For many brands, communicating with creators can slow down an influencer marketing campaign.
Thankfully, Vamp’s platform removes the need for multiple email chains and DMs by giving brands a direct line of communication to creators. Brands can write a brief themselves and chat to all of their creators throughout the campaign, in one central dashboard. Clear, concise, fast.
One brand that benefited from this streamlined approach was Nestle. In their self-serve, awareness-boosting campaign for new drink ‘NESCAFE NATIV Cascara’, they were able to chat to their 21 creators to get the result they wanted.
Vamp’s platform was easy to use and allowed me to have an open conversation with content creators. This resulted in content that was highly-engaging, as the influencers knew how to make it resonate with their audience. The Vamp team were also extremely helpful and enjoyable to work with throughout.
Lauren Mann, Marketing Manager, Ready to Drink at Nestlé
Whether you’re using Vamp’s platform or not, communication is key when it comes to influencer marketing campaigns. To get the best out of your creators, make sure the campaign runs on time and maximise ROI, follow our four top tips.
#1 Create a concise brief
The brief tells creators who and what they’ll be creating content for. It also tells them what format of content they’ll need to create and what the campaign timeline looks like. But more than that, it’s the first impression creators will have of you, so it needs to be engaging, concise and informative to get them excited for the campaign.
Important information you’ll need to include in your brief includes:
- Your brand name and logo.
- The campaign’s live dates, including the start and end dates.
- The product, service or promotion name that the campaign is for.
- A bite sized summary of your brand, product and campaign objectives.
- A description of the campaign and what is expected of creators.
- The dos and don’ts creators need to follow with their content creation and captions.
- The mandatory @ mentions and hashtags.
Vamp’s briefing form is a ready-made template for you to fill. We’ve put character limits on most of these sections to ensure you keep your brief short and snappy. Only need to include the most important and relevant information.
As an added bonus, Vamp’s briefing form also gives you the option to ask questions that creators are required to answer. We highly recommend using this Q&A function to get as much information from the creators as possible. This will help you during the selection process. For example, if your campaign is to promote pet food and you want to work with a variety of pets, you’ll need to use the Q&A function to ask creators what type of pets they have. This will then help streamline the influencer selection process. The questions are unlimited, however we advise you to stick to asking three to five questions to avoid creators dropping off before the end of the application.
#2 Keep your campaign on track
The best way to keep your campaign moving along, and your creators on track, is to provide them with a detailed campaign timeline. Your timeline should include dates and time-frames for the following phases:
- Product delivery. Also let creators know if they need to purchase the product themselves.
- Content creation. Ensure you give creators ample time, especially if they’re shooting video content.
- Approval and feedback stage. On occasion you may need to reject content, so allow time for creators to re-shoot.
- Campaign live dates. Consider whether you want all content to go live on the same day, or if you want to stagger it over a course of a few weeks.
We know schedules can get pushed for a multitude of reasons, but keep your timelines up-to-date to ensure your campaign doesn’t fall behind. The Vamp platform makes creating, updating and tracking your campaign timeline easy and efficient. You get a timeline for each creator you’re working with, which are all located in one spot. The timelines are colour coded depending on each phase and they can easily be edited with a simple drag and drop.
#3 Communicate during the campaign
Once your selected creators have been briefed, the success of your campaign depends on your effective communication skills. However you are chatting with your creators, whether it’s by email or direct message, be sure to check for new notifications on a daily basis. This will help you avoid missing any important updates or questions from your creators. Unchecked messages or emails could lead to a pushed-back schedule.
On your end of the communication line, if you aren’t providing an update, asking questions or answering theirs, it’s best to leave comms to a minimum. That way you aren’t bombarding your creators with notifications, and you can leave them to do what they know best; shooting content.
If your campaign involves more than one creator, you may be thinking to yourself, “How on earth can I keep up with all my influencer comms!?” Well we have a solution! A chat function with each individual creator. And we keep all of your chats with each creator in one, central location. Minimising the need for you to be across different comms channels and avoiding any missed messages from creators.
It’s important you use the chat function correctly to get the most out of the tool. For effective influencer comms, we suggest the following:
- Keep messages concise and get straight to the point. Important information could be missed in a lengthy message.
- Although chat functions tend to be less-formal than email, still use proper grammar and spelling. Miscommunication could lead to a campaign disaster.
- Any updates made to the campaign timeline also need to be made clear to the creator in a message. This is to ensure they update their creation process accordingly.
- Aim to reply to your creator’s questions the same day they’re asked. Slow replies can cost the schedule of the campaign and push back timelines.
#4 Provide constructive feedback
Brand safety is top of mind for many marketers – and rightly so. So if it puts your mind at ease, ask to approve your creator’s content before it goes live. However, we advise you don’t go overboard with the creative controls. Influencers are so effective at what they do because they understand their audience and what is going to appeal to them. So to preserve the authenticity of your campaign, only reject content if it doesn’t match the brief you set. And if you do, provide your constructive feedback to give creators a better idea of what they did wrong and you’re looking for in the next version.
Here are our top tips for content approvals:
- If a creator is struggling to understand how they should re-shoot, provide them with an example to spark an idea.
- Highlight what you love about their content, before delivering what you’d like to see changed. This helps creators feel less defensive about their work.
- Always check for spelling and grammatical errors in captions. There’s nothing worse than seeing a beautiful piece of content, accompanied by a writing error!
- If it’s not in the brief, don’t provide feedback on it. It’s the creators’ unique perspective that their followers love. You want to retain that authenticity. So only reject content that doesn’t match the specific requirements in your brief. More often than not, you’ll be blown away by their fresh interpretation of your brand.
We’ve made content approvals easy on the Vamp platform by collating all content in one, central location. You can review posts and read over captions before you decide to approve or reject the post. Approving content is as simple as clicking the ‘Approve’ button. And rejecting content is as easy as tapping the ‘Reject’ button and selecting which dos or don’ts the creator didn’t follow.
Oh so you’re a fast learner!? Put the skills you learnt today to the test and get in contact with a sales representative.
