2015 Influencer Marketing Guide

The 2015
Influencer Marketing Guide

The 2015 Influencer Marketing Guide #SocialAnalytics1
As a result, they have the ability to influence others on these topics or
areas of interest.
Companies looking to bolster their social presence and build consumer
trust often find themselves turning to this group of online “elites” for
brand advocacy. These social media power users have the ability to
strengthen brands’ reputations through well-targeted word-of-mouth
campaigns.
The relationship between the brand and the influencer is mutually
beneficial: as the influencer endorses the brand’s credibility, the
influencer’s stock rises because of its affiliation with the brand.
Advice from a Pro
“Influencer” is such a mainstream
buzzword nowadays. It’s generally
used in reference to people with
significant networks, including
followers and readers, who can
speak to a broad range of products
and services with the ability to sway opinions in
their favor. It all depends on the relationship the
brand has built with that influencer.
Identifying and Measuring the Impact of Influencers
In a recent study, nearly 60% of marketers stated that they are planning to
increase their influencer marketing budgets in 2015 (Tomoson).
Variety magazine found that six out of ten teens are more likely to believe
and buy from YouTube stars than movie stars.
And another study announced that 12-to-32-year-olds spend 30% of daily
media time consuming UGC (user-generated content)—compared to
13% of total media time spent watching live TV and 10% watching pre-
recorded shows.
What we’re trying to say is, influencer marketing is now a vital brand
strategy for building credibility and boosting sales.
This guide explores how to identify, engage and measure the impact of
partnering with influencers in marketing campaigns, with tips from beloved
influencers themselves along the way.
What Is an Influencer?
In the world of social media, some consumers have louder voices and
reach either much broader or much more niche audiences than others.
These people are “influencers.”
Celebrities have traditionally been tapped by marketers to enhance
marketing efforts, but social media has given rise to a new generation of
people with significant influence. These influencers are passionate about
a particular topic and have invested time to develop trust with a significant
following on their social networks.
Jess Estrada
Content Strategist at Bezos Family Foundation,
FreshJess.com Creator, and Lifestyle Influencer

Earning Engagement with Influencers
Technology has significantly changed the purchasing behavior of consumers
by bringing a world of information to their fingertips. For instance, 87% of
potential car buyers research vehicles on social channels before making a
decision (Crowdtap). Thirty-three percent (33%) of millennials rely mostly on
blogs before they make any kind of purchase, compared to fewer than 3%
for TV news, magazines, and books. (Forbes/EliteDaily)
Today, 70-90% of the buyer’s journey is completed prior to engaging with a
vendor (Forrester). The adoption of technology initially caused a rise in digital
advertising as marketers attempted to reach a new generation of consumers
online. However, this quickly became challenging for several reasons.
First, consumers developed “banner blindness” and stopped seeing the
ads being pushed at them. Second, these ads often weren’t properly
targeted, so a 29-year-old, vegan, yoga devotee was being served up
campaigns from hamburger fast food chains.
As people specialize their social spaces more and more to reflect their true
interests, so do the social networks themselves. Facebook, for instance,
shows you more content from the people and brands you “like” content
from, and less from those you don’t.
These changes have forced brands to reconsider traditional “push-based”
marketing strategies and seek out “engagement-based” approaches. One
of the key drivers for this shift is that while consumers have begun to tune
out traditional ads, they have also become increasingly connected to each
other and now more than ever before are turning to their trusted networks
to share and gain recommendations.
With recent findings telling us that the average consumer engages with
11.4 pieces of content prior to making a purchase (Forrester) and that
consumers are five times more dependent on content than they were
five years ago (Nielsen), brands need help to reach consumers in this
new reality.
By engaging influencers, brands are able to generate earned media,
which has quickly become recognized as the most effective form of
media in reaching today’s consumers.
On average, marketers who implemented an Influencer Marketing
program in 2014 received $6.85 in earned media value for every $1.00
of paid media value (Burst Media).
What makes it so effective? Earned media addresses many of the
challenges brands face today by breaking through noise online and
driving not only awareness but also purchase intent.
Building influence and connecting with influencers has become an
essential part of today’s marketing strategies. Yet, getting started can
be easier said than done.

