Let’s face it, old school, traditional marketing is dead. Consumers are too smart to be wooed by scripts. Instead of the feel-good factor, consumers crave transparency. We’re officially in the era of influencers, and they are experts in engaging with their online communities. A well-executed influencer marketing campaign will increase brand awareness, grow reach, and drive sales. It’s time to experience these influencer marketing benefits for yourself.

What Is Influencer Marketing 

The nfluencer marketing industry may still be a budding, but the art of influence is as old s time. The foundatios of influencer marketing are built on trust and relationship- two things that have always been vital to mankind. This dates back as far as prehistoric times, when primal humans depended on the knowledge and influence of their alpha leaders to guide them to food and safety. This still happens today, although the the conversation is happening virtually. Social media is the online party that everyone’s invited to, and 4.59 billion people are showing up on these online platforms. 

More specifically, influencer marketing is a form of word-of-mouth marketing where brands hire social media creators who have expertise and influence in specific areas to talk about the various benefits of the brand’s offerings..

If you want to learn more about the ins and outs of influencer marketing in detail check out our article, “What Is Influencer Marketing.” 

Is the Industry All That And a Bag of Chips? 

It’s easy to see celebrities or top influencers repping certain brands and question whether it impacts consumer behavior.What’s the catch? Is this industry legit? Or,does it leave more to be desired??

The influencer marketing industry is like one of those magic water growing toys where you just don’t think it can get any bigger, but then it does. It was valued at $13.8 billion at the end of 2021, a steep incline from  $4.6 billion in 2018. 

Like the classically nostalgic toy, the industry continues to grow and is predicted to exceed $24 billion by 2025. The influencer marketing benefits are irrefutable and irresistible. 

The ROI for influencer marketing is $5.78for every dollar spent. Returns like these shows us that influencer marketing benefits (and revenue) have the potential to be uncapped for both brands, and the influencers they parter with.

Influencer Marketing Hub reports that a jaw-dropping 90 percent of their respondents believe it to be effective, and 72 percent believe they receive higher quality customers with influencer marketing campaigns. 

93 percent of marketers are already use Instagram to grow their brands- and for good reason. This growth is universal asplatforms like TikTok or Twitch are gaining more attention from big brands as a place to maximize the benefits of influencer marketing. 

One of the reasons why influencer marketing is growing so quickly is because it levels the playing field. t’s not just celebrities and big brands that are capitalizing on the effectiveness of  this sector. Small businesses and micro-influencers are starting to lead the charge as the industry continues to grow into ‘all that’ and many more bags of chips. Check out these influencer marketing statistics for a deeper dive into the influencer marketing world. 

Top 3 Benefits of Influencer Marketing 

We know that there many more than 3 influencer marketing benefits, these are the ones that are making the biggest waves. 

Influencers Are Large and in Charge 

We entered the influencer era because influencers are the ones that the world is looking to. Consumers are starting to prioritize them over celebrities and beyond. 

Consumer purchase intent went up 5.2X for influencer content like a tweet, compared to that of a brand’s at 2.7X. Social media users are listening to influencers and care about what they eat, wear, say, and consume. 

Forbes wrote that “92 percent of consumers trust an influencer more than an advertisement or celebrity endorsement. It’s not about follower count, or celebrity status.-consumers care most about authenticity. 

The benefits of influencer marketing are propelled bythe influencers. They are the experts in engaging youraudience. Because of their ability to inspire action and create high-quality content, they remain the driving force for winning campaigns. 

It’s a widely accepted belief that success leaves clues.  This is true in every part of the life (including the marketing process). Check out these influencer marketing best practices that are sure to give your campaigns an edge. 

Effective Targeting That Works 

A niche influencer is someone that creates content for or about a specific area of interest. For example, vegan oatmeal recipes or iPhone photo editing hacks would be niche topics on social media. 

Just as you create customer personas for your brand, influencer accounts are rich in specific groups of people that you’re looking to appeal to. You can get a taste of the benefits of niche marketing and finally start meeting your perfect customers. 

Instead of casting a wide net with print media or other traditional formats, influencer marketing offers more precision as you can find your ideal consumers and share your message through a person they already know and trust. 

More Time and Cost Effective

Influencer marketing is fast and affordable on multiple fronts. 

Production is more budget-friendly as you outsource it to influencers that include this in their fees. While this can still be a sizable expense, it’s not as big as hiring out your own photoshoots or hiring celebrities. Many influencers will also work for free products, especially micro-influencers, making your budget negotiable. 

While a traditional commercial may seem like a wise marketing choice, they’re often expensive, take longer to go live, and are skipped by tech-savvy consumers. Over 42 percent of internet users claim to use an ad blocker. However, consumers welcome influencer content and actually seek it out, making it a must for your influencer marketing campaign. 

While a lot of influencer marketing is transactional or a one-time exchange, long-term partnerships can extend the influencer marketing benefits for both parties. It’s a sustainable approach that may involve frequent collaborations with an influencer that results in a wide range of content and general promotion all-year round. 

And, above all, this influencer marketing benefit results in higher return because interest and engagement are just higher. The people want influencer content, so meet them where they’re at. 

Top 3 Objections to Influencer Marketing 

Just as there are so many influencer marketing benefits, there are also some caveats or disadvantages of influencer marketing.

Influencer Selection Can Make or Break You

Finding influencers that align with your brand is everything. Thirty-four percent of brands struggle to find influencers. It’s hard to navigate the various platforms and find the ones that match your brand, while also avoiding the “fake” accounts. Yes, Tinder isn’t the only place you can get catfished. 

For many, hiring out a third-party to take care of this can optimize your time and energy, which is where we would come in and pair you with your influencer soulmates. 

“The Agency’s Technical Guide to Influencer Selection,” is another great resource for looking deeper into the qualitative and quantitative data that accompanies influencer selection. 

Management and Tracking Takes Work

Tracking and staying on top of influencer marketing is no easy task. Each influencer has varying levels of experience, professionalism, or styles when it comes to how they want to work with you or showcase your brand. 

Fifty percent of marketers struggle to manage everything from deadlines to contracts within an influencer campaign. Surprisingly,  33 percent don’t even bother measuring their influencer marketing ROI. 

Social media platforms and different softwares are making it easier to track and manage influencer marketing campaigns. However, many still struggle with analyzing and staying in front of the data as they measure the benefits of influencer marketing. 

Lack of Forethought and Goal-Setting Will Hurt You 

While many want to jump right to finding the influencers for their marketing campaign, it’s not that simple. There’s a lot more that goes into an influencer marketing strategy. 

Your marketing goals should be a guide for your selection process whether that be the influencer, platform, or type of content. You want to create a solid foundation at the start to ensure you know what your desired outcomes are so you can review and adjust your efforts along the way to receive all of the benefits of influencer marketing. 

Get your frequently asked questions about influencer marketing answered and learn more about common pitfalls or concerns when it comes to the industry. 

What Else Should You Know About Running Influencer Campaigns? 

Influencer marketing can transform a brand. This symbiotic relationship between influencer and brand has the ability to revolutionize reach, engagement, profit, and more. There are many pros and cons of influencer marketing to keep in mind as you build your strategy. 

Remember that authenticity reigns supreme. Video is what consumers want. User-generated content (UGC) is your best friend. And, influencer selection is critical to your campaign’s success. 

Staying up to date with trends or platform algorithms isn’t easy. Selection, tracking, and managing your campaigns may prove to be a challenge, but ultimately worth it in the end. Trial and error can be devastatingly expensive. Tap in with a great agency with a pool of influencers that specialize in different niches across multiple platorms. Don’t be afraid of a trial and error approach.

In this multi-billion dollar industry, the influencer marketing benefits far outweigh the potential obstacles you may face. It’s time to take to influencer marketing to give your brand the boost it needs to thrive.

Reaping that ROI

Are you positioning your brand to get the best ROI on its ad dollars? Every brand reaches the point when influencer marketing no longer becomes optional if it wants to stay relevant. Has your brand reached that point in it’s growth? Need help deciding? Schedule a strategy call!

The post So, What Exactly ARE the Benefits of Influencer Marketing? appeared first on The Shelf Full-Service Influencer Marketing.

Did you know there are dozens of KPIs influencer marketing uses? You can use them to measure the effectiveness of your influencer marketing campaigns. No matter what type of campaign you’re running, or what industry you’re in, there’s a KPI that will help you gauge its success. 

In this super-duper-ultra-valuable listicle, we’ll outline some of the most powerful KPIs for influencer marketing campaign performance. We’ll also provide tips on how to track them effectively. You’ll learn everything you need to know to start tracking and monitoring your campaigns’ success.

What Are the KPIs for Influencer Marketing?

Before we dive in, let’s quickly review what influencer KPIs are, and why they’re important. An influencer marketing KPI is a way to measure and track the success of your company’s various marketing channels. They help you make decisions about which areas need more attention, as well as whether or not they’re performing at an acceptable level compared to other companies within similar industries.

A key performance indicator (KPI) may be defined simply: It Indicates how well your campaign is going. But these numbers can also show us if there’s anything that needs fixing so we know how to improve.

1. Engagement Rate

Engagement rate is an important influencer marketing KPI. The engagement rate is the number of people who engage with your content divided by the number of people who see it. Engagement can include likes, comments, shares, and clicks. This KPI measures how well your content is performing and how interested your audience is in it.

Establishing and maintaining engagement with your audience is key to the success of any brand. It builds relationships, relevance, and loyalty among customers while also being a good barometer for how well-received your content is.

You’ll want to confirm that you’re speaking to your ideal demographic and that they are engaged with what you have to say. People who engage with your content demonstrate that they not only see your content but also find it interesting. This means they want others to know about you too. A high engagement rate is proof of the success of your brand.

Maintaining a good engagement rate on social media is vital for any business, and most experts agree that this percentage should fall between one to five percent. The number of the influencer’s followers doesn’t matter as much as the quality of your content.

When seeking out potential influencers to collaborate with, always consider both their engagement rate and reach. An influencer whose followers are fewer in number but highly engaged will be more effective for promoting your brand than one whose following is large but uninvolved.

To improve this influencer marketing KPI, be sure to post content with strong visuals, an interesting headline, and a call to action. Also, consider the time of day you’re posting. Experiment with different times and see when you get the most engagement.

ProTip: Geotagged Instagram posts see 79 percent more engagement than those without location tagging.

2. Reach

Influencer reach is their total number of followers, AKA the number of people you could potentially engage with your content. Reach can be measured for individual pieces of content or your overall account. Reach is a good way to measure the potential impact of your content and to see how far it is spreading.

To be successful, you should track how many people were reached with your campaign and whether any new prospects became aware of the brand as a result. You can also look at your last campaign to determine context for success or failure in comparison to previous efforts.

Improving this influencer marketing KPI could be as simple as working with influencers who have a large social media following. Again, don’t forget that influencer quality is more important than quantity. The goal is to create brand advocates.

Always focus on creating high-quality content that’s shareable and interesting so that people will want to spread the word about your brand.

Instagram may be the way to go if you’re looking to increase reach. In terms of paid social media reach, Instagram is currently outpacing Facebook. Facebook’s global advertising only grew by 6.5 percent this year, whereas Instagram more than tripled that at a 20.5 percent increase.

Another easy way to expand reach is to post at the right times. By scheduling your social media content to post during the most active times of day for each specific network, you’re much more likely to engage with your followers.

3. Impressions

Reach and impressions are sometimes confused, but these KPIs for influencer marketing are not as similar as they seem. The total number of people who see your content is classified as reach, while impressions are the number of times your content is displayed (with or without engagement).

Every time a user views one of your posts, it is counted as an impression. So if the same user views one post three times, that would count as three Impressions and one reach. If you have a higher Instagram impression rate than reach, it means people are watching your content multiple times!

The way different social platforms count impressions and reach can vary, so be sure to analyze your results from different social media platforms carefully as there can be subtle variations when measuring this influencer marketing KPI.

Impressions can be measured for individual pieces of content or your overall account. This is a good way to measure how often your content is being seen and to track its reach over time.

Impressions data can be used to understand how often people are seeing your content, which can help you make decisions about frequency and budget, and increase your brand’s visibility.

4. Conversions

Conversions are the number of times people take the desired action after seeing your content. They can be anything from signing up for a newsletter to making a purchase. Conversions are a good way to measure how effective your content is at achieving your goals.

By utilizing influencer marketing, you can greatly expand your potential customer base by growing a follower list of people who might buy from you down the line. However, an influencer KPI that shouldn’t be overlooked is conversion rates — how many leads are we getting each month and closing?

Conversions are one of the most useful KPIs for influencer marketing because they measure how effective influencers are at driving people to take the desired action. 42.3 percent of brands determine the success of an influencer marketing campaign by measuring conversions and sales.

There are a few ways to make sure that your campaign smashes your conversion goals. First, influencers should be as relevant to your brand as possible. Their audience should also be highly skilled at creating content that doesn’t distract from the CTA. This keeps followers engaged and focused, which means they’re more likely to take the desired action.

