Being influencers ourselves in the social media space for over 15 years and having companies from around the world come to us for guidance, we’ve seen everything you can imagine especially when it comes to businesses seeing the hype around social media influencer marketing, dumping money into paying influencers then being unhappy in the end. But there’s more to the story…

First of all, one of the biggest failures we see is companies taking a transactional approach to influencer marketing: Like having someone from their marketing team research relevant influencers then contact them (DM, via email, etc.) to request a sponsored post. That = a big no no.

What you’ve essentially done is tried to skip the relationship building phase and go straight to something self-serving that is not only going to cost you much more but also make you lose credibility and influence yourself. The best relationships you can build and eventually monetize are those where social media influencers see you as an equal due to your own influence, so it essentially becomes a collaboration.

Secondly, the misconception of social media follower count and engagement on the surface (e.g. likes) as it relates to an influencer and their reach is totally flawed, and unfortunately many companies have and will continue to dump money into these smoke and mirrors then wonder why they’re not seeing a real return on their investment in the end.

Why? Because a vast majority of the “influencer’s” followers were purchased, they buy likes, etc. and these inflated numbers look magical to the untrained eye, but are also where companies get screwed and social media influencer marketing gets a black eye sometimes. However, there’s hope.

If you want to be successful with social media marketing in general, including working with social media influencers, you gotta stop the madness and use social networks for the reason they were created in the first place: To actually be social.

Throw the “if we build it, they will come” mentality out the window and focus on actionable things today that will get your company to the next level tomorrow.

And if you run into roadblocks or have questions, let’s connect: info@thebrainchildgroup.com