Content Makers and Speakers. How to diversify the content with Influencers?

Today, almost every company or store has a social media presence. In addition to self-promotion, these platforms may be used as a platform for speakers – Influencers. This article will explain why this is required.

My colleagues and I received an email from a large online portal one day. The letter offered to host our author’s material on their website for free. We were asked to create an article promoting their products for them, citing our authorship; we were asked to publish such an article for free – doesn’t that seem attractive? What is the secret advantage for the portal, buried in this offer, if you read between the lines?

The portal has an audience. The audience is interested in the content that is published on the portal.  To keep the attention of the old audience and attract new ones, you need interesting new content.  And to create content, you need authors, who must be paid or encouraged in other ways. As a result, the portal created an interesting plan of a kind of barter – the authors produce content for free, and the portal reveals their authorship for free as well.

Why not repeat this strategy for our online store, my colleagues and I thought? We have a loyal audience – the regular buyers of perfumes and cosmetics, who read the informational and educational content published on our social media and we are ready to share this audience with bloggers.  For a beauty-influencer it’s a good image story to be published on the official page of a big online store and for us it’s a good opportunity to diversify our content as well as get additional audience and the blogger themselves, since they usually share links with subscribers when a publication with their authorship appears on our website or social network page.

We decided to start with YouTube and called such cooperation an expert author section on our channel, and since then our channel has started to live a new life. Every week we started to post videos with different Influencers, with reviews of products that can be bought on our website. And it became a real win-win situation. We began to receive offers of such cooperation from bloggers themselves – they were interested in publishing their reviews on our page, because it is solid and attracts new viewers, and we, of course, are interested in getting interesting reviews.

However, not everything was always smooth, and several times videos sent to us didn’t pass the approval process and we had to refuse bloggers in publication. So, we got extra costs for the product we sent and didn’t get quality content in return. Therefore, we concluded that this format of cooperation requires a clear script with requirements and wishes, which should be sent to Influencers at the earliest stage of negotiations.

What is important to specify in the requirements script? Checklist for the brand.

1. At the beginning, you need to specify the main and basic wishes – the things that can’t be overlooked. The Influencer reads this part first, and then immediately has a broader view of what is required of him. Basic requirements may include requirements for backgrounds, lighting and sound quality in case it is a video or writing style in case it is an article.
2. Be sure to mention in what form, format, quality, and in what time frame you expect to receive the source material.
3. If you want an announcement of the publication in the Influencer’s personal social networks – you’d better specify that too.
4. If you wish, you can give an example of the structure of an article or video, so that the Influencer can understand the format in which you expect the content to be posted at your site.

In conclusion…

If you don’t like the content received by the Influencer – you can think of a plan B. For example, offer the Influencer to post the video on his/her social networks, but it’s important to do it tactfully and be able to say “no” without offending.

I wrote earlier in my article about which social networks Influencers advertise on.