It’s also important to make sure that your influencer’s call to action is clear and concise. The more specific you can be, the better. Campaigns with a clear, personalized call-to-action convert more than twice as well as those without one.

If you’re directing your audience to a website, ensuring that it’s mobile-optimized is key. About 60 percent of internet traffic now comes from mobile devices. Make sure that your website loads quickly and that buttons and links are easy to find and click on a small screen.

5. Sentiment

In influencer marketing, sentiment means the emotion that an influencer’s posts evoke in their audience. A high sentiment score means that the influencer’s posts mostly create positive, enthusiastic emotions in their audiences like happiness, approval, or satisfaction.

A low sentiment score is a very telling influencer marketing KPI. It means that the influencer’s posts are mostly negative and evoke sad, angry, or frustrated emotions in their audience. Neutral sentiment is associated with things that are neither good nor bad, like facts or statements of opinion.

Sentiment exists whether your audience is online or offline. High inflation and gas prices caused the consumer sentiment index to drop from 58.4 in May 2022 to 50.2 in June 2022, which is the lowest level on record since November 1952.

It’s important to track sentiment because it can be a good indicator of the overall tone and relationship that an influencer has with their audience. Monitoring this metric also allows you to measure public opinion, offer a better customer experience, and if the need arises, quickly spring into damage control mode.

Some drawbacks to sentiment analysis exist. It’s difficult for AI and algorithms to determine the tone of the text it’s trying to analyze. Misspellings, sarcasm, punctuation, and even emojis can cause problems for sentiment analysis. Contrastive conjunctions can also complicate analysis. This is when two different sentiments are given in the same statement like “Standing in the long line was horrible, but I loved riding Splash Mountain.”

6. Referral Traffic

The next influencer marketing KPI on our list is referral traffic. Referral traffic measures the number of visitors that come to your website from an influencer’s blog or social media profile.

Referral traffic is a valuable metric because it shows you how effectively an influencer is driving users to your website. If an influencer has a large amount of referral traffic, it’s a good indication that their followers are interested in what you have to offer.

To track referral traffic from influencers, you can use Google Analytics. Simply set up a campaign tracking code for each influencer and then check the Referrals report to see how much traffic they’re sending your way. Google has announced that Universal Analytics will no longer process new data in standard properties beginning July 1, 2023. It is advising all users to switch over to Google Analytics 4 as soon as possible.

Over the last few years, Google has worked hard to improve the search experience for users. This includes returning more accurate and relevant results, as well as getting rid of any intermediaries who use techniques that try to cheat the system. As a result, organic search traffic is up. Still, it only accounts for 53 percent of traffic. This means there are still endless opportunities for influencers to help you reach your target audience.

7. ROI (Return On Investment)

ROI is a measure of how much money you make from an influencer campaign compared to how much you spend. For example, if you spend $1,000 on an influencer campaign and it generates $10,000 in sales, your ROI would be 10X or 1,000 percent.

ROI or return on investment is an important metric because it allows you to see how effective your influencer campaign is at driving revenue. If you’re not seeing a good ROI from your influencer campaigns, it’s time to reassess your strategy.

You can also use ROI to compare the performance of different influencer campaigns. For example, if you have two influencers with similar numbers of followers, but one has a higher ROI than the other, you know which influencer is more effective and worth working with again in the future.

Influencer marketing currently gives you the best ROI of all digital marketing channels.

If you’re like the 28.1 percent of brands that run campaigns in-house, you feel that measuring campaign results can be a daunting task, but have no fear! The Shelf is here to help you navigate the ins and outs of your influencer campaign KPIs.

8. CTR (Click-Through Rate)

CTR compares the number of clicks an online ad receives to its number of impressions, or how often the ad was seen.

Click-through rates (CTRs) are an important part of pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns. A high CTR is an indication that your influencer’s followers are interested in what you have to offer and are more likely to convert into customers because the content was relevant enough to keep them engaged throughout the entire process.

On TikTok, the CTR for Take-Over ads hovers between seven and ten percent, and TopView ads skyrocket CTRs up to 16 percent. This means that the platform’s audience is usually active and responsive, which is excellent news for brands trying to promote their content.

Measuring your click-through rate is simple. Divide the number of clicks your ad received by the number of times it was seen, or the number of impressions. For example, if your ad was seen 10,000 times and received 100 clicks, your CTR would be one percent.

LocaliQ just released their 2022 Search Advertising Benchmarks for Every Industry Report. Quite a few of the industries it analyzed saw a very high average CTR. Arts and entertainment sit at 11.43 percent and travel at 9.19 percent. That’s a big deal because the average CTR for Google Ads is 3.17 percent.

Every industry listed not only outperforms that data but puts the average across all industries in the six to seven percent range. Keep in mind though the data includes both Google Ads and Bing Ads, which could also account for higher CTRs. Need more inspiration? Read about how we got this smart lighting company over 3.5 times higher CTR than the industry standard will help tip the scales. We don’t mean to toot our own horn, but um… Beep Beep!

9. CPC (Cost-Per-Click)

CPC measures how much it costs to get someone to click on an influencer’s post. The advertiser pays the publisher each time an ad is clicked. The Cost-Per-Click is determined by taking the overall cost of your clicks and dividing it between the total number of clicks. Your average CPC will depend on your actual cost-per-click.

This metric shouldn’t be taken lightly. Marketers should take CPC into account, as it indicates how much a brand pays for its paid advertising campaigns. Marketers’ goals should be to reduce the cost per click while simultaneously increasing clicks from high-quality prospects/patrons.

The average amount paid for each click on an ad is known as CPC. A high number of clicks or visits to an ad indicates that the audience is interested in the product or service.

So, How does CPC work? Great question! The cost-per-click of an ad on a website or popular keyword is determined by how much advertisers are willing to pay for that placement. The more demand there is for a particular keyword in the auction, and the better the ad placement (such as appearing higher up on a webpage), the higher those costs will be.

The smaller the number, the better! When a brand has a low CPC, it means that its ads are high-value but relatively cheap. A perfect example of this is when we achieved a CPC of $0.14 for a global footwear retailer. Is this a big deal? Nah. It’s HUGE. Especially when you consider that the average CPC in the apparel/fashion industry is $2.66.  

Are You Ready To Have Your Mind Blown? 

After reading this ridiculously valuable listicle, you now know nine influencer marketing KPIs that are essential to measuring the success of your influencer campaigns. Fully maximizing these Powerful Influencer Marketing KPIs is the only thing that stands between you, and the success of your campaign. By understanding and utilizing these KPIs, you can fine-tune your influencer marketing strategy to ensure that it is as effective as possible.

This is a lot to take in. We get it, and we’re here to help. Our team of marketing geeks, ninjas, geniuses, and wizards (yes, there are levels to this) can help you develop and implement an influencer marketing strategy that is tailored to your specific needs and goals. Book a strategy call, and let us wow you with our mad influencer marketing skills!

About This Author

Lira Stone | Effective, Magnetic Strategist

For over a decade, my focus has been ensuring that professionals stay ahead of the curve in the most time-efficient, task-prioritized, and stress-free manner possible. My extensive experience has equipped me with the knowledge to design a concise, company-culture-relevant, methodical approach to internet sales and marketing.

The post 9 Powerful Influencer Marketing KPIs appeared first on The Shelf Full-Service Influencer Marketing.

At The Shelf, our creative strategists and content teams document the industry changes that happen in the influencer marketing space on a daily basis. First thing in the morning, we share news, developments, new platform features, and tech news in one of our Slack channels before cataloging those changes in a spreadsheet that we can all access. We know from experience that it’s not easy keeping up with the constant changes.

Why Influencer Marketing Trends for 2023 Matter So Much

The end of the year is always action-packed for brands, marketers, and many influencers. As you focus on rolling out and optimizing your holiday influencer campaigns, you are simultaneously analyzing the results to inform your influencer marketing budget for next year. Even as you zero in on what’s working for you now, it’s super important to keep up to date on changes happening across all the potential marketing channels on which you may post influencer content.

So, we’ve compiled a list of 18 key influencer marketing trends that will impact your 2023 campaigns (and your creative assets, and your influencer marketing budgets, and the contracts, and your ROI).

Let’s talk a bit about some of the features, content, technology, and user tendencies we anticipate will roll out and catch on in the next 18 months. Take a gander, comment below, hit us up on social, whatever. Let us know which influencer marketing trend is kinda your jam right now. These trends definitely have the potential to shape the future of influencer marketing so you don’t want to ignore them.

What Will Influencer Marketing Look Like in 2023? Here Are the Top Influencer Marketing Trends

#1: Audio-first channels will become even more important.

Our first set of influencer marketing trends is all about leveraging those audio-first channels. Last year, we predicted that podcast influencers will crop up in more and more influencer marketing campaigns. #NailedIt

Non-music audio has exploded as a format for consuming content. Notable growth happened during the global pandemic when work commutes vanished for months in 2020. As people flocked to podcasts to find content to keep them entertained and occupied during lockdowns, more influencers and content creators began adding audio as a medium for reaching their own audiences.

Between 2017 and 2021,  the percentage of monthly podcast listeners among 12-to-34 years old grew from 27 percent to 49 percent. There are now more weekly podcast listeners than Netflix account holders. And podcast ad spend hit $800 million in 2020 on a sprint to more than double to $1.7 billion by 2024.

Partnering with podcast influencers affords brands the chance to get their name and products in front of well-informed, high-income consumers, 94 percent of whom are active on at least one social media channel, and 54 percent of whom have thought about buying a product they hear promoted on a podcast.

Veritonic, an audio analytics platform, has added brand lift data to audio campaigns to help brands analyze the effectiveness of specific pieces of audio content. Veritonic’s move to build more robust measurement tools will drive tons more brands to create content and roll out partnerships on audio-only platforms.

As it relates to influencer marketing trends, running campaigns on Clubhouse became a common question for us in 2021. But other social media platforms have added audio functionality, too.

With more brands marketing to audio listeners and better analytics tools available, brands will be able to know for sure if sponsoring podcasts with nano influencers delivers better brand awareness results than partnering with micro influencers or other influencers who have larger followings.

#2: Creators are brands.

Any marketer worth their salt already understands something that is downright critical to seeing creator marketing in the right light – influencers are brands. Brands don’t hire influencers as employees; brands partner with influencers.

Last year, we talked a bit about the nuances we expected to see in how influencers negotiated contracts – with a more critical eye, with more confidence about the value they bring. We predicted that establishing those mutually-beneficial influencer partnerships would take more time, require more vigorous influencer outreach, and require a larger investment from brands. Totally true.

In 2023, expect to not only see more influencers position themselves as valuable brands, but we’ll also see brands stand up entire departments devoted to providing their influencer partners with tons of resources, education, and monetization opportunities. Why? Because it’s become evident, especially in the last two years, that though influencers are typically smaller brands than their brand partners, they are well-established brands.

#3: Equality and inclusion are now requisite for campaigns.

In 2020, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) become a conversation brands could no longer avoid having. It was referred to as a Reckoning, which is apropos. DEI is a necessary policy for brands to install and update, not through the lens of quotas and earmarks, but with the understanding that nearly half of Millennials and Gen Zs identify as racial or ethnic minorities. That’s a truth many industry leaders and political leaders in their 60s, 70s, and 80s frequently miss.

Influencers and consumers are analyzing brands to make sure marketing messages, campaign creative, influencer partners, and even a brand’s employees and agencies of record are actively working to create inclusive cultures.

In recent years, brands have been taken to task by influencers who published the fees brands paid them as a way to shine a light on the pay inequalities that happen behind the scenes in the influencer industry. White influencers were consistently paid more for comparable work than Black influencers who had audiences of similar sizes.

Another Instagram-based campaign that served to spark tons of conversation around racial inequality was #ShareTheMicNow in which influencers of color took over the Instagram accounts of well-known White celebrities to reach larger audiences. Pretty epic.

Equality trends in influencer marketing continue to be a hot-button issue and not something we expect to change come 2023. Or ever.

#4: More monetization opportunities for creators

When we initially predicted this back in 2021, this was something a few social platforms were doing. But now monetization (and the features that make content more visible and accounts monetizable) is the carrot social media platforms hang in the faces of creators to get them to come to their platforms and to stay on their platforms.

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We thought it would be cool for platforms to start some sort of licensing program for creators, even if it’s just a buck or two, that allows choreographers to be paid for their creations every time someone tags a video with a challenge or dance they created.

This one is all about making sure ALL creators have a chance to reap tangible, financial benefits from their creative endeavors. You’ve probably already heard about the controversy that was sparked when Jimmy Fallon invited White TikToker Addison Rae onto his NBC late-night show to demonstrate all the most popular TikTok dances.

When none of the original creators of the challenges Rae demonstrated on network TV were mentioned or credited during the broadcast, Rae’s appearance sparked a conversation-debate-argument-rage monster around cultural appropriation. The Renegade Challenge, in particular, was the creation of Jalaiah Harmon, an African American teenager from Atlanta.

