How to Master Influencer Generated Content

Influencer Question of the Day:

What’re the best practices and steps to follow when working with influencers to create IGC (Influencer Generated Content) on behalf of your brand?

Before continuing to read this article, open a new tab, or click the link below:

facebook.com/collabsmanager/start/brand/

Click “Apply As An Advertiser” and get onboarded to Facebook’s “Brand Collabs Manager” which is their FREE influencer search engine tool. 

It’s worth mentioning that this isn’t some third party tool with a bunch of scraped data from an outsourced independent contractor that's overseas.

This is the mothership - Facebook - giving the public an influencer identification tool, I repeat, FREE of cost.

Before we’re able to get into best practices of creating content with influencers, this entire process begins with your ability to find the RIGHT influencers for your brand that will create winning IGC (Influencer Generated Content).

During the identification process, as you filter through potential influencers to partner with to create UGC/IGC, keep the following pro tip in mind. Not only should you be looking to see if this person is a brand fit by the looks of their social feeds and the captured audiences that they have, but also, you need to get a gauge of the influencer’s ability to create content, specifically video content. ALWAYS source video content from influencers, over static imagery, as they tend to outperform the other across all channels...

With this in mind, when assessing an influencer’s video content creation ability, ask yourself the following questions:

• First and foremost, can this influencer sell my product and convince buyers to become a part of our community through their video content?
• Is this influencer able to speak fluidly and articulate the value props of my product service and the ethos of my brand?
• Is this influencer able to capture my attention within the first 3-seconds of watching their content?
• While it's the most oversaturated terminology within our industry, it remains important. Is this influencer able to create content that is authentic and organic in comparison to fake and "salesy"?

Once you've identified your set of influencers following these criteria, it's time to create some world-class IGC. 🔥🔥

While it may seem obvious, it's worth mentioning that there needs to be intentionality behind the content you're creating with influencers. 

Many within the marketplace seem to believe that influencer marketing can be done in a few simple steps.

A.) Source/contract the influencer 

B.) Give them a couple talking points to make sure to include that are “on brand” 

C.) Rinse and repeat with all the influencers you work with 

I want to be clear in saying, this is not the level of intentionality needed to be successful in creating quality influencer content.

When sourcing influencer creative, the starting point for brands is with the customer journey in mind. 

You are NOT merely sending over the same templated talking points to every influencer a part of your campaign. 

This is where you run into all the people that say,

"Influencer marketing is a scam."

"Influencer marketing doesn't work, and it never will work."

I’m not making fun, but more so calling it as it is. Many do influencer marketing incredibly wrong, fail, and become completely shut off to the channel altogether and miss out on massive opportunities to scale their business.

I want to make sure YOU do not fail, so make sure to start with the customer journey in mind and not make the same mistakes as others.

My subjective hypothesis as to why many don’t think about creating content with influencers in this way is that people are so used to working with them to execute social posts in which there is NO customer journey.

It’s merely a one-off post that is one and done or re-engaging the same audience (the influencer’s followers) with several posts, which is still no customer journey at all.

For purposes of creating an effective influencer creative campaign, we need to switch the framework of thought surrounding the above. This is what all of us marketers love to do anyhow- let’s put together a methodical customer journey that’ll convert our target audiences!

Think about the steps of your customer journey and the different audience segments you’re targeting within email or FB/IG ads

Audience segmentation to keep in mind:

A.) New customers that have never heard of your brand

B.) Existing newsletter subscribers and/or social media followers

C.) Website Visitors 

D.) Abandoned Cart

E.) First Time Purchasers

F.) Repeat Purchasers

The audience segments above are merely examples, but make sure to identify what these segments are within YOUR campaign before sourcing influencer content.

For purposes of this example, let’s walk through the type of content you should create when targeting a few of these audience segments (A. B. & C from above).

Audience Segment A: New customers that have never heard of your brand

At the top of the funnel, Influencer content intended for people that have never heard of your brand needs to be educational and entertaining. On the educational side, this creative needs to be product-focused and be incredibly clear from the jump on what the product/service is and what your brand is all about. On the entertaining side, the content needs to capture attention from the moment it begins.

Pro Tip: Have the influencer showcase the product clearly and/or speak to the product from the start of the video in a way that is “thumb-stopping” for viewers.

Audience Segment B: Existing newsletter subscribers and/or social media followers

When re-engaging existing newsletter subscribers and/or social media followers, having influencers speak to a brand promotion, such as Black Friday/Cyber Monday or the giving season in December, is an effective means to enable community members to take the next steps in their respective, customer journeys.

Whether this is a piece of video content with the influencer speaking to the latest deals/discounts or an email positioned from an influencer to your newsletter subscribers laying out the latest promotion, re-engaging with these audience segments in this way is powerful.

Audience Segment C: Website Visitors 

Based on the objective of your campaign, I'd recommend two approaches when sourcing influencer content to retarget Website Visitors that are yet to purchase.

If the objective of the campaign is to build brand equity, I’d recommend creating content with influencers speaking to your brand ethos- what you guys are all about and what you care about! Think of this content as a brand piece.

If the objective of the campaign is conversions, create "mashable" style ads for this audience segment by piecing together clips from all of the video content provided by several Influencers into a single ad. This will effectively position the product/service as though it is everywhere, and everyone is using it, hammering home the idea that people need to get it now or they're missing out- instill a sense of FOMO!

These are a few examples of the type of influencer content that has been effective when targeting this set of audience segments, but the main point of this is to lay out the thought and framework that it takes to be successful when working with influencers to create content.

Instead of sending influencers a couple of templated talking points that you send everyone, put together unique, single page, creative briefs for every influencer you partner with. Each influencer creative brief should entail unique scenes and talking points that are specifically tailored to the audience segment the content will target within the overall customer journey of your campaign. For your convenience, I’ve shared an example creative brief that our team uses as well as a templated format for you to use moving forward with influencers.

Let's continue to take the next steps in this process.

Once your team has successfully identified, briefed, and created content with your influencers of choice, should you simply implement the influencer’s content the way it’s provided or what editing, if any, needs to be made before launching it across your marketing channels? 

Step 1:

ALWAYS MAKE SURE TO CAPTION!

• The majority of people viewing ads never click to listen to the sound. If there are no captions, potential consumers will not be able to understand what your ad is trying to communicate. 
• The last thing you want to do is hope that your audience is filled with master lip readers! 
• Performance has also reflected that videos with captions ALWAYS outperform those without. 

Step 2:

Reformat the Influencer Generated Content for optimization purposes on the marketing channel your team intends on using it (I.e., 1x1 & 9x16 on Facebook's ad platform).

Captioning and reformatting are all that is needed before launching highly effective Influencer Generated Content across your own marketing channels.

By taking all of the steps laid out above, the IGC will maintain it's organic nature that is native to the viewer's feed in which many may not even realize it's an ad. 👍 🙌 

Step 3:

Create iterations off of the IGC that includes text overlay, graphics, branding, logo, etc. and test it against the ad that is much more of a raw asset in comparison to see which outperforms the other.

Creative testing is key when gauging what type of influencer content performs best for any given ad account.

Now that you know what to do, go and execute! As I'd love to hear from you, please share your success stories with me on Twitter @TaylorLagace or via email taylor@kynship.co! Let's win.