Every marketer knows that “people are powerful distribution channels for your brand message”, said Jon Dick a couple of weeks ago during a wonderful webinar we watched here at Delightful.
However, the question this poses, he went on to say, is: How can you get people to talk about your brand?
The webinar organized by Klout and Simply Measured answered this question for us by introducing how to successfully manage an influencer program for your brand. Featuring Jon Dick from Klout, Uri Bar Joseph from Simply Measured and blogger and digital marketing influencer Jess Estrada, the webinar showed how to identify, engage, and measure the success of relationships with influencers.
Below are the 4 top takeaways I found compelling from the one hour webinar:
Find the right Influencer
According to Jon, there are three dimensions for finding the right influencer: reach, relevance, and resonance. The Klout score measures reach and resonance, that is to say, the more people they reached and the more engagement they drove, the higher the Klout score they have.
Uri put “relevance” as the starting point of identifying an influencer. An influencer should be relevant to your branding goal in:
Location
Industry
Networks
Keywords
LINK! See what he did there?!
He also suggested you, “Choose the right influencers rather than the popular ones.” Don’t always focus on how many followers they have, remember that relevance and resonance are equally important parameters to be valued.
Pay attention to Citizen Influencers
According to Edelman’s research, a much greater degree of trust is afforded those with specific credentials or those with similar perspective. 62% of people trust “a person like me” while 43% of them trust a CEO. Citizen influencers are those people just like you and me on social media. They are active social content creators, and they have their own audience but not massive followers. Although they don’t have massive reach, citizen influencers are more likely to drive engagement and results. Trying to find this breed of influencers will surprisingly benefit your program.
Personalize the relationship
Quizzed about how to effectively manage relationship with influencers, Uri said, “Influencer programs are all about relationships, you are trying to build a relationship with a person.” Personalizing each influencer interaction when reaching out to them was a strategy valued by all three presenters. It’s important to do thorough research on them before sending out the message.
Jess Estrada mentioned that “90% of emails I get are standard PR pitches of things I never read or talk about on my blog. Why don’t they read my blog?” It’s very obvious that this kind of message would easily be marked as a spam. Creatively customizing your strategy towards each and every influencer will make them feel valued and appreciated. As Jess said, she’s naturally more likely to share information about the brand with her audience if she’s more engaged in a relationship with it.
Be specific and clear
As Uris says, managing relationships with influencers is more like creating an experience for them. “Don’t treat them as a PR people or media people that their entire purpose is just amplify your message, they want to see value out of this relationship.”
Being specific and clear about your expectations and how they can benefit from the relationship is the key when reaching out to the influencers.
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I hope you enjoyed reading this post. Know that here at Delightful, we’ve had great success in managing influencer programs as part of our digital PR services, so if you have a need, do get in touch.
Best regards,
Bianca Hu – Delightful Digital PR Co-ordinator