In a world where social media channels play a part in the everyday life of millions, many brands promote influencer campaigns that seek to promote their image and boost engagement with their audience. This strategy, known as influencer marketing, has proven to be extremely successful across a wide range of online platforms.
As with every other kind of marketing campaign, influencer campaigns require smart forward planning in order to meet their desired goals. And it’s not enough to know what works – identifying and avoiding harmful mistakes is crucial too. We have listed below 5 of the most common errors in influencer campaigns – check it out!
1. Selecting influencers based on their follower count
As far as many brands and companies are concerned, the more followers an influencer has, the better. Naturally, a high follower count on social media is appealing; after all, it shows that the influencer in question is well known in their niche.
But this is not the only metric, or even the main one, to consider when organizing a campaign. The amount of followers an influencer has doesn’t demonstrate their engagement levels or influence on their audience, per se. This brings us on to our second mistake.
2. Ignoring engagement
Frequently, companies focus on follower count, and disregard engagement rates. We already mentioned above that this metric is all-important, and now’s the time to find out why.
Engagement rate is the relation between impressions and interactions received on each publication. In other words, it helps to understand the extent to which an influencer engages and captivates their audience, exerting a genuine influence over them.
Influencers with fewer followers often have higher engagement rates than those with higher follower counts, and it’s vital to consider this when starting your campaign.
3. Not researching past controversies
Knowing the details of your influencer’s history on social media is just as important as analyzing their metrics. During the campaign, you will be linking your image to theirs. Influencers become the face of a campaign, so naturally the audience will conflate their attitudes, opinions and worldviews with those of the brand.
Therefore you should do prior research into the influencers whom you wish to work with, and make sure that they align with the message you are looking to transmit.
4. Overlooking the influencer’s niche
It may seem obvious to analyze the niche with which influencers communicate, but this task is often overlooked. For instance, a brand may be so excited to run a campaign with a particular influencer that it fails to consider the impact it might have on the desired audience.
This begs the question: how closely does the influencer’s audience profile relate to my company’s ideal client? A 100% perfect match is unrealistic, of course, which is precisely why it’s so essential to carry out a detailed study beforehand.
5. Trying to dictate the way the influencer transmits the message
When partnering with influencers, brands often want to control everything they say or write about during the campaign. But attempts to communicate a safe, vetted message to your audience can backfire.
Why is that? The more rules you impose on the influencer’s communication style, the more artificial and forced it will feel. The aim is to intervene as little as possible on the chosen influencer’s personal style.
