With traditional advertising getting less and less effective, social media influencer marketing has become one of the go-to promotional channels of marketers today.
Researchers predict in a recent study that the influencer marketing industry’s worth would balloon to $9.7 billion this year. Out of the 4,000 respondents in the said survey, 91 percent believe that social media influencer marketing is an effective form of marketing.
For the uninitiated, social media influencers are people with significant followings on social media platforms like Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok.
Influencers are experts in their fields, and their actions could influence the views and opinions of their avid followers.
What is Influencer Marketing?
As the name implies, influencer marketing relies on the famous social media personalities to get the word out about brands.
Sounds simple right? In reality, it is, but getting desired results takes effort.
A lot of brands often jump in without much research and preparation. It can be disastrous.
In this article, we will discuss the three common mistakes people make with influencer marketing and ways to avoid them.
Social Media Influencer Marketing Mistakes
1. Poor Planning
One of the biggest mistakes a brand/business can make is to rush into an influencer campaign without a proper plan in place.
As the saying goes, ‘If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail!’
Without a plan, your campaign is less likely to succeed.
For example, if you are looking to have an influencer help you get the word out about your business, you probably don’t want to seek out an influencer that features many products in one post. Instead, you’ll want to find an influencer that focuses on one business at one time.
On the other hand, if you’re looking to get your products mentioned alongside competitors, you’ll need to seek out an influencer that incorporates many products into each post.
In short, if you don’t plan, you’re more likely to hire the wrong influencer and lose money on your campaign.
Don’t make that mistake. Instead, have a definitive plan for your campaign.
Having a clear plan will guide you in setting SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Â and Timebound) goals for your campaigns.
Your goals will guide you as to the kind of influencer to hire for your campaign, how long you’ll run the campaign, the platforms to use, and the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) you’ll need to measure your success.
Read More:Â Why The Biggest Companies Use Influencer Marketing
2. Focusing on Vanity Metrics
Another common mistake people make with social media influencers is focusing on vanity metrics. It’s common for brands/businesses to focus on the popularity of the influencer.
A standard vanity metric is the number of followers or fans an influencer has.
Being famous is good, but it doesn’t necessarily translate into profitability.
Just because one influencer has 300k followers doesn’t make him better for business than one with 100k followers.
Technically, the more followers a person has, the more reach they can get. But this is not the case any longer on social media.
Don’t pay a lot of attention to the number of followers or fans. What you should check is how engaged his/her followers are.
Engagement rate is the ultimate measure of the quality of an influencer’s fans or followers.
Your campaign is more likely to perform better with an influencer that has a higher engagement rate than one with more followers.
3. Not Measuring Results
Numbers don’t lie.
The only way to truly measure the impact of an influencer campaign is to dive into the data.
Many fail to look beyond the likes, shares, and retweets on the influencers social media accounts.
As discussed in our first point, because many brands rush into influencer campaigns without a clear definition of goals, there often aren’t any KPIs to measure success against.
Not measuring results means you can’t pinpoint which campaigns had the most success if you’re running multiple campaigns.
Avoid this by having measures in place to track results. Use trackable links where necessary. Check your analytics for any bumps in traffic or sales during campaign periods and growth in social pages.
Measure results against goals to find out whether the campaign was a success or not.
Invest in Social Media Influencer Marketing
Influencer marketing is getting more and more popular by the day. A lot of brands and businesses are employing it.
As a relatively new form of marketing, there’ll be a lot of trial and error.
By avoiding these common mistakes that we discussed, you can drastically increase the chances of success of your influencer marketing campaigns.
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