How to Identify Influencers
Brands should be able to identify influencers by the following attributes.
Reach + Relevance
Ideal influencers reach your brand’s target social media audience, whether
for the overall brand or a single campaign.
The value of an influencer’s reach is not only the size of his or her
audience, but also the relevance of those audience members to your
brand. How many of the influencer’s audience members fit into your
brand’s target demographic? Are they likely to be customers of your
brand? Do your brand and that influencer’s audiences, missions, and
interests truly align?
Pro Tip: Conduct an audience analysis to discover which topics an
influencer’s followers are talking about, and how they define themselves.
This will give you a good idea of whether you should pursue this
influencer further.
Resonance
An influencer’s resonance is his or her ability to create or build buzz for
content with audiences that a brand finds valuable.
One way to find out if your influencer’s audience matches up with your dream audience is by looking at
the top keywords in that influencer’s followers’ Twitter profiles. You can find out what that influencer’s
audience feels most passionate about, connected to, and likely to react well to on social media.

Who?
Now that you know what influencers are, how do you find the ideal
influencers for your brand?
First figure out which qualities matter most to you in an influencer:
• How many followers they have
• The wealth, interests, geographical location, or influence of their
followers
• How much engagement they get on average per month
• How active they are on the social networks you’re focused on
• How well they are able to amplify content
Then identify the influencers who have the desirable traits you prioritize
within the pool of people who already follow you and/or engage with
your brand’s social content. In essence, these people are acquaintances
you’re turning into close friends.
These are people who post regularly on social networks, engage often
with their followers, have a high ratio of followers to people they’ve
followed, and often have a high post count.
This chart shows @UAGolf’s top influencers sorted by followers.

But, don’t forget to look outside your pool of social followers for
influencers who might be a fantastic fit for your brand.
By looking at who is driving the buzz around a particular hashtag or topic
on any given social network, you’ll quickly be able to build a list of relevant
potential influencers for your brand.
You may also choose to work directly with an influencer agency like Team
Epiphany, Evolve!, or Socialyte for a lower lift (but higher cost) experience
on your end.
Another worthwhile tactic is reaching out to your customers via surveys or
conversations on your social networks to ask them which influencers they
admire and turn to for product suggestions and reviews.
This chart shows the most active users, most followed users, and top users by Klout Score for the
hashtag #socialanalytics—all useful lists to look at when building your influencer list.
Advice from a Pro
Look for influencers everywhere.
Okay, maybe not “everywhere,” but
look in a variety of places. Some
influencers make themselves easy
to find because they’re already
talking about your brand via blog
posts or social media. A simple Google or social
search can unearth those influencers. Work with
affiliate networks like GLAM Media, who vet, reach
out to, and sign bloggers to their network. Affiliate
networks are an easy one-stop shop for a brand to
reach multiple influencers at once. The network
acts as a third-party facilitating the contract and
partnership with that influencer.
Jess Estrada
Content Strategist at Bezos Family Foundation,
FreshJess.com Creator, and Lifestyle Influencer

When?
Now that you have your list of influencers to target, connect with them
organically by understanding:
• When they are online: Is the influencer online during the workday,
or mainly after hours? Which social networks does the influencer use
during which time periods? Which time zone is the influencer in?
• When your social audience is online: Your influencer’s most active
times, of course, should match up with when your brand is active
online.
The more aligned that your influencer’s temporal social rhythms are
with those of your brand’s followers, the greater the chance that your
influencer will be able to get your brand in front of relevant eyes.
Of course, if your efforts are more focused on getting social influencers
to blog about you than to post about you on their networks, you widen
your possibilities of which influencers you can utilize.
These charts show the most popular time zones for @UAGolf’s followers, along with the top time
zones for influencers specifically.
Advice from a Pro
Ideally, influencers only support and
promote brands and products that
completely align with their values. An
influencer will be much more intrinsically
motivated and passionate about a brand
if there is a natural alignment in personal values. Build out
a dossier on each prospective influencer before making the
initial contact; strive to find out his or her top values and
favorite hobbies. These values may be most evident from a
personal Instagram and/or Facebook profile.
For instance, it’s apparent from my personal shares that I’m
crazy about my Bengal cat, my roses and garden, singing
and piano lessons, and healthy organic foods to name a
few. From a business standpoint: I love to support forward-
thinking, conscious companies that provide exemplary
customer service. There’s plenty of scope, therefore, for
someone like myself to be a raving evangelist for a number of
brands, not just the obvious social media-related products.
Mari Smith
Social Media Thought Leader, Top Facebook Marketing Expert

