7 Ways to Have Engaging Influencer Marketing Content in 2022

Influence and the subsequent engagement that such influence garners are immeasurable aspects of social currency. With this, content is at the heart of extending these aspects. If you are a brand trying to broaden your reach through influencer marketing services, do you know the type of content that creates the right traction with your audience?

So much so that the socially active consumers know when the content is sponsored even without the ‘sponsored’ tag. By looking at the accompanying photo or reading the caption, they would know how dry, sale-sy and pushy the message is. This serves as an ongoing challenge for both the brands and influencers. On the one hand, there is a need to ensure that the campaign will thrive against the competition and, on the other hand, convey an authentic branded message.

In 2022, brands are expected to ramp up social media marketing spending by up to $15 billion. So in penetrating this ever-competitive landscape, brands need to amplify their content creation strategies.

Understanding brand engagement

Before we proceed to the ways to engage the audience through influencer marketing content with the highest possible traction this 2022, we need to know what brand engagement is.

What is brand engagement?

Brand engagement is the process of creating an attachment between brands and consumers. The attachment could be rational or emotional, though both lead to the development of brand loyalty in the long run. Brand engagement pertains to building and sustaining the consumers’ commitment to the brand.

Influencers are at the heart of brand engagement. The content they produce and publish online, particularly on social media, develops a strong attachment between their audience and the sponsoring brand. This is why branded content must be highly engaging—to generate the results it is intended to.

What are the benefits of engaging influencer marketing content?

Content pieces that fully engage the audience:

• Drive results

Consumers are very particular about what they see on social media. They do not buy immediately directly from post or page that appears overly promotional. On the other hand, relationships and stories, especially those anchored on a relatable narrative, drive them to make a purchase.

No wonder influencers became the trusted voice in a sea of commercial noise. Since they are credible to their followers, they can lend that credibility to your brand. As a result, they drive exposure, awareness, relevance, and, ultimately, conversions that you would definitely want for the impact of the influencer marketing campaign.

• Cultivate brand loyalty

Building brand awareness through constant exposure to branded content is the first step. However, the ultimate goal is to cultivate brand loyalty, wherein the engaged audience rallies behind your brand.

Influencers can create this end game for you. They can build a solid bridge connecting your brand with your target audience through strong emotional connections.

• Generate real-time data

This sounds technical, but influencer marketing content provides you with data and insights that tell you whether the campaign is working towards the goal or not. Adjustments are made based on the analysis of the relevant factors, maximizing the campaign budget in the process.

How to have engaging branded content

This list of different ways to make influencer marketing content more exciting and engaging is meant to be exhaustive. Here’s how to do influencer marketing content right from the start.

1) Be clear with influencers

As the sponsoring brand, you must understand what you want the campaign to achieve. Expectations must be clear from the get-go before taking the initiative to orient your chosen influencers about the campaign. Through establishing goals, objectives, expected conversions, brand message, and timeline, onboarding will become a more straightforward process.

Your chosen influencers’ audience will likely judge them based on the content they publish on their platforms. And people will judge you too! So it would be best if you prepared a creative brief that contains the posting requirements, message slants, promotion do’s and don’ts, and other related information. While it is true that brands must give influencers the creative freedom they need, you still want to control the message.

Encourage creativity, but be transparent about the process. The most important thing about this is to let the influencers know that you will be doing edits to their drafts and giving approvals before the content goes live. Include this information in the creative brief to guide the influencers’ expectations when creating branded content.

2) Provide a variety of writing angles

Speaking of creative freedom that virtually all influencer agencies advocate for, giving influencers choices of how they tackle content creation also spells the difference between highly engaging and poorly performing content.

The ability of the influencers to sustain the interest of their followers is already there. Some influencers may have the idea for content since they interact with their followers constantly and know what content to feed them. They are continually guarding the pulse of their followers too. However, other influencers don’t. Thereby, it is wise to pitch ideas to kickstart content creation. These ideas may serve as the foundation of the content, giving the basis within which they will create their content.

3) Target long-term partnership

Brands are often skeptical of partnering with influencers for extended periods. The majority still prefer one-off influencer marketing campaigns with equally one-shot results.

Some brands that want to create long-term collaborations with influencers struggle with how to devise a content strategy for influencers and fit with the influencers’ personal branding. They are not wrong since influencer marketing must be predisposed to an ongoing narrative. Engagement is more organic and authentic if the audience can see how the campaign progresses in the long run.

4) Publish a variety of content

Creating different content can break the monotony of what your target audience sees from you on their feed. Social media caters to different types of audiences that require variety. You may try text-photo posts, short or long videos, and the trending feature nowadays—reels. Reels are available on both Instagram and Facebook. Even YouTube has its Shorts that you can recommend the influencers to use if they are not using the feature yet (but we doubt it). Influencers are adept at using their platforms; some of them are even included in the rosters of users who get to use new features and tools ahead of the general users.

Variety does not only apply to the actual content. It may also mean a collaboration between two or more influencers. For the types of content, they can do a review, unboxing, or prank video. They can also host contests, giveaways, or event activation and capture live on social media to capitalize on urgency and FOMO (fear of missing out). Apparently, the possibilities are endless when it comes to varying content.

5) Boost sponsored content

By boosting, a post may reach more people, not just the influencer’s audience. The platform where you promote the post will show the post to more people willing and ready to engage with that type of content.

Boosting branded content provides additional value. For example, when tracking the campaign, there will be insights and recommendations that you can scrutinize directly from the dashboard. You will know which among the boosted posts resonates best with the target audience based on the engagement rates against the considered budget. You want to promote those posts with the highest engagements at the lowest costs.

For the subsequent campaigns, you may want to take note of the settings that propel your boosted post to success engagement-wise and replicate them. But, again, you can maximize the boost budget if you clearly grasp what works and what does not.

6) Diversify social platforms

Instagram, YouTube, and Facebook are the primary influencer marketing channels brands work with. These should be in your arsenal. On the other hand, you may also explore Twitter, TikTok, Snapchat, Twitch, etc. If you are on the business side, you may look for influencers on LinkedIn.

Whichever you choose, this is a critical decision because platform choices generally reflect your brand’s value. In addition, influencers intensify the message and put it out in the world, so more people are aware that your brand exists. Therefore, you want to concentrate your influencer marketing efforts (and budget) on social platforms that bring in conversions, impacting your ROI (return on investment).

7) Include a call-to-action

What would you like your influencer marketing campaigns to achieve? Increasing your followers, boosting website traffic, building an email list, and generating product sales are some of the goals to consider.

You need to be clear about this and communicate this matter to the influencers. Then, they will create based on the campaign goals and include the necessary call-to-action in their content. That is how you hit the campaign goals you initially set through the right content—the right content tells the people what they should do next.

All in all

In making branded content more engaging, as a brand, you need to be deeply engaged with the process and the influencers too. You must be clear about what you want the campaign to achieve, provide them with plenty of creative choices, target long-term collaborations, promote content, diversify platforms