Influencer Management: How To Build Successful Relationships

Table of Contents:

• Yes, You Need to Manage Influencer Relationships
• Why You Need an Influencer Management Strategy
• 7 Tips to Successfully Manage Influencer Relations
• 4 Influencer Management Tools to Try
• How Klear Creates Better Influencer Management Relationships

Influencer marketing is the key to brand awareness, growth, and sustainable success. It allows you to get in front of audiences that are likely to be interested in what you do. Plus, a recommendation from someone people trust can give you major street cred. But first, you need a way to connect with influencers and build a strong relationship with them. That’s where an influencer management strategy comes in. 

Just like with your customers, relationships don’t happen automatically. They’re the products of careful nurturing, marketing, ongoing attention, and beneficial terms for both parties. A well-designed influencer management strategy can help companies build successful relationships with their influencers.

We’re sharing the importance of a sound influencer management strategy and providing tips on how to do it right.

Yes, You Need to Manage Influencer Relationships

In a world where anyone can be an influencer, it’s more important than ever to have a strategy for managing those relationships. Whether you’re looking to build brand awareness, drive traffic or sales, improve marketing, or simply create a better customer experience, influencers can play a key role.

But finding and nurturing those relationships takes time and effort. It’s not enough to identify the right influencers – you also need to develop strategies for engaging them and tracking their impact.

That’s why more brands are discovering the benefits of influencer relationship management (IRM). Influencer relationship management tools and platforms can help you track and manage your interactions with influencers, making it easier to identify the most valuable relationships and get the most out of them.

Why You Need an Influencer Management Strategy

We define an influencer management strategy as a documented, intentional approach to building and maintaining relationships with influencers. This strategy gives you a roadmap to follow so you can make each relationship a priority and track your results.

Ultimately, your influencers promote your brand or products in a positive light. But without a good existing relationship, they may not feel connected to your brand enough to present you in a compelling way. Or worse, they might decide you’re not worth their time or otherwise don’t feel comfortable recommending you to their followers.

Influencer management helps you build stronger connections with each influencer. It helps them get to know your brand on a deeper level so they can put you in the best light when promoting you. It also makes each promotion feel more genuine for their followers when influencers care about the brands they work with.

A good strategy makes it easy to put all the pieces of campaign management into place. With a blueprint in hand, you can continue nurturing the relationship, foster loyalty and goodwill, and make it easy for them to share some brand love.

6 Tips to Successfully Manage Influencer Relations

First time leading influencer marketing campaigns? We’ve been in your shoes and have learned some things along the way. As you’re crafting your digital influencer management approach, put the following tips into practice.

1. Reach Out to Relevant Influencers

It’s easier to build an influencer database if you start by connecting with relevant prospects. Not everyone with an audience will help your brand flourish.

The right influencer partners should share a target audience that’s most likely to care about what you do. A beauty influencer probably isn’t a great fit for a fishing brand. Make it easy for followers to connect your brand to whatever the influencer does best to build credibility and better brand recall.

Also, don’t confuse relevance with audience size. Even smaller followings (micro-influencers have as few as 1,000 people) can have a big impact on your influencer campaigns if they’re engaged and trust the influencer’s recommendations.

2. Set Clear Expectations

Building good relationships means starting off on the right foot, but you wouldn’t want to make a first impression you can’t live up to. That’s why it’s important to think about what you want your influencer relationships to look like, and then set the tone for the relationship moving forward.

Outline your expectations in a contract and provide it to the influencer. Include details about payments, how you’ll evaluate their performance, contract length, and other specifics.

Contracts work both ways. They give both sides some security and assurances that the other party will live up to certain expectations. It holds you both to higher standards, which can lead to a more fruitful relationship.

3. Give Influencers Creative Freedom

Here’s a tough pill for some brands to swallow – your influencers know their audience better than you do. They’re experienced content creators and know what works when it comes to promoting products and services to their followers. This is their area of expertise, so let them influence the best ways they know how.

