How do you leverage user-generated content (UGC) and word-of-mouth marketing (WOMM) from influencers?

The effectiveness of your UGC and WOMM campaign largely depends on the influencers you work with. You need to find influencers who align with your brand values, cater to your target audience, and have a good reputation and engagement rate. You can find influencers by using social media tools, checking your followers, and looking at your competitors. Once you find potential influencers, you should reach out to them, build a relationship, and discuss your campaign goals and expectations. Make sure to negotiate a fair compensation for their work, and provide clear guidelines on how to showcase your products or services and share their positive experiences.

In identifying influencers, use tools like Hootsuite, Buzzsumo, Traackr, or Klear for precise targeting. Assess not just audience size, but engagement rate. Collaborating with 'micro-influencers' often yields better results than with 'mega-influencers'. It's crucial to align an influencer's audience demographics with your target customer profile for higher ROI. Also, consider 'influencer vetting' to safeguard your brand's reputation. The right influencer selection involves using advanced tools, qualitative evaluation, and brand-influencer alignment.

There are qualifying metrics that important to distinct between, depth and breadth. Depth is the what type of influencer; generalist, knowledge specialist or amplifier of existing content and then breadth is the size of the following. Rarely do you find knowledge specialists and huge audiences together, especially in B2B, but size isn’t always the determining factor.

Building a genuine, long-term relationship with influencers is an essential aspect of a successful marketing campaign. Follow their posts, like, comment, and share their content consistently. Additionally, being genuinely interested in their content fosters a sense of camaraderie that can be the foundation of a strong working relationship. Once you've established a base, reach out to them via email or direct messages, introducing yourself and your brand. Explain your interest in their work, why you believe they would be a good fit for your brand, and how the collaboration could be mutually beneficial. Offering free trials of your product or service, exclusive discounts, or special perks can also help to incentivize them.

Providing your influencers with a complimentary or discounted product or an easy way to experience your service is the best way to get an authentic review. Documenting the product/service experience through photography and videos will resonate the best with your target audience. Also, providing your influencers with an exclusive link and discount code for their audience to use is a must-have. The biggest miss I see businesses forget to implement is the ongoing lifecycle with user-generated content. Include regular touchpoints with each influencer through email and social, as well as exclusive perks for hitting different content milestones.

This may sound obvious, but I’m going to talk about it because so many brands miss out on this aspect of UGC created content. If somebody makes content about your brand, make sure to engage with it. Like, comment, follow, share. It’s an easy way to tie your official accounts into that piece of content, and increases your chances of being followed back!

A great way of combining both UCB and WOMM is by being a #creatoremployee I know a few people that are doing a phenomenal job at this and Fanny Dunagan did an incredible series that shows how both the employee and company benefit. You can search on that hashtag above. It’s a Win-Win!