We like our idea better, but this is a start towards equality in influencer marketing.

#5: Live shopping will become a regular part of social commerce and the influencer marketing.

Since being credited with the creation of the Renegade Challenge, Harmon has partnered with several large brands including Prada, and has been featured in Teen Vogue, The New York Times, Oprah Daily, CNN, ABC, and a host of media outlets that were finally paying attention.

This is an influencer marketing trend we’ve seen really taking hold in recent years. In fact, we’ve created posts around social commerce and content 100% shoppable. Social media platforms are pushing for QVC-styled live shopping experiences. Both Facebook and Instagram rolled out live shopping features this year designed to streamline and boost social commerce.

Amazon and Pinterest offer similar features that allow brands to partner with influencers who are great at creating engaging live streams. This has to be one of our favorite influencer marketing trends, and definitely one with the most immediate impact on influencer marketing campaign ROI.

#6: Using real-time posts and live content as community builders.

Beyond just shopping, consumers are searching for more content in real-time, not just pre-recorded content. We talked about this a bit in our post on YouTube user trends.

Pandemic-fueled lockdowns gave rise to live video content in which viewers were urged to participate in synchronized activities. We’re talking about everything from studying with the Lo-Fi girl to watching concerts to family game nights, and even things like weekly worship services.

Influencers have been going live on YouTube and Facebook for a while. TikTok recently added a new “LIVE” feature that allows users to live stream and interact with their followers’ comments/questions in real-time.

Pinterest TV is still relatively new, but it’s popular among the foodies, gardening lovers, religious circles, and beauty influencers.

Real-time content is one of the biggest influencer marketing trends for 2023 and beyond because it’s something we continue to see picking up steam.

#7: Content creators will add longer versions of micro video content to their arsenal.

TikTok now offers its users to create videos up to 10 minutes in length. This is a huge shift from the 60-second max, quick-tempo speed that brought about the app’s popularity. But longer content allows users to share more in-depth entertainment and add a little depth to their storytelling. This influencer marketing trend continues to move people away from traditional forms of entertainment.

Instagram has already made the switch to longer video content versus photo sharing and short clips, and TikTok now allows users to post videos up to 10 minutes long.

#8: The focus on user experience will extend to social platforms.

We want it all, and we want it all in one place. In 2021, Instagram introduced out-of-the-box features that push the platform toward being a more all-encompassing app.

In August 2021 Insta added an “audio” feature that allows users to search, sample, and save songs to use in future content. Instagram also introduced a map search in September 2021. The map search serves as a business directory that allows users to find different businesses like restaurants, bars, event centers, coffee shops, etc.

When a business is selected, Instagram provides more information about that business such as pricing, hours, products/services, contact information, reviews, and more. The goal is to get users to spend more time on the app, and we totally expect other platforms to follow suit with similar capabilities.

#9: Social commerce will be officially a one-stop shopping channel.

You would be hard-pressed to find a social platform that did not offer shoppable features. Over the past few years, all of the major social platforms have installed social commerce features that create seamless, new shopping experiences for consumers. And it’s pretty cool, too: users get AI-driven personalizations that show them the products they are most likely to buy. products can be tagged in posts, users can snap pics of things they see out in the wild and find similar products on social and visual search platforms… it’s a great time to be a consumer with a smart phone.

According to The 2022 Future Shopper Report from Wunderman Thompson, 53 percent of the consumers polled said they’re planning to spend more social commerce this year, 56 percent said they prefer to be able to buy from brands without ever having to leave the social platform.

These little tweaks make it easier than ever for consumers to find product information and purchase directly from the post. 

#10: Consumers will continue to prefer brands with a soul.

Just a little early 2000s vampire humor for you (specifically thinking about Angelus from Buffy the Vampire Slayer and its spinoff, Angel). But for years, consumers have been increasingly picky about how they spend money and who they spend their money with. Nearly 7 in 10 consumers (68 percent) expect brands to be clear and vocal about their values, and 54 percent expect brands to take an active role in conversations around social issues.

As we saw in 2021, social media influencers possess remarkable sway when it comes to starting those important conversations, and brands that don’t demonstrate consistency between what they say, what they do, and how they behave internally (corporate culture) can quickly find themselves the subject of very public scrutiny. In 2022, the influencer marketing industry saw this hit even stronger.

From campaigns like #BLM and #MeToo, to personal activist accounts to advocate for the environment, key influencers have used their social media content to recruit people to their cause and effect significant change.

#11: Experiential marketing will be the new luxury experience.

Influencer-promoted and influencer-attended live events are a great way to boost visibility and create a host of loyal fans. Experiential marketing allows audiences who may be curious about a brand or product to interact with a brand in a real-world situation.

Experiential marketing (aka engagement marketing) now ranks as one of the top five marketing strategies brands are leveraging, according to HubSpot.

It takes many forms: Pop-ups, co-branding events (we did this with our client DXV by coordinating events with world-renowned design expert (and celeb influencer) Nate Berkus), product demos, product sampling, tours, conferences, classes/workshops, AR/VR, and even metaverse activations.

Think of Apple Stores – customers get plenty of time to interact with devices, play games, click through apps,  and experience the value and utility of the devices. The result? They basically convince themselves that they NEED the phone, tablet, or computer.

#12: Nonprofits rely on social media platforms to drive donations.

Another really cool influencer marketing trend for 2023 is likely to be something most of us never really think about – social giving. But despite the global pandemic leading to an economic downturn, other events that happened in 2020 impacted donation trends in a positive way. If you spent any time on Instagram last year, you may have noticed all kinds of asks – micro-influencers encouraging their followers to patronize local businesses, socially aware real-life influencers sharing donation links to allow their followers to donate to legal funds to help arrested protestors, grocery stores asking customers to “round up” their purchases to support social programs.

What many nonprofits got incontrovertible truth of last year is that creating a platform-based social movement can:

• boost brand awareness (and positively impact brand mentions)
• facilitate deeper connections with their audiences
• drive website traffic, and
• increase donations

Statistics show that there has been an increase in funds allocated to non-profit organizations, including those to aid in the COVID-19. Not only have more people donated, but those donors are also donating more money.

There is speculation that donation trends will drop again as things get better, but nonprofits can implement social media strategies and a click-focused influencer marketing strategy to mitigate this trend! Reaching out to new donors by partnering with internet celebrities, as well as nano and micro-influencers who are talented storytellers.

Organizations can recruit influencers who will help them remind donors just how helpful and impactful their donation was, and encourage them to donate again in the future.

#13: More and more and more and more collabs.

The writing has gone from being on the wall to this one to basically being in the app already. Apps are moving toward enabling multiple accounts to work together to reach audiences, share audiences, share engagement numbers. Instagram has rolled out a nice set of features to help brands amplify branded content through influencer collaborations that can be successfully promoted to targeted audiences as influencer collaborations.

So, we tapped our Strategy team to find out the latest from Instagram:

Collabs. Lets users co-author posts and Reels so that content can reach bigger, untapped audiences.

Add Yours. Allows users to add their own pictures to someone else’s Instagram Stories.

Instagram Reels Play Bonuses. Opportunities for creators to earn money directly from Facebook and Instagram for creating content that their communities love. Creators can make money based on the number of plays their Reel gets. The amount of money earned is based on the performance of the reel and the total number of reels produced.

You’ll select the Reels Play bonus from the Bonuses page and tag the reel within 24 hours. You’re then paid out on all Reels that receive at least 1,000 views over a 30-day period.

Branded Content Partnerships (being tested). This includes a new partnership message folder in the primary inbox, brands can filter through the creator’s details (using Instagram data), like their follower count, location, gender, and age range.  Brands will be able to use data and unique filters to discover and select the best creators for their campaigns. Creators can add brands they’re interested in working with to a “preferred brands list.” 

 

 

 

 

 

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A post shared by Adam Mosseri (@mosseri)

#14: Familiar audio, music, and TV shows being used to connect with audiences.

We have never been so engrossed in music. No matter where we turn audio features are being added to social platforms like crazy. Advertisers are starting to look to streaming and trending audio clips to talk to their audiences. Between TikTok, Spotify, IG Reels, Twitter Spaces, Clubhouse, etc. there are tons of options for brands looking to loop audio platforms into their social media marketing strategies. And yeah… this is the way to go if you want to reach younger buyers. Quality content is all about connecting, right?

Spotify stepped into the viral audio world in a unique way. Seeing an opportunity to help connect advertisers with Spotify users and capitalize on their dedicated audience base, Spotify launched their “All Ears On You” campaign, a B2B campaign that – get this – uses neuroscience to help advertisers understand how to reach their target audiences BASED ON the type of audio content they’re consuming.

#BOOM

Burger King hopped on this audio trend recently with its “Questions” ad.

For those who don’t see the big deal (since it basically looks like a regular Burger King commercial), TikTok users will instantly recognize the song as “The Magic Bomb (Questions I Get Asked)” by Hoàng Read. The song’s super popular on TikTok.

Earlier this week, Snapchat announced a second partnership with NBC Universal to allow users to grab audio clips (famous quotes and theme music) from different NBC properties – we’re talking SNL, 40-Year-Old Virgin, Saved by the Bell, 30 Rock, The Office, Shrek, Despicable Me, Seinfeld, The Cosby Show, Friends… #RedRoss #WeWereOnABreak #Pivot

Earlier this year, Snapchat inked a similar deal with Universal to allow users access to the company’s massive library of music.

#15: A rise in ongoing partnerships between brands and influencers.

Influencer selection is such a pain in the neck for brands, and the nuances of influencer contracts will make it tougher to grab up influencers easily for campaigns. So, we expect to see a noticeable rise in ambassadorships and influencer partnerships that go beyond one-off sponsored posts.

Creating content is time-intensive for many brands. And while it’s easy-ish to get access to a content creator, finding one that can create value-driven content that resonates with the specific segment of your target audience you’re aiming to reach can make the effectiveness of brand sponsorships tough to quantify, and even hard to justify.

In order for sponsored posts to be considered quality content, brands have to partner with influencers who understand how to communicate value. We’re way past follower count here, right? Ongoing partnerships will allow brands to consistently work with influencers who have had huge success reaching a brand’s targeted audience segments.

#16: Quality video content – especially short-form video – will remain important as more social platforms expand to bigger screens.

Here’s a really cool influencer marketing trend still in its growth stage: We are seeing mobile apps pushing their way onto larger screens. This will inevitably impact your influencer marketing campaigns because it affects how content is created and shared. Plus, we think it’s going to increase the size of the audience that sees that content.

On the heels of Instagram making it easier for users to post content from their laptops and desktops, TikTok announced a partnership with Amazon Fire TV. Know what that means? the influencer content your creative partners make for TikTok will be watched on the biggest screen in the house.

As a medium, short-form video has the highest ROI of any social media marketing strategy. It’s also fantastic at drumming up engagement. According to the 2022 YouTube Culture & Trends Report, 59% of 18 to 24-year-olds use short-form video apps to discover things they then watch longer versions of.

Instagram, TikTok, and now YouTube are the go-to channels for boosting engagement and visibility with short-form video. Combine this with the longer versions of micro video content and it’s a bonafide win for food and makeup demonstrations!

#17: More social media protections for kids.

We penned a post on this a few years ago, back before Ryan Kaji and his brand of toys took over the homes of many parents of young kids.

But kids influence billions upon billions of dollars in spending. Just a few years ago, many parents retired from YouTube because the platform was slow to react when inappropriate content began showing up in videos meant for children.

Lately, the government’s been cracking down on Facebook and other social media platforms targeting underage users.

This is and should have a major impact on the influencer marketing trends as more and more platforms continue to take steps towards keeping our children safe online.

Instagram ended up halting work on a platform geared toward the under-18 crowd. YouTube (and YouTube now officially qualifies as a social media platform) has begun suppressing low-quality videos that are overly commercial or loaded with branded content designed to push kids into wanting stuff (think unboxing videos and in-store walk-throughs of the toy department).

A Final Word About Influencer Marketing Trends

Influencer marketing trends are ever-changing. Dude, these are just a few of the changes happening. Many of them have been announced just in the last few weeks. But as more and more social media platforms follow suit, they’ll end up being crucial to your influencer marketing efforts and all of your marketing campaigns in the coming year.

There are nuances to reaching your target audience and even more nuances to coming up with effective influencer marketing ideas. Partnering with the right influencers to share the right message at the right time has never been more popular. But to keep your social media marketing campaigns fresh and effective, it’s smart to keep up with the marketing trends that will shape branded content. Each weird, little influencer marketing trend cataloged has the potential to impact your influencer marketing pushes for 2023.

That said, one of the best things about influencer marketing is that content creators earn their keep by staying up to date on the latest influencer marketing trends. So, build out those long-term partnerships with influencers who can help you stay relevant.

To learn more about the latest influencer marketing trends and what you can do to get on board in 2023, schedule a strategy call today!

