At Social Fresh West I spoke on the topic of how to successfully run influencer and advocate programs.
It is a topic I know a lot about from years of running them for clients in my agency days and from taking part in them from the other side of the coin quite often.
While you have to attend a Social Fresh social media conference to get all the goodies, I wanted to share the core piece of being successful with these programs that most brands completely forget about or don’t take enough time to focus on.
The best relationships work in both directions and each person gets something out of it. [Tweet this]
Let’s dive in.
1. What’s In It For Me?
Whenever a brand, organization or agency approaches me about taking part in something, a big part of the decision is what is in it for me.
Sure, this might sound selfish to you, but we only have so many hours in the day and if you are not selfish with your time and commitments, no one else is ever going to do it for you.
The easiest answer is that to pay your influencer participants. This isn’t always in the budget and I’m sure it made more than one of you shiver a bit as the hair on the back of your neck stood up.
But, the truth of the matter is that if you want truly highly influential individuals taking part in your program and creating things for you, paying them is the only way it is going to happen.
2. What Is The Commitment?
Outside of the cash conversation, you need to think about what you are asking of the people you are getting involved and make sure they are getting something out of it.
Nothing is more frustrating (and I speak from experience) than creating content as part of one of these programs and then never seeing it used.
If you are running a program like this you should be sharing the content across all your channels, treating it like you would any other piece of marketing content and being sure the creator is getting credit for it.
Creatives love to have a light shown on their work. More than likely you have a big light to shine so don’t be stingy using it.
3. What Is The Followup Plan?
Finally, as the campaign winds down, hopefully you and the individuals are closer than you were at the beginning. Don’t treat this like a first date and walk away.
Stay in touch. Check in from time to time and let them know about what you are working on and see what they are doing. You’ve already established this contact and writing them off and never talking to them again just because your campaign is over makes no sense.
If you’ve built a good relationship, they are more than likely to share out new things you are working on even if they are not involved.
Being a friend means more than clicking on a social media button. [Tweet this]
Always remember that.