Influencer marketing is a brilliant and effective way to connect and engage with your audience. However with the world changing rapidly and millions of consumers using social to make buying decisions brands are actively exploring new ways of engaging with their customers on various social media platforms and reaching out to influencers to create meaningful partnerships.

Also referred to as Key Opinion Leaders (KOL’s), influencers are primarily content creators with an extensive reach on social platforms and have also gained trust within their micro-communities. Hence, to ensure influencers think and talk favorably about your brand and share your story with their readers, dodge these common pitfalls.

Mistake 1: Is the influencer right for you?

The most crucial piece of an influencer campaign is the influencer itself. Hence it becomes essential to find the correct influencers who align with your brand. While an influencer with a large following may sound tempting, pick someone influential for your brand. In many cases, it is worthwhile to connect to niche bloggers since they may have passionate and targeted followers within tight-knit communities. Begin with creating a pool of influencers who resonates best with your brand’s image and filter this pool further based on the influencer’s suitability to the campaign’s message. This simple process will go a long way in driving success.

Mistake 2: Are you racing against time?

Our world is constantly on top gear, and marketers are always under tight deadlines to get their campaigns live. While the same pressure may be passed on to influencers to create content within tight timelines, this can often lead to a loss for a brand. If under pressure, the influencer creates sub-par content, this may lead to the poor performance of the campaign. At the same time, this does not mean that influencers should be left unchecked on timelines but an agreeable 3-7 day window is a good deal.

Mistake 3: Do you know what your influencers charge?

Initiate more conversations with bloggers to familiarize yourself with the varying audience sizes accessible and at what price ranges. It would help if you also take the opportunity to operate with bloggers of differing sizes so you can gain an understanding of what to expect and what works best for your brand. Depending on your niche, this can vary widely. If you don’t hear back when you first start doing blogger outreach, it can be difficult to conclude what you’re doing wrong. Many times you could be ‘barking up the wrong tree’ either in size or in relevance.

Mistake 4: Have you defined your objectives clearly?

Are your marketing objectives unclear or misaligned? Doesn’t matter! In either case, they are doomed to fail. It’s critical for a marketer and the influencer to be on the same page to be equally aligned to achieve the goals. Set the expectations right on what you want their readers/listeners/followers to do. Do you like them to sign up for a newsletter, click on a link, follow you on Instagram, or enter a contest? Sharing even the most basic expectations with the influencer will ensure their message is customized to your desired call to action.

A tip from a powerful influencer, “Don’t try to control the perspective we share with our followers. After all, it’s our voice and authenticity that resonates most with them. Let that be organic.”

Mistake 5: Do you think a few posts are enough?

The common mistake made by brands is that they go live with a couple of micro-influencers and start expecting a massive impact on sales and websites. Based on the targeting strategies, both macro and micro-influencers can be engaged.

Micro-influencers are experts in their niche with limited but dedicated followers. Their content is effective and helps to get more significant ROI. To gain higher engagements, their posts/stories must be higher in a day for readers to recall their brands. For macro-influencers with higher reach, the volume of posting can be less.

Mistake 6: Did you drop the influencer after the campaign is over

Remember influencers are people too! Don’t disconnect with the influencer like a hot potato after the campaign is done. Continue to connect and engage through their blogs, videos, and social media. Add your influencers to a private list on Twitter/LinkedIn/Instagram and monitor it regularly and seek chances to engage with them. Build long-term relationships that leave the door open for future collaborations.

Everyone talks about the practical and best ways to be successful in influencer marketing but often ignore the simple mistakes that can quickly derail even well-planned strategies.