3 tips for getting started with social media influencers

Use these tips to create and maintain a positive relationship with influencers.

Social media influencers are becoming important to consumers, and their advice is affecting consumers’ purchasing decisions. According to a 2022 survey, 37% of consumers trust social media influencers more than brands. Reflecting this, Influencer Marketing Hub expected the social media influencer marketing industry to grow to $13.8 billion in 2021 and expects it to hit $16.4 billion in 2022.

The growing influencer market means now’s a great time to start working with an influencer to promote your company’s products or services. However, you’ll need some preparation before you get started in the world of social media influencers.

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1. You’ll need a budget

Make sure you have a budget set aside just for social media influencers before you start looking for one, or multiple, to work with. Creditable influencers don’t do it for free or even in exchange for merchandise from your company or other goodies.

2. Don’t be too controlling

When working with an influencer, it can be tempting to tell them almost or exactly what you want them to say or do to promote your service or product to ensure they convey your intended message. However, this isn’t a good idea. Influencers like to have freedom to do what they want for promotions, so be willing to work with them and give them leeway to do things their own way.

At the same time, you need to ensure your message isn’t lost when working with them. If you feel the upcoming content they’re working on isn’t accurately conveying what you want, tell them. Having some content spend some extra time in the cooker is a lot better than your message being distorted or outright missing in content an influencer creates.

Each influencer has their own amount of control they’d like in a business relationship with you, so be willing to change how your company works with them as needed.

3. Disclose business relationships

Working with an influencer means you’re establishing a business relationship with them. That means it’s vital that they properly disclose their business relationships with you. Failure to do so can lead to Federal Trade Commission fines and a massive loss in trust for you and the influencer. Disclose the relationship early in content featuring your company’s services or products to ensure audiences know that content is promoted.

Boost your campaigns with influencers

A social media influencer can be a very useful tool in your company’s PR toolkit, but you need to ensure you do things correctly with them so you don’t accidentally damage your online PR campaigns. The rewards for a successful partnership with a social media influencer can be well worth it, so give it a shot if your company has the budget to support it.

If you need help finding the right social media influencers for your company, we offer InfluencerInsights℠, a service that’ll help you connect with the right social media influencers.

Clients love Jacob’s speed. Jacob is an inbound marketing-certified webmaster. He earned an integrated communications degree from Florida State College at Jacksonville. Jacob joined Axia PR as an intern in August 2015 and earned his way into a critical role at our PR agency.