The Lion's Den
Ultimate Guide to Design Authentic Influencer Content
Influencer Marketing
Marketing is not just about brand promotion on different platforms. It’s more than just connecting with the emotional audience. Today, people prefer authenticity over advertising. People want to know the facts, the estimates, and the testimonies. And not just by reading it from other websites but reliable sources. This is where social media influencers come in.
Many brands have turned to influencer marketing to create believability, help them connect with their target, drive sales, and promote their brands. For brands that make use of influencer marketing, you will most likely need a guide that can help you design authentic content for influencer marketing.
If you have been searching for one, then look no further because your search is over. In this article, you will find all the guidelines that you will need to design effective and custom-made influencer marketing content that drives sales on Instagram. Take a look.
Designing Authentic Influencer Content
Define your aim clearly from the start
To successfully prepare content that will generate the source of engagement that you want, you need to know what you expect to achieve with your content from the outset. You need to set a target at the beginning so that you will know when you hit the target. It is just like having a goalpost in the game of football, without it you wouldn’t know if you have scored a goal or not.
There are quite a plethora of reasons why people create content. It could be to drive sales or to generate some form of engagement (likes, shares, comments, etc) from followers. It could also be to promote the awareness of a brand (make the brand known and acceptable to more people) or to generate leads (getting people to sign up). You can also create content for brand identification; setting a brand apart from all others.
Find niched-influencers who align with your goals
As you already know, Influencers are persons with an established online presence in a particular industry and have the power to influence their audience’s buying decisions. To create authentic influencer content you need authentic Influencers who share the same values as you, the same niche, and an established community of target audience.
In order words, narrow your influencer search to Influencers already talking about your brand or have a genuine interest in your industry. Mainly because it’s easier for these Influencers to come up with content that’s natural, relatable, and authentic. So, bring on influencers who have a community of your target audience and content style that effortlessly resonates with your brand.
Again, people prefer authenticity over advertising; that means they’ll listen to marketing messages from Influencers and believe your products or brand. That’s the credibility you can leverage when you choose Influencers who align with your niche and have the heart of your target audience.
Choose brand ambassadors from your community
You can create influencer content that is authentic by leveraging on the experience that people who have enjoyed your brand’s products have about them. The fact that they have had real experience with your products will help in sharing their opinions on the kind of benefits and value for money that new users will get from using your products.
Using this knowledge, if you look within your brand community which includes loyal customers and clients, followers, subscribers, visitors to your page, etc, you will find a pool of people from which you can choose your brand influencers. It is within this network that you are likely to find your most authentic content creators.
Without a doubt, this group of people is your best bet to fly the flag of your brand. Many of them are even willing and will go the extra mile to promote your brand to their friends, family, colleagues, and everyone within their network.
You can even carry out a quick analysis of all your contacts in your community; look out for the number of followers they have, how much engagement their posts usually generate, and a few other metrics. From the resulting statistics, you can now decide on who and who is qualified to be influencers for your brand. This should solely be based on how valuable they would be to your brand and not just because they have a big name.
For more authentic content, allow some form of flexibility when giving influencers brief
Most brands always make the mistake of trying to regulate and control even the smallest of details in the campaigns their influencers run. This will not really help very much. It’ll stifle every bit of creativity that your influencers have when trying to create authentic content.
The extra creativity that your influencers come up with may be very vital to your brand promotion. Hence, it’s advisable to allow your influencers the freedom to come up with their content style. This way, they’ll employ their skills and expertise in creating content that is much different from what over-regulated influencers who handle corporate pages usually come up with.
After giving your influencers sufficient guidelines and what you expect from them, you should also give room for them to display their creativity. Many of these influencers already know how best to connect with their target audience. A little bit of flexibility and room for creativity when creating content will always be appreciated and in return, it will yield positive results.
Take advantage of user-generated content
As already established, your most authentic content creators will always be your customers and followers. You can actually take advantage of this and encourage your followers to post user-generated content (UGC) like videos, selfies, etc about your brand.
This will excite many of your followers and they will participate by creating their content. They can be encouraged to create posts about how your products have benefited them or made life much easier for them. These posts can even convert potential customers into customers.
To encourage more participation, you can even have some form of reward for users whose posts have the highest engagement. Participants can be encouraged to post using a particular hashtag chosen by your brand. Using a particular hashtag will enable you to sort all the posts that make up the interactive campaign. This will help you to analyze the level of participation.
Conclusion
Creating authentic influencer content for Instagram marketing can really be demanding. And as a result, many people usually decide to take the easy way out by copying content from other people’s pages and presenting it as theirs. That shouldn’t be your case. With these guidelines, you’ll be able to get the best authentic content for your brand.
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