’t easy! Engaging influencers to create content that resonates with their audience is a great first step — you know their audiences are receptive. But even the most loyal influencer fan will click or tap to something else if the content they’re seeing is something they’ve seen a million times before. No one wants content that is stale, boring, corporate, or lame.

As with all social media advertising, creating great content is tricky because users are savvy. They don’t want to be sold to. They don’t want advertising that feels like advertising. At the same time, they don’t want to feel “tricked” into reading or engaging with content that is sponsored but tries too hard to pass itself off as non-sponsored.

FTC guidelines require disclosure of sponsored content! Be sure to visit www.ftc.gov for the most recent guidelines on how to properly disclose influencer endorsements on social media.

The happy medium with influencer marketing is in developing a great campaign outline and then letting influencers take over, doing what they do best.

Walking the walk

To be successful at influencer marketing — or social media marketing of any kind — you must stay on top of Internet trends. (Many marketers outsource influencer marketing for this very reason!) You wouldn’t hire someone to produce a TV commercial if that person had never seen a TV commercial before, would you? Similarly, you can’t run an influencer marketing campaign if you’ve never seen one, and you can’t just guess at what kind of influencers and content will work on social media platforms if you aren’t paying attention to them.

Start by expanding your own social networks. How many people follow you is far less important than how many people you follow. Listen, post, and interact on Twitter and Facebook. Use Instagram every day. Find some Tumblr accounts you enjoy and follow them. Join Reddit. Spend time researching trending topics. If you don’t understand a hashtag, click it and find out what the story is. Start using the language yourself.

While you’re poking around social media, you’ll run into countless “gurus” and experts and people whose only job online is to offer advice. You may benefit from following them, but you’ll likely benefit more simply by becoming a savvy social media participant yourself. It’s about a million times easier to answer the question “What would make this blog post interesting for readers?” if you’re a blog reader yourself!

You don’t have to be an expert, but you should at least try to understand what’s happening in social media by downloading popular apps (for example, Snapchat, Whatsapp, and Tinder) and/or talking to people who use them regularly to become versed in what’s cool.

Yes, you have to know what’s cool. Cool is critical to social media and influencer marketing success. If you’re not trendy, you’re not relevant.

Are you having fun yet?

For some reason, marketers seem to completely forget how they behave online, and end up creating content they’d never pay attention to themselves.

Social media is, above all, social. It’s about connecting, reaching out to people you know in real life and online, and sharing human experiences through stories and photos. The only way to interject brand stories among all the nonbranded ones is to make them as real and unbrandlike as possible. This doesn’t mean you should create programs that are so far from your brand or brand message that no one will notice (or remember!) what your brand even is. But there are definitely ways to get out of “corporate box” thinking.

When you’re immersed in social media culture, pay attention to your personal trends and preferences:

• What content do you click each day?
• Which headlines spark your interest most often?
• What content do you actually share?
• What content do you ignore?
• What’s the last piece of sponsored content you read?

When you can answer those questions, you’re on your way to building influencer marketing programs that will pass the cool test!

The following sectionswalk you through an example of taking an everyday product and transforming an influencer marketing campaign from “boring” (irrelevant) to “fun” (relevant and engaging).

Dental floss is boring

Say you’ve been tasked with engaging influencers as part of a new product launch for dental floss. Assuming that the program goals and success metrics have already been mapped, your job is to guide influencers into creating content. About dental floss.

You’re probably hard-pressed to think of a more boring blog post than one that outlines the features and benefits of dental floss. A product review of dental floss? Not only would you, as a reader, never click that post, but what kind of influencer would be happy to write it?

If you secretly think dental floss is boring, everyone else will think it’s boring, too. So, how do you create an influencer marketing program around dental floss that’s fun?