Where?
Now that you’ve whittled down your influencer list, you’ll want to know
where your influencers:
• Are the most active – Which social networks do these influencers
spend the most time on?
• Have the greatest impact – Which social networks do these influencers
drive the most engagement on, or have the most followers?
• Interact with your content the most -- On which social network do
these influencers organically prefer to engage with your brand’s
content?
Don’t try to fit a square peg in a round hole. Meet your influencers where
they’re strongest.

What?
What content is driving engagement among your influencers? This is one
of the most important components of your influencer strategy. If your
content is attracting the attention of influencers, half your outreach work is
already done for you.
Creating quality content both on your site and on social ensures that
influencers will respect your brand and promote your content to their
social audience without a whole lot of wasted energy spent coaxing and
prodding.
IDENTIFY TOPICS THAT INTEREST YOUR CURRENT AUDIENCE
To create content that enraptures your audience and potential influencer
partners alike, analyze your current audience. Get a good idea of your
audience’s interests, needs, and feelings about your brand.
Knowing demographic details helps you target content that speaks to
your audience’s age group, gender, and location. You can use this data to
determine what your audience is like, understand which influencers fit into
your target audience personas, and even identify other possible target
audiences you may be missing out on.
This chart shows the most popular cities for @Nike’s Instagram followers, along with the top
specific locations.

Advice from a Pro
The beauty of social media is it allows
you to build rapport with someone
before you reach out to them directly.
This can be done through a variety of
social signals, some more flattering to
the influencers. If you’re a brand and
want to work with an influencer, why wouldn’t you want to
retweet their content or share their Instagram photos?
If they are that aligned with your brand, it will only help
you better engage with your fans through a different lens
AND flatter the influencer that you’re consuming and
sharing their content. It will make it that much easier
when you want to reach out to them because you’ve built
a relationship in advance.
Neal Schaffer
Global social media speaker, creator of the Maximize Social
Business blog, and Forbes top-ranked influencer
Topics of Interest
When you’re analyzing your audience, look into their topics of interest.
Having a clear picture of what interests your potential influencers will help
you personalize content that speaks to both these influencers and their
followers.
How do you identify these topics? Look at what your likely influencers
and current audience are posting. You might find that topics and posting
behaviors vary network-by-network.
Keywords in your influencers’ profiles, their followers’ profiles, and their
post content hold clues to what they find most important. Looking at the
content your influencers produce and share, and how many Retweets,
shares, favorites, Likes, replies, and comments this content receives will tell
you what resonates with your influencer’s audience.
This also gives you insight into how your influencers interact with their
audiences, which will teach you how to personalize your approach to these
influencers and foster deeper partnership opportunities.

FIND POTENTIAL INFLUENCERS THROUGH
AUDIENCE AND COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS
After analyzing your current audience, your influencers, and your influencers’
audiences, give yourself healthy dose of competitive intelligence.
In addition to looking at general topic influencers – through Klout, organic
search, and the social media channels themselves – you’ll want to take
stock of your competitors’ network of influencers.
These are people who have access to target audiences similar to
yours, and have a large amount of engagement with that audience.
Find out how many influencers your competitor has. As best you can,
determine whether these influencers have an official affiliation with your
competitor’s business.
If you find influencers who have no affiliation with the business, look at
their content, their profile information and their audiences to pinpoint
reasons they engage with your competitor’s brand and not yours, or that
brand and yours.
Your influencers may have project collaborators who also have their
own sphere of influence. By finding out who these collaborators are
and studying their social activity, you may be able to glean even more
information about your audience or gain access to an audience you didn’t
know about. You may find that you want to consider these collaborators in
your influencer quest.
This is lifestyle influencer Lauren Conrad’s Retweet of a Tweet from The Little Market, a brand
she is closely affiliated with.