About This Author

Sorilbran Stone | Content Strategist

I serve as the resident content strategist and the official Head of Content Marketing at The Shelf. Marketing is my happy place. I’m as happy looking at analytics as I am actually creating a thing. I focus on dreaming up and implementing the best ways to create, publish, and distribute content that will build your brand and get your audience to do a thing.

The post 17 Key Influencer Marketing Trends for 2023 appeared first on The Shelf Full-Service Influencer Marketing.

But don’t worry, we’ve got your back. Let’s review some of the top objections CMOs have when presented with influencer marketing budget requests and how to respond.

Why do we need an influencer marketing budget?

A solid question deserves a solid answer. Before jumping into the numbers and reasons, use a little FOMO: 74 percent of CMOs increased their social media marketing, and 65 percent planned to roll out full or pilot influencer campaigns. Not with meager budgets either — roughly $6.5 billion went toward campaigns in 2019.

So the question is: Why are they throwing money at influencer marketing and your CMO isn’t? Something for them to ponder as you roll out the following stats:

• 80 percent of consumers purchased a product after an influencer recommended it by clicking on a link or image they shared. 
• 66 percent of buyers say social media plays a pivotal role in impacting their decision to purchase from a brand. 
• Half of consumers visited a website to buy a product or service after watching an influencer’s Instagram Stories. 

And while you’re at it — point out that “influencers” aren’t just celebrities with household names. In fact, the ones with the biggest impact are the ones with smaller, but more dedicated, fan bases. Micro-influencers have tight-knit communities, making them a gold mine for the right brands. 

So, it’s more about finding the right match than going after the influencers with the largest following. Not only that — influencer marketing works at every stage of the funnel. Now you’re talking CMO language, and that’s what they like to hear. 

How will influencer marketing help our growth?

If your business isn’t growing, then it’s dying. Maybe that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but leave it up to some execs, and this is the profound truth. So, you’ll likely be at the other end of this question when you bring up establishing an influencer marketing budget. 

The best answer is to point to real-world case studies proving the outcomes of influencer marketing. For example, take our client KIDZ BOP (only the coolest kid-friendly album featuring renditions of today’s most popular music).

Our influencer marketing agency used a strategy that increased the brand’s visibility substantially. Not only did one of their Facebook videos go live with over 370K views, that campaign reached more than 3.6 million people. The Instagram engagement was also impressive at 2.3%.  Actually, you can check out the KIDZ BOP case study here.

Finding testimonials like this helps CMOs visualize the possibilities of influencer marketing. And it may even get you the buy-in you’re looking for. 

Why not just run targeted social media ads?

Why would you hire an influencer marketing agency? Why not just run ads? To be honest, this question makes sense. After all, social media ads are delivering impressive results for brands. They’re highly targeted and get clicks from your target audience. So, why not focus on targeted social media ads and forgo using influencers altogether? 

Sure, social media ads build awareness and may even garner clicks and purchases. But it’s the influencers that drive conversions in droves. With the right influencers, you can convince potential buyers to become new (or repeat) customers. 

Seeing an ad isn’t as convincing as getting a product recommendation from a person you trust. And this is why combining social media ads with influencer marketing is the sweet spot. Most marketers know the power of the trust factor and are dedicating 49 percent of their budget toward micro-influencers. 

You can turn influencer marketing Stories and posts into ads you promote on Facebook, TikTok, and wherever else your prospects hang out. 

This is what we did with KIDZ BOP, and saw exceptional results (as I mentioned). But what’s one case study? A good CMO will want to see more than one to prove it works consistently. 

So here’s another for you.

In the #MoosejawMadness campaign for Moosejaw, we created dozens of scroll-stopping, shareable posts that captured attention from 37 influencers. But they didn’t just share branded content — they created their own #MoosejawMadness content using photos and captions. 

The result: nearly 30K engagements on Pinterest alone. 

We targeted influencers on the West Coast, where Moosejaw was building awareness. So, if your CMO’s worried about targeting issues, there’s a way to find influencers based on various attributes (location, industry, audience, etc.). 

How much does influencer marketing cost?

Here’s where things get tricky. Coming up with your influencer marketing budget request needs solid numbers. But without past experience and a network of influencers, you’ll have more of a ballpark figure. 

That’s because the answer to this question is a common one in the marketing field: it depends. There are several factors that determine influencer marketing costs, like:

• Size of the influencer (determines demand and potential results)
• Engagement rates (the higher, the better)
• Social channel or platform used (some see more engagement than others)
• Type of content (videos take more effort to produce)
• Industry of the influencer (riches are in the niches)
• Exclusivity of the deal (want them all to yourself or will you share?)

Targeting influencers with micro, niche communities will be cheaper than chasing after a celebrity. But if you’re looking for exclusive deals, then prepare to pay higher. 

Costs can be anywhere from $100 for a post to $10,000 for a video and beyond. So, the best way to approach this is to build an influencer marketing strategy that fits your brand and audience. This way you’re partnering with the right influencers for your marketing goals. 

From there, you can dedicate a percentage of your budget towards influencer marketing. A 2021 report from Influencer Marketing Hub shows:

• 49 percent of brands spent $10k/yr and under
• 23 percent of brands spent $50k/yr and under
• 9 percent of brands spent over $500k/yr

Apparently, something’s working because an overwhelming 75 percent of brands plan to use influencer marketing in 2022. And another 68% plan to increase their influencer marketing budgets this year.

Even more reason to light a fire under your CMO. 

Get your CMO to make it rain on your influencer campaign

If your CMO loves facts and numbers (quite surely, they do), then they’ll appreciate the information in this post. But this is just the tip of the iceberg. There are other objections they may throw at you before making it rain. 

Thankfully, we have the information you need right here.

Grab our eBook “How to Get Buy-In from Your CMO” to learn how to block all their shots and win MVP of the marketing department. 

The post How to Get Buy-In from Your CMO to Run a Q4 Influencer Marketing Campaign appeared first on The Shelf Full-Service Influencer Marketing.

In this post, we’re going to identify the key metrics that are most important to influencer marketing ROI and show you a few examples of some of the influencer marketing campaigns The Shelf team has run that performed well. Plus, walk you through and tell you how to create always-on influencer campaigns that can be optimized in real time.

Does Influencer Marketing Work? Yes, But…

Now, before we dig into influencer marketing ROI, let’s answer the obvious question: Does influencer marketing work?

Influencer marketing is skyrocketing. From 1.7 billion in market size in 2016, to 9.7 billion in 2020, influencer marketing, as an industry, is expected to grow to $13.8 billion by the end of this year. These numbers don’t seem surprising when you consider 89 percent of businesses that have tried influencer marketing say it’s better or comparable to other marketing initiatives. 

Influencer marketing works. You may remember the now-famous 2017 study from Tomoson which reported brands generated $6.50 in revenue per $1 spent. About 13 percent of influencer campaigns generate $20 for every $1 invested in the campaign, and 70 percent make $2 for every $1 invested, according to a poll.

Even as recently as last year, $5.78 was reportedly the average ROI on every $1 spent on influencer marketing, according to the Influencer Marketing Hub Benchmark Report 2020. 

So, why is this form of digital marketing so effective? Influential people have successfully promoted brands, products or services for as long as societies have existed. But formalized influencer marketing campaigns running on social media platforms like Instagram and YouTube emerged because consumers shifted their trust away from brand-generated marketing to the growing catalog of user-generated content that makes up the “social” part of social media.

Consumers are more likely to heed the advice of someone they consider a knowledgeable peer than the gimmicks of a company’s own branded content drummed up by savvy marketers. 

But not every business that includes deploys and effective influencer marketing strategy has been able to recoup their investments. Upwards of 18 percent of influencer marketing campaigns fail to produce any return at all. So, it’s not enough to pick the right influencers and the choose the right social channels. You also need to keep track of your campaigns. So, let’s talk about that aspect.

Which Are the Best KPIs to Track for an Influencer Campaign?

Without fail, that’s the question brands (and especially CMOs and VPs) want to know before, during, and after their influencer campaign. Which metrics will move the needle for our brand?

Influencer marketing has been plagued by fraud for years. In the early years, brands deployed short-sighted methods for selecting influencer partners, focusing on metrics that can easily be gamed like audience size, number of Likes, and comment counts. Still today, those are the primary criteria most in-house marketing teams use to identify influencer partners for campaigns.

Most in-house teams use vanity metrics like an influencer’s audience size, number of Likes, and comment counts as the primary criteria to identify influencer partners, even though those metrics can be easily manipulated.

Determining which metrics are the most important ones for your campaign start with you identifying a goal for your campaign. And your campaign goals determine how you will structure an influencer campaign. 

We typically like to say there are three main types of influencer campaign structures that marketers can deploy to achieve a number of different goals. 

• A Brand Awareness campaign – designed to help brands boost brand lift so people start to recognize the name and maybe even associate the name with a product or experience. We have a post on building brand awareness campaigns that you can read here.
• A Conversion campaign – designed to help brands send traffic to a place where customers can take specific actions, usually buying something, downloading something, or joining something. We have a post on this one, too that you can read here.
• A Content/Asset campaign – designed to help brands build a catalog of creative assets they can reuse for online and offline marketing. If you want to get up to speed on this UGC campaigns, you can read this post on getting content, this on content rights one, or this one.

Each campaign structure works well to accomplish different goals, and each campaign structure shifts to highlight specific types of metrics. For instance, engagement becomes important with an awareness campaign because it’s the easiest way to validate the reach of a campaign. 

So, let’s now look at the various different types of metrics and the corresponding campaign types.

Reach

If a campaign runs and no one sees it, does it even make a sound? Not quite how that saying goes, but you get the point. Reach measures the total number of unique people/accounts that see your content. Not to be confused with impressions which is the total number of other accounts your content is visible to. But just because something shows up in the feed doesn’t mean your entire audience saw it. 

There’s a pretty well-known stat that says for any given post, only about 30 percent of the poster’s audience will ever see the post. That said, the best way to get the most reach and visibility for your campaign is to partner with active influencers who have audiences across multiple platforms.  

Here’s a good example: The Shelf team rolled out a holiday campaign for Feit Electrical on TikTok targeting the DIY and home decor audiences.

The video above from @blankslatereno was cross-promoted on Instagram where it generated another 800 instances of engagement (video views and comments).

But this campaign also ran on YouTube with a video lifestyle vlogger Angela Lanter published detailing how she and her partner updated their back porch with Feit Electric products to create their own personal winter wonderland.

Reach is one of those elements that can also be manipulated (not in a bad way) because the more frequently someone posts and the more frequently others interact with their content, the more likely the social media platform’s algorithm is to show that person’s content to more people. 

Types of campaign: All types

How to track reach: The best way to track actual reach is through engagement. Potential reach is usually a calculation of an influencer’s audience size x the total number of influencers working on your campaign. 

Engagement

Engagement measures how well your target market has connected with your influencer’s content. Generally speaking, engagement is: 

(Post engagements / total number of followers) * 100 

Engagement ratios different from influencer to influencer, from vertical to vertical, and platform to platform. On Instagram, average engagement per post hovers right around 1%, which is noticeably lower than it was even last year (when it hovered between 1.5% and 2%).  

Engagement rates for sponsored content are usually lower than an influencer’s organic content, but great content that resonates with followers will usually have an engagement rate that stays right in line with an influencer’s average engagement ratio. 

If you’re seeing higher engagement rates on your sponsored content (more comments, likes, or shares) than the influencer’s usual posts when they’re not being sponsored, then you’ve hit a good success rate with that collaboration. 

Types of campaigns: All types. Engagement is always a good metric to track. It’s the best way to validate the reach of a campaign, and it provides you with real-time insights into whether or not a post is performing well with an influencer’s audience. 

How to track engagement: If you don’t have access to a platform like The Shelf from which you can monitor all of your campaign content in one place, your influencers can access information about the performance of each post from the different dashboards. For instance…

For instance, Instagram has Insights that you can access once you have a business or creator account. Facebook has its own Facebook Business Suite that allows you to manage your account and shows you detailed reports about your audience, analytics report and trends. On Pinterest, the Analytics menu is the place to access Audience Insights and insights about how well content is performing.

What counts as engagement: One of the reasons engagement is so critical as a metric is because it includes a pretty wide range of actions, depending on the platform where your campaign is running. 

• Core Post Engagements – The number of likes, comments, saves, and shares on a post
• Views – The number of times a user has viewed a video 
• Replies, Shares, Profile Taps, Sticker taps, Link Clicks – The various actions a user can take on Instagram stories

We actually created an encyclopedia on this stuff…

The Complete Guide to Influencer Marketing

Followers on Your Account

If you’re doing an influencer campaign with a Facebook, Instagram, or YouTube influencer, you should see more followers or likes coming on to your brand’s social media account. For example, you’re working with an Instagram influencer and you noticed that your Instagram profile suddenly garnered more likes and followers, that’s most likely the effect of your collaboration.

Types of campaigns: Brand awareness

How to track: You can do this by viewing how many subscribers, likes, shares, followers or comments a specific platform generated. This applies to Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Youtube and Instagram. An increase in email subscribers after your campaign is also a good indicator of the success of your influencer marketing initiative.

