Engaging an influencer to boost the visibility of one’s brand, one’s company, and one’s image is one thing. But how can we foster this collaboration and maximise its effectiveness? It is about the public’s perception of the tone of your brand.
Set milestones before choosing your influencer
Before choosing the influencer that will become an added value for your brand and your business, the time is right for observation and reflection. It is from the collected elements that you will be able to define the conditions for a clear and fruitful collaboration.
Observe and analyze before acting
Are you interested in what other companies are doing? How do your competitors or even companies that do not necessarily compete proceed? If you have never asked yourself these questions, it is time to look for the companies with which you share the market. Do not forget brands that are not part of your industry but have a similar operating mode to yours.
This first step accomplished, lean on your current communication. You will have to analyze the performance of your content to determine why some are more powerful than others to the public.
Have an up-to-date marketing team
There is nothing better than a marketing team able to use new technologies for the benefit of their company. Social media has tools that many companies have at their fingertips when it comes to marketing. All you have to do is look at these companies and mimic the way they use the networks to communicate.
Identify your influence marketing campaign
The influencer is an asset, not a simple pawn that the company can move at will to make its brand shine with the public. By gathering the elements collected during the observation and analysis stage, you will be able to sketch your expectations. It is from this pattern that your influencer will imbibe the spirit that surrounds your brand, and act. It is therefore useless to entrust to him strict specifications, which will kill any creative desire in the egg.
Choose the right influencer
It would be a shame to choose the first influencer at hand, at the risk that the latter is simply not relevant to your brand. Take the time to find the right influencer the first time. Otherwise, you risk investing money at a loss.
Collaborate with your influencer
In order for this collaboration with your influencer to be successful for your brand, you must clarify the contractual terms. This step is essential because it induces:
- A financial investment from your company
- The protection of the reputation and interests of each party
- Satisfaction of your subscribers
- Maintaining sales of your product or service
- The identity of the intellectual owner of the contents created within the framework of the collaboration
- Protection of rights to use the created content
- The expectations of both parties
- Expected results for the campaign of influence
Develop a collaborative agreement
The marketing campaign your influencer will conduct should be consistent with the process of marketing your brand. To achieve such a result, you must involve the influencer in your team. Do not forget that if you invest time and money in this process, the influencer is not just a pawn. It is indeed an actor whose commercial potential is immeasurable! By creating a two-way relationship, this asset will not just talk about your brand in a few posts posted here and there on Facebook, on the contrary.
The collaboration agreement must be transparent, and bear witness to a relationship in which each actor is active, the company as well as the influencer. To achieve such a result, several elements must be combined.
Clear expectations on content
The influencer must not be imposed strict specifications, but rather have a certain creative freedom. However, in order to effectively exploit its potential, do not hesitate to guide him subtly, as this will allow him to soak up the soul of your brand. In turn, your influencer will help you avoid the pitfalls in communication:
- What types of content do you want to publish?
- Will it only be written content?
- Would you like text and images?
- In which media category will you communicate?
- How often will you communicate?
In the brand/company duo and influencer, you have marketing knowledge and expertise in communication. Together, analyze your results on social media and websites to determine the best time to communicate. By doing this, your influencer will be able to provide you with the appropriate volume of content, to be published on your respective channels. It is by pooling your skills that your brand can take advantage of an effective campaign.
Use the media to illustrate your publications
The public is particularly fond of content that is sufficiently worked and of high quality. Thus, it is better to leave the written texts as simple as possible in favor of content enhanced with images, videos, GIF or even computer graphics. Take advantage of developing this collaboration agreement to use your influencer’s portfolio, if the media it contains is relevant to your brand.
Moreover, you might be tempted to turn to picture libraries, commonly known as stocks. However, nothing beats the media created specifically for your business:
- Photos of your product
- Staged situations
- Information videos
- Filmed tutorials
Broadcast channels for the message
The influencer chooses the channels of diffusion according to the brand, the product or the service to be promoted, but also the audience to whom the message is addressed. It is therefore essential that you clearly indicate to your influencer the channels that he will use to spread your content. Define together the purpose of this kind of dissemination: is it to quickly impact the target audience with unique content? Is this a suitable post for so many channels, in order to generate maximum commitment?
The right to use your content
In most cases, the influencer is cited as the creator of the content he publishes. By engaging an influencer to communicate around your brand, this gives you some rights over its creations. Avoid any misunderstanding by clarifying the rights and duties of each party with respect to:
- Your access time to content
- The ability to later use content that it has created for you
- Copyright
- The licenses
- Authorizations for the use of your content by third parties
Sponsored content should be mentioned
Your influencer and yourself should be aware of the laws inherent in sponsored content. In case you are implementing sponsored content, consider adding the hashtag #ad, #partnership or #spon, in a duty of transparency to the legislation and to the public.
Share follow-up links
In order to enable your influencer to track your communication campaign, provide them with tracking links, discount coupons and promotional codes inherent in your product or service. It will be able to monitor the performance of the content he will broadcast.
For the development of the collaboration agreement, tell your influencer how these codes are to be disseminated.
A dedicated campaign or not
When your influencer creates and broadcasts sponsored content, it can only mention your brand or make it cohabit with others. It all depends on how much you are willing to spend with your influencer, knowing that the latter can work for several companies.
The right of inspection before publication
In order to preserve your image and reputation, you can ask your influencer to check each content before publishing. This will allow you to ensure that the content perfectly reflects your brand image. For a perfectly calibrated right of inspection, your influencer must respect the delivery deadlines and your schedule of evaluation and approval, for each publication.
Manage meticulously your calendar
Influencer and marketing team must work according to a common schedule. This schedule must be kept up to date by both parties, and you must clearly indicate your deadline requirements. Chance has no place when it comes to promoting or launching a new product! At the very start, you can create a Gantt chart.
Time is money!
The collaboration agreement should clearly state what you will need to pay for:
- Creating content
- Rights of use
- Public access to your influencer
- Creating content for launching any new service or product
- The sharing of content – written and images – related to current campaigns
- That the influencer shows up in person during the events organized or sponsored by your company
- Centralize and analyze the persuasive power of comments left as a result of your advertising messages
- Give ideas to improve your products
- Assist in the design of new products
- Relaying social media satisfaction surveys
The collaboration agreement is the best method to optimise the relationship your influencer will maintain with your company, but especially your brand. It will allow him to feel fully integrated with your company.
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