How to Create a Successful Social Influencer Strategy

With more brands joining forces with influencers to take their business to the next level, influencer marketing is starting to take over traditional advertising – Instagram being the platform of choice.

But, you may be asking yourself - how much influence do these influencers really have?  According to a recent survey, 72 percent of participants made a fashion or beauty purchase after seeing it on Instagram.  The market is not only speaking, but showing results – and it’s a large market – sponsored Instagram posts totaled 1 billion likes in 2017.

While influencer marketing has grown tremendously in recent years, many businesses are unsure how to effectively harness the power of these creators and do not understand how to create a campaign that generates measurable ROI and leads to real business results.

Here is a step-by-step guide for optimizing your social influencer strategy:

1. Clearly define your campaign goals

Before you begin any campaign, make sure that your executive team agrees on the goal.  We find it helpful to even write it down to ensure everyone is on the same page regarding what success will look like. 

Do you have an upcoming event that you want to promote? A new product or service you’re launching?

Once you’re clear on the goals you want to accomplish, you can determine tangible key performance indicators (KPIs) that will help you benchmark your progress and measure effectiveness throughout the campaign. For instance, if you want to gain 10,000 subscribers by the end of the year, think about how many that would be per month so you can adjust your budget and strategy accordingly.

This will also help you determine which strategies worked and which ones could be working harder so you can make adjustments along the way.

2. Find the right influencers for your brand

The next step is to create a key list of influencers you will reach out to asking for partnership.  This is the research phase and it’s a critical component to the success.  While searching for influencers, ask yourself these key questions:

• Is this person sharing content that’s relevant to my brand and aligns with my brand’s mission and values?
• Does this person have a strong social media presence? Is their potential reach going to result in sales conversions?
• Does this person have a proven track record for producing high quality work in the past?

3. Be authentic in your approach

After identifying a list of brand influencers, it’s time to reach out. To increase your chances of bringing influencers on board, be authentic in your outreach. This means you need to show you’ve done your homework, you understand their brand and you can explain how this partnership is mutually beneficial.

Above all, make sure your message is personal, clear and concise. Influencers get hundreds of emails each day, so if your email is too lengthy chances are it’s being tossed.  Also, make sure to be responsive, if they ask you a question via email, the faster you respond with an answer, the more likely you are of attaining a partnership

4. Maintain a consistent posting and engagement schedule

Consistency is key when it comes to keeping your followers engaged and boosting your social media presence. This means being able to strike the right balance. If you drop off the radar for periods of time, your followers will forget about you, but if you over-post it will be a turn off. So, your goal should be to show up regularly in news feeds, but not so much that it annoys your audience.