Despite the fact that today popular foreign social networks are losing their reach, "influence marketing" is still an important tool for interacting with the target audience. Despite the fact that popular foreign social networks are losing their reach today, "influencer marketing" is still an important tool for engaging with your target audience. The habit of relying on recommendations from bloggers has already entered everyday life, and even now, when we are going through difficult times, "advice from a friend" is needed more than ever. It is this role that bloggers actively continue to take on.
But is it possible to work with blocked social networks now? There is still no exact decision on the ban on working on a banned social network. Some brands are still trying to protect themselves legally and not to promote themselves even on barter terms with bloggers, others, on the contrary, after a short pause, continued to interact with the blogosphere, both in the format of advertising and native integrations.
On the one hand, there really is an outflow of the audience, and on the other, those who remain are a super loyal and receptive audience to advertising.
In any case, it is not worth disappearing from the information field now in order to avoid uncomfortable questions from the audience: "do you continue to work?". Of course, you can also go to other platforms (telegram, VK, TenChat, etc.), but it is too early to exclude the forbidden social network from the communication tools. So, let's figure out how to work with bloggers in today's conditions.
Influence Marketing
To begin with, let's remember what influence marketing is. This is a way to promote goods or services through the so-called influencers (from the English influencer). Today they are divided into several types: nano-influencers (about 2 thousand subscribers), micro-influencers (from 2 thousand to 50 thousand subscribers) and opinion leaders, who have from several hundred thousand to a million subscribers.
To begin with, let's remember what influencer marketing is all about. It is a way to promote products or services through influencers. Today, they are divided into several types: nano-influencers (about 2,000 subscribers), micro-influencers (from 2,000 to 50,000 subscribers) and opinion leaders, who have a few hundred thousand to a million subscribers.
Micro-influencers in this case are the "golden mean", because the involvement of their audience may be higher than that of opinion leaders. Moreover, the audience of opinion leaders, although huge, is too “blurred” and often includes people from completely different segments, compared with micro-influencers. And in most cases, media personalities with this audience are usually approached to increase brand recognition.
All this suggests that influencers can powerfully influence the audience by presenting the value of a certain product or service, which encourages us to buy.
How to choose an influencer correctly?
Almost all companies understand how effective competent interaction with influencers can be, but at the same time brands still make mistakes when working with them.
The most common misconception when working with Influencers is: "the number of subscribers solves everything." Many people believe that by paying a blogger with a lot of subscribers and then placing ads with him, they will lead their companies to instant sales. Believe it or not, these are mostly empty numbers and myths. Sales have a long-term effect. However, if it's a special promotion that involves a blogger, sales can increase instantly, but the effect will be short-term. For long-term growth, we recommend using a long-term partnership with a blogger/bloggers, perhaps even engaging a blogger-ambassador.
The most common misconception when working with Influencers is: "the number of subscribers solves everything." Many people believe that by paying a blogger with a lot of subscribers and then placing ads with him, they will lead their companies to instant sales. Believe it or not, these are mostly empty numbers and myths. Sales have a long-term effect. However, if it's a special promotion that involves a blogger, sales can increase instantly, but the effect will be short-term. For long-term growth, we recommend using a long-term partnership with a blogger/bloggers, perhaps even engaging a blogger-ambassador.
Coverage
One of the most important indicators when working with bloggers. It can be obtained both with the help of special services that allow you to automate all work with statistics, and request directly from bloggers in correspondence in video format. Since many of the influencers can fake information by showing old or non-existent numbers.
ER from bloggers
Engagement Rate or ER. It is an engagement coefficient, which is calculated as a percentage and serves as an indicator of the activity of the Instagram profile audience. As a rule, it takes into account likes, comments, reposts, the number of saved posts and reposts. ER is calculated as the ratio of the average number of all interactions on posts to the number of subscribers over a certain period of time, for example, one month:
ER = (Total Actions Taken/Total Coverage)*100
Let's look at an example to make it clearer. The blogger to whom you want to send an offer of cooperation has 1 million subscribers, and the last publication has gained 120,000 likes and 1,500 comments.So ER = (120 000 + 1 500) / 1 000 000 * 100% = 1%.
Optimal ER indicators:
- from 5-10 thousand subscribers – 10-20%;
- more than 10 thousand subscribers - up to 5%;
- more than 100 thousand subscribers – 3%;
- one million subscribers – up to 1%.
According to the formula, the resulting 1% is the correct ER coefficient. So you can trust this Influencer.
