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With the upswing of social media, the relevance of influencer marketing has touched new heights. Though the rules are few, they need precise and strategic attention to implement the process where nothing is predetermined or charted. Anyone who still hasn’t noticed the concept needs to take a look around at this promising avenue of marketing. Take a stroll through Instagram to see a lot of influencers thriving with brands. In the latest, we saw the former Indian skipper, MS Dhoni becoming the icon for Panerai watches. But if you are intending to apply the fruitful slice of social media influencer marketing, then it’s essential to know the entire approach.

Thanks to the flourish of social media that people today have the exquisite liberty of following what they love and live. They can hold and retain brand or celebrities that manages to meaningfully relate their interests and tastes. You can’t just supply some content and expect the audience to only look through your perspectives. Your message must weave a harmonious thread between brand identity, influencer, and the right content so that they are never forced to look for more entertaining options. So understand brand image marketing, the expected benchmarks of audiences in social media and create engaging content that resonates across the channel with more targeted exposure.

Brand and Influencer

The major factor that determines the success of influencer marketing is how the brand will establish a meaningful relationship with the influencer. The established narrative of the brand needs to be perfectly in lines with the overall personality of the influencer. Let’s take the example of Panerai watches and why they have chosen Indian cricket icon MS Dhoni for the purpose. First of all, they have a commitment towards the large audience of the Indian market. Being an ardent fan of the brand and one of the most respected, disciplined sportsman in the world, MS Dhoni becomes the well-fitted adjective to embody the value and authenticity of Panerai. Here, both he peripherals perfectly align each other to succeed.

Channel Reach of Influencer

Another important aspect of influencer marketing is the reach of the influencer. The more strong followership the influencer has across multiple social media platforms, the more he creates ripples in the market. However, you don’t necessarily focus strictly on this aspect. Sometimes the target audience of your brand might be largely based on any one of the social media platforms. Sometimes you might not need a massive influencer. In the case of small brands, they need to address only a small niche audience. Sometimes the ads and campaigns you curate might only be prominent to say, Instagram only. So it’s essential to know the metrics of the target audience to focus your efforts in that way.

Freedom for influencer

Today social media influencers happen to be more accustomed to the role they play as modern day creative directors. They have great insights on what exactly people demand from them and how they need to place themselves in the content they pass to the audience. Rather than being strict on the brand goals, let them have the freedom of choice to place themselves in the content. After a series of campaigns, influencer will know what aspect of them can be used to sell the brand. As a brand, you need to track every single detail of the influencer that will address their business motto to the target audience and give them a good script that will expose their positive factors for luring the audience.

Celebrity or Home Grown Influencers?

Are you planning to storm in the market with a Kylie Jenner or DeStorm Power effect? Well, this depends on the ultimate brand goal. Celebrities will add serious brand publicity in a short period of time. Not only that celebrities are more expensive from a marketing perspective, but brands require repeated efforts frequently to get the audience connected with the celebrity. However, home-grown influencers are less expensive and they can provide a more genuine association with the brand and grow the reputation in a fair organic way. Both of these categories have their own role to play in social media marketing services, but brands need to understand the goals to choose the right category.

Priority Factor

At times brands fail to set the priority level. Having accustomed to running campaigns, brands give more emphasis on marketing that the influencer. A slight mistake can overshadow the campaign ideas and cause blackmark for your brand. The way of conveying a message to the audience is more important than the message. Some influencers might be adept in conveying the message in a genuine way. While in some instances, it might fail as well. In the latter situation, the priority will be always on conveying the story. Rather than treating influencer as a billboard, evaluate them based on the genuine talent to peep into the hearts of the audience and engage them in a pursuing way.

Social media is day by day shooting up its value that business no longer can just sit idle and watch. People are largely flocking into establishing their presence in social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. With the increasing popularity, every business needs to rely on strategies to boost their social media channels to establish a connection with the audience. Social media is where people are hanging around and making conversations. So brands need to sneak peek into this space and connect them on different levels.

We know the importance of framing social media strategy, that details the whole script of what you have planned to do and intend to achieve. Once we begin the process, you need to follow up the process and make sure that things are progressing as planned. This is where social media audit comes into the picture, which uses a series of methods to evaluate and optimize the social media profiles and strategies of the business. Most businesses fail to look forward to social media audits but its essential today for business growth to do a competitive analysis in marketing.

Today various social media audit tools are available to make the process more simple. You need to scribble down the whole statistics into a spreadsheet as well. Once you habitualise the process, it will become a lot easier for you. Most often social media audits are conducted on a monthly basis and at times quarterly as well. Whether you are already experienced or a fresher who intends to refine the social media audit process, we have got you covered with the best tips to enhance your work.

Template and Checklist

You need to create a social media template (spreadsheet) to clearly record all the data and insights. You can find a lot of templates online today to save your time. After client requirement gathering and proper team discussions, you can get ready with the checklist as well to easily walk through all the steps without confusion. Make sure the spreadsheet is shared with the team to get a clear idea of what is happening in the work sphere.

The social media audit checklist should have all the basics including Profile Information, Engagement Analytics, Publishing Facts, Target Audience Demographics, Referrals, Channels etc. Sometimes the template needs to be customized to fit in all the aspects. Mark the percentage of change in visitors or clicks etc on a monthly or quarterly basis. In the case of yearly review meetings with clients, you can make a detailed annual audit report as well.

The duration and type of audit depend on the industry of business. If your client happens to be an e-commerce business, then you can consider opting for seasonal comparisons. Never miss mentioning the summary of each social media channel separately instead of having them all and making it clumsy. In the case of Twitter, you will be recording the metrics of retweets. But then Facebook and Instagram have different aspects. So customize the columns and rows in respect to the social media channels.

Secure Social Media Accounts

Find and secure all the existing channels of social media accounts of the client. Make sure you include all the social media verticals other than the front runners like Facebook and Instagram. The client even has a Tumblr account updated probably years ago. Get access to the account and optimize it properly. Analyze each social media profile by evaluating factors that are working well and areas where you need to make changes for better results.

Performance of Social Media Posts

Observing the performance of social media posts gets you valuable insights for improving content strategy. The posts must be engaging your target audience. Measuring the outcome of posts holds great significance in audit reports. Platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram can be quickly and easily analyzed. For Snap chat and YouTube, you might need some alternative tools. Compare the post based on its purpose of entertainment, promotional, educational, informative etc.

Check the Branding

The main intention of social media posts is to establish a clear branding image for the business. The brand should be immediately identifiable by the audience. In this regard, it’s essential to have a verified account for your business in social media and have proper URL in the bio. Social media audit must have inputs regarding brand style guidelines to be strictly followed. Users will relate the brand more with consistent graphics, images, fonts, styles, and typos.

Define Audience

In this step, you need to audit the followers to evaluate whether the social media initiatives are precisely targeting your category of audiences. Some of the social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook can give you valuable information about the target audience. These data are filtered based on the industry background of the leads coming and also based on age and gender. This gives valuable indices on how your social media activities should be curated and run to maximize the benefits.