How-to be a Great Influencer

The first step in becoming an amazing influencer is recognizing that you are doing a job and that you should be a consummate professional at every step of the process. The best outcome of a collaboration is a long term relationship between influencer and brand, and this only comes from being an amazing influencer. We’ve watched tens of thousands of interactions between influencers and businesses and have outlined our top tips for how to shine as an influencer.

• Read the Brief - If you do nothing else, read all the information the brand provides about what is expected and required to work with them. Nothing drives a brand crazier than having influencers totally ignore what they took the time to outline and write down or ask them constantly to supply the information they have already supplied.
• Communicate - Set your day up to be able to get back to businesses as fast as possible. Even if it’s only once a day that you can check and reply to messages, a good communicator is a great influencer
• Calendar - Know the dates that each step of the process is happening on and make sure you stick to them. It’s best to write these down and send them to the business so everyone can agree or double verify the calendar dates are correct.
• No Ghosting - If you would not disappear from a day job for a few days or not reply to your boss for a week then why would you do this with a brand you’re collaborating with. This happens more often than you’d think - influencers get sent a product and then just fall off the planet and get busy with life thinking it’s okay. We can tell you right now, from a brand’s perspective, it’s not.
• You Are Not the Only One - The hardest thing about influencer marketing for brands is working with a lot of humans all at the same time. Imagine trying to coordinate 25 of your friends to show up at a hot new restaurant at the same time. If any of them are 15 minutes late you lose your reservation and can’t rebook it for a month. This is the stress a brand goes through every day working with influencers. Be the awesome one that shows up 10 minutes early and not the one that’s “just getting in the uber now” 5 minutes before the reservation.

Being a great influencer is mostly about understanding what the brand wants from the collaboration and staying in constant communication. Being responsive in email, being proactive in messaging related to deliverables, doing everything on the day you said you would, and not trying to change the deal you’ve struck with a brand halfway through the collaboration will earn you a reputation as someone they (or their marketing friends) will want to work with again. The best relationships are those that blossom into multiple collaborations over time.