L4

Selecting and Engaging Influencers

How to select a good influencer?

4Rs framework
1. Reach
total size of audience across all social platforms
2. Resonance
engagement between the influencer’s audience and content measured by shares,
likes, retweets, comments
3. Relevance
audience and topic aligned with the brand interest and target audience
4. Reference
level of authority and peer-perception of influencer’s expertise

and a range of other factors like…

- frequency of posting
- strength of opinion backed up by rationale
- quality of engagement
- …all depends on what are your objectives

 But Authenticity is an essential requirement!

• Consistent content
• Good content – balance between curated and original content
• The blogs history – life span during which they built their audience
• Transparency on branded content

How to spot a fake blogger?

• Lots of followers
• Bot followers = check their profile, low level of activities, no photos in profiles
• The engagement rate is low
• Engagement quality is poor = lots of comments with kisses and hearts, not very
articulated, general and not specific to the content
• Instagram has a verification badge

Strategies to success:
 SEO
 CONTENT MARKETING

Engaging Influencers, Best Pratices:

• Build goodwill = (i.e. start a dialogue before to contact, engage and share
influencer’s content)
• Choose an appropriate channel to contact influencers

Develop a schedule:
 Does the influencer prefer monthly/quarterly/biannual calls or newsletters?
 Integrate with your PR schedule, product release schedule, etc.
L4

 Send emails on behalf of key executives. Plan travel schedules for executives and
arrange face-to-face meetings

How Corporate Benefit from Corporate Blogging:

• Communicate with customers for creating brand positioning, awareness, bring in
new leads, web traffic and eventually conversion= (i.e. Microsoft)
• Customer acquisition: word-of-’’mouse’’ marketing, exponential number of contacts
• Receiving feedback, improve and develop new product = (Lego, Betabrands)

In House of Agency IM:

Adopt an Influencer Marketing strategy implies also other choices

ORGANIZATIONAL
1. In-House
2. Outsourcing

TYPE OF BLOGS
• an hosted blog on blogging platform WordPress, Blogger, Tumblr.
• social media communities
• self-hosted blog on the company website

Steps for Effective Blogging:

• Identify a compelling and relevant subject area
• Creating compelling content
• Writing effectively
• Improving content based on feedback
• Content seeding
• Build an audience - community

Why influencer marketing (IM) is a powerful tool?

Two-step flow communication theory

- messages disseminated by media are filtered by opinion leaders who decode the
message and mediate the transmission (Katz and Lazarsfeld, 1955)
- interpersonal communication is more powerful compared to mass media (Weimann, 1994)