Location
Nowadays, when every second person uses VPN service, it's quite difficult to determine the exact geography of bloggers' subscribers, especially by UTM link clicks. However, we can still rely on professional services that determine the geography of subscribers by their photo tags.
Age of audience
This is also worth paying attention to, because audiences can have different metrics. And if the average age of your company's audience is 25-45 years old, it's unlikely you'll need an Influencer with an audience of 15-20 years old. Why? This audience is unlikely to want to buy a product or service that is intended for an older generation.
Content quality
The quality of the content is quite difficult to assess by any numerical metrics, but before you start working, you need to carefully check it and monitor how the influencer fills out his profile. In this case, we are interested in how the content is consumed, how active the audience is really involved in the topic of the post, and whether it coincides with the one indicated in the profile statistics. Agree that you would like to cooperate with a blogger who has a high involvement in the topic of the post, and not just emojis of hearts and flowers in the comments, which are bots and cheating with maximum probability.
Blogger’s reputation
When choosing bloggers consider not only their target audience, but also how their reputation can affect your brand. Many companies are still burned in working with influencers, carefully not checking them for reputational risks. Subsequently, this leads to the notorious “cancellation culture” not only of the influencer, but also of the brand itself, which, according to the audience, will support and share the spoiled reputation of such an opinion leader. Therefore, monitor the reputation of a blogger not only by his posts, because many over time simply delete scandalous posts or publications that caused a lot of hate or caused a public outcry. Always study other social networks, mentions on the Internet, media, accounts of other influencers, as well as with which of the competitors the blogger has already collaborated.
For example, one of such cases with reputation damage was Timati and his clip dedicated to the mayoral elections in Moscow. The video became one of the most disliked videos and was deleted. This cost the singer material losses and turned into a failure for his new works.
The “Cancel culture” has also touched the well-known Russian journalist Ksenia Sobchak. The scandal was a video publication on Instagram (an organization banned in Russia), in which the song "A Negro was Killed" sounded against the background of a black screen. After learning about this, the Audi car brand decided to break the contract with Ksenia Sobchak, which had lasted 8 years before.
Despite these cases, today bloggers act more carefully, realizing the value of their reputation and the consequences of the “cancel culture”.
What format should you use today on Instagram (a banned organization in the Russian Federation)?
The question is from the "forever" category lead in terms of the effectiveness of posts in the sum of reactions. According to LiveDune research, "Reels" and "Carousel" lead in the effectiveness of posts in terms of total reactions. By publishing posts of these formats more often, the number of interactions between subscribers and posts increases. So coverage increases, because Instagram (an organization banned in the Russian Federation) algorithms are sharpened by the number and frequency of interactions. Everything depends on the agreed KPIs. For example, if you want more likes, then "Reels", comments - "Videos", retention - "Reels" and "Carousels" will do.
Barriers when working with bloggers
1. The blogger may not respond to emails
After figuring out what kind of Influencers you need, as well as studying the number of their subscribers, audience, and quality of content, it's time to send bloggers an offer. It’s done and now you expect to get lots of responses in a few days, but... only 1-2 Influencers have responded.
That doesn’t mean you mispresented the offer of cooperation. Often, Influencers may not respond to emails because their direct/email is flooded with offers, they don't check the mail, or the mailbox has not been used for a long time, the offer is not interesting, the blogger is out of town, or there are personal reasons.
Don't hesitate to remind yourself, if you don't, the Influencer may not get in touch for months. Of course, you can work with bloggers who respond better, but what should you do if that's the one on your priority list?
Write again. In 90% of communications with opinion leaders, your message gets lost among others. You can also use alternative channels of communication. Sometimes bloggers respond on VK, Facebook or other social networks better, because the flow of messages there is much less.
Based on our practice of working with influencers, we can say that some respond only from the fifth, and sometimes from the fifteenth time, so be persistent, but not annoying.
2. Payment was made, but the Influencer disappeared
It happens, but not very often. For example, an interested Influencer responds to your offer quickly, everything is coordinated, prepayment is made, and then the blogger mysteriously disappears.
If you have got such an Influencer, do not worry. The amount transferred can be recovered through "protection money". For example, you can do this in PayPal or Yandex.Money.
However, we recommend to insure in case of force majeure and make payment in parts. That is 50% of the amount immediately and 50% when the work is done. Do not hesitate to stipulate and fix on paper the terms of payment, unfortunately, there are still performers who disappear unfairly fulfill the pre-agreed terms of cooperation.