Site Traffic or Clicks

Site traffic can encompass a number of actions. It can lead to sign-ups, sales, downloads, and users adding products to their cart. 

Types of campaigns: Conversion campaigns and Content campaigns

How to track clicks: Having a dedicated landing page and URL is important so you can see how often that page is being visited. Each influencer will need to be assigned a tracking pixel that you can monitor because there will be situations when the landing page is one of your own sales pages, but it may make more sense to send traffic to maybe a blog post on an influencer’s own website so visitors can grab a discount code or access to a special promotion.

Or it may just be that the influencer created value-add content and posted it to their own website and you get more opportunities to grab someone’s attention and getting the clicks by sending them to the influencer’s blog.

Give your influencers their own affiliate links. You can send traffic to a single promotion page or to a specific page for each influencer. 

For instance, one of The Shelf’s most recent campaigns was with a wedding dress company where each influencer picked their own dress and styled a backdrop that was AMAZING! In that situation, it makes sense to send traffic from an influencer’s Instagram feed or website to a landing page on the brand’s website that features the dress the influencer was wearing in the post. 

For the Feit campaign in particular, influencers like Angela Lanter who used tracking pixels were able to drive traffic to a custom page on Feit’s website. You can see below that Angela used trackable links in the video description:

Clicking on the link goes to a landing page on Feit’s website featuring a variety of different products Angela’s mentioned in her content for the campaign.

Without tracking pixels, it will be challenging to tie your influencer marketing efforts to specific traffic or actions taken on your site. It’s also important to be able to measure the effectiveness of different influencers for future partnerships.

Being able to track the actions taken will help you measure the impact of the influencer campaign on your SEO or link building strategy. You can use reports and insights from Google Analytics to get an idea of how well each piece of sponsored content is performing.

Elements you’ll want to track:

• Clicks – The number of actions taken on a post in the form of a click to a designated URL. Clicks are counted through link in bio, swipe up, post links, etc.
• Unique UTM links – These codes added to the end of a URL track clicks and performance of marketing activities
• Tracking Pixels – Used for blog content, these snippets of code allow you to gather information about visitors on a website (how they browse, what type of ads they click on, etc.)
• Brand Sentiment – How relevant was the branded content to the influencer’s audience and did the branded content actually resonate with the audience (ie: commenting on the outfit vs. the brand sponsorship or messaging)

And the preferred metrics for this list can shake out a number of different ways depending on your campaign goals.

Related Post

Which Social Media Network Drives the Greatest ROI?

Hashtags and Mentions

If you’re launching a campaign with a specific hashtag, and the influencer’s followers are using that hashtag, then you’re creating a sort of viral effect, which is great for awareness campaigns.

Types of campaigns: Brand Awareness

How to track: You can use tools that can scour all corners of the internet to find hashtags you’ve specifically set for your campaign or mentions. Buzzsumo is one such tool where you can monitor brand mentions and your progress over time. You can also use the tool to track hashtags and see whether people are using them across social media platforms.

Leads

For some businesses, sales from influencer campaigns may not be immediate. So it’s important to also track and measure qualified leads. Make sure that you have a method to capture email addresses. Once you capture their contact information, you can then evaluate how many qualified leads you’ve captured.

A clear understanding of how many leads an influencer can bring you, how long it takes those leads to hit sales or conversion stage and knowing how long the entire process takes are crucial in determining the success of your influencer marketing initiative. This will also let you know if it’s a strategy you should pursue in the long run.

Types of campaign: Conversion campaigns

How to track: Leads are captured through emails and sign-ups. Use a CRM, like Salesforce or Zoho, to help you see where the lead originated from and how they landed on your site.

Related Post

Influencer Strategy: Getting Clicks vs Boosting Brand Awareness

Sales

Influencer marketing can be an effective sales driver. Statistics show  that 74 percent of online consumers turn to social networks to guide them in making the right purchase decisions and that 40 percent of Americans have stated that they’ve bought an item online after seeing an influencer use it on social media.

Types of campaigns: Conversion campaigns

How to track: Apply UTM tracking code to know if a purchase came from the influencer’s post.

A promo code is also an easy way to both push more sales and track how many users the influencer campaign reached. Discount codes and promo codes are always a good way to entice new customers and it will be amplified with the right influencers.

Another creative way to track sales is by creating a hashtag campaign aimed for people who have purchased your product. Have them publish a post or photo of the product with the hashtag and track how many people have used the hashtag.

Wrapping Up

As with all marketing campaigns, you need a clear influencer marketing goal and strategy before you implement one. Knowing your goals will help you prioritize the important KPIs, which will then narrow down your focus to elements that will amplify your results. 

Be clear about what you’re expecting out of the partnership when working with influencers. Is it for awareness or sales? Having the right influencer isn’t enough; you have to gather data to know if the campaign is delivering business results. 

Once you’ve got these things figured out: goals, KPIs, strategy, and the right influencers, begin your campaigns. Be prepared to tweak and change your strategy overtime. Eventually, you’ll accomplish all the goals you’ve set out for your influencer marketing campaign.

About the Author

Itamar Gero is the founder of SEO Reseller, a global digital marketing solutions provider that empowers agencies and their local clients all over the world.

When he isn’t working, Itamar is traveling the world, meditating, or dreaming (in code).

The post Influencer Marketing ROI: Which Metrics Will Give You the Best Campaigns? appeared first on The Shelf Full-Service Influencer Marketing.

So, in this article, we’ll take a look at how you can measure, track, optimize, and understand social media ROI, and choose which platforms will bring the best results for your business.

What is Social Media ROI?

Let’s start with the basics. The return on investment (or ROI) for any campaign is a crucial metric to track for marketers. It lets you know what’s working and what’s not. If you’re pouring time and resources into a marketing strategy, you need to make sure that you’re getting the most out of it.

When it comes to social media marketing though, marketing teams often struggle to quantify the ROI of a campaign. This is because social media goals are not always based on revenue.

Much of the time, social media marketing goals are focused on things like brand awareness, customer engagement, and website visits. These are not necessarily metrics that easily convert to ROI statistics. But, that doesn’t mean they aren’t important. If these are the kinds of goals you’re aiming for, you can still use them to measure your ROI on social media.

We actually created an encyclopedia on this stuff…

The Complete Guide to Influencer Marketing

How to Measure ROI on Social Media

I want to do a rundown of goal-setting and ROI for you since “only a fraction” of marketers feel it is measurable. The fact is that despite the issue many of them face with calculating this specific type of ROI, $40 billion was spent in 2020 on social media advertising and that is expected to increase to around $56 billion by 2022.

Now, let’s take a look at some business goals, the cost of running campaigns, and the actual things that matter when it comes to social media ROI.

COUNT THE COSTS OF “DOING” SOCIAL MEDIA

We know what you lose by not investing in social media. But there are costs associated with even the day-to-day management of social media. Before you can calculate how effective your campaign has been, you need to have a clear picture of how much you have invested in your social media marketing. While posting to social media networks, in general, is a free endeavor, there are other factors to consider as investments from your business.

TOOLS

If you’re investing money in scheduling tools, improved analytics, photo or video editing software, research tools, or anything else that helps you build your social media posts and strategy, these costs should be taken into consideration.

For instance, MeetEdgar is a social media scheduling tool. It keeps a virtual inventory of your social media content and automates the publication of your posts based on a post category schedule that you create.

So, for instance, every Wednesday, we have blogger roundups scheduled to go out to our networks on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook. Every Wednesday. Without fail.

So, if you’re not using third-party tools like MeetEdgar or Buffer (which we use as well) in your social media marketing, you should definitely check some out and consider them. The value they can bring to your marketing campaigns far outweighs the initial costs you must spend to get started (plus, most of them offer free trials to front-load value).

Related Post

UGC Rights: Who Owns the Content You Pay Influencers to Create for You?

ADVERTISING COSTS

If you’re including things like boosted posts, PPC ads, or other paid advertising as part of your social media strategy (and you probably should be) these costs also need to be factored into your overall investment cost to calculate your ROI.

STAFF

Hiring designers to create marketing assets, specialists to create ad campaigns, influencers to promote your brand, or freelancers to help manage your presence on social media are all great ways to improve your marketing. But they all come with a cost, and this cost will impact your ROI.

TIME

The one resource you can’t replace is time. If you and your team spend 20 hours a week managing Facebook, but only 10 hours a week managing LinkedIn, each platform will have a different investment amount to include.

There’s a monthly subscription fee for MeetEdgar, but the tool literally saves us about 10 hours a week of social media scheduling time, which is the equivalent of $200 to $300 a week in scheduling and curating our social media feeds.

Adding all of these costs together will give you your total investment for your social media marketing efforts.

SET GOALS AND OBJECTIVES FOR EACH CAMPAIGN AND INCLUDE PARTNERING WITH INFLUENCERS IN THEM

Setting goals is an important part of any marketing campaign. Without setting clear goals early on in your campaign, you’re setting yourself up for a frustrating cycle of wondering how well your efforts are working, and what they are actually doing for you.

While goal setting isn’t difficult, it needs to be practical. If you’re rolling out a new software system, having people click through to see or schedule a demo is a much better metric of how well a campaign is working rather than gauging sales. Getting sales is important, but the reality is social media users aren’t on social to find a new piece of software. So, a legit win would be getting them to click through.

Yes, people are becoming more comfortable with buying online, but many are buying as a result of the positive experiences they are having online with different brands. I’m  not saying that sales goals aren’t good to set. What I am saying is that you can’t convert customers unless you first grab (and keep) their attention long enough to close the deal.

Consider the usefulness of these social media goals:

BRAND AWARENESS

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<div style=”clear:both”><a href=”https://theshelf.com/the-blog/which-social-networks-drive-roi”><img src=”<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /> https://marketing.theshelf.com/infographic-which-influencer-campaign-to-use” title=”Which Type of Influencer Campaign should I Use?” border=”0″ /></a></div><div>Courtesy of: <a style=”text-decoration:underline; color:#11d3c8;” href=”https://theshelf.com/the-blog/which-social-networks-drive-roi”>The Shelf Full-Funnel Influencer Marketing</a></div>

Brand awareness is probably one of the most important yet least understood of the SMM goals. Increasing your brand’s awareness is the first step in every marketing sales funnel. People have to see you to do business with you, so knowing how to effectively market your brand across social media helps spread the word about your company, team, culture, brand, and product (because social media success is about way more than just talking about your product).

In a brand awareness campaign, reach becomes really important. So, if you’re going to partner with influencers to announce a new product launch, a new store, or your spring line, you’ll want to target larger influencers because they will be able to reach more people with the announcement.

A successful brand awareness campaign will result in greater visibility, which will lead to more brand mentions, more engagement, more followers, and more people sharing your posts with the people in their own networks.

Donald J Pliner’s #ArtofFun

For its Spring 2017 marketing push, Donald J Pliner launched the #ArtofFun campaign on social media to get eyes on its inventory of edgy mid-priced shoes. This was a brand awareness campaign, meaning DJP wanted to get the word out to as many potential customers (not just random people) as possible about its shoes.

So, we (The Shelf worked on this particular campaign) enlisted a set of confident, fashion-forward millennial macro-influencers who had the influence, the follower numbers, and the engagement needed to help Donald J Pliner get the attention of people who were most likely to “get” his brand’s vibe and want to get in on the extraordinary-ness. These were people who invested in their shoe game.

The campaign produced some really great posts. They were colorful, creative, stylish, and a bit out of step with the typical Instagram posts you see.

UGC AND CREATIVE ASSETS

We’ve done several posts on the topic of user-generated content…

The benefits of UGC.

How to drive sales with UGC.

How to get amazing UGC in your campaigns.

Examples of cool UGC campaigns.

Getting the rights to sponsored content.

We understand that UGC (the posts created by users that get published to different platforms) are the lifeblood of social media and influencer marketing.

For brands, UGC is a powerful word-of-mouth endorsement from key opinion leaders of targeted demographic segments. When presented in the right way, UGC carries more sway than any other type of branded or brand-owned content.

So, we get lots of clients that are looking to get loads of UGC from their influencer campaigns that they can reuse across their own branded social media feeds in paid ads. Basically, they can use UGC as a creative asset in any way they see fit.

Alex Brands – #AlexBrandsPlays

You may not immediately recognize the name Alex Brands, but you know the company’s products. Alex Brands sells some of the most well-known brands in the toy market, like the Slinky and Hot Wheelz bikes for kids. There’s even a National Slinky Day at the end of summer.

Until recently, the company’s primary method of distribution and their way to get new products into new markets was through Toy “R” Us stores. In early 2018, their #AlexBrandsPlays social media campaign was all about boosting visibility by having kid influencers create tons of UGC Alex Brands could use on their own branded social channels.

ENGAGEMENT

Engagement is another popular goal for social media marketing. This goal is focused on encouraging your customers and followers to interact with your brand online. This includes liking, commenting, sharing, messaging, or tagging across social media platforms.

