Influencer Community Management: 5 Ways to Reduce Campaign Chaos

Managing an influencer community of any size isn’t easy.

Balancing influencer relationship management with actually getting quality content requires the right tools and a super-organized strategy. It’s a lot to juggle.

But when building an influencer community to the tune of 100s or 1000s of creators, every decision feels make-or-break. 

If you’re a creator community manager on the verge of a meltdown, just breathe! 

Below we’ll dig into our firsthand tips for less chaotic influencer community and campaign management to bring some much-needed order to your strategy.

1. Segment Your Influencer Community ASAP

Staring at a disorganized spreadsheet of 1000s of influencers is nerve-wracking.

And this is the unfortunate reality for so many influencer community managers new to their roles. 

Even with a dedicated influencer platform or CRM, sometimes your influencer community feels more like a random list of creators with no rhyme or reason.

That’s why segmentation is so valuable and the first thing you should do to streamline influencer community managmenet. Both for the sake of campaign organization and understanding who would be the best fit for your brand when it comes to creating content.

For example, consider how you can segment your influencers based on:

• Product preferences. This includes what brands they like or the types of products and industries they actively want to promote. This also might include products that creators don’t want to promote.
  
  
• Demographics. This includes details like age and gender. Different types of products require different audiences. For example, you might promote products on behalf of a skincare brand one month that’s targeting 50+ customers and then Gen Zers the next month. Influencer segmentation sorts them out instantly.
  
  
• Location. Segmenting influencers by location is especially helpful in the case of retail support campaigns where you want creators to go in-store to promote products at specific brick-and-mortar stores (think: Target or Ulta).
  
  
• Campaigns. This is helpful if you are running multiple promotions on behalf of your brand simultaneously. This is extremely common among beauty brands that send a variety of product seeding kits to different audiences to gauge interest or promote a product launch.
  
  
• Follower count. Brands should embrace variety when it comes to their influencer communities. Seeing the spread of micro-influencers versus power-middle or macro-influencers can help you understand where yours stands.
  
  
• Engagement rate. More brands are prioritizing engagement over follower count and rightfully so. As a result, micro-influencers can serve as the basis for your influencer communities because of their relatively high engagement compared to their follower counts.
  
  
• Social media platforms. While many brands run influencer campaigns across both TikTok and Instagram, others keep them totally separate. Segmentation based on platform can help you measure the performance of both and help you see common threads or differences between your target audience on each.

• Activity. For example, creators who’ve completed a high number of collabs with your brand or have been a part of your influencer community for multiple years might signal themselves as your best creators. These are great candidates for rewards, freebies and product seeding campaigns.

Some influencer CRMs allow you to tag creators based on the points above. Then, you can automatically sort and search for influencers in the future based on these details. 

The more granular you get with segmentation and targeting, the better. Both for the sake of more organized influencer campaign management and getting better content.

For example, let’s say you’re tasked with promoting a food product launch and you’re on a time crunch. Through segmentation, you can zero in on the creators who have specific dietary needs or likewise restrict your campaign to five-star food creators who you can trust to meet deadlines and knock their content out of the park.

2. Don't Be Afraid to Automate More Influencer Campaign Tasks

Manually responding to every message for your influencer community is a recipe for burnout. 

Especially if you’ve grown your online brand community beyond a handful of creators.

Still, the longer that questions and issues linger, the more likely you are to sour relationships with creators. This also means you have to wait longer to get your content.

That’s why it’s important to automate more of your community communication. Managing influencers day-to-day means finding a balance between automation and providing support and a personal touch.

Here’s a handful of influencer management tasks that can be automated depending on your marketing stack:

• Sending creative briefs
• Sending and accepting influencer contracts
• Sharing onboarding materials and documents
• Getting content rights approval for ads
• Compensating creators
• Fulfillment updates and notifications
• Influencer vetting (accepting and rejecting creators)

For example, many of the messages above could be templated or automated through the right influencer management platform.

Eliminating these one-on-one messages from your schedule is a massive time-saver. Likewise, doing so will make your campaigns more efficient and consistent.

3. Remove Data Entry and Record-Keeping From Your Plate 

Spoiler alert: data entry and note-taking are not the best uses of your time! 

Managing influencers at scale means eliminating tedious tasks wherever you possibly can. The less manual legwork to keep creators informed and organized, the better. 

This piggybacks on the tip above and is yet again where influencer automation and a streamlined onboarding process can save your schedule.