Set Goals
As you go through this process of analyzing influencers, tracking
keywords, and assessing other audiences, note any areas where there’s
a gap in your strategy – whether it’s keywords you’re not yet targeting,
content that you should be producing, or other audiences you haven’t
considered. Then, set goals to cover those gaps with a timeline of
deliverables and a plan for measurement.
The point in developing relationships with influencers is to augment your
current strategy. Remember, partnering with influencers is often a business
venture. Many influencers have policies in place to help protect their
brand image and integrity to maintain their status.
Think about what your influencers might be able to provide for your
company: Are you trying to boost traffic or conversions? Are you looking
for content creation, or would you want to create guest content for your
influencer’s blog, for example?
And, remember to build your value prop for these influencers. Why should
they work with you? What benefit can you provide? This benefit doesn’t
necessarily have to be financial. It could be something like helping that
influencer widen his or her own net of influence, providing speaking
opportunities, or offering to help with site design work or event planning.
When you have your goals clearly set, create metrics around them
that allow you to measure the success of your work with a particular
influencer. Popular metrics include growth in:
• Community size
• Mentions
• Engagement
• Web traffic
Having set goals will allow you to determine where your influencer
strategy is working, and decide whether to continue partnering with the
influencer(s) you choose.
Advice from a Pro
When we work with influencers,
we gauge success by looking at
how our content resonates with
their audience.
In theory, an influencer’s audience should be like
an extension of our audience. We’re looking for
the indicators of well-received content: web traffic,
engagement, and positive qualitative feedback.
Jade Furubayashi
Social Media Manager at Simply Measured

Tips for Engaging with Your Influencer,
From Influencers
Discovering the influencers is the easy part – enticing them to engage with
your brand is another matter altogether. Influencers are often very careful
about which brands they choose to partner with and how they choose
to engage. A lack of selectivity could reduce the influencer’s authority or
damage their brand integrity.
When engaging influencers, start by recognizing the people who engage
with your content and reward them for that engagement – either with
special deals, sneak peeks, or free demos in exchange for feedback.
When this has proven successful, you can begin to reach out to influencers
outside your circle, using the following tips:
Impress, But Authentically
Ensure that the content, deals, or demos you’re offering show off your
brand’s best assets, while still remaining personal and transparent. Be as
authentic as you can in working with your influencers. Ask yourself – why
should they engage with my brand? The more transparent and “real” the
transaction is, the more enticing your offer will be.
Advice from a Pro
Make it easy for the influencer to work
with you. Also ensure that you both
win from the relationship. That can
be in a variety of ways. This could be
in the form of increasing both brands’
awareness, credibility, and also a
financial reward for the influencer.
Each influencer will want different things from the
relationship. Make sure you know what that is and it
should be included in initial discussions and ongoing
conversations because that could change.
Jeff Bullas
Social media marketing strategist and speaker,
Forbes-ranked influencer

Advice from a Pro
One strategy is to first understand
how influencers can shape the market
and that they require a very specific
engagement approach. At WCG, we
follow the 1-9-90 model whereby the
1%, are the influencers who create
content, shape the market and drive
the conversation about a given topic. Our algorithms
show that there are never more than 50 people who drive
the majority of share of conversation for a brand or a
topic in a given country or language. Once this group is
identified, they require a different, more unique approach
at reaching them than the others do.
The 9% are highly active online. They are brand
advocates. They recommend, share, sign up, download,
comment, and other actions that let their communities
and peers know what they think about certain topics,
products or brands.
Michael Brito
Group Director and Head of Social Strategy, WCG
The 90% are the great majority of any market. They
lurk and learn. This rather large group is satisfied with
using search or consuming the content of their peers.
They decide how compelling the 1% and the 9% really
are in telling your brand’s story.
The second strategy involves scale. Influencers are
also consumers. It takes more than a phone call or
email to reach them with a brand message. In many
cases, they need to interact with branded content 3 –
5 times before they believe something. The ability to
target influencers with paid media is somewhat of a
new concept though. Twitter’s custom audiences allow
brands to target specific individuals with content. So,
in order for this to be successful, the first strategy of
influencer identification must first be nailed down.