This is a great goal for brands who are focused on a slightly younger audience, as brands appearing authentic and “human” online is a big deal for them.

CUSTOMER SERVICE

With younger audiences fast becoming the majority of spenders across the board, having top notch customer service online is no longer simply an option for brands. Platforms like Twitter are perfect platforms for quick responses and public discussions that show how much you value your customers.

Measuring this can take the form of response times, response rates, and the resolution of problems via social media.

Which Social Media Networks Will Deliver the Best ROI for My Campaign?

<div style=”clear:both”><a href=”https://theshelf.com/the-blog/which-social-networks-drive-roi”><img src=”<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /> https://marketing.theshelf.com/social-platform-influencer-marketing” title=”Which Type of Influencer Campaign should I Use?” border=”0″ /></a></div><div>Courtesy of: <a style=”text-decoration:underline; color:#11d3c8;” href=”https://theshelf.com/the-blog/which-social-networks-drive-roi”>The Shelf Full-Funnel Influencer Marketing</a></div>

The reason you’re reading this is to determine which social media networks provide the greatest ROI, right? So, let’s dive into some platform-specific analysis to see where your business or brand can get the most bang for your buck.

The results of any social media campaign always goes back to the goals you set. Your goals also determine which social media platforms you use to accomplish your goals. While one platform may bring in amazing results for one brand, it may not do the same for you if your goals do not align.

For this reason, we’ve organized the top social media networks by the goals they are most likely to help you reach.

Facebook

FOR BRAND AWARENESS

With over 2 billion users, Facebook is the largest social media network in the world. So, it is highly likely that your target audience is spending time here. Facebook can be a great platform for those who have placed brand awareness as their number one goal on social media.

Facebook’s algorithm shifted in 2018  in favor of personal content over corporate content, putting  a thorn in the sides of marketers as their reach was slashed. But, there was a silver lining in the form of Facebook groups and the platform’s new feature that allows pages to post in groups, just like individual accounts.

If you’re leaning toward paid ads on Facebook, “Brand Awareness” is also a campaign goal that you can access in the dashboard of your Facebook ads manager. You can choose ad recall as a goal if you’re working towards ensuring people remember seeing your ad two days later. Marketing is about more than just reaching lots of people; it’s also about sticking in those people’s minds.

If you have a dedicated budget for advertising on Facebook, you’re going to see even better results. According to research by the social media scheduling tool Buffer, Facebook ads can bring in some pretty great ROI. Their experiment found the average price on Facebook for a thousand impressions was $0.59, compared with $3.50 on Twitter. That’s a huge difference.

FOR BUILDING COMMUNITY

Facebook is also a great platform for building a branded or industry-specific group. And if you do that, you’re in luck because Facebook favors group posts more than anything else right now. A Facebook group will enable you to get your content in front of a group of people who have already demonstrated an interest in your content.

Brands can also join and participate in groups as a business page, so social media managers don’t have to worry about their personal brands being overshadowed by their professional brands on Facebook. They can remain separate.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is the home of professionals on social media. There are 40 million decision makers on the platform, so it’s the place to be if you want to establish yourself as a knowledgeable professional, do targeted B2B marketing, and attract new clients to your business.

FOR ESTABLISHING AUTHORITY

LinkedIn is the place professionals go to connect with, talk to, and hear from other professionals. For brands, LinkedIn presents a moderately captive audience who is checking in for one reason and one reason only – to find professional opportunities. Those opportunities could be sharing an interesting post they read, sharing an idea they want to spread, or sharing information about their company and culture.

All these little bits of information will come together nicely to help brands establish credibility and build authority in their specific area of expertise.

FOR WEBSITE TRAFFIC

Let me share some really interesting stats I found at Omnicore.com.

Of the 500 million LinkedIn users, 3 million of them share content weekly, and 1 million users actually create articles for LinkedIn. But here’s the thing: 91 percent of marketing executives peg LinkedIn as the best place to find quality content. It is currently THE #1 platform B2B marketers use to distribute content and LinkedIn makes up half the traffic to B2B websites.

FOR GENERATING LEADS

LinkedIn leads the pack when it comes to using social media marketing to generate B2B leads. LinkedIn accounts for 80 percent of B2B lead generation while Twitter and Facebook account for the other 20 percent.

Sponsored InMail allows users to send personalized messages to other users, regardless if there is an existing connection on the platform.

Brands use Sponsored InMail to facilitate trust with new potential leads, send out invites to webinars or in-person events, and to pitch their services to business owners.

InMail isn’t the only advertising option at your fingertips, though. LinkedIn offers a range of different ways to reach new customers.

Sponsored Content – In the same way you can on Facebook, you can plug some investment into existing posts you’ve sent out from your company page to help them reach more people. This should be reserved for your best performing posts.

Display Ads – These appear in people’s LinkedIn feeds just like Facebook Ads. You can use text, images, and video to attract people’s attention.

Dynamic Ads – These are display ads on steroids. These are shown to people based on their activity, making them hyper-targeted compared to the usual fare.

It almost goes without saying that this platform is great for B2B brands, or those who have services that would benefit busy professionals. This is probably the most niche of all the social media networks, and not everyone will be able to benefit from advertising here. So, make sure you fit the LinkedIn mold before going forward with a campaign on there.

Instagram

FOR PRODUCT LAUNCHES

Instagram is my absolute favorite platform for engaging and connecting with customers and influencers alike. It reached 1 billion users in 2018 and is only going to get bigger. Thanks to it’s visual nature, content on Instagram is much easier to digest and engage with as it requires less concentration and shorter attention spans.

FOR CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT

Instagram gives you a number of ways to reach your audience on their platform – all of which encourage engagement and interaction. Because the site is accessed almost exclusively on mobile devices, it’s a place that is ever-present in many of our lives. The platform is key for engagement-based goals as it brings in 10 times more engagement than Facebook does, despite not having as many active users.

Thanks to the “Explore” page and the power of hashtags, discoverability is much higher on Instagram than other social networks, which helps brands to connect with more people. This also means this can be a great platform for reach as well, but you’ll have a more limited demographic than you would on Facebook, which is why we positioned it in this way.

There are two ways to post on Instagram – in the main feed and in your stories. Both offer different advantages, and both should be undertaken simultaneously for maximum impact. Unlike other platforms where engagement is limited to likes and comments, Instagram offers users a number of ways to interact with your content.

If you post to Instagram Stories, viewers can interact in the following ways:

• Swipe up – If you have a following of over 10K and are operating on a business account (which you should be), you can include a link in your story that viewers can access by simply swiping up. Other than this, the only way to include a clickable link is in your bio on your profile. This is an incredibly useful tool for businesses looking to drive web traffic through social.
• Questions – If there’s something in particular you want your followers to tell you about, then you can post a question on your story. With this feature, you’re actively encouraging engagement by giving your followers the chance to speak directly to you. You can then share their answers on subsequent stories to further increase their effectiveness.
• Polls – Polls on Stories are pretty self-explanatory. You pose a question to your followers with two possible answers and all your followers have to do is click one, and you’ve got direct engagement.

Combine all of these with the usual options of liking, commenting, and direct messaging, and you have a catalyst for huge levels of engagement that you just won’t find on any other social media platform.

With more than 100 million in the US alone, the explosive popularity of TikTok is undeniable to anyone keeping an eye on social media trends. Its future in this country, however, is unsure.

Enter Instagram Reels

Time will tell us a lot about how this new short video technology on Insta will stand up next to TikTok, but here is what we do know so far:

According to Business Insider, “Reels allows users to record and edit short-form videos with audio and music soundtracks — akin to what users already do on TikTok. On the surface, it seems viewing Reels will be a similar experience as viewing TikTok videos: You can like or comment on videos, and click through to see what audio track was used in a specific video. 

It appears that Reels videos are limited to 15 seconds, while TikTok extended the maximum length of its videos to 60 seconds and is testing out the idea of extending up to three minutes. Vishal Shah, Instagram’s head of product, says that, “Reels will differ from TikTok in giving users a more built-out augmented reality platform, as well as offering them a way to make short-form videos inside Instagram, a place they already love and know how to use.”

 The quality of the user’s experience with Reels compared to TikTok has yet to reveal itself. Still one HUGE plus that businesses and brands can tap into with Reels is influencer partnerships. Whether you are thinking about it or are already actively partnering with micro- or macro-influencers, know this: users who prefer watching video demos of stuff — like trying on new makeup, a box with a coveted clothing item inside be opened and tried on, or kids playing with the hottest new toy on the block — can now experience that joy, along with scrolling through tons of photos and interacting through comments with their favorite influencers (who they trust and value) all in one place.

At the very least, Reels gives you yet another social media marketing outlet to consider for spreading the love for your amazing product, whatever that may be.

Twitter

Next on the list is Twitter, and this is the place to be if you want to focus on customer service across social media. Thanks to the fast pace of the online world, we are no longer content to sit on hold for hours with customer service teams (not that we ever liked it in the first place), so businesses need to be able to respond quicker than ever.

FOR TALKING WITH EXISTING CUSTOMERS

That’s where Twitter comes in. The fastest moving of all the social networks, it’s the ideal place to keep up with customer requests. Because it’s such a public way of dealing with customer requests, many people love to use this in the hopes of receiving a speedy and positive response, as they know that others will be watching.

This means you need to be quick and prepared to help diffuse any situations as soon as possible. But providing awesome customer service isn’t just limited to direct questions sent your way. Keeping your eye on brand mentions on the platform is another way to make sure your customers stay as happy as possible.

See how Unbounce responds to a brand mention to help their customer as well as turn the situation around in their favor? This is the kind of quick thinking that helps keep your customer service in tip-top shape.

FOR GETTING CLICKS

So, this last one is really from our personal experience. On the word of Gary Vaynerchuk, who said during a keynote (or fireside chat or something) last year that Twitter ads were under-priced, we leveraged the reach of Twitter to promote a downloadable guide to rolling out an influencer campaign ahead of last year’s holiday season.

The response was phenomenal. Within a span of about two weeks, we saw more than 1,000 downloads of the guide.

Here’s the thing, though: Because we weren’t nearly as focused on list-building as we were on testing Twitter’s fire and getting the guide in people’s hands, the landing page for the guide gave visitors the option to opt-in or not. What I mean is they could download the guide and skip town for all we knew. So, despite not NEEDING to opt-in to get the guide, about 1 in 10 did.

So, when it comes to promoting content to get clicks and traffic back to your site, Twitter is a really affordable way to go.

FOR GETTING SHARES

Whether you’re Marvel promoting the next Avengers movie or Daquan spreading the next great meme, your Twitter network is key because so much of your reach on Twitter comes from engaging with and sharing other users’ content,. Creating content specifically to grab the attention of your Twitter followers can help you grow your network and build your reputation in the process.

Final Word

We have to agree with those who claim that measuring ROI on social media really does differ from case to case, but having a firm grasp on your campaign goals is the first step in making sure you get the most out of your marketing.

By understanding your goals, you can understand where to place your efforts on social media. Social media is a great way to bring in customers, engage with your fans, and keep on top of customer service – if you do it right.

The post Which Social Media Networks Drive the Most ROI? appeared first on The Shelf Full-Service Influencer Marketing.

Part of what The Shelf team has seen is that there are typically two big elements to consider with every “Traffic/Clicks” campaign.

 The First Element…

Is a combination of having a sticky concept + amazing content from great storytellers + being able to sort of “Houdini” the logistics of running an influencer campaign. (You really do have to be kinda magical to pull off a great campaign if you’re a really small team.) 

The Second Element…

Is making sure your website supports your influencer campaign by being well-designed AND by being set up to monitor and measure exactly what people are doing when they come to your site. 

When customers use your website, they leave a TRAIL of data. This is data you can use to help you increase customer engagement, create better products, and capitalize on (and optimize) the strategies that are working so you’re not spinning your wheels and blowing through your budget on an influencer campaign that has stalled. 

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The challenge for a lot of businesses – especially those running influencer campaigns – is knowing what to track and how to interpret that data to improve your campaign’s performance. After all, the most meaningful data is actionable data. Yes, you need to track what happens in your influencer campaign and that means getting data on your influencer partners and their followers.

So, I compiled this list of the top user actions marketers should track and what they mean for your campaign, your next marketing meeting, and your organization overall.

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7 Key Metrics Google Analytics Tracks That’ll Help You Get Site Traffic and Clicks During Influencer Campaigns

Track Destinations

Destination refers to the page a follower comes to your site in search of. And that will typically be the page on which he/she spends the most time. It will often take them several clicks to access or find the desired page, but it’s important to pay close attention to your destination page so you can make sure users are getting out of it what they were expecting when they clicked through from social media. 

Track Logins

Tracking when a user logs in may seem like a no-brainer. Duh. We should all know when somebody new is in our house. But tracking logins can help you figure out:

• when people are accessing your site (so you know when to have new content available)
• how people are accessing your site (so you know how to tailor your messaging and promotions for desktop or mobile), and 
• where people are accessing your site (which is great for apps that have geofencing capabilities (like shopping apps, rebate apps, and coupon apps)).

