How to work with Influencers on your Marketing Campaign

As a marketeer, someone who has worked with a high profile influencer, and follows several more, I've got some tips for brands on what to expect when embarking on an influencer marketing campaign.

From a brand point of view, you're probably thinking: I'll send a load of my products out to influencers and with any luck, they'll all post it on their social media. But you'd be naive to think that it's going to be as straight forward as a visit to the post office.

Here are my tips to a successful brand to influencer partnership:

1. Make a solid plan

Making a plan before you start is your number one priority. You might have a budget in mind, and you're going to need to use it. You've got to have an idea of what your influencers are going to be doing and specific set of instructions to give to give to them so that the work they do fits in with your brief. 

2. Pay for your content

Influencers expect to be paid, and if you really want your campaign to go off with a bang you're going to have to make an investment. This is not simply User Generated Content, this is someone with thousands of followers who takes time and care over their content - doing exactly that to promote your brand.

Even if it means quality over quantity - pay a few select bloggers being to promote a product, they'll then cooperate with you and you'll be sure to get a @mention!

3. Give Influencers creative freedom

Social Media personalities are creatives and they are each different. It's worth noting that your businesses social media reflects your brand, and the way an infleuncers social media looks reflects their brand too. Your brand style may not be in sync which is why it's important to give influencers creative freedom. This way it doesn't look like advertising to their follows. The subtler the better. That will really make your campaign worth while.

4. Pick your timing

Will you ask them all to post on the same day, or is your campaign much larger than that? To begin with I would suggest timing it over the week, that way you're drip feeding to consumers and always keeping your brand in their mind.

5. Work with a group of influencers who know each other

If a group of influencers know each other, it's likely that a proportion of their followers are the same, meaning that your exposing them to more reminders of you brand, and their memory retention of your brand is likely to be higher. Win win!

Have you worked with Influencers? What did you learn on your journey that you wish you'd know at the beginning? Comment below...