The Future of Influence, Creative Collaboration

This is part two of a three-part series looking at the future of influence. You can read part one here.

In the first part of the series, we explored the changes in influencer marketing and the importance of developing the criteria and methodology to score talent and predict performance.

Influence marketing is deeply human. Are you prepared to make an active investment in understanding creators and their communities to ensure your partnership is purposeful and collaborative?

As the creator economy continues to mature, these individuals are resistant to brands and marketers dictating exactly how product shows up on their channels. It presents too much risk for their audience, who has grown accustomed to their storytelling.

Are you prepared to understand the culture and nuance of a creator and their community?

Purposeful Partnerships

We need to re-think influencer partnerships—moving beyond traditional terms of achievement that look like sponsorships and media campaigns. It’s matchmaking and thought leadership rather than amplification and ownership.

We need an emphasis on understanding the passions of creators and their communities, so the partnership reflects your brand purpose and can make a meaningful impact.

There are many ways to accomplish this, including audience analysis, surveys, and using social listening tools to mine conversations for important behaviors and signals.

We also need to do more than show up; we need to sustain a presence. But sustaining a presence can’t be done with one campaign—it requires a shift to long-term investment in creators and communities. This provides an important opportunity to support diverse and inclusive conversations with the use of creators through ideation and execution.

Creative Collaboration

The most difficult change to make may be inviting authors and their audience into the creative process. However, if you believe in the partnership and its purpose, it’s an easy decision to invite them to the table.

The benefits are clear. They understand the conversation and nuance of the subculture and the passions they share. They also can bring diversity in thought and experience to your team, which is especially important for underrepresented groups in your organization. And, once we invite them to the process, they have an investment in the outcome.

• Invite talent as creative partners into ideation sessions and as you develop your creative territories and stories.
• Engage and research communities to understand their makeup and demographics, but also to ensure you build a relationship and sustained presence.

It may feel uncomfortable as you give up creative control, but doing so not only ensures buy-in and alignment, but true ownership between all partners.

Now more than ever, community and culture can come together to build networks of lasting influence and impact that appeal to our passions and desires.

If you’re interested in leveraging the power of influence or just talking about the future of social marketing, reach out in the comments below or DM me on LinkedIn.

In part three of our series, we’ll explore the opportunity to create experiences with creators.