Whitepaper: Influencer marketing best practice, seven lessons learned

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Key learnings

1. Don’t try to force your brand in

It is obvious to social media followers when a product or post is trying to sell something in an overt way. If it doesn’t look natural, people will be turned off. Sponsored posts should look and feel like part of the environment (also known as ‘native’ posts), rather than being the social media equivalent of an advertorial.

2. Bigger isn’t always better

Influencers with a moderate number of followers are perceived to be more credible and authentic, as MetrixLab found when it worked with a Fortune 500 company to identify influencers to promote its brand. While a Kardashian endorsement might seem the dream, it makes sense to work with people who have smaller audiences. Think about the role of a TV ad versus more personal marketing – one is mass- market but the other might be much more effective.

3. Don’t try to pass advertising off as editorial

There is a fine line these days between advertising and pure editorial content, especially in a world where ad blocking is prolific. Generating “earned” media, where a celebrity or influencer naturally likes your brand (without having to pay them to say they do) is the ultimate in what might be called holistic marketing.

The best examples of influencer marketing are when paid-for endorsements appear natural, and do not seem like advertising (see number one), but they must be labelled correctly, as #spon or #ad. The Federal Trade Commission in the US recently wrote to influential Instagrammers reminding them that they must disclose paid-for endorsements. MetrixLab’s own Keith Sutherland questioned the ethics of services such as Social Chain, which uses its own social media accounts to advertise, in a blog post earlier this year.

4. Think carefully about hashtags

Make sure you keep the language of your campaign consistent. If you are using influencer marketing to drive people to your website, enter a competition (so you can collect their data) or change perceptions of your brand, think carefully about what you call it. Hashtags on Instagram or Twitter should be short, simple and easy to remember. You might want to use keywords that will search well organically, or include them as part of a paid search campaign.

5. Include calls to action

Some brands like to build up excitement about their involvement with an influencer, and agree a “teaser” post (whether that’s a short video for YouTube or an image for Instagram). It’s usual for an influencer to announce a partnership, as James Charles did with Uber’s #RideWithPride campaign. But calls to action are also a must – think about what you want people to do as a result of seeing it. Apart from liking a post, are you trying to drive people to a website, enter a competition or post their own pictures as part of your campaign?

6. Amplify in other media

Just as Las Vegas tweeted pictures of its Snapchat launch with DJ Khaled enjoying his key to the strip, consider how best to use other social media. If it’s a launch, agree what time your influencers will post content, and you can then amplify that across all your other channels. If your campaign includes TV or other mass media spend, it’s likely the two will complement each other – see this case story on MetrixLab’s with a global confectionary brand here.

7. Experiment and think creatively

Some brands lend themselves more obviously to working with influencers, as in the Net-a-Porter and blogger Camila Coutinho example above. Instagram is a visual medium and it’s obvious that fashion and beauty work well on the channel. But a car manufacturer, for example, might find it harder to think of ways to create content beyond showing features of the vehicle. Subaru’s ‘Meet an Owner’ campaign is an inventive way of working with influencers.