By Skai Blue Media

Social media is one of our favorite things to talk about here at Skai Blue Media, and for good reason: it is perhaps the most valuable and prolific resource available for brands to communicate with audiences.

Whether you are launching your brand, debuting a new product or simply looking to gain exposure, the first thing experts will tell you about any social media platform is to get to know the players. This means reaching out and fostering relationships with relevant users and established brands.

Aligning yourself with key personnel not only provides insight into what works for your target audience, it creates valuable opportunities to access and leverage the large following of these major brands through influencer campaigns.

Mogul, the user-generated, global information-sharing platform for women that reaches over 18 million people per week, is a shining example of influencer relations done right. We recently worked with the Mogul team to plan and execute their successful #IAmAMogul campaign, and have consolidated our expertise into these 5 steps for a successful influencer campaign:

1. Define Goals

Before you begin tweeting every big name in town for shout-outs, consider what you want to accomplish with this campaign, and be specific. “I want to gain exposure” sounds great, but how can you measure that? For #IAmAMogul, we established more concrete, metric-oriented goals such as “drive traffic to the site” and “increase social media followers.” This helped to focus the planning and execution of the campaign.

2. Qualify Influencers & Inspire Participation

The best influencers for any campaign will be authoritative and relevant to your brand and audience. Justin Bieber has an outstanding Twitter following of over 79.9 million, but that would not necessarily qualify him to discuss topics like gender equality for #IAmAMogul. Instead, we sought out 39 prominent women whose voices and experiences called attention to women’s issues and who are representative of the Mogul brand, such as Kelly Osbourne, Alysia Reiner, and Shiza Shahid,

It is imperative that you do not contact influencers for the first time asking them to participate in your campaign. Ideally, brands should begin fostering these relationships far in advance, allowing them to grow organically.

3. Plan and CO-create content

It is important to choose the appropriate content and medium to compliment your brand and influencers. Mogul’s mission is to provide women with information to become the best versions of themselves as possible, so we asked #IAmAMogul influencers to contribute op-ed style guest blogs to the platform or share special custom graphics on their social media pages.

4. Measure & Optimize performance

Remember that you chose an influencer campaign to access larger audiences and enhance your brand’s performance, so simply asking influencers to post on your behalf will not accomplish the specific goals you set., You need to interact with new audiences by following them, answering their questions or even just saying hello. Assigning one team member to check and re-check all social platforms and track campaign metrics daily via Sprout Social or another media management tool is a smart move.

For example, actress Jessica Biel did not directly participate as an #IAmAMogul influencer, but still viewed and re-tweeted #IAmAMogul content via via WomenCare Global CEO Saundra Pelletier. Her single tweet was one of the most impactful posts from the entire campaign, earning over 780k impressions.

5. Repeat

Influencer campaigns are centered on relationships, which should not be conditional. Therefore, it is important to continue to leverage new relationships after campaigns end. At the very least, reach out and thank influencers for their participation and make yourself available for contact in the future. This helps strengthen the association between your brand and your influencer in the eyes of their audience.

No one succeeds in a vacuum and choosing the right allies for your brand is critical to social media campaign success. Keep these steps in mind when you are ready to assemble your VIP dream team and view case studies and learn more about #WhatWeDo on our website.

Note: PPRA is composed of many distinct organizations and individuals, each with different perspectives and specializations in diverse areas of public relations. Many of these members’ websites feature blogs with valuable insights and advice, and we would like to make this content available to you. Periodically, we will repost content from member blogs. If you would like to see your company’s blog considered, email Stephen Krasowski at skrasowski@rmahq.org.