How do you align your brand voice and values with the influencer's style and tone?

This is so important. Take the time to review an influencer’s social feeds, watch them on video, listen to them in podcasts and read their written work. Don’t forget to also look at their comments and back and forth conversations. Think of your SMEs, your clients and broader audiences, will they find the influencer’s voice an extension of your brand? Share their work with your executives and SMEs who will be a part of the influencer programming to get their input first hand. This step is so important so that you begin to engage with influencers that you feel a connection with.

Know who you are talking to, whether they are an influencer or not, do your research because you can have a better conversation if you know your audience.

Aligning to an influencer’s content strategy is key. If you’re looking for someone to host your video series or be an SME on your video program, look for an influencer that focuses on video as s part of their content strategy. If you’re looking for someone to write a blog, look for me influencer that creates long form content etc. It is important that you align your goals to an influencer’s strengths and ways they have built their presence and connections with their audiences.

Define your overarching goals yes, example the focus is brand awareness. I recommend to then work with the influencer to collaborate and define sub goals/KPIs as they bring a lot of experience working with brands that you can benefit from and together set the program up up for success. If you’re working direct with an influencer definitely discuss payment straight away. Is it per click? Is it per activity? Or is it organic and ‘payment’ is through giving access to your executives and events, brand reach and other non monetary compensation? Document the agreement and how you will confirm the work has been completed.

Be clear up front who is building what. This is truly advantageous when you’re establishing a longer term project with an influencer, for short term transactional projects (which are not recommended), it’s often more efficient to have the brand team build any social cards for the influencer with their input and sign off. For longer term projects take the influencer through brand guidelines to empower them to create and then a simple review process. Consider also using a consistent hashtag across all their content so it’s easy to track and engage with.

There are ways to build a long-term relationship: 1. Focus on helping the other person. 2. Invest in their work. 3. Add value and follow-up.

This is so important! With a long term relationship you can onboard your influencer as a part of the team, to participate in strategy sessions, help build programs and have real skin in the game instead of just be executing. This also helps with the post activity debrief and to brainstorm on why something worked and something did not, course correct and evolve the next phase in collaboration. With a longer term engagement you can also start to build connections and relationships with company SMEs and the influencer and establish connections with your more active employee advocates. These relationships will extend beyond the project at hand too, and create greater reach and engagement for your brand.

Think of an influencer as high value advocate for your organization and less as a transaction to drive XYZ results. When you lead with this mindset, you build a real relationship with them and their loyalty and advocacy naturally extends beyond the engagement which means all their touch points with their audiences will be natural brand advocacy for you. And when your work together ends, they will authentically continue to engage with your SMEs and employees they’ve become friends with which in turn helps the brand

Make sure you choose the right influencer. It's essential to choose an influencer whose values align with your brand's values. You can research an influencer's past content and collaborations to get an idea of their style and tone and determine if they would be a good fit for your brand.