A few recent examples of online influencers hurting the brands they work with have small businesses wary of influencer marketing. PewDiePie and Logan Paul are just a few of the big name influencers who have stirred up controversy in recent months that the brands they work with didn’t count on.
But these situations don’t mean that influencer marketing is too risky for small businesses. You just need to be prepared. And there’s a new resource that can help you do just that.
Brand-Safe Influencer Marketing Guide
Influicity, an influencer marketing analytics and campaign management service, has just released a brand-safe influencer marketing guide to help brands manage influencer campaigns even when they go rogue.
Jon Davids, founder and CEO of Influicity, told Small Business Trends, “The last year was an awakening for marketers on the importance of brand-safety in the new media context. It’s not enough to send a product over to a creator and hope for the best. Brands need to develop and follow a diligence process to protect their IP wherever it goes.”
The guide is aimed at helping brands manage their influencer campaigns in a way that will allow them to more easily avoid or at least navigate these types of controversies without having their brand names dragged through the mud. Here are just a few of the tips covered in the guide.
Perform Exhaustive Research on Influencers
You can get a pretty good idea about an influencer and the types of content they’re likely to post by simply researching them beforehand. During that process, you might see some warning signs that would suggest an influencer could do some damage to your brand in the future. For example, if your brand is one that you want far away from controversial political subjects, then it’s probably not a great idea to partner with a comedian who constantly posts jokes related to those topics online.
Create Very Clear Contracts
It’s also a good idea to be very clear with any influencers you work with right from the outset. Create a clear contract that outlines what you expect from them and if there are any types of posts or activities you expect them to avoid while representing your brand. You can also use this opportunity to find out what the influencers expect from the relationship as well.
Monitor Influencer Activity Constantly
When you’re working with an influencer, you need to keep a constant eye on their content. This doesn’t just help you monitor results for your own campaigns, but it also gives you an opportunity to spot any potential issues early on so that you can address them in a timely manner.
Have Back-up Plans and Crisis Management Plans
No matter how much you prepare beforehand, you might still find your brand in crisis mode if one of your influencers goes rogue. So have a plan in place, including making sure some of your team members are on call at any time and that there are defined roles, to make sure you have a process for addressing issues in a timely and satisfactory manner.
Hire Specialists Who Can Manage These Issues for You
Finally, if this all sounds a little overwhelming for you, there are businesses and professionals out there specializing in influencer marketing that can help you develop a plan and carry out all of these essential steps so that your influencer campaigns actually help your brand rather than hurt it.
Photo via Shutterstock
Aira Bongco
I guess it is important that your brand is properly communicated across. This is the only way for them to interpret your brand properly.
Annie Pilon
Yes, communication is key
They said that there’s a way to retrieve information from Google so that you can correct what’s being said about you online.
Annie Pilon
In some cases it’s not even influencers saying something about your brand, but if they’re associated with you then the things they say can still reflect negatively upon your brand
Have a system. If you can, you should have a team who will track mentions of your brand name. This is the only way you can get control over this.
Annie Pilon
You definitely need to track this, yes