How do you get more engagement from your influencer content?

Understanding your KPIs is important for both the influencer as well as the brand. In the past, I've found that a brand can come to an influencer and want "sales" when the influencer is thinking the brand wants "awareness". It's important to have a discovery call or something in advance to iron out what exactly both parties need in order to feel this is successful. I also like to offer "secondary" goals, which help paint the bigger story and drive a unique experience for the influencer.

Aligning on the right KPIs for any influencer campaign is key. However, having a holistic influencer strategy in place is always the starting point before any influencer collaborations should start. What data/trends inform how we shape creative, content platform, influencer identification, etc? Why does X brand/product matter to an influencer's audience? What is the human element at the center of the campaign? These are the questions we should be asking to create a clear, concise, holistic influencer strategy and then we can align on the best KPIs to measure success. Strategy + Creative + Measurement = Core Influencer Campaign Tenants

Every social platform has its own niche in how influencers create & optimize on it. It's important to understand the cultural nuances of each platform & how they each shape social trends. Making sure the platform you're seeking out aligns back to your core strategy for an influencer campaign is key. Re: influencers, they should obviously align to the influencer strategy & platform strategy. However, I also want to remind us all of two things to consider in influencer identification: 1) Diversity: Don't fall into a trap of only working with homogenous groups of creators who look like YOU or your For YOU Page. Think outside the box. 2) Storytellers: Lots of people have followers...not everyone tells good stories...work with CREATORS.

Influencers are a Creative Director, CMO, Media agency, and CEO combined in one. If you’re in the agency space, you know that paying for all 4 of those is VERY expensive. Tapping into influencers to create traditional influencer marketing content for their own audiences is highly effective. However, why stop there? Contract creators to make more authentic social assets, paid assets, TikTok content, branded community management reply GIFs, and more. Additionally, tapping into them for creative and strategic consulting can give your creative brand and social approach a fresh perspective outside of the traditional agency approach. Influencer marketing is evolving. Creators are the North Star. Get creative in how you work with them ??

High level...you should be creating a Strategy and a CREATIVE Strategy at the start of any influencer campaign. When building a creative strategy, here are some things to keep in mind: 1) How do we take advantage of unique platform features to tell stories through influencer content? (i.e. Stitches on TikTok) 2) What is the human emotion we're looking to evoke through our influencer content? Excitement? Inspiration? How do we have influencers tell stories leading to this end result? 3) How does the influencer content we produce fit into broader cultural and social trends? What is the authentic fit X brand/product has in this space and how does our influencer content hit on this?

A great way to extend the value and reach of your creator content is to utilize collaboration posts on Instagram. You pull reach from both accounts and get more eyes on the content. Make sure your community team is always engaging on every single creator partnership post as well. There are so many great conversations going on there about your brand. Don't intrude but engage - there is a big difference. You can have light conversation in the comments and not come across as salesy. There may even be customer service opps to help people out.