Tweet #Influencer101
The measure of success of a campaign is not how many impressions your hashtag gets.
The measure of success is how much good will, activity, and energy you get buzzing about your brand.
Those who measure influence tend to get this concept and do a good job selling it, but I wonder how much prep and coaching about this they give the brands that buy influence marketing campaigns.
Here are 3 Steps to ensure the success of an influence marketing campaign for brands
I’ve spoken up about my views on Klout, and other influence measurement programs in the past. They have come a long way in the past couple of years, and I for one am glad of the direction I see things going in. With some strategy, influencer programs provide the opportunity for some win-win situations for both brands and influencers. Most recently, I offered some advice to brands looking to run successful influence marketing programs on Mark Schaefer’s blog {grow} in my article : A plan to earn your way into the hearts of Internet influencers , here’s an excerpt from that article, which covers Step 1.
STEP 1: Find something that really delivers value
The key to finding influencers is by providing people with value directly related to their field of interest.
- Give them something that makes their lives or work more efficient (tools, technology, apps)
- Offer an unusual experience (huge opportunity in the travel and hospitality industry).
- Solve a problem
- Create content that will be highly valued by their audience
- Offer exclusive access. They don’t want to run an infographic or review the same product being sent to a thousand other people.
click here to read more of this article on {grow}
STEP 2:
Make everyone in your company aware of the campaign and gain their support
The moment a marketing campaign goes out over social networks, you can’t just throw it to the wind and see where it goes. You must provide support. The more support you have the better.
Devise your response plan.
Make sure you have set up monitoring tools to monitor the hashtag, and anything else related to your brand. For example:
- mentions of your brand name
- tweets to your brand
- Facebook hashtags
- Instagram posts
- boards on Pinterest
Do keyword searches on a constant basis during the campaign. If someone out there is talking about this campaign or anything related to it, you have to be all over it.
Think Community Building
The campaign does not have to be limited to the influencers participating in the program. There’s a good chance others are dialoging with your influencers as they share the story of their experience. Do you want to make an impression? Get in on all the conversation!
- Send tweets over the open network so that everyone can see the conversation. Knowing Twitter communication styling helps to understand who can see the tweets you send. Keep the whole dialogue public if its for the campaign.
- You must set up monitoring on the activity of the influencers you selected to participate in the campaign (not just your brand name and hashtag) and keep them engaged.
You think the work went into building the campaign? Think again, this is the moment to shine. It’s show time. You need to ramp up your social activity and monitoring so you can fully maximize the coverage you get. Influence marketing only works when you’re making an impression. Get out there and help your influencers show you off.
It is far more valuable to see your influencer talking to the brand, than just tweeting promos. It is in seeing the dialogue and responsiveness of the brand that the consumer starts to take the kind of notice that influences opinion and support.
- Make sure that your team understands how to respond, draw in more people, and not just “simply respond”. It’s the art of conversation, are you answering communications with with open ended or closed ended responses?
Click here to see a great example of a brand creating opportunities for deeper dialogue
Jack was determined to be the new #puppy #CTSDrive spokesmodel- he didnt want to give it back 🙂 @CadillacCanada pic.twitter.com/AbJx0sonQ1 — Mila Araujo (@Milaspage) April 14, 2014
STEP 3: Analysis & tools to steer direction and keep things going.
Make sure to set yourself up before this higher activity period to be able to analyze what is going on. Companies like Hashtracking (a personal favorite of mine) can create reports that can really supplement your efforts during the event and afterwards. They can give insight and leads. They also provide insight into how the conversation is shifting around your campaign hashtag so that you can move with the campaign and keep things going. Shift between the two slides below to see an example.
Maximize the value of your investment in your outreach program.
I recently had a chance to explore their platform, and I strongly recommend them as well. With reporting, team management, and listening/sentiment tools you can not only monitor the campaign, but manage your response team The reporting features are very interesting,and the various capabilities not only give you what you need, but can help you springboard onto new ideas. Also, noteworthy is that it allows complete management of various campaigns and team creation. In a recent discussion with Joseph Olewitz, SVP Global Business Development, he mentioned that they are the only engagement tool that provides both an analytics overlay and visualization of the conversation stream. Definitely worth checking out.
For more screen shots and examples, click here.
A final note: This is Real Time Marketing Opportunity at it’s best!
Are you ready to make it happen? If you want to end this post on a fun note click below to see a collection of the hashtag experience from my own CTSDrive You can see the variance in energy that is created in tweets and shared across the various platforms.
View Slideshow
This article was written by Mila Araujo and originally appeared on Perspectives . It has been republished and adapted for MillennialCEO by the author.
