How To Brief An Influencer
Follow our masterclass on how to brief an influencer for your brand's campaign. We explain what needs to be included in your brief, what deliverables are most important, how to understand influencer marketing roles and responsibilities and of course how to measure the success of your campaign.
It’s no secret that Influencer Marketing is a growing industry. The rise of the social media influencer has opened the door to a whole new playground for social media marketing.
A great campaign brief creates transparency between both parties across deliverables and campaign creative, as well as outlining the campaign objectives and the non-negotiables for the influencer.
Why do you need a brief for influencers?
A brief operates as an instruction manual for influencers. Briefs should clearly outline the who, what, when and why of the campaign. Good briefs will be written in simplistic language with photographic evidence to illustrate each point. Ideally each brief will have a section where there are examples of “good content” captured and “bad content” captured. The more explicit you are in the briefs, the less likely you are to receive poor results.
What does a brief need to include?
Brand info
A brief overview of the client in question to give context to the campaign for the influencer. If you are briefing for a small conservative fashion label and you do not give background information and content examples, you may find yourself with a whole host of expensive, unusable bedroom shots.
Including current content examples, even as simple sharing the brand’s Instagram feed, will instantly inform the talent of the kind of content that needs to be captured.
The above example of two juice companies @pressedjuicery and @nudie demonstrate how differently a product can be marketed on social. A keen marketing eye will observe how @pressedjuicery has a very curated feed, whereas nudie has created a much more candid feed of product imagery. Influencers should always have an understanding of their brand and how their content will fit into established marketing streams and systems.
Campaign overview
A paragraph on the ideas behind and the key objectives on the campaign - and how/why influencers have been chosen to broadcast and amplify the brand message.
Deliverables
Deliverables are essentially the first point of instruction on the brief. They should be short and concise detailing what’s required of the influencer to deliver
- 2x Instagram posts (with a mention of time it needs to stay live)
- 2x instagram stories with swipe up links
Deliverables and their consequent contracts should always include a clause where its stipulated how long the content must remain on their feeds. Unprofessional influencers will
delete the post you invested so heavily in almost immediately if there is nothing that contractually forbids them from doing so. Imagine having your post live for 12 hours and then watch it disappear into oblivion. It’s not a fun feeling.
Posting Mandatories
Posting mandatories include but are not restricted to the tags and posting mechanics of content and/or broader campaign;
- @ tags
- Hashtags
- Geotags
- Product inclusions
- Lighting requirements
- Image dimensions
Timing
Timeline for influencer to create and submit content for approval, post and send insights to allow the brand to deliver on time and keep both parties transparent and accountable.
Example Imagery
Example imagery is one of the most important parts of the brief. Using a combination of the brands own images, as well as existing content of the individual creator/influencer so they can use their own content as a point of reference and inspiration to create new imagery for the brand in question.
Example imagery also allows the marketer to maintain control over content production so neither party are ‘stabbing in the dark’ with a written imagery brief.
Reporting
It’s important to keep in mind when writing a brief for an influencer that you’re essentially briefing a photographer, artist and model all in one, so be descriptive but concise and where possible, create briefs for influencers individually.
Most influencer marketing campaigns are performance focused. This means, influencers need to provide their post insights.
It’s much easier to outline what you need from a reporting perspective before the campaign rather than chase it up while the campaign is live or drawing to a close. Insights to request for influencer marketing reports can include;
- Number of likes
- Number of comments
- Total reach
- Total impressions
- Number of link clicks
- Story views
How do you brief your influencers?
Being a relatively new channel, influencer marketing teams often haven’t etched their processes in stone quite yet. Creating a briefing template is a great first step to codify the structure and deliverables of your campaigns, ensuring that you get a better return on your marketing spend.
Do you have an influencer campaign brief? Tell us what you have learned from working with social media celebs in the comments below, or check out our influencer marketing page to speak to the team.
