5 Ways to Improve Influencer Management in Less Than 5 Minutes

Influencer management represents how you oversee and communicate with creators. This means balancing relationship-building with campaign tasks like providing feedback, offering creative direction and managing content.

The duties of influencer managers vary but can include any combination of…

• Communication (ex: outreach, questions, negotiation, influencer relations)
• Handling creator compensation (ex: contracts, payments)
• Overseeing fulfillment (ex: shipping PR packages and influencer kits)
• Tracking influencer content 

Managing all of the above is no small feat. The bigger your roster of creators gets, the more intense influencer campaign management becomes. 

And we talk to influencer managers drowning in day-to-day tasks as they juggle campaigns with 100s (or 1000s!) or creators. 

The reality is that influencer managers can only do so much on their own. 

Our take? Nailing influencer management means balancing automation and tools with giving creators individual attention. This post highlights how to build a better influencer management strategy by doing exactly that.

Why Your Influencer Management Strategy is So Important

With so many moving pieces of your campaigns, it’s understandable why the nitty gritty of influencer relationship management gets overlooked.

The reality, though? How you manage creators and build relationships goes hand in hand with positive outcomes from your campaigns.

Here’s a snapshot of why strong influencer relations are a top priority for brands:

1. Creators know what they’re worth.  Most influencers today understand their value and have high expectations of their brand partners. Rightfully so! The effectiveness of influencer ads makes creators invaluable to brands today. Giving creators the royal treatment makes it easier to recruit influencers and stand out from competitors attempting to do the same.
   
   
2. How you treat influencers directly impacts your brand reputation. Piggybacking on the last point: the golden rule still rules, and influencers talk! When you build great creator relationships through excellent communication and fair compensation, they’re bound to sing the praises of your partnership to others.
   
   
3. Better influencer relationships result in better content. Satisfied creators tend to go above and beyond for the brands they love. When you build a team of creators that really “get” you and effortlessly post on-brand UGC, your influencer campaigns are poised for better results. Not to mention less influencer churn. Remember: brand loyalty goes both ways.

In the unboxing video, you can feel the love and legitimate enthusiasm of the creator. Getting this sort of excitement and top-tier promotional content doesn’t happen by accident: it happens by being mindful of improving influencer management. 

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5 Ways to Improve Influencer Management (Without Reinventing the Wheel)

Better influencer relations and more efficient management don’t have to lead to burnout on your part. 

It’s about working smarter, not harder.

Below are five opportunities to improve your influencer management strategy without totally scrapping your current strategy.

This actionable combination of tips, tools and templates can help you get there ASAP!

1. Provide Clear Directions to Influencers from the Word "Go"

Communication is crucial to any type of relationship and managing influencers is no exception. That means being upfront and direct without being aggressive.

Creators thrive with well-defined expectations. Uncertainty is stressful and influencers shouldn’t feel like they need to ask a million questions before they can start creating content. 

As an influencer manager, your goal should be to become an “easy” brand to work with. Making it happen means putting together creative briefs that involve less legwork for you and fewer potential questions from creators.

Translation? You don’t have to go overboard in your influencer briefs! Oftentimes, less is more when it comes to instructions and creative direction.

The word “direction” is key here. Your goal should be to inspire influencers, not overwhelm or art-direct them. If you find yourself crafting totally unique and in-depth briefs for every influencer promotion, you’re going to struggle.

Instead, consider how to streamline the process and make influencers happy:

• Be upfront about must-dos (and must-don’ts). For example, be clear about any length minimums or competing brands and products to avoid mentioning. However, avoiding step-by-step, laundry lists of instructions. The longer your instructions get, the more likely creators are to tune out.
   
• Let creators cook. Leave some breathing room and trust your creators by giving up some creative control. Doing so puts less pressure on yourself and you’ll likely be surprised at what they manage to put together.
  
  
• Provide positive feedback when someone nails it. Whether that’s a quick DM or star rating within your influencer platform, providing positive reinforcement makes it more straightforward for creators to nail their next post(s).

Our recommendation? Stick to a structured influencer creative brief template that you can use time and time again for every product you promote. This will keep your instructions and keep you from overwhelming creators. Not to mention you’ll save a ton of time in the process when your instructions are limited to just a few bullet points.

2. Match Creators with the Right Products to Promote

The types of products you include in your PR packages or influencer kits are make-or-break for your campaign results. 

Switching up what you send to creators is a low-hanging way to improve influencer management by reducing post rejections and not wasting money sending creators products they’ll never actually post about.

Every brand is different but picking products that tick the following boxes can help:

• Colorful, branded packaging. Thoughtfully curate your influencer kits so they don’t look ordinary. Ideally, you should make them “pop.”
  
  
• Meaningful products. Bargain bin products and sample-sized items won’t cut it for most creators. If you want to inspire enthusiasm and great content, you need an appropriate value exchange to match. If you need more inspiration, check out this breakdown of how to pick products for influencers.
  
