The 6 best practices in influencer marketing for 2022

Social networks are the medium for influencer marketing. In addition to offering the possibility of interacting with inspiring people, they allow users to discover new brands and products in a whole new way. This is where influencer marketing comes in. This strategy, based on the power of influencers known to be excellent opinion leaders, is ideal to boost your sales and improve your brand awareness.

The Skeepers influencer platform, including Hivency and Octoly, gives you its 6 best practices to optimize your influencer marketing strategy.

What practices to adopt in influencer marketing in 2022?

#1 – Create an ambassador program with influencers

Consumers have more and more demands and prefer to buy with brands they have a certain proximity with. This is where influencers play a key role: they act as a filter between the two. Moreover, 92% of consumers trust the feedback of influencers (source: HubSpot).

Advocacy marketing, or using brand ambassadors to communicate on social networks, has been growing in 2021 and will continue to become more and more important in brand strategy in 2022. Influencers, as powerful opinion leaders, are a major asset to integrate into your ambassador program. To turn some of your influencers into ambassadors for your brand, here are some tips: 

• Find the right influencers, those who share the same values and passions as your brand. On our platform, you can have access to the Smart Matching that helps you to select the perfect influencers for your campaign;
• Choose influencers you are used to working with. They will be able to communicate about your products with more accuracy and enthusiasm, being loyal to your brand.

#2 – Augmented reviews: video serving Customer Advocacy

It’s a fact, consumers are your most powerful advocates. Once you have established a certain bond with them, you need to convince them to leave reviews for your products, as they influence consumer behavior. Indeed, 70% of online shoppers read one to six online consumer reviews before making a purchasing decision (source: Statista). Customer reviews can be in the form of reviews on pages like Google Reviews, or under your product sheets, but not only! Augmented reviews are reviews that do not take the “classic” typed form, including those using the video channel. 

In 2021, the video channel was very popular with consumers. It is also a channel to be privileged in your collaborations with influencers who appreciate creating this type of content and which can take the form of Reels, TikTok videos or lives. To help you, consumer video solutions exist, such as Teester, which accompany you in the implementation of these UGC videos in order to :

• Increase your conversion rate;
• Improve your SEO;
• Increase your reputation online, etc.

#3 – Reuse UGC from influencers and consumers

Once you have succeeded in generating UGC, whether through content produced by influencers or through consumer reviews, the next step is to enhance them. 

You have several choices: 

• you can integrate the beautiful photos and videos of influencers on your product sheets to highlight your products; 
• You can also create an account on social networks dedicated to UGC, like Dior did with its DiorBeautyLovers Instagram account;
• You can reuse the influencers’ videos and integrate them into an advertisement, like the Garnier brand did for its new Fructis Hair Food range, etc.

It’s good to point out that nano and micro-influencers can generate quality UGC, as seen on the DiorBeautyLovers Instagram account, without having millions of followers.

#4 – Do content curation

Content curation follows the principle of digital monitoring. The goal is to be informed of the latest trends on social networks that are ephemeral, to develop your expertise by keeping yourself informed regularly, but also to find potential influencers with whom to collaborate. To do this, you can create an account, especially on TikTok, and follow your brand and search through hashtags for content related to your brand’s universe. For example, to do content curation for a beauty brand, the right hashtags would be:

• #beauty;
• #tutorial;
• #makeup…

#5 – Organize offline and online events

Online events

Whether you are a B2B or B2C brand, you are concerned by the implementation of online events, a phenomenon accelerated by the global health crisis. In these online events, we count the fashion shows of the luxury brands transmitted on the social networks of each House, Q&A live, but also live shopping. This year, France has seen social commerce or the sale of products through social networks, develop considerably.  

To organize an online event with influencers, here are some best practices:

• Survey the influencers’ communities on what they would like to find in this event, what kind of products (bestsellers, new products…);
• Set up a communication with the influencers to make their community not want to miss this unique event;
• Adopt the right social network according to your target! The choice is wide: LinkedIn for a B2B brand, TikTok for more informal content and a rather young target… 
• Reveal a part of the backstage of this event to make the audience want to see it and bring more authenticity to this operation, etc.

Offline events

By inviting influencers to events in your workshops and other premises, you improve your brand-influencer relationship. This is the case of the French food brand Michel et Augustin, who organized last December a chocolate mousse class with its products to inaugurate its new premise near Paris. On this occasion, each invited influencer could come accompanied by a person, a great idea to develop his brand awareness and humanize the operation! 

#6 – Learn about the regulations

Influencer marketing is becoming more and more important in the strategy of brands and on social networks, so influencer marketing regulations are necessary. Depending on the country in which you wish to operate, the regulations will be different. You must therefore make sure to find out about this and not hesitate to include certain standards in your briefs, such as :

• Remind influencers to explicitly mention (verbally or in writing) each partnership;
• Remind them to report when this collaboration is paid…

In turn, social networks are increasingly framing influencers, allowing for true collaborations, and within the codes. For example, Pinterest has launched its “Creator Code” with the aim of preserving the positivity present on the platform.

Source: Newsroom Pinterest

With these 6 best practices that refer to influence and consumer reviews, you can be sure to optimize your marketing strategy! To prepare for 2022, Hivency by Skeepers can help you set up your influencer campaigns. 

Photo credits: Isabela Kronemberger via Unsplash