Get Personal
When you reach out to influencers, opt for personalized contact. Engage
them through social channels, commenting on or sharing their posts. Let
them know that your brand respects both their industry knowledge and
their social clout.
Here is where the homework you’ve already done pays off. You know who
your influencers are, what their social profiles look like, and why they’re
desirable to you.
Know exactly how you want to partner with an influencer before initiating
contact. For instance, you might want them to wear a t-shirt repping your
campaign and take an Instagram photo wearing it, or live-tweet a specific
event for you.
Engagement takes time and you’ll want to build a solid foundation for your
next move, so don’t rush this process. Once you’ve made initial contact
on social, send out a personalized email or handwritten note, letting your
influencer know that your brand is interested in working with them.
Ensure there’s some follow up after the project is completed, via phone,
Skype, or email at the very least. This process is simplified for brands
that use the Klout Perks platform. Klout acts as a trusted intermediary in
engaging influencers for marketing campaigns.
It Goes Both Ways
Once you’ve established a rapport with your influencer, make sure that you
keep that channel open and supportive.
Be sure to share out some of the influencer’s content related to your
industry and/or brand. After all, the influencer did choose to work with
your brand and deserves the recognition for promoting your content to
their followers. Aim to evoke a positive experience using what you
know about that influencer and their audience so that he or she will
want to work with you again in the future.
Klout’s Topic Expertise
Klout’s Topic Expertise is a new way to help brands identify
influencers on social. By analyzing the activity generated
by influencers on the social, Klout determines who produces
the most impactful content across over 10,000 topics. This
information allows your brand to discover and engage with
experts throughout your social and professional networks.

Employ Pull Strategy
Use a pull strategy in your influencer marketing efforts, rather than a
push strategy. What does this mean? Instead of foisting content on
your influencers, listen and source their ideas to create content and
campaigns. Ask them if they’ve got promotional ideas, since they likely
know things about your target audience’s preferences that you may not.
This is not only a good way to come up with fresh ideas – it also shows
trust in your influencers to help solidify your relationship. Just be sure
these ideas mesh with your overall brand strategy.
Advice from a Pro
Treat everyone like a who. You might
define your short list of the most
influential influencers to work with
specifically, but here’s my plea for a
more generous mindset: Be generous
with how you define “influencer” in
any ongoing program.
A clear strength of our social, connected world is that
everyone has a voice and can be heard. Everyone has a way
of looking at things that can inform the thinking of anyone
else. Everyone is a who in a who’s who scenario.
So consider incorporating less-obvious influencers from
time to time in your program—nurturing them along as you
nurture your own business and marketing, by making them
part of your success story. I like how marketing agency head
Lee Odden (an influencer in his own right!) puts it: “Working
with an established influencer makes them your friend for
a day. Helping upcoming talent become influential makes
them a friend for life.”
Ann Handley
Chief Content Officer, MarketingProfs

