HOWEVER,

working with influencers can be complicated. What do you need to know about choosing the right influencer for your brand and putting together a successful campaign? Read on for our 5 best tips for working with influencers and getting them to successfully promote your events.

1. MAKE SURE THEY ARE A GOOD FIT

One of the most important things to consider when choosing an influencer for your brand is whether or not they’re a good fit. For example, if you’re planning an event in the tourism industry, it wouldn’t make sense to choose an influencer in the health and fitness niche. Instead, you want to choose someone whose personal brand reflects what your event (and company in general) is about.

It’s also important to make sure that the style and tone of the posts your influencer makes matches your brand’s voice. If the event is very formal, it may not make sense to work with an influencer who is known for being controversial or using swear words in their posts. However, if you’re hosting an event that is more casual or meant to be “disruptive,” that might be a good fit.

2. LOOK FOR ENGAGEMENT RATHER THAN NUMBERS

How do you determine which influencers are most effective? Engagement can be a more important metric than number of followers. An influencer with a huge following but few likes, comments or other signs of engagement won’t be as valuable as an influencer who actively connects with their followers.

You’ll want to have a good balance of clicks, likes and shares from your influencer campaign. You can actually do some simple math to figure out the “engagement rate” of an influencer. Here’s the formula, as explained by Scrunch:

Engagement Rate = Total Likes, Comments & Retweets / Followers / Number of Posts x 100

The average profile on Instagram has an engagement rate of around 2.7%, while the top-performing profiles can have an engagement rate of up to 17.8%. The higher the engagement rate, the more effective your influencer marketing campaign will be!

3. BE WARY OF FAKE FOLLOWERS

Unfortunately, in the world of online influencers not everything is as it seems. Some influencers buy their social media followers in order to appear more “influential” than they really are. You don’t want to be wasting your marketing budget on followers with no value. They won’t provide you with exposure, engagement or anything else they have promised. They also won’t provide you with the ROI you are looking for. If an influencer is willing to buy fake followers, you should also be concerned about them being dishonest or unethical in other aspects of their business.

So, how can you tell the difference between fake and real followers? There are number of ways you can tell, including comparing follower numbers against likes and looking for a high percentage of gibberish usernames. Here’s a guide with more information.

4. CONSIDER WORKING WITH MICRO-INFLUENCERS

When it comes to getting influencers to promote your event, consider working with a group of micro-influencers with between 1,000 and 10,000 followers. Sometimes these influencers can offer you better results than the larger influencers, especially if they have a very engaged audience.

Micro-influencers have a very close connection with their audience and and they have the ability to tell stories about your events that will make people eager to attend. Plus, they will often be much more cost effective to work with. You may be able to make your marketing budget stretch to cover working with several micro-influencers rather than one large one.

5. LET THE INFLUENCER DO THEIR THING

It’s one thing to work with micro-influencers, but it’s another thing to micro-manage them. When you are working with influencers, resist the urge to tell them exactly what to say about your event. There are a couple of reasons for this:

The influencer will enjoy posting about your event more when they are able to speak about it in their own words and express themselves as they see fit.The influencer will have the creative freedom to come up with unique ways to promote your event, which might be even better than the content you had planned.The post will be more effective, because the audience can tell when the influencer is speaking with honesty and authenticity. Posts that don’t fit their brand will look “fake” and won’t get high engagement.You can certainly give the influencer guidelines on what to say and what not to say about your event. Overall, however, you should leave the specifics of the message up to them. After all, their followers are loyal to them because of their unique way of speaking to their audience – so why not take advantage of that?

HOW WILL YOU PROMOTE YOUR NEXT EVENT?

These are just a few important tips for working with influencers and getting them to promote your events in an effective way. Influencers are a powerful way to promote your event, but they aren’t the only way. They are just one part of a complete marketing campaign for any event. There are many other ways you can get the word out, such as creating a hashtag for your event, using Facebook Live, hosting a contest, using direct messaging on LinkedIn and much more.

For more tips on promoting your event via social media, check out our post 25 Tips for Promoting Your Next Corporate Event on Social Media.Contact us