Real Talk: Influencer Relationships Beyond the Campaign
In our Real Talk series, we’ve guided you through the many stages of working with influencers for a campaign: including analyzing and choosing influencers, creating your campaign, conveying your brand, and making changes during a campaign. In this final installment, we discuss what happens after the campaign ends.
While the campaign is still fresh in your memory, you should document your experience with each influencer. Save the feedback and the results they drove for your brand. It may even be helpful to record a score for each that you keep in your records. If you do a campaign in the future and want to consider using some of the same influencers, you want to have an indication of your experience with them. If you run many paid influencer campaigns, the more documentation you keep, the better.
Next, provide feedback to the influencers you worked with. This is good for you because you may want to work with them again, and it’s beneficial for them because it helps them learn from the experience. This is especially valid if they’re relatively new to being a paid influencer. They may want to work with additional companies in the future as an influencer and your feedback could help them refine their content and approach.
Focus your feedback on three areas:
- The quality of their content (uniqueness, alignment with your brand/campaign, reception by their followers)
- Their efforts to drive more from their content (engagement, sharing, etc.)
- How well they operated within the parameters of the campaign
In each area, tell them what they did well and what they could improve in the future. Make sure you’re constructive. You don’t want them to feel defensive. After all, they just helped you with your campaign. After providing your feedback, ask for their feedback on the campaign and how you ran it as a brand. There may be things you should change about how you run influencer campaigns that you could only learn from these influencers.
After you’ve shared feedback with the influencers and received their feedback for you, make sure you continue to actively follow them to see what they’re doing and saying. Continue to engage with them, when appropriate. You have a chance to turn this relationship into more than a business transaction. If they enjoyed the work they did for your brand, they may share your content from time to time without any prompt, making them a non-paid influencer. Organic sharing from influencers is even better than a paid campaign.
Taking on an influencer campaign isn’t just merely about having someone promote your brand, there are many facets to it and hopefully our Real Talk series giving advice on the stages of an influencer campaign have been helpful. Feel free to use these posts as a blueprint for running your own paid influencer campaign to get as much out of them as you can.