Making dental floss fun

Start by considering what you find fun about social media, and what type of content you share. You can then transfer those ideas to a dental floss program. Now, your ideas won’t be all good, but they’re a jumping off point to get creative and fun with even the most mundane of topics. Here are some ideas on how to make dental floss fun:

• Share DIY content/ Ask influencers to showcase other uses for floss, encouraging them to take a creative, DIY spin on a product usually relegated to the bathroom: weaving, making jewelry, dipping floss in paints and decorating jars, dangling cat toys, and so on.
• Recipes are always popular. Why make a special trip to the store for cooking twine when dental floss works just as well for trussing roasted chicken or turkey? There are many ways dental floss can be used in cooking techniques that influencers could illustrate, encouraging new ways for consumers to keep dental floss top-of-mind.
• Getting kids to floss regularly can be really tough. Ask influencers to share their best tips and tricks to getting their kids to floss regularly, sharing their secret bathroom charts or incentives, plus lots of pictures of really cute kids!
• Create completely unscientific “flosser profiles” and then develop a “What Kind of Flosser Are You?” type of quiz that people love to fill out.
• Maybe the goal is to make dental floss a more prominent aspect of everyday grooming among consumers. Ask influencers to showcase new ways in which they’re willing to display their floss. Why do soaps and toothbrushes get all the fancy bathroom display tools? Why can’t floss be proudly displayed on the bathroom sink as well?
• Best songs to floss to? Ask influencers to name, or even come up with alternate lyrics to, their favorite songs — songs that they sing to themselves in their heads while flossing so they know they’re spending enough time on the job. You could even host a contest for the best song/lyrics for flossing your teeth to!

Go for it!

Not to get too philosophical, but when it comes down to it, the real reason brands don’t do a better job of embracing influencer marketing is because they’re scared. They’re afraid of losing control of their brand’s message. What the brands don’t realize, however, is that people are using social media to talk about them — whether the brands are participating or not.

Still, this fear of loss of control compromises influencer campaigns that could otherwise be great. To those brands and marketers: Let it go!

Don’t be afraid to be real

If you’re paying attention, you’re immersing yourself in social media. You’re following and interacting with influencers you want to engage professionally. You see what they’re posting.

In the earlier dental floss example, influencers needed to think of and post creative uses for dental floss. This isn’t a traditional approach to promoting dental floss, and probably the brand’s manager expects the entire marketing campaign to focus on bathroom-only messaging. But that’s so corporate! And everyone knows what dental floss is for. No one will pay attention to a boring bathroom-only program. Not on social media, anyway. But using dental floss for crafts? That’s unexpected. That’s something people would be interested in. That’s a real-life hack and something people on social media are likely to find useful.

So what’s “real”? Think of it this way: Would you tell your friend about it? You probably won’t tell anyone about a new dental floss just because there’s a new dental floss on the market. (In truth, that would be weird! “Hey, buddy! Did you hear about this new dental floss?”) But you might share a fun craft you did with your kid that turned out great and that you photographed and that, oh, hey, happened to use dental floss.

Let the influencers influence

If you’re all tapped out of “real” or “cool” ideas but you really want a fantastically successful influencer marketing program, ask the influencers what kind of posts they’d like to create!

No one knows an influencer’s audience better than the influencer does. Influencers are successful because they create great content. Don’t be afraid to let them take the lead! Tell them what your program goals are and ask them how they think they could best achieve your objective.

The influencers care just as much about their posts as you do. They have a reputation to uphold, and they can’t come across as inauthentic to their readers. They are (presumably) being paid for the work that they’re doing for you. They want to please you because they want to work with you — and other brands — again.

Giving minimal guidance to the influencers and letting them do their thing often results in diverse, interesting, compelling programs that truly engage audiences.

What If It All Goes Wrong?

Brands still worry about handing their precious brand messaging keys over to influencers. What happens if the bloggers go crazy on us? Horror stories abound of brands failing to use social media correctly, and having the Internet come after them like an angry mob. It does happen from time to time.

The good news is that avoiding Internet disasters isn’t difficult! Brands that find themselves in hot water usually do so because they aren’t paying attention, or because they forget that social media is a live medium, which means if you put something out there you need to be prepared to respond. Social media and social media marketing isn’t a one-way street — you need to be prepared to engage with your consumers as soon as they offer you feedback, even if it’s not positive.

Preventing a crisis

No form of social media marketing, including influencer marketing, can be 100 percent brand-safe. Even the most carefully selected influencers following guidelines to a completely innocuous program may have a commenter who says something unkind about the brand. That’s okay! This is what makes the medium so real. And truly, a few negative comments here and there aren’t a big issue.

Internet backlash from influencer marketing programs occurs for a finite number of reasons. Here’s how to prevent this kind of backlash:

• Don’t try to hide the fact that you’re working with influencers, or that the influencers are being compensated. Always be transparent! Besides, the FTC requires that you be honest about this stuff — whether you get backlash or not from consumers, you don’t want to be fined by the FTC.

