Influencer Marketing: 10 Mistakes Brands Make and How to Fix Them

Influence marketing is helping brands big and small ignite their online and offline communities, increase brand awareness and nurture powerful relationships when done right. If you haven't heard about influence marketing you have likely been on a long vacation on a beautiful island with zero internet connectivity or you have been hiding under a rock.

As with anything in marketing, business or life, there are some marketers doing it right and there are others who are burning more bridges than the ones they are trying to build. Many are doing it without really knowing they are damaging relationships.

There are also agencies who are claiming to help brands big and small build relationships with an influencer marketing program. However, they wound up falling to spammy tactics and end up hurting the brand reputation without the brand marketer even knowing. Every brand touch is an impression of your brand. If an agency or a member of your team is spamming the contact boxes of top industry or even micro-influencers with copy / paste spam messages begging for free tweets, I can guarantee they are hurting your brand more than helping you.

Influencer marketing is not about getting free tweets and coverage. It is not the same as earned media. Earned media = media you actually do something to earn. Many brands trick themselves into believing that they can skip valuing the influencers time investment in community as they lump it into “earned media.”

It's time agencies and brand marketing leaders get real and acknowledge that reaching out and spamming contact boxes and expecting free tweets is not doing the work to earn the media.Click To Tweet

You will get out of influencer marketing what you put into it. If you invest time as a human in building relationships the payoff can be big. However, many brands fall to the spammy tactics and then blame it on the fact that influencer marketing isn't working. The truth is the person running the program never took the time to learn the strategies and tactics that really work. They often skip researching influencers and send a generic blanket email or contact form desperately begging for free amplification.

Instead, brand and social marketing leaders wanting to test the waters with influencer marketing must always also think… “what is in it for the influencer?” How can I bring them mass value in working with our brand. The most successful influencer programs are when there is a partnership, when the brand and the influencer have common ground, beliefs, interests and a base to build a relationship. This is much of why micro-influencer marketing can be so successful for even brands with small budgets.

I developed episode 121 of the Social Zoom Factor podcast with a goal to help marketers brand new to influence marketing as well as seasoned veterans get the most out of their influence marketing programs.

The goal of this episode is to save you some heartache, wasted time and help you save your reputation along the way as you build, launch and execute your influencer marketing program.

I share with you tips in this podcast from my experience in working with brands of all sizes from startups to Fortune 100 brands helping them develop and execute influence marketing programs as well as from being an influencer myself. We get contacted by at minimum 10-20 brands per week wanting us to be an influencer for their brand.

In this 30 Minute Episode You Will Learn:

Why and how brands are confusing spam with influence marketing
How to choose the right influencers and avoid choosing the wrong influencers
Importance of doing your research on influencers before reaching out to them
The importance of the influencer being able to drive real action to help you achieve your business goals
Why trust matters with influencers
Building your team to succeed with influence marketing
How to create value for the influencer as a top priority
Importance of connecting the influencer with other people at your in person events
Importance of respecting the influencer as a human being, not as a number to help you simply amplify your message
How to decide if you should compensate influencers for their time

This is the fourth podcast episode in a series of conversations that will cover influencer marketing in detail. Take a listen and be sure to subscribe to the entire series on iTunes, Stitcher or SoundCloud!

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Need help implementing a new influencer marketing service for your brand? Our agency, Marketing Nutz can help you build, launch and optimize an influencer marketing program that will help you achieve your goals. Give us a shout and let's get to work!

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