4 Big Considerations When Working With Social Media Influencers

Influencer marketing should be part of your wider digital marketing strategy. It’s a clever way of taking someone’s existing influence and attaching your brand to it. The influencer does the promotional work for you, which helps you generate web traffic, secure sales, and so on. 

Before you start working with social media influencers, be sure to consider these four things to avoid a calamity: 

Clarify Usage Rights & Content Ownership

Be clear from the outset who owns any content the influencer creates for your brand, and always how it can be used. This is a core problem in many social media influencer partnerships because brands aren’t always upfront about things, so influencers complain or try to take legal action when their content gets reused after a partnership finishes. 

Avoid any complications by being honest and getting the usage rights & ownership details in writing. It is also handy to have the contact details of an expert witness in social media, just in case the influencer tries to take legal action. The witness can prove that you’ve done nothing wrong and aren’t in breach of the pre-determined usage/ownership rights. 

Conduct A Full Background Check

Don’t slip up by securing partnerships with influencers who will end up damaging your brand. The moment you use them for content, they become an extension of your company. Ergo, people associate your brand with them - and this means the things they do will reflect back on your business. 

As a consequence, conduct full background checks on social media influencers before partnering with them. Ensure they don’t have a dodgy past and check to see if they align with your brand values. To give you a really simple example, imagine your business sells vegan clothing, but you’ve partnered with someone who hunts in their spare time. Not a great fit, so some background research avoids a massive incident. 

Create Genuine Legal Contracts With Expectations

Draw up legitimate contracts for social media influencers to outline all expectations, rights, etc. Don’t secure a partnership by messaging them on Instagram or sending an email. They should sign a contract that sets out what they need to do as part of the partnership - along with what happens if they don’t deliver. 

Focus On The Influencer’s Engagement 

Influencer marketing focuses on people, not just platforms. With that in mind, you need to find influencers with good engagement metrics. What good is a follower count if the influencers get hardly any comments or don’t interact with their audience? It is better to pick a smaller influencer with a more active and engaged audience because they’re more likely to be influenced. So, stop wasting money on the big fish because you see a high follower count and assume that means they’re a good fit. 

Basically, you should be in a position where all the legal obligations and rights are outlined for the influencer to see, their brand aligns with yours, and they have an engaged audience. Then it’s a case of signing on the dotted line and relaxing. The influencer has legally agreed to commit to this partnership, so there shouldn’t be any problems that can’t be solved instantly.