Address Any Issues Right Away
As a brand spokesperson, an influencer might have feedback, may
experience issues with your product or brand, or may find out about
customer service issues before you do. So, when an influencer comes to
your brand with a problem or issue, make sure you’re able to resolve the
issue in a timely fashion.
Not only does this show that you care about your customers, it shows
that you care about the influencer whose authority may be affected by
negative sentiment surrounding your brand.
One of the most important parts of using influencers in your marketing
strategy is interacting with them in a way that benefits both your brand
and theirs.
Advice from a Pro
One of the biggest mistakes I see
companies make time and again
is shipping sample products to an
influencer... and then not following
up. Always remember: The fortune
is in the follow up.
Mari Smith
Advice from a Pro
Influencers are inundated with requests.
The only way to capture their attention
is to ensure your partnership is a win-win
situation. Oftentimes, brands approach the
relationship with a “me first” mentality”
rather than identifying what matters to the
influencer and their community.
Take your time to properly piece together a pitch that
clearly spells out the benefits. An influencer has the ability
to lead a community and impact decisions, bringing
your brand to a potential new marketplace. If you want
to engage an influencer and allow them to be the voice of
your brand, get to know them and their community before
hastily making contact.
Rebekah Radice
Social media strategist, speaker and digital marketing specialist,
Chief Experience Officer of Imagine WOW, and author of
“How to Use Social Media to Virtually Crush the Competition”

Adding Influencers to Your Marketing Strategy
Once you’ve gathered your network of influencers, you’ll need to decide which role you want them to play. Knowing where your influencers fit into your
product’s buyer journey is a great way to figure out what you want out of your influencers. You may find you want different outcomes from different influencers.
Stage Traits Unaware Aware Interest Consideration Decision Engagement & Advocacy
Brand Goal
Generate awareness Generate interest Encourage buyer to consider a
purchase
Move buyer to the decision-
making stage
Win a new customer Encourage customer to use
the product and promote it
organically
Buyer Mindset
Unaware of the problem
your product solves
Aware of the problems your
product solves
Interested in solving the problems
associated with your product
Exploring your product as
a solution. Committed to
researching and understanding all
available approaches to solving
their defined problem.
Making the decision whether
to choose your product or
another product
Love your product, hate your
product, are indifferent to
your product, or want more
information on how to use your
product more effectively
Topics
(To Drive Buyer
to Next Stage)
-Industry and/or lifestyle
best practices
-Profiles of the best in
class within industry/brand
category
-What is insert the pain
point your brand addresses
here?
-“How to…” problems and
analysis
- Definitions within the field
-Benchmarks for what success
looks like in the field
-How do I solve this problem for my
brand?
-What does “perfect” look like?
-What are the consequences of not
solving this problem?
-Why your product’s approach?
-How do I know which solution is
best?
-How do I make sure I am not
misunderstanding what I need?
-Why you?
-Why not your competitors?
-Details about your product
-Examples of how others use
your product
-How will your product
enhance life in a way
competitor can’t?
How can I insert the pain point
your brand solves with insert your
brand here?
-Why doesn’t insert your product
here work?
-Hacks for using your product
Influencer Strengths
Trusted by broad range
of people, has different
touchpoints in different
communities, good at
building dialogue about
new issues
Considered SME (subject
matter expert) in your field,
track record of driving people
from awareness to product
interest, active on networks
where your target demographic
tends to huddle
True, historical believer in your
product and why it’s important,
excels in this area his or herself, can
offer personal narrative of how not
having a solution hurt him/her
Familiar with different approaches
to the problem your product
solves, considered SME, able to
articulate pros and cons, aware
of the different persona types
who are considering your brand,
and loyal to your brand over the
competition
Knows the ROI of your
product, familiar with
competitors’ products but
loyal to yours, has access to
network of people who also
love your product
Is willing to jump into
conversations when she/he
hears your brand being talked
about positively or negatively,
has experience hosting on- and
off-line events which build buzz
for your brand and a sense of
community among its users
Content Ideas
Product reviews, hosting
your brand’s blog content,
engagement with your
brand on social media,
product referral program,
beta testing program
Giveaways, free “tastes” or
samples of product, blog posts,
original research or swag just
for that influencer, more robust
content like videos that the
influencer can blast out on his/
her social channels
Big emphasis on statistics/data/
personal experiences with both the
problem and your product, studies,
blog posts
Twitter chat, video diary that shows
how your product works and
solves a problem, mini-campaigns
involving developing platforms
like Periscope, Snapchat, and
Pinterest, which benefit both your
brand and the influencer
Event partnerships, promo
code partnerships, influencer-
hosted demos, influencer-
hosted giveaways, social
posts about the ROI of your
product
FAQ’s, how-to videos, on- and
off-line events, regular social
posting about your brand’s blog
collateral and new releases

