So… you want to approach an influencer to spread the word about your business? That’s great! Influencers, or Social Media users who have a high, genuine following, are a great way to increase the reach of your brand to potential customers. But, unlike the more traditional forms of Social Media advertising, where each and every click, view and like is trackable, it’s sometimes harder to measure the success of an influencer outreach campaign. So, today, I’m going to take you through the best ways to know if your brand influencers are kicking butt for your business!
1. Assess Your Brand Reach Today
Obviously, you’ve got to start somewhere! Before even reaching out to an influencer, measure your brand’s performance now, and where you’d like your brand reach/following to get to. That way, it’ll be easier to understand if any social media growth through outreach has occurred.
2. Determine your Campaign Goals
The success of any marketing campaign don’t mean squat unless you have set goals to measure it’s achievements! Are you aiming for a higher amount of traffic to your website? Or perhaps you’re looking for more customer engagement. Set these goals before you start your outreach, that way you can quite easily look back and see what lead to your success.
3. Review Traffic from Unique Links
A great way to measure if influencer posts have lead to success is by creating unique points of measurement for each post. So, for example, you might want to increase traffic to your website, or sales of your product – give your influencers unique links, or coupon codes to include in Instagram posts to track visits to your website or sales.
4. Check Your Hashtags
Again, creating unique campaign hashtags are a great way to keep track of user engagement. With a unique hashtag, you can quite easily tally up total posts, views, and engagement and get an understanding of performance.
5. Closely Monitor Brand Engagement
One of the main reasons to conduct influencer outreach is to take advantage of the authentic connection these Social Media stars have with their following. Followers of these influencers believe their endorsements, even if they know that they’re being paid to promote what they’re talking about. Why? Because they’re seen as leaders in their space of recognition (beauty, travel, sports). They’re seen to ‘know what they’re talking about’ – so they’re trusted when they start talking about your brand or business. Tracking engagement should not focus solely on numbers. Quality engagements with fans are super vital. Within these sponsored posts, influencers should be encouraged to answer questions about products or services to further showcase their authority within their field of expertise.
Ok, now you’ve got the tools under your belt to measure success of an influencer outreach campaign… time to get choosing the right influencers for your business! But… that’s not for today. I’ll tackle that in my next blog post; ‘Finding the Right Influencers for your Brand!’. Until the, happy marketing!