INFLUENCER MARKETING basics

Let's talk about Influencer marketing today.

It's a ZONE OF INFLUENCE & the most in - thing for organic & inorganic form of marketing.

The focal point of Influencer Marketing are Influencers.

Influencers are commercial content creators who influence their followers (earned &/or paid) with their concepts & demonstration of any industry-based brand/product/service.

Their major USP in marketing is REACH(unique audience). Their posts are likely to reach you in your feed to influence you.

Their primary job is to HOOK YOUR INTEREST & GIVE YOU A REASON TO BUY a certain product or service.

Their usual methods are self-application of product/service, product/service education & its benefits, price comparison with competition, exclusive brand offers published through promotional code & explain pros & cons of related products/services.

They operate both in an organic & inorganic way.

Organic - boosting posts through either platform owned & operated communities, engagement pods & pay to play communities. Some creators use sophisticated paid media tools or AI based tools where usage of these apps by default increases your reach & engagement.

Some third-party tools give an influencer campaign idea, keywords, tone of voice, the best performing industry content, hashtags, top 10 posts industry wise, top10 posts for particular interest area. Most of these third-party tools also give in depth creator analytics.

Inorganic - Boost posts (as paid ads) for reach, followers & engagement. Buy out bots created on your profile as followers, this is not recommended though. Platforms can ban/suspend your account & brands can discard your partnership with them, on knowledge.

How do you judge & select influencers for a brand campaign?

1. No.of followers.
2. Frequency of publishing posts.
3. Influencer audience - Brand Target audience match
4. Authenticity in posts (invokes trust)
5. Influencers readiness to use brand link/app in posts.
6. Willingness to give 100% for content & be creative + energetic for promotion.
7. Influencers understanding the concepts of brand, product positioning, align scripts to exact/near brand persona.
8. Influencers creating human content (not AI generated).
9. Brand +ve posts, not to make it controversial, no endorsement by false claims - crucial for brand safety.

Platforms like TikTok have taken new approaches to use influencer marketing which other platforms can absorb.

1. Use paid ads to begin brand generated content & then leverage it by influencer marketing & community acceleration.
2. Hire a few top influencers to promote your brand & then use micro/nano/mid -tier influencers on the content produced by top influencers e. g, Duet & Stitch formats of video promotion - This increases the shelf life of your brand campaign.
3. Inspire influencers to make content that doesn't appear very commercial /very salesy, native to the feed.

A lot of brands with large budgets urge platforms to create custom brand specific AR lenses & filters for the community of influencers to accelerate upon.

One huge challenge in influencer marketing is measurement of the campaign performance. So, for this purpose few social media platforms create influencer logins where influencers can create & promote brand specific content on platforms through those logins only. Brands can track the influencer campaign on a real time basis & can optimize the campaign on timely basis.

Another challenge is the unification of the overall campaign.

Ideating influencers campaign theme idea - Creation of campaign brief - Finding right influencers -Identifying genuine influencers from fake ones- Content promotion templates - Tracking influencers whether they are following the brief/template - Ensuring no controversial claims/false commitments are published by influencers on their posts/stories - Brand safety, Campaign performance measurement & Campaign insights - Facilitate third party market research on campaign performance (e.g., Nielsen) - Collection/Aggregation of data - second/third party data post campaign (majorly holds for CPG brands)

As platforms became huge in volume of accounts, Influencer marketing is the genesis of social media platforms to drive additional revenues. So, platforms combined performance marketing + programmatic advertising + influencer marketing to meet campaign objectives for a brand & generate recurring revenues from brands.

Let me know what you think about influencer marketing.

#influencermarketing #influencer #influencermarketingagency #influencermarketingstrategy #contentcreators #creatoreconomy

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