In the initial phases of your buyer’s journey, your influencers play the role
of trendsetters. These influencers show off your product on social and pen
blog posts that drive awareness. At this stage, influencers are using their
reach to amplify your message.
As you move through the buyer’s journey, your influencers serve as
thought leaders and conversation starters. In the final stages, you’ll benefit
from influencer reviews and feedback.
At the end of your buyer’s journey, your influencer is a catalyst for brand
advocacy, whether by co-hosting contests or collaborating on FAQ-related
content. Your influencer starts to become a validator, recognizing audience
members who also use your product and fostering a community around
that product.
The most worthwhile effort your influencer can undertake is using your
product in his or her day-to-day world and telling about it, proving that
your product is a good buy to his or her social following. Do everything
you can to encourage a level of intimacy with your product in your
influencer cluster.
Ask the hard questions on a regular basis, like: Would he or she suggest
the product to his or her best friend or most respected colleague?
Advice from a Pro
Successful brand-influencer
relationships need to be carefully
nurtured over time, based on trust,
open communication and reciprocity.
As a brand, seek humility in an
influencer. Observe the responses by
the influencer’s audience - there should be tremendous
trust, loyalty, and respect there, and an ability by the
influencer to move his or her audience members to
take action. This can be seen in comments and replies
throughout social channels and blog posts.
Mari Smith

Measuring Your Success
Any marketing strategy must have measureable goals to assess whether or
not resources are being devoted wisely. Marketing with influencers is no
different. A few different metrics you could use to measure the success of
your campaign include:
• Increase in community size
• Increase in mentions
• Increase in engagement
Let’s take engagement as our example goal. The first thing you’ll want
to do is establish a baseline for your current engagement. Take a set
time frame – say the month prior to your campaign – and find out your
engagement metrics for that month.
Once you’ve determined how much engagement you’re currently getting,
you’ll want to set a goal for your influencer campaign. Let’s assume you
want to increase engagement by 10%. Here are the first steps towards
achieving this goal:
Content
a. Have your influencer create one piece of content that engages or
educates the customer
b. Engage with the influencer and the customer to answer questions
and field commentary surrounding these tandem pieces of content
Next, you’ll want to measure how this content is disseminated on social.
Social Network Promotion
a. Offer a promotion through the influencer on one or multiple social
channels to drive engagement
b. Engage with the influencer and the customer to build engagement
through the content and your promotion
c. After the promotion is over, continue to promote both your brand
and the influencer, and engage the influencer and their audience.
Once you’ve outlined the steps in your plan, determine how to track
your engagement growth for the period. You’ll want to know how much
of this engagement growth can be attributed to normal trends and how
much can be attributed to your influencer campaign.
When you know what you’re measuring, how you’re measuring, and
what your goals are, you can begin to implement your campaign and
collect data to determine the impact of that campaign on your social
media marketing strategy. At the end of your campaign, compare your
results to both your beginning baseline and your target goals. You
should be able to identify successes and areas of improvement and
modify your future campaign strategy based on that information.
A breakdown of sports retailer Volcom’s Instagram posting cadence and engagement during March 2015.

Conclusion
Working with influencers is a partnership that can be incredibly beneficial
for your brand. Influencers have the power to drive brand perceptions and
encourage purchasing. Influencers give you the power of an independent,
well-respected voice and specialized industry knowledge.
This partnership requires the same level of professionalism you’d adopt
in partnering with other brands and can be time-consuming, but if you’re
clear on your goals and respectful of your influencers, the opportunities for
creative content and ROI are limitless.
Lucy Hitz is a Content Marketing
Producer at Simply Measured, where
she works on longform content and
writes for the award-winning social
analytics blog. Her favorite musical
artist is Taylor Swift, and you can find
her on Twitter at @LLHitz.

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2015 Influencer Marketing Guide

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