Allowing some creative freedom with your influencer campaigns can help you to get better outcomes. Remember, your influencer’s reputation is on the line, too. They’ll only present your products in a way they think will work because they wouldn’t want to risk damage to their own brand.

4. Choose the Right Engagement Metrics

Tracking your influencer’s performance is a natural part of influencer marketing management. You want to know your influencers are making real connections on your behalf. This gives you a better idea of which influencers to continue partnering with and which ones to let go.

That said, not just any metrics or KPIs give you a clear idea of your influencer’s performance. Vanity metrics like impressions and likes mean little in the grand scheme of ROI. Fake influencers rely heavily on these metrics because they think they make them look more valuable.

A better approach is to look beneath the surface and track things like clicks, sales, conversions, website traffic, and brand awareness. If your brand is steadily gaining more attention, it’s a good sign your influencer is doing their job.

5. Attribute Results to the Right Influencer

If you’re working with multiple influencers, you’ll need a way to see which ones are driving the results and which ones aren’t. One way to do this is to give them each a unique offer code to share with their audience. You can track conversions by offer code to see who’s bringing the most engagement.

An influencer marketing campaign platform can help you keep tabs on all of your influencer campaigns from a single location. See at a glance who is making a difference and which relationships you should keep nurturing.

6. Stay in Touch with Your Influencers

Ongoing communication is key in influencer marketing campaigns. It helps you stay top of mind to them, and it helps them to feel more connected to your brand.

An influencer management tool can simplify communication. Set reminders for ongoing follow-up, send personalized emails, and keep learning and growing together.

4 Influencer Management Tools to Try

Influencer management software and tools can help you simplify the process of creating and following your strategy. Here are a few tools and platforms to help you get started.

Klear

Klear offers all-inclusive influencer marketing software that brings all of your activities into a single program. Centralize all of your influencer communications so you never miss a message. Share campaign briefs and content that won’t get lost in your email inbox. Centralizing also makes it easier to go back and review message threads in case communications drop off.

The end-to-end platform also serves as a project manager. Keep campaigns organized with a custom workflow and keep your campaign content in one location. Assign tasks and deadlines, keep team members updated, and collaborate on project assets. You can also track each campaign’s status within the dashboard as well as the metrics that matter to you.

Klear works across all social media platforms, including TikTok, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and more. 

HypeAuditor

Curious to find the best influencers? HypeAuditor is purpose-built for the task. It uses AI technology to find and rank Instagram influencers by followers and engagement.

What’s cool about HypeAuditor is that it doesn’t just look at surface-level data. It prioritizes follower quality, allowing brands to choose influencers based on quality and not just audience size.

View the top 1000 Instagram influencers in real time, or break down your search into one of 14 categories.

Storyclash

Storyclash is a free Instagram tool that connects you to social media influencers who are already talking about your brand. This is a great way to find influencers who are already familiar with what you do. It makes for an easy introduction, at the very least.

Using Storyclash is easy. Just input your brand’s hashtag or name into the search bar, then see a partial list of influencers who have mentioned your brand in the last 30 days. You’ll also see their audience size and their niche, allowing you to decide whether to reach out to them or keep searching.

Discover.ly

This Chrome plug-in helps you find influencers within your own network. The sidebar gives you a peek into the social followings of your email, LinkedIn, and Facebook contacts.

For example, you can see which of your LinkedIn contacts share mutual connections on Facebook, or see which tweets you share with your contacts on Facebook. Discover.ly gives you a more complete social media snapshot of people you’re already connected with.

How Klear Creates Better Influencer Relationships

Klear is a leader in social media influencer management. Our comprehensive platform gives you a single source for all your hands-on activities and even automates some on your behalf. Quickly discover influencers who make sense to work with, then nurture and manage the entire relationship with ease.

We’re helping brands build a stronger, data-driven influencer management program. Get up-to-date analytics, insights, and confidence with an all-in-one solution. Schedule a demo to learn more!