Part 5 in our 2018 Influencer Marketing Strategy & Planning Playbook series.
Discovering, identifying and vetting the right influencers is among marketers’ biggest influencer marketing challenges – and then, there’s the issue of scale. Designing a scalable influencer marketing strategy in 2018 requires an influencer marketing mix comprised of influencers, advocates, referrers, and loyalists, as well as an influencer recruitment and identification data strategy.
If you plan to engage influencers during initial campaign planning, i.e. initial research, campaign ideation (and you should), you will need to have influencers identified before campaign planning kicks-off, using data sources and attributes identified in your influence-augmented customer journey.
Aligning influencers from the beginning of the planning process also means you mitigate the risk of not finding the right influencers to power your content strategy, as well as brand alignment through the content creation process. Depending on the number of influencers required, it is best practice to allow three months for influencer identification and recruitment.
Target Audience(s)
Primary:
Key Journey Moments / Priority Channels: ______________________________
Secondary:
Key Journey Moments / Priority Channels: ______________________________
Influencer, Advocate, Referrer & Loyalist Identification Data
I. Who they are:
Start by reviewing known (i.e. previously engaged) influencers, advocates, referrers, loyalists from past campaigns or existing resources, such as subscriber lists, CRM database, and social followers. We recommend leveraging an IMR Technology Partner, such as Mavrck, to manage your relationship and performance data for each.
Biographical & demographic information for identification: What do we know about the influencers already? How do they self-identify?
Identity or Bio Keywords: _________________________
Life Events:__________________
Other: __________________
II. What they say & share (influencers, advocates, referrers)
Conversation indicators for Identification: Are the influencers discussing relevant topics online? If so, what are they talking about (likely using a IMR Technology, such as Mavrck or social listening tool)?
Conversation Topics:_____________________
Boolean Query: ____________________
III. Where they can be found:
Destinations for Identification: What are specific locations where they can be found?
Key Social Media Networks: _____________________
Internal Databases: _____________________
Communities: _________________
Owned Entities, or Entities they Follow:_________________
IV. Influencer Vetting & Validation:
It’s important to vet an influencer’s content for negative or risky content, as well, to manually review their presence for brand alignment, e.g. does their aesthetic match that of the brand, and does their tone fit the campaign and brand messaging?
Content & Risk Assessment Checklist
❏ Profanity
❏ Politics – Party Related
❏ Politics – Gun Control
❏ Politics – Abortion
❏ Politics – Climate Change
❏ Drug Use
❏ Discrimination – Race
❏ Discrimination – Religion
❏ Discrimination – Sexual
❏ Other________________
Influence is rooted in historical social behavior and predictive brand performance – an influencer my be relevant for the next few hours or perhaps for years, which requires technology to understand and quantify.
Influencer Curation
Mavrck’s Curation module allows you and your teams to ‘upvote’ and ‘downvote’ influencers based on your influencer identification parameters, influencer percentile and performance.
Influencer Review
Mavrck’s Influencer Review module displays a gallery of that Influencer’s last 25 posts, as well as the likes and comments earned per post.
During the review process, you or any member of your team can leave notes on influencers’ profiles, and will be maintained across any subsequent interactions with the influencer. You can also tag and segment influencers into specific lists.
Download our full 2018 Influencer Marketing Strategy & Planning Playbook, and check out the rest of the series below:
