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What is Authentic Influencer Marketing?
“Authentic” is often used to describe influencer marketing campaigns that are dynamic, engaging, and most importantly – effective.
A triangle of trust between the consumer, brand, and creator is central to this dynamic. In fact, 80% of consumers claim they will only make purchases from trusted brands.
Working with authentic content creators helps you establish a reputation and showcase brand values. At the end of the day, it only takes one in-authentic influencer to tank the perception of your brand to the public.
Picking the right influencers for the job is not easy. The choices you make represent a golden opportunity to communicate a fresh and trustworthy voice to your ideal target audience.
We’ve put together everything you need to know to become an expert in authentic influencer marketing.
Your Authentic Influencer Marketing Guide:
Choose the right content creators
Don’t just look at follower count and engagement rate when searching for influencers. For many brands and industries, follower count is rarely an indicator of success.
Instead, it is crucial to only choose influencers that align with your brand’s industry, values, and mission. Make sure your creators have a credible and consistent background by conducting research into past posts and campaigns.
Look into your creator’s followers to ensure you are reaching the right target audience. Similarly, the audience should share and appreciate your brand’s values and mission. You can use a tool like Statsocial to quickly analyze a content creator’s audiences’ demographics.
Or you can manually audit a creator by looking at the profiles commenting on their content. If you notice that the bulk of profiles commenting do not fit your target audience, or seem fake, that’s a strong indication that the influencer is not a fit.
Collaborate with influencers during the creative process
Don’t just send creators guidelines or scripts and expect them to produce authentic content automatically.
Authentic influencer marketing incorporates creators throughout the entire creative process, accepting their feedback and perspectives, and adjusting campaigns accordingly. The resulting content will feel more natural, engaging, and relevant to the creators’ audiences.
Disclose official partnerships
Encourage your creators to use #ad, #sponsored, or #gifted with their content on social media.
This communicates to customers that your brand is not trying to fool them.
You’ll ultimately avoid backlash from audiences and show that you are honest about your influencer marketing campaigns.
Evaluate the results
Monitor and evaluate every influencer marketing campaign. Key metrics include reach, impressions, clicks, conversions, and sales. Make note of differences between campaigns, and begin to draw conclusions about the ideal content creator for the job.
There are tools that can help you evaluate effectiveness and authenticity of campaigns in order to optimize future programming.
With LoudCrowd, you can measure the impressions, reach, engagement rate, EMV and more from every single piece of content tagging your brand on Instagram and TikTok.
Build long-term partnerships with creators
Avoid treating creators like one-time contractors or transactional partners. Authentic influencer marketing treats every creator like a valued member of your brand’s community. Ensure you show creators appreciation and recognition. This oftentimes will transpire into the content that they share with their audiences.
Offering your creators additional incentives, rewards, feedback, and exclusive perks are easy ways to foster positive relationships.
By creating relationships of trust and respect, you can nearly guarantee sustainable and authentic influencer marketing campaigns for years to come.
Conclusion
Authentic influencer marketing is foundational to best-in-class campaigns. Whether you’re aiming to drive more sales or spread positive awareness about your brand’s values – you’ll want an army of aligned, authentic content creators.
If you…
- Choose the right creators
- Collaborate with influencers on the brief
- Disclose official partnerships
- Evaluate results
- Build long-term creator relationships
You’ll be well on your way to a sustainable and authentic influencer marketing model.