• Don’t underestimate the intelligence of your influencers’ audiences. If your brand or service is controversial, even just among a small group of people, the influencers’ audiences may bring this controversy to light. Don’t use influencers to try to “spin” something negative into a positive if the positive spin is disingenuous.

  If you do have a product or service that is known to draw Internet ire, do your best to warn the influencers ahead of time.

• Don’t hop on social media memes — like using trending hashtags on Twitter — without doing research! Too many brands use hashtags without researching their origins. Don’t ask your influencers to participate in trendy memes or use hashtags if they’re appropriating or “hijacking” them from meaningful conversations.
• Be careful, courteous, honest, and professional in all your communications with influencers. Not all influencers will show you the same respect, but it’s always worth it to err on the side of caution. Ask yourself, “What if this blogger decided to post the content of my email to her site?”
• Don’t engage influencers in programs that encourage “bad” behavior on the influencers’ part or their audiences’ part. For instance, programs where the influencer who get the most votes wins can get downright ugly. In an attempt to get votes, some influencers may start spamming their networks, or find creative ways to get people to vote for them. Meanwhile, influencers who don’t get enough votes may feel jealous and/or make accusations of their fellow influencers, and the whole program can end poorly, overshadowed by the angst and anger of the participants.

• If you’re asking influencers to review your product and you’re afraid of what they’ll write if they don’t like it, know your options. If the product isn’t great, influencer marketing is probably not the best way to go. If you don’t really want influencers to share their honest opinions, don’t engage them. You’d basically be asking them to lie for you, and that damages everyone’s reputation. This is where a contract becomes important. Spell out what your expectations are and be sure your influencer is on board.

  If the product is good but you worry about influencer feedback, be upfront about how you would like them to handle it. Don’t say, “You may only post your opinion about our product if you like it.” Remember: You aren’t compensating people to write good things. Instead, say, “If you were unhappy with this product for any reason, we’d love to hear your feedback directly. We want to know how we can improve it! You’re welcome to share your balanced feedback in your post, or you may choose not to post at all.” Give them the option of not posting. Consider compensating them regardless.

• Cease all influencer marketing activity across social channels when there is a national or international crisis. From a brand management standpoint, you don’t want influencers touting a product amid sensitive posts about a national tragedy. You don’t want your “Fun, flirty looks for spring” mascara tweets next to a tweet from someone who’s openly mourning.

It’s important to make sure you do your due diligence and research the reputation of any influencer you’re planning to engage.

Managing a crisis (if it happens anyway)

If you follow the guidelines, you’ll deftly avoid any real controversies online. However, on the slim chance that something does go off-kilter with your influencers, here’s what you can do:

• Respond immediately. The longer you remain silent, the worse the situation can get. Don’t launch an influencer marketing campaign (or any social media campaign) if you don’t have the resources to monitor it in real time. If someone or something goes off the rails, you need to have someone on hand to respond right away. If the crisis is big and requires more executive-level response than you can give immediately, at least acknowledge that there is a problem and you’re looking into it.
• Respond with honesty. Don’t lie about how long the issue will take to resolve, or say that the issue was unforeseen if it wasn’t. That will only make matters worse.

• Apologize. The Internet has a terrible memory! The faster you apologize for whatever started the negativity in the first place, the faster the audience will move on to something else. Negative situations usually get worse when a brand argues with its customers, and the same holds true for influencers and their audiences.

  Make sure your apologies are sincere and actual apologies. Don’t use words like if and but. For instance, saying “We’re sorry if we offended anyone” is troublesome for two reasons:

  • If you’re making an apology because people were offended, there is no need to say “if.”
  • Phrases like this suggest that the blame lies with the people who are offended as opposed to the offender.

  This may seem like splitting hairs, but bad apologies can add fuel to Internet firestorms.

  Try to make your apologies personal. If a program somehow offended many people, do your best to apologize to those people directly, not just in a single blanket statement they may not see. If your influencers are the ones fending off negativity, support them publicly and privately. Publicly, defend your influencers on their posts (by acknowledging the negative comments and apologizing on behalf of the influencer). Privately, email the influencers and offer them support.

None of these steps should be necessary if you’ve taken the proper care to avoid risky programs in the first place. Remember: The influencers want their programs to be as successful as you do. You’re in this together!