5 Ways to Maintain Strong Influencer Relationships

Marketers spend a lot of time strategizing about influencer selection, analytics, pricing, and other tactical matters. But there’s a whole other side to influencer media that doesn’t get enough attention until it’s too late, as headphone startup Kanoa recently learned.

After an influencer released a scathing review in August, Kanoa announced they were shutting down, unable to overcome the negative backlash from an influencer’s YouTube video. Of course, there were other matters that contributed to the shutdown and this wasn’t a typical paid influencer program. Nevertheless it illustrates how powerful influencers have become in shaping public opinion, and why brands need to properly construct their influencer policies.

After years of dealing with influencers from all spectrums, Influicity has put together a whitepaper to help brands minimize a potential chance of influencers going “off-script” with negative commentary. Here are a few pearls I'd like to share.

1. Have a written process for choosing your influencers

We’ve all heard that choosing the right influencer is 90% of success — but how do we ensure we’re choosing the right influencer?

A vetting protocol is critical to ensuring your influencer is the type of person you’d like to work with. Some of Influicity’s large clients, say a multinational food brand, call for criminal background checks for each influencer they sign. Other clients vet influencers only to make sure there is minimal cursing within their content.

Create your own checklist and vehemently commit to following it. Are you ok with profanity? Do the influencers have to be a certain age? Do influencers need to accept an exclusivity clause?

Your criteria may change over time, but it needs to start somewhere.

2. Develop a trouble-shooting system

Say you have selected an influencer and for whatever reason, you’re not getting what you want from them. You should have a step-by-step process to trouble-shoot.

For example, step 1 might be to have a call or meeting, to discuss the wrinkles and how you can iron them out. Step 2 may be to revise the creative concept based on the influencer’s suggestions. If it’s still not working, step 3 might be to pay the influencer a percentage of their fee and then move on.

While this may seem obvious, we’ve seen numerous examples of brand managers panicking and jumping straight to cancelling the campaign, only to realize they’ll still have to pay the influencer. On the other hand, when a discussion does take place, the influencer is quite receptive to constructive feedback.

Whatever the case, make sure you’ve budgeted some time and money for this type of trouble shooting.

3. Don’t Put Words in their Mouth

There is no quicker way to rub an influencer the wrong way, than to put words in their mouth. Providing brand messaging, creative direction and feedback are all part of the process. But unless you’re producing a scripted series, an influencer should be free to speak in their own voice.

And remember, there’s a difference between telling influencers what to say, versus how to say it.

In Kanoa’s case, it was putting words in the influencer’s mouth, coupled with the fact that they didn’t have a formal paid relationship with this influencer, that damaged the relationship. They sloppily tried to pay the influencer off at the last minute, which was an amateur mistake.

4. Program Management

One of the issues many brands deal with is the lack of staff to manage influencer programs. In a lot of companies, the responsibility falls to a social media manager, PR manager, or the interns. And it’s usually not a dedicated role, but just one of many responsibilities that person has.

In working so closely with large brands, I can’t fault brands for taking time to adjust. After all, the influencer media space has grown from virtually nothing to over $2 billion in just a few years, globally.

But if brands are going to truly invest in influencers, it would be a great benefit to invest internally at the same time.

Within organizations who have done it well, there is typically one senior leader given oversight over the influencer operations — someone in marketing or communications. As well, I’ve seen 1 or 2 managers oversee the day-to-day operations.

5. Contracts Matter

It’s worthwhile to take a look at your influencer agreements and ensure you’ve clearly laid out that paid influencers cannot speak negatively about your product. You should also define what counts as ‘negative’ and isolate a window of time.

I’ve seen anywhere from 3 to 6 months as the timeframe, and of course that varies with the product category and price being paid to the influencer.

Then again, if you’ve chosen the right influencers, they’ll probably have nothing bad to say.

Jon Davids is the Founder + CEO of Influicity, a leading influencer marketing platform and services company. Follow Jon on Instagram @jon_davids