  
• Products that are easy to ship. Making sure your influencer kits arrive in one piece is crucial. Smaller, non-breakable items are a safe bet.
  
  
• Instructions included. Either through an insert or on the product packaging, anything that makes the product easy to use from the word “go” is a huge plus. 

Picking what to send to each creator is time-consuming but crucial for getting meaningful content.

On the flip side, sending out one-size-fits-all influencer kits or PR packages is faster but can result in awkward posts and creators wondering why you’re sending them items irrelevant to their target audience.

The solution? Let creators pick their favorite items to promote instead of doing it yourself. This approach saves time, encourages more personalized content and likewise delights creators as they only receive products they actually want.

For example, an influencer management tool like Statusphere outright eliminates the process of picking products for creators by hand. Instead, our software programmatically matches creators with brands they legitimately want to post about. We use 250+ first-party data points to ensure relevant matches.

This is a situation where influencer relationship management can be handled beautifully by automation.

 3. Increase Your Response Times with Influencer Automation 

Food for thought: 77% of consumers on social media expect brands to respond to questions within 24 hours. Creators have similar expectations when it comes to their brand partners.

The longer you let questions and concerns linger, the more tension builds. Swiftly responding to creators not only shows that you’re actively listening to them but ultimately ensures that you get your content on time.

Thankfully, influencer managers don’t need to be available around the clock to be more responsive. Streamlined communication through influencer automation can be done to instantly improve response times for the following:

• Fulfillment: Whether you’re creating shipping labels, managing updates or providing delivery updates, this is a task best left to automation. For example, Statusphere automatically provides updates to creators about the status (pun intended!) of their shipments.
  
  
• Influencer content management. This is another time sink which consists of manually collecting posts or gathering content rights for ads. By using an influencer platform that aggregates real-time posts with built-in content rights, you can eliminate these tasks full-stop.
  
  
• Reporting and analytics.  Tracking influencer content means keeping a pulse on your progress and ROI. With a holistic view of influencer campaign performance, you can keep what’s working and improve on what’s not. Digging through this data by hand is an unnecessary nightmare and should be left to an influencer reporting platform.

Consider how many hours you can save by using automation to free up your time so you can focus on actually building relationships with influencers.

4. Make Repeat Influencer Collabs as Seamless as Possible

Repeat collaborations are a win-win for influencer managers and creators alike.

For you, it means less potential back-and-forth and hand-holding when it comes to expectations and getting content. 

And for content creators, it typically means getting products and compensation in their hands faster and less legwork creating content because they’re already familiar with your brand.

Anything you can do to encourage repeat influencer collaborations is a plus. That means eliminating the need to conduct repeat outreach, confirming influencers’ information and being able to seamlessly share creative instructions. Influencer programs built on one-and-done collabs will ultimately consume your schedule.

This is yet again where an influencer management platform like Statusphere can be a game-changer. Working within the same platform as your creators, you allow creators to claim your products again and again without having to communicate every detail of your collab.

Not to mention you can deliver the same creative instructions to multiple creators per product at once. For example, features within our micro-influencer management platform include instant creator reactivation for repeat campaigns. 

Escaping spreadsheets and inboxes should be a top priority for influencer managers to not only reduce stress but also encourage better collabs. Managing influencer communication within a management platform versus DIY does just that.

 5. Show Your Influencer Partners How Much You Care

This might sound cliche but simply showing you care is the lowest-hanging way to improve influencer relationship management.

This is exactly why taking the time to send personalized notes, freebies and other exclusives is 100% worth it for your best creators. There’s a reason why brands that send creators thank-you notes get a lot of positive mentions on social media.

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Personalized shout-outs only take a few minutes (especially if you’re managing influencer marketing campaigns in a platform!) but can produce long-lasting results and boost your brand’s reputation among creators.

Showing authentic appreciation doesn’t have to be a time-sink or money pit but can result in long-term loyalty to you and your brand. 

Especially since so many brands don’t show their creators enough love.

How Improving Influencer Management Improves Creator Relationships and Campaign Results

We get it: influencer marketing involves a million moving pieces.

And it’s easy for influencer relations to fall by the wayside.

Still, the connection between influencer management goes hand in hand with everything from higher-performing content to longer-term collabs with creators.

Streamlining your most tedious tasks with the help of an influencer platform is a must-do, especially for brands that want to run creator campaigns at scale.

If you need a new approach to influencer management that results in always-on creator collaborations, our software can help.

Our platform is built to streamline and optimize brands' influencer marketing strategies with content at scale. Powered by advanced matchmaking and a vetted influencer network, our platform helps brands crush their influencer campaign goals in a fraction of the time.

We've already generated 75,000+ pieces of authentic content for 400+ consumer brands.

Want to see exactly how our platform works? Get in touch with one of our experts to learn how Statusphere can help your brand get influencer content at scale.