Instead of trying to manually record and manage the minor details of every influencer, consider how you can put the ball in your creators’ court and let them pick up the slack:

• Gather key details on your creators when they apply to your influencer program or are uploaded into your influencer platform. 
  
  
• Create required fields related to product preferences, demographics and personal details during influencer onboarding.
  
  
• Empower influencers to pick the products that they promote rather than going through trial-and-error or pitching them collabs.

This speaks to the value of having a platform that automatically gathers the information above without requiring influencer marekting managers to lift a finger. For example, Statusphere's influencer community management platform sources 100s of data points during onboarding.

Effective influencer relationship management requires cooperation between you and your creators. This is just a handful of ways to share the responsibility of making sure your brand community gets the best experience possible, too.

4. Focus on Influencer Retention

The stop-go and on-again, off-again nature of influencer marketing is super frustrating. 

That’s why building an influencer community is worthwhile in the first place. You shouldn’t have to constantly scramble to fill your pipeline for your next campaign.

Scaling your influencer community beyond a handful of creators is a priority. However, you can’t grow a community without retaining the creators you have. 

The upside of retention is that the longer people stick around, the better they know the brands you work with. This is a benefit for both yourself and the creator. They work with brands they love and you get authentic content from influencers that actually care. Win-win!

Here are some influencer retention strategies to consider:

• Provide praise and positive feedback: A simple acknowledgment can be a massive motivation-booster.
  
  
• Share incentives and bonuses. Show appreciation for stellar content creation! Whether it’s a birthday gift or an exclusive product drop, rewards are a prime way to build loyalty.
  
  
• Give your creators more upside. The more valuable your collabs are, the better. That rings true in terms of product value but also the ability for creators to get paid (such as compensating them in exchange for their Spark Ad codes).
  
  
• Offer consistent collaborations. If you expect your influencer community to be reliable, you need to be reliable as well. Don’t disappear on your creators for months on end.

All of the above go hand in hand with positive influencer relationship management. 

And if you stick to the rules of segmenting influencers above, it’s so much easier to reward and delight your online community.

For example, you can set up automated birthday gifts for creators or personalized products once they’ve hit a certain collaboration milestone (think: 10 posts).

This might seem like a lot of extra work but doing so is worthwhile (especially via influencer automation).  Treating creators like VIPs represents a long-term investment in your influencer program as you build your reputation and attract even more creators through positive word-of-mouth.

5. Stop Living in Influencer Campaign Spreadsheets!

Your role as an influencer marketing manager instantly gets easier when you escape spreadsheets.

Maybe you’re used to managing user-generated content and relationships in Google Sheets or Excel.

That said, doing so is not sustainable in the long run. Especially if you plan to scale your influencer community into the 100s or 1000s.

We’re no strangers to influencer spreadsheets but here’s where they fall short:

• Lack of real-time updates. You can’t keep a pulse on your campaigns or influencer performance by inputting data manually. Not only is this inefficient and time-consuming but also opens you up for error and inaccurate data.
  
  
• Limited scalability: As your influencer community grows, spreadsheets become exponentially more cumbersome to manage. For a handful of creators, they’re fine. More than that is where you run into trouble.
  
  
• Poor collaboration.  Spreadsheets limit the ability of influencer teams to work together. This will likewise slow down your ability to manage your campaigns.
  
  
• Security risks. Spreadsheets lack sophisticated security features, making sensitive influencer data vulnerable to breaches. That’s the last thing any influencer manager wants, right? 

On the flip side, choosing the right influencer platform can remedy all of the above while empowering you to manage your campaigns with confidence. 

For example, a platform like Statusphere provides a place for brands to manage every aspect of their influencer community in one place. 

Features such as creator segmentation based on 250+ data points help keep your influencers and campaigns organized within you having to fill out a single form field or spreadsheet. All performance data, content and influencer information are stored and organized automatically. That includes creators you upload to our platform!

How to Build a Better Influencer Community Management Strategy 

With limited bandwidth and high expectations, how you prioritize your time as an influencer manager is make-or-break.

Anything you can do to eliminate tedious, time-consuming tasks from your schedule is a huge point in your favor. You should focus on scaling and fostering positive relationships with your influencers rather than sifting through spreadsheets or DMs.

And that’s where Statusphere’s software can help.

Again, our platform serves as an all-in-one influencer management tool for brands to build and manage their communities at scale with minimal legwork. We eliminate time-consuming communication and automate the process of getting products into vetted creators’ hands ASAP.

Want to see how our platform works? Get in touch with one of our experts to see how Statusphere's software can help your brand build authentic connections with influencers at scale.