• by Maria Bailey , Columnist, August 28, 2024

It’s been almost a decade since the word “influencer” became a job title. With an estimated spend of $21 billion globally on influencer marketing, it’s surprising to see brands still making common mistakes that limit the effectiveness of this marketing tactic. Here’s a list of the most common mistakes marketing professionals make when it comes to engaging with influencers.

Confusing an influencer with a content creator -- they are not one and the same. Defining the purpose of a post will help you select the right person for the job.  An influencer provides a brand with access to a community or audience.  A content creator may or may not have a dedicated following, but elevated skills in creating aesthetically pleasing images.

If a brand intends to build a content library or use images on its feed, then a content creator is more aligned with these goals. Don’t miss out on great images by overlooking smaller accounts of content creators, who will typically provide more images per dollar than an influencer.

Putting greater weight on an influencer’s number of followers than on their engagement rate. Some influencers have been collecting followers for a decade, driving their follower counts into the millions. But are the relationships established 10 years ago still relevant today? Probably not all of them.

Nano- and micro-influencers with less than 50,000 followers often produce higher engagement rates by their followers than larger influencers with over 700,000 followers. Engagement matters more than follower counts in most instances.

Ignoring the value found by reading the comments on sponsored posts. Let’s face it, you paid the influencer for access to their community -- so why wouldn’t you want to hear the community’s feedback on your product?

Very few brands evaluate the comments on their sponsored posts. But not only do these comments hold interesting insights, they also validate the true engagement of the post.  All too often, brands learn that the influencer’s followers are more interested in his/her backdrop than your product. 

Paying for one-time posts rather than establishing a multi-month relationship. Social media followers expect to see sponsored posts -- but when the product shows up in a feed month after month, it demonstrates a sense of loyalty to the brand. Longer engagement with influencers should not only save the brand on budget, recruitment and screening, but also enhance the organic and authentic feel of the posts.

Ignoring the algorithms that control the reach and distribution of your influencer content.  No one really knows the secret science of Meta’s algorithms, but many influencers do know when their content performs the best.  Allowing your influencers to select when they post and the hashtags they use to maximize the reach of their content is good strategy in most cases.

Not every online community engages at the exact same time during the day or with the same type of content. It’s in your influencer’s best interest to produce results, so view them as a credible partner.

This post was previously published in an earlier edition of Marketing Insider.