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Track Bounce Rate

Get a handle on your ego, here. Your bounce rate measures how many times a potential customer visits one page on your site, and then leaves the site entirely, without visiting another page. Although a high bounce rate may seem like an indicator something’s wrong, that’s not always the case. 

If your website is a blog or article-based, a high bounce rate may not be that bad. However, if your bounce rate is high on pages significant to conversions like your homepage or product pages, that may signify something is wrong that requires your team to tweak things a bit. 

Track Session Time

When it comes to those article-based websites, session time can be a much stronger barometer of success than click-through rates (discussed next). Session time is the length of time customers spend on your site, even if it’s only on one page. Though it’s a simple metric, it can be one of the earliest signs of customers’ opinions of your site. 

If users aren’t spending enough time on your site to understand your product or make a purchase, that may be an indication that your content isn’t clear or that it lacks the ability to compel a user to take further action, from a copywriting perspective.

So, keep that in mind that if your influencer was able to drive traffic to your site, your influencer campaign was actually a success… your funnel may be the weak link here. Either way, evaluating session time can be a major asset for interpreting customers’ understanding of what you do.

Track Click-Through Rate

The click-through rate (CTR) is the frequency of clicks on calls-to-action (CTA) compared to the number of people who actually see the CTA. Typically a button or link that says something like “Schedule a Demo” or “Sign Up Here” or “Buy Now” is what we’re talking about. 

CTAs are different from shares, likes, or comments. CTAs are actually meant to direct people deeper into your funnel. 

This metric is extremely important, especially when it comes to assessing how effective your CTAs are. If your site has a low CTR, that can indicate your CTAs aren’t strategically placed or compelling enough for users to click on and can signify a need for optimization.

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Track Cart Abandonments

Cart abandonments are when customers have items added to their carts but fail to follow through to actually purchasing them. Oftentimes, users will make it all the way to the checkout page before changing their minds. 

By tracking when this happens, with which customers, and what products are being left, you can start to understand why customers aren’t completing purchases. In many cases, the checkout process is too long or customers haven’t been fully convinced to buy. Sometimes, they are just time-pressed and planning to come back to finish shopping or complete the purchase later, but don’t want the hassle of starting over the research process. Monitoring this can help your business make the necessary changes to secure those sales. 

Track Conversion Rate

Your conversion rate refers to the percentage of customers who visit your site and actually end up making a purchase. Most of the time, conversion is the ultimate goal of every single influencer campaign ever.  But there are, of course, steps along the path to purchase where brands have to meet customers first in order to get the conversion. Conversions turn directly into money earned for the company and drive the business forward. 

A high conversion rate indicates you’re doing something right. Maybe everything right. Flip side, a low conversion rate may signify a need to evaluate your CTAs, products, and marketing efforts in order to secure more buyers. 

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So How Do You Track User Actions?

For insights on things like vanity metrics, influencer fraud, and everything that’s happening with your influencer campaign, The Shelf platform delivers the goods and also helps agencies and brands streamline the often overwhelming process of planning, launching and measuring an influencer campaign. And campaigns are always much better when we have the info we need to optimize campaigns on both ends. 

Now that you know which on-page actions you need to monitor to get the best results from your influencer campaign, the question becomes: how do you even begin to sort through each of these metrics? Manually sifting through all of that data can be taxing and time-consuming. 

We positioned this post around Google Analytics because it’s free, super-simple to access, and you can easily find someone on your team or on a gig platform like Fiverr or Upwork who knows how to properly set up Google Analytics for your website.  

But I would venture a bet that most businesses are using Google Analytics and at least one other piece of tracking software like Hubspot, or a more fully-integrated business-management solution like Oracle Applications. But whether from one big, suped-up data engine or from martech you’ve integrated to work seamlessly, you need to get your hands on these key metrics so you have a more accurate picture of what’s happening with your influencer campaign. 

I’ll Close With This…

Tracking user actions is an important piece of the marketing puzzle. You absolutely need to know which actions are significant and how a user’s decision to take them or not take them affect your business. In the end, user actions will help you better evaluate your customers’ actions and understand how they drive revenue for your business. 

Marie Johnson is a contributor to Enlightened Digital, UX Designer and technology writer from New York City. If she’s not writing her latest blog post in her kitchen, you’ll likely find her strolling through Central Park, cappuccino in hand.

The post THE 7 METRICS YOUR SITE SHOULD TRACK IN TRAFFIC/CLICKS INFLUENCER CAMPAIGNS appeared first on The Shelf Full-Service Influencer Marketing.

One of the big questions brands and marketers have about the effectiveness of an influencer marketing campaign is how to achieve a high enough return on investment to justify the expense of running the campaign. It can be tough to tell a traditional marketers how effective influencer marketing can be. Many brands are coming into influencer marketing without knowing how to quantify the results they get.

Now that influencer marketing is becoming more and more popular, more brands are using it to reach their target audience and boosting their online sales. According to Bloglovin’s Marketers Survey 2017, six in 10 marketers surveyed planned to increase their influencer marketing budgets. That figure has only grown over the past year. And it’s grown for one reason and one reason only: Influencer campaigns work.

In 2017, brands saw an ROI of $6.78 for every $1 spent on influencer marketing. That number climbs to more than $11 for every $1 spent for beauty brands. Of course, not every brand sees those kinds of results.

The Shelf blog is basically about…

• The BEST STRATEGIES brands can use to roll out killer influencer campaigns
• How to get AMAZING UGC by partnering with the RIGHT INFLUENCERS
• How to AVOID MISTAKES that commonly lead to crappy campaigns
• Step-by-step plans for rolling out SUPER COOL INFLUENCER CAMPAIGNS
• Which signals you should to track to MAXIMIZE and MEASURE ROI (you know… instead of vanity metrics)

Fact is, if you run your campaign effectively, you’ll see the results you really want. And, we’re here to help you do just that. So let’s take a look at how you can maximize the ROI of your next influencer marketing campaign.

The 3 Benefits of Influencer Marketing

#1 BETTER TARGETING FOR BETTER CUSTOMERS

With influencer marketing, you’re working with an audience that has already been targeted by your chosen influencer. By working with the right person, you’re able to tap into an existing community that already cares about the kind of product you’re trying to market.

With traditional digital marketing, you’re hoping that the right people see your posts, open your emails, and eventually make it to your website. But, with influencer marketing, you know that they’ll be listening, and you know that they’re likely to be interested.

#2 TRUST AND CREDIBILITY BY ASSOCIATION

Word-of-mouth still works. Getting a recommendation from a real person is the best way to establish instant credibility (via social proof) with potential customers. Ninety-two percent of people will trust personal recommendations over brand messages – even if they don’t actually know the person making the recommendation. Having an influencer talk about why they love your product is a great way to utilise this for your own business.

#3 ACCESSIBILITY

Around the world, most Internet users are also social media users. In fact, the majority of users on platforms like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are outside the U.S. It’s not always easy to build a dedicated following on social media, but that’s the value of partnering with an influencer – many of them have mastered the art of creating and curating content that moves people to take an action. The right influencer partnership will give you access to thousands, and possibly even millions of new buyers.

5 Tips for Seamless, Profitable Influencer Campaigns

#1 FIND THE PERFECT INFLUENCER

As effective as influencer marketing can be, if you’re working with the wrong influencer you’ll know it by your results. The biggest benefit that comes from working with an influencer is being able to tap into his or her dedicated audience, an audience the influencer has worked to grow and cultivate. So it benefits you to work with influencer who have built the kind of niche following that matters to you and your brand.

Following Size

More followers means that more people will see your product on their feeds. The influencer will likely have a bigger reputation, and will be able to introduce thousands, or even millions of people to your brand. But, bigger isn’t always better. Having a larger following often means an influencer’s demographic is more diverse. Not everyone will be as into your product as you’d like.

Instead, you might want to consider working with influencers will slightly smaller followings – enough to make an impact, but not so many that your message gets lost. These micro-influencers create a connected community who really listen when they speak. You’ll also see some much higher engagement rates here – how many of their followers are actually engaging with the content they put out there. And tracking engagement rates is often a better indicator of influencer quality than follower size.

Niche Audiences

Niched-down audiences can, in many cases, convert better than larger audiences. So, finding an influencer who has sway in a niched-down version of a wider audience (like Muslim mom influencer of school-aged kids or a body-positive, plus-sized fashion influencer) allows you to narrow your product targeting and refine your message so it resonates better with your influencer’s audience.

A growing trend in the influencer space in partnering with who VaynerMedia calls unfluencers – social media users who have fewer than 3,000 followers to reach lots of smaller audiences with more targeted messages.

Previous Partnerships

A pretty good indicator of an influencer’s future success with your campaign is their past success in campaigns similar to yours if an influencer has them. If you can see their past successes, you know that they’re an influencer brands like to work with – especially if they’ve worked with the same brand more than once.

On the other hand, you can also spot which influencers to avoid if their previous attempts at paid partnerships have fallen flat. Not everyone who wants to make it as an influencer has the skills and abilities to do so, and it’s important to remember that when searching for the right person for your campaign.

#2 SET CLEAR GOALS AND OBJECTIVES

Possibly the most important factor for any marketing campaign, influencer or otherwise, is making sure you set clear goals and objectives before launching. Your campaign goals determine almost of every other aspect of your campaign, from the types of influencers you enlist to the types of content they create for you.

Remember: Influencers are influencers because they’ve figured out what kind of content moves people to take actions. By telling your influencer partners what you hope to achieve with your campaign, you enable them to craft content that will help you meet your goals.

Use SMART Goals

If you’ve read any of our other posts, then you’ll know how much we love SMART goals – these are goals that are Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Realistic, and Time-sensitive. Take a look at these two example goals, and you’ll soon see why we love them:

“I want to get more followers”

“I want to increase our following to 5,000 through a targeted influencer marketing campaign, using three micro-influencers over a period of 1 month.”

With the first goal, there’s no real way to measure the success of your campaign. You might attract 100 new followers, or you might attract 1000 – either way, you have no benchmark to measure your success against.

In the second example, you’ve set out exactly what you want to achieve, by when, and how you’re going to do it. Goals like this allow you to track your results with much more accuracy.

#3 LOCK DOWN YOUR BUDGET

Something that many brands and businesses struggle with when they first dive into the world of influencer marketing is setting and sticking to a budget. Knowing how much a partnership with a specific influencer is worth can be hard to lock down when you’re just starting out. There isn’t specifically an industry standard yet for influencer pricing, and individual quotes can vary wildly, even in the same industry and with the same following.

It’s a tricky game to get right for both sides of the negotiations. Influencers know just how valuable their content can be for businesses nowadays, and they feel that they deserve to be compensated accordingly. Forty-four percent of influencers don’t think they’re getting a fair shake when it comes time to negotiate their service rates with brands.

Working with micro-influencers instead of macro- and mega-influencers tends to cost less per influencer, but you’ll probably need to work with more than one micro-influencer at a time. Fair warning, though: Their rates aren’t as low as you would expect.

There are mega-influencers who are charging $250K for a single YouTube video (not kidding – this was a real quote from an influencer we contacted for a campaign recently – and that rate didn’t include UGC rights), and you have micro-influencers who will do a single blog post for a few hundred bucks. It depends on the influencer there are several important factors that affect influencer rates.

What about free products? Well, you may be able to negotiate free products for small influencers, but… usually, you won’t be able to guarantee positive UGC without monetary compensation.

#4 COMMUNICATE

A “set it and forget it” mentality doesn’t work in this business. The landscape changes to quickly. So, you need to maintain open lines of communication before and during your campaign. In the build-up to the campaign launch, you should be constantly checking in with them to make sure everything is in place, and that they fully understand their position in the partnership. They need to feel comfortable enough to ask you any questions, or bring up concerns as they arise. If you keep the lines of communication open, you can watch your campaign to make sure you can address issues before they become problems.

Another thing many brands are considering is building long-term relationships with influencers. Keep influencers in the loop to let them know the results of their campaigns and get feedback from them about their side of the campaign as well. Influencers are full of good ideas. It’s also good to gather feedback on your process… Was everything laid out clearly for them? Did they feel valued as an influencer? Would they work with you again? All these things can help to inform future campaigns, and can help maintain a good relationship with the influencer if you decide to work with them again.

#5 TRACK AND MEASURE

As with any form of marketing, not every campaign and idea that you run with will bring you the same level of success. Some ideas will tank, and so will some influencer marketing campaigns – that’s just the way that life goes. But, a failed campaign isn’t a complete waste. There is so much to learn from it, more so than a successful one.

By tracking and measuring your results throughout your campaign, and diving into a deep analysis after the fact, you’ll have a wealth of information right at your fingertips. You’ll be able to figure out exactly how and why your campaign tanked, and how you can change your methods in the future to stop it from happening again.

And, by tracking as the campaign is running, you’ll also be able to sidestep a lot of these issues as they are happening. Keeping a close eye on the analytics throughout the run can help you spot any problems the second they arise, and resolve them before they have a bigger impact on your campaign.