3. The influencer didn't do what you wanted
There is no need to dictate to the influencer what to write to him. He understands his audience perfectly and how best to present the material to them. If you put pressure on the blogger that you need to publish the text in your editorial office, you can lose twice: the audience will take the post badly, they will see falseness, and, as a result, it may affect the attitude toward your brand. Also, we want to point out that Influencers have their own "hangouts" in which they share news with each other. If your communication has gone badly, the blogger can tell "theirs" that it's not worth working with you, and this can threaten you with a kind of isolation from the blogosphere.
However, it happens that the blogger himself can "creative" and go on a "free flight" with your offer, ignoring absolutely everything you told him. As a result, the message you wanted to give the audience will be distorted.
To prevent this kind of situation, we recommend writing a detailed and articulate terms of reference (TOR). To do this, formulate clear goals, objectives, the essence of the action or message from the brand, as well as the KPI (how you will monitor the effectiveness of the post), indicate the benefits of the product that you would like to emphasize, its facts and accompanying numbers. Even if the Influencer is a professional, he's still not as familiar with the product as you are, and it's not like he'll want to take the time to research it in depth.
Again, don't dictate what a blogger should write. Suggest him to write his version of the text, and only then work out a compromise that will satisfy both of you. You should take into account all the features of cooperation at the start. This is the key to effective work and will lead to the result of "win-win", because it is important to integrate and adapt your brand to the blogger's audience and style, rather than trying to impose your formats and values.
4. Influencer doesn't want to show you statistics
We have already talked about the importance of knowing the blogger's statistics: views of posts and storis, audience and its geography, but many refuse to disclose these data for absolutely different reasons.
What to do in this situation? Study the statistics yourself. Do not be afraid, you do not have to sit down and read every post. Thanks God, we live in the age of technology, which allows you to analyze the data for you. Here are services that work in Russia and will definitely help you with this:
LiveDune is a cool service for Instagram analytics. The minimum tariff starts at 130 rubles. It also has a special extension for Google Chrome to find out the ER of any account. The app is free and works for any account.
Yoloco is a tool for searching, analyzing and crossing the audience of bloggers in Instagram. The service allows you to filter accounts not only by basic metrics: number of subscribers, ER, GEO, but also by audience parameters. In total, there are more than 15 filters for finding the right profile.
TrendHERO is an advanced service that makes it easy to collaborate with Instagram bloggers. It knows how to select bloggers for advertising, check them for cheating, analyze accounts (their own or competitors), monitor other people's advertising posts.
Little pigeons can carry great messages
As we said before, micro-influencers are the golden mean for all brands. This is confirmed by research from Cambridge University, which calls bloggers "digital friends." Indeed, native integration is perceived differently by bloggers with large audiences than it is by micro-influencers. Their audiences see such content more as advice from a trusted friend.
Also, micro-influencers already have the kind of narrow targeting that brands need. For example, if an advertising campaign needs channels with a paying audience in the culinary industry, bloggers who talk about recipes are picked up. Yes, yes, the engagement of such Influencers can be much higher than those who talk about businesses, startups, technology, etc.
We're not prohibiting you from advertising with opinion leaders, but remember that their audiences are too varied in their preferences, interests and tastes, and the advertising message may simply not hit the target.
We see the biggest demand for such bloggers in the areas of IT, edtech and children's products, where the target audience of such bloggers is in awe of the choice of the product.
The mechanics of such publications is absolutely native and is done in the format of feedback-impressions.
For major players, such as banks and mobile operators, the blogger is an outlet for a completely new audience, indifferent to traditional media and advertising formats. Young audiences have a high level of loyalty to bloggers. For example, for startups, beginning entrepreneurs, working with bloggers is an excellent tool for attracting traffic, but only with a competent selection and high-quality preparation of the project itself.
In conclusion
Yes, Influencers sometimes forget to respond to posts, miss deadlines, and strive to make money with minimal effort, but that doesn't mean you should abandon influencer marketing. On the contrary, a quality post or video can be the key to your campaign's success. Prepare carefully, check the Influencer, articulate your expectations, goals and objectives, and set KPIs. Even now, due to the crisis, the effectiveness of working with Influencers will only increase, because they are still being watched. Moreover, we are confident that influencer marketing as a separate area for brand promotion will have further development.
You can get a consultation on working with bloggers from our agency, scroll below
