With today’s social media rules constantly evolving, it is important to keep an eye out for different flaws or mistakes that could send your brand into an unavoidable mess. When it comes to influencer marketing, however, it is still a relatively new practice in the world of marketing. With all of the options and considerations, many brands are unsure where to start. That’s why our influencer marketing firm put together five of the top influencer mistakes to avoid as a brand.
Spamming
On any social media platform, it is never a good idea to spam your followers with the same (or similar) content. Not only do apps like Instagram reduce your appearance on the home and explore page, but your followers will also start to get fed up with your repetitive posts. Therefore, if you ask an influencer to post 10 sponsored #ads of the same content, you won’t get much traction. Instead, diversify your influencer content and timing to maximize reach and effect of these campaigns.
Prioritizing Reach Over Content
The mistake that many brands make is trying to work with huge celebrities and influencers purely based on follower count. Many think that the more followers an influencer has, the more likely they are to have more influence and pull in higher sales. However, the truth is the complete opposite. Micro-influencers with a follower number between 5k to 20k and ones that really compliment your brand is trying to represent. Smaller influencers have the potential to spend more time on your brand and to represent it in a better way. Their content may have more quality and detail, that could be beneficial to your brand in the long run.
Not Being Transparent
One of the most important priorities to have in brand marketing is to figure out how to perfectly disclose the existence of a partnership between the influencer and the brand. Whether it’s a caption or hashtags announcing a new partnership between an influencer and your brand or providing your post with sponsorship labels, depending on the platform, you always want to make sure that your followers and clients know that there is a deal going on between the two parties. Influencers and brands that do not announce their partnerships and make it obvious that they are advertising for them are usually disliked by crowds and are seen as liars and manipulators. This can easily affect the image of your brand.
Focusing Only on One Platform
Many social media platforms have become prominent in the recent few years. All of them play a special role in the world of marketing and advertising. One mistake a lot of brands make is focusing on influencers that are only successful on one single platform. Each application has its own set of audiences. A good influencer marketing firm would recommend that the influencers you choose are present on a variety of platforms. This allows for content to reach more people, which will push your brand to grow as other influencers may want to do partnerships with you as well.
Not Creating Different Types of Content
Starting off from our last point, we expressed how important it is to be present on multiple platforms. This means that your influencer content is also bound to change depending on the platform it’s on. It isn’t “cool” to stick with one style anymore. Viewers love to see you active in different places, and they love to see how creative you can be with spreading content. An example of this could be Instagram’s multiple tools that allow for the creation of diverse content. Many brands today are learning to juggle posts, stories, reels, and lives at the same time. Doing this allows for unique content, which will pull in your target audience in higher numbers.
Social media branding and marketing methods are rapidly changing. Therefore, brands and influencers need to keep an eye out for anything new that may help them reach more audiences and avoid small mistakes that could jeopardize the future of their projects. To learn more tips from our influencer marketing firm, click here.
