For the last several decades, content marketing has been a powerful strategy for many businesses. To connect and speak to your customers on a human level has been one of the most effective tactics by content marketing experts. Over the last several years, more and more companies have started to turn to influencer marketing to give them, even more, reach for their content. Influencer marketing is a newer strategy where businesses work with influential individuals in their industry to produce high-quality content marketing that will reach a broader audience. If your company is looking to become an influence marketer here are seven expert tips to get you started.

Determine Your Goals

Start by defining your target audience, then one this is established, set a budget for your campaign. With the rise of influence marketing, many influencers are being well-paid for their partnerships with businesses. Then you’ll want to determine which KPIs you’re going to measure.

Do the Groundwork

Before you can get an influencer to engage with your product or service, you have to lay the groundwork first and build a relationship with the influencer. You can use tools like Traacker or GetLittlebird to identify and connect with relevant influencers in your industry and start focusing on building a relationship with them. To help you keep track of your influencer contacts, you can let Spiro organize your business contacts with ease.

Plan Your Schedule

After you’ve determined which influencers you’re going to work with, you need to develop a strategy that will leverage the influencer network. You’ll want to use your KPIs and demographic trends to determine the best times to post content, to ensure that your influencers are posting on a regular basis.

Educate Influencers About Your Brand

Just because an influencer likes your product or service, doesn’t mean they will fully understand your brand’s point of view. To help educate your influencers about your business, make sure to supply them with articles, eBooks, whitepapers, and any other resource they’ll need to learn more about you.

Get Influencers Involved in Your Events

One of the most common influence marketing strategy is to get influencers to attend your sponsored events. They can create hashtags to get your message to their followers and live tweet your events and product rollouts. More people trust an influencers recommendation over a classic advertisement because they know they only promote products and services they believe in.

Track Your Results

You’ll need to establish a set of metrics so you can determine the success of your campaign. To optimize your approach and evaluate your relationships, share these metrics with your influencers and your marketing team. Save time and effort by recognizing mistakes that are made early on to help you determine whether to continue with the influencer relationship.

Address Social Media Compliance

According to the Federal Trade Commission states that all material connections must be disclosed with a documented process. Publishing this kind of information provides brands with the authenticity and transparency they need to gain the trust of their target audience. CMP.ly is an NYC-based social media compliance platform that provides influencers and businesses with coded URLs and badges, that are linked to different disclosures.

These seven tips will help you get started with an effective influence marketing campaign for your business. Take the time upfront to research your industry and find the best influencers for your brand, then start to build the relationship with them before bringing them into the fold.