Conclusion

The effectiveness of a marketing campaign is everything. It’s true for TV ads and it’s true for influencer campaigns. In this post, we laid out an abbreviated version of a solid influencer campaign, along with links to some content you can use to roll out a more sophisticated campaign for better results.

The post How to Improve the ROI of Your Holiday Influencer Marketing appeared first on The Shelf Full-Service Influencer Marketing.

Last Updated September 2018

“Vanity metrics” is a term that comes up pretty often in the context of influencer marketing, typically referring to metrics like follower counts and blog traffic.

Vanity metrics, by definition, are meant to increase the PERCEIVED value of a blog or social influencer by presenting influencer stats that make that influencer more appealing to brands. If their follower count is high, but engagement levels are low, bloggers might direct attention over to their follower count because that particular stat makes them look really valuable. Unfortunately they might be neglecting to mention the fact that they have very low engagement.

We run The Shelf, an influencer marketing platform, so literally every single day we talk brands who are basing their entire outreach strategies on these types of vanity metrics…and getting nowhere. 

At first, it surprised me that so many brands put so much weight on metrics like follower counts, as it’s pretty common knowledge that follower counts are easy to inflate. People can go on Fiverr right now and buy 5,000 Twitter followers for a few bucks… or if you’re dealing with a “set it and forget it” type of person who’s in it for the long haul, there are services that will consistently grow an influencers following with bots, cloned accounts, fake accounts, and dummy accounts for a hundred bucks a month or less.

But the influencer rarely retains their newly-purchased follower numbers… and fake accounts don’t offer great engagement, so… there’s that little piece.

While most people know that it’s possible to buy followers, I don’t think that everyone knows that these shady practices have been going on for years.

So, that’s what this post is about. I’ll be covering:

• Why dishonest metrics (we call it influencer fraud ‘round these parts) have become so prevalent within influencer marketing
• Which metrics bloggers and influencers are easily able to manipulate
• The signals marketers should analyze INSTEAD of these tired little vanity metrics

Why Dishonest Metrics (i.e. Influencer Fraud) Became the Thing

Influencers have all realized that popularity – whether real or fabricated – is often the first signal of an influencer’s potential value to brands. If you have craploads of followers (is craploads supposed to be hyphenated?), brands are far more willing to stuff money into your expensive little pockets.

…And if you don’t, they won’t. Simple.

This preoccupation that brands and marketers have with popularity (i.e. follower count) presents bloggers and wannabe brand ambassadors with a moral dilemma:

1. They can grow their following the hard way by networking, sucking up, and publishing years worth of quality content (without getting paid a dime)…all with the hope that one day their hard work will pay off, and they will finally know what it feels like to achieve that true, unadulterated state of popularity that they so long for…

OR

2. They can simply BUY their popularity for five or fifty bucks (depending on how much popularity they want and how legit they want that popularity to look), and rocket-launch themselves into the company of influencers who get the big contracts, the pretty photo ops, and the free stuff.

I’m going to be a sweetheart and say that most influencers probably start out with noble intentions, but after struggling for enough time, as well as watching other, less qualified influencers zoom past them for the price of 5 dollars worth of followers, many of them start to venture into the vanity metric gray-zone.

There are a few social media users who will leap head-first off of their moral high-ground, and flat-out purchase their followers, traffic, YouTube views, etc…Meanwhile, others will utilize less extreme tactics that are more like shortcuts instead of outright cheating.

Regardless of the intentions behind these tactics, by inflating their numbers these influencers are engaging in deceptive practices and making it a total nightmare for marketers to find the RIGHT influencers for their campaigns. 

The flip side is if brands and marketers weren’t bent on finding a quick fix for the Instagram puzzle, this particular “influencer black market” would never have emerged.

So, I can totally empathize with the brands who have to navigate through this mess… and I can totally empathize with the plight of the influencers.

Whether or not you feel influencers are justified in manipulating their metrics, it’s a real issue for brands.

2018 was bang-up year for influencer marketing.

1. Influencer marketing is largely responsible for making Kylie Jenner one of the world’s youngest billionaires…
2. It also attracted enough negative press this year to make people totally sick of it, and make brands call out influencers who are buying their followers (I’m specifically thinking about Unilever’s dramatic announcement at Cannes)…
3. The UAE required influencers to become licensed publishers, and at a pretty hefty price tag…
4. The FTC refined its Endorsement Guidelines and got rid of a lot of the loopholes and trap doors…

From the outside looking in, it could be easy to assume all these changes were signs influencer marketing was dying.

But dying and maturing are two different things. If you’re doing influencer marketing and you’ve been using vanity metrics as your go-to, you need a new way of evaluating influencers and measuring the ROI of campaigns.

So, we’re going to tell you which signals matter.

Here’s How to ID Legit Influencers Using Data (you know us)

When I went on Google and started typing in “buy Twitter…” check out what auto-populated. Clearly I’m not the first person to be typing in this search query. If you click through Google’s search results, you’ll be confronted with literally thousands of companies selling followers!

Right around the time influencer marketing really took hold of social media and blossomed into it’s own cottage industry, search volume for terms “buying followers” began shooting up, with Instagram being significantly higher than the other social networks.

Back then, to gauge the real demand for fake followers, I checked out Google’s Keyword Research Tool, which reported that there were more than 100K searches per month for the various types of follower-buying.

Perhaps that number doesn’t sound super high. But, Google’s Keyword Tool typically underestimates search volume so I included a search for “cat videos” in the screenshot below just so you can see how the numbers compare to something as widespread as the various cat memes that are ransacking the internet. You can see that there are more people looking to buy Instagram and Twitter followers (combined) than there are people searching for “cat videos”!

One more thing to note here is how much higher Instagram searches are compared to Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest. Instagram is by far leading the race in buying followers. And the fact that it’s still that much further ahead than the rest is impressive, considering the frequency with which platforms like Instagram and Twitter go through and purge fake accounts.

As I mentioned earlier, anyone who engages in this tactic has their own reason for it. And in most cases, I don’t think it’s to manipulate anyone. Oftentimes, these bloggers bring in extremely good ROIs for the brands they work with, yet they’re getting paid paltry amounts because they aren’t gaming their follower counts like everyone else.

• This article, written by Kristen, the blogger behind Just K, walks her readers through her various adventures with buying followers. She’s done quite a few experiments and actually wound up getting hit by Instagram’s big cleanup. Her take is an interesting one, and it also explains the rationale for follower-buying from a blogger’s perspective.
• You might also want to check out this post written by Gilad Lotan, a data scientist who blogs about social data. He did an experiment with buying followers and explained the various positive effects that he experienced as a result of that one large jump in his follower count.

Just for fun, go onto Fiverr and look for “Instagram followers” or “Twitter followers”. You have to click around a little because I think they try to prevent people from using the phrase “buy followers”…but you’ll see all sorts of posts that say: “I will 2500 FACEBOOK Likes” or “I will 3000 Instagram followers”. It’s crazy how much clout 5 bucks can buy you!

Obviously that sort of thing isn’t allowed by the various social networks, so they’ll up their ante from time to time in order to discourage that behavior.

Without fail, crackdowns by social media platforms will typically affect everyone. Some are affected WAY more than others but almost everyone on Instagram has fake followers, whether knowingly or not. So purges cause dips in everyone’s numbers. The people who had abnormally large percentages of their followers dropping off are the ones you’ll want to be a little of.

On our platform, The Shelf, we have tools that help with this quite a bit. We track follower counts over time and plot each social network on a graph. So it’s helpful to see what’s going on before you reach out to someone about a collaboration. When the Instagram cleanup happened, we noticed that quite a few people had huge dips in their follower counts. 

In the above examples, you can see where Instagram made it’s fake-follower-sweep and removed all the fake followers. Our charts can also show you where there are extremely abnormal growth patterns.

For this person, their Instagram was growing at a nice steady rate, but Facebook and Twitter were lagging behind. It looks like they purchased followers for both Twitter and Facebook on the same day in order to get their growth rate up near their Instagram’s. And while the jump doesn’t look huge, this influencer’s social accounts grew by around 500,000 total followers that day!

Below are two separate Pinterest influencers that seem to be up to something too. I can’t really say definitively that they’re buying followers but growing by 700,000 followers within a few months seems sort of unlikely, especially with such abnormal spurts AND considering they both started down near zero.

Anyway, there are countless ways and reasons why influencers buy followers. Regardless of the measures that these social networks are taking to prevent this kind of behavior, it’s a practice that is here to stay. Where there’s a will, there’s a way, and as long as follower counts determine the worth of people, there will be people trying to game their follower counts.

PURCHASING ENGAGEMENT

This one was actually news to me. When I was on Fiverr, doing research on how to buy followers, I saw that there were just as many people who were selling social network ENGAGEMENT. You can get people to retweet your tweets, Like your Facebook posts, pin your Pins, like your Instagram photos, and comment on any of your posts across your social networks. You can even buy views for your YouTube videos!!!

I thought that it would be difficult to fake YouTube views but evidently bots are out there doing all sorts of nonsense. And it isn’t just the randos out there who are purchasing followers and engagement…even Justin Bieber has been rumored to play in this space.

$5 GETS YOU 5 (QUALITY) BLOG COMMENTS

Discovering sellers on Fiverr who are selling blog comments was actually a little depressing. I assumed blog comments were safe from this but evidently you need to be wary of blog comments as well.

I would ALSO think that fake comments would be easy enough to notice if you take the time to read through some of the comments but if an influencer opts to pay a little more for said comments, those comments will actually be of higher quality, making them harder to detect. Five for $5 will get you quality comments, as opposed to the normal going rate of 15 comments for 5 bucks, which will earn you low quality comments.

TRAFFIC SCAMS

I was already aware that it’s possible to send fake traffic to your site but I was always under the impression that it required the help of a developer. Evidently you can take care of this too for the meager price of 5 dollars…

Here’s an article on the Observer that talks about this happening to a very extreme extent, where publishers were scamming ad buyers out of millions of dollars by using fake “bot” traffic. This isn’t at all what most influencers are doing, but it shows just how widespread this issue is.

All of the above tactics are straight-up breaking the Terms of Services for these social networks, and even more than that, they’re eroding the trust that brands have with influencers as a whole.  

I’m sure that a large percentage of influencers are not frequent Fiverr shoppers but it’s always good to be aware of the options that are out there so that you know what to look for when finding the right influencers to work with. My exploration into the seedy underbelly of Fiverr was actually quite enlightening, so hopefully you were able to learn from all of that as well!

Moving on, we’ll now cover vanity metrics that are less “illegal” than those covered above.

How Influencers to Inflate Metrics Without Breaking Laws

The world of buying followers isn’t completely unmoderated. Many influencers have seen their fake followers removed, and in more extreme cases, their accounts deleted because social networks have built-in mechanisms to prevent abuse.  For many, the possibility of having their account deleted is enough to stop them from buying followers and/or engagement.

But there’s more than one way to skin a cat.

First, there’s the age-old Follow/Unfollow technique, one thats been rocked by some of the most “popular” people out there. It involves following a whole bunch of targeted Twitter users, and then several days later, unfollowing the ones who didn’t follow back. A tool that’s popular for this is Unfollowers.com.

This technique will definitely kick the follower counts up for the influencers who go this route, but it does cause the follower/following ratio to get out of whack. In an ideal world, popular bloggers will have a ratio similar to that of Justin Beiber and his massive following of Beliebers (most of whom HE is not following back). Being popular just isn’t as cool if you “like” as many people as those who “like” you. You need to be snubbing a large enough percentage of those people in order for it to be legit popularity.

So for the influencers who are concerned about their ratio, it just requires a small adjustment to the follow-unfollower strategy. Rather than unfollowing the people who don’t wind up following back, they just unfollow everyone, including the people who were nice enough to follow back. 

Another mechanism for growing followers without breaking rules is through the use of auto-engagement tools, where an influencer can auto-engage with certain hashtags. In return, those people who received the engagement will typically follow back or reciprocate. 

There are many ways to speed up the growth of a social following. Some involve tools. Some just involve focused effort. And…how does one even define foul-play here? Followers don’t just materialize out of thin air, so a certain amount of effort is going to go into growing one’s follower count. 

Conclusion

This is the first post in a series of three on the topic of Vanity Metrics. Hopefully it gave you a nice overview of everything that’s possible in terms of the manipulation of an influencer’s metrics. It should also arm you with the knowledge of what to look out for when choosing influencers to work with.

The second post in this group discusses which bloggers will have accurate Alexa/Compete rankings and which ones won’t, plus why. We did a whole bunch of experiments, so you can read all about that here.

The third post will bring everything to a close. Now that you know what to watch out for, and what metrics to avoid when finding your influencers, you now need to know how you should go about picking your influencers if you don’t have stats like follower counts and traffic to base your decisions on. The third post covers all of that, so stay tuned!

The post Why Vanity Metrics Matter Less Than You Think appeared first on The Shelf Full-Service Influencer Marketing.