Jibran Malek — June 12, 2018 — June 12, 2018
The great thing about influencer marketing is that content has long-tail, long-term value. YouTube is perhaps the second largest search-engine in the world. To that end, marketers need to make sure the content they’re putting out there drives quality engagement. That way, your videos will continue to drive results for your brand months after they launch.
You need to check the boxes on everything, from maximizing the number of impressions to ensuring each individual has a positive experience with the content/promotion.
Here are five important things to consider when creating branded content with influencers:
- Position of the promotion in a video
Unless you’re doing a fully dedicated promotion video, you’ll generally want to have the influencer start talking about your product before the 30 second mark. Although, if they have a high average view duration, you can have the promotion start later.
- Length of the promotion
90 to 120 seconds tends to be the best length for an integrated promotion in a video. Any less and the influencer will have a hard time communicating the value of your product to their audience.
Great example of a video from Drew Scott for Society6, which drove high engagement.
If your content is more than five minutes, your target audience might lose interest.
- Don’t put the product in title/thumbnail
The key to influencer marketing is authenticity. Don’t make creators include your product in the title/thumbnail as this can cause your content to not feel genuine. Good Influencers care about their business and brand just as much as you do. They know what will drive action from their audiences.
Trust them and let them do what think makes the most sense, given the content of the video and what they usually do on their channel. Ex. tech influencers can have tech products in the title, but gamers shouldn’t have food products in the title.
- Cross-platform syndication
Sometimes, influencers post on other social platforms about new content. Repurposing content for platforms like Twitter or Instagram is key for reach. Be sure to ask the influencer if they can do this. You might even get a better deal in terms of payment considering most influencers typically bundle their promotions. A cross-promotional strategy will ensure that the greatest quantity of their audience sees your promotion.
- Build a Strong Professional Relationship.
When you’re clear about your goals and treat creators like an equal member of your team, they’re more likely to deliver content that thrills their audience. Professional quality content will almost always drive better results.
A good way to encourage influencers to produce top-notch content is to mention that you may be interested in working together again if the content comes out well. Also, if you think you may be interested in purchasing the content rights (for things like building programmatic campaigns) let them know! They’ll put more time into making it great if you do.
- Content consistency
Last, but definitely not least, it’s extremely important that the style of the content is consistent with the rest of the content the influencer produces.
If people encounter content that isn’t generally in line with what they expected, they will become frustrated and disengaged.
Make sure your content guidelines give a clear expectation of what you want the creator to do. Guidelines should also give creators the flexibility to make content their own. You can use our free Influencer Marketing Creative Brief template, which should give you a clear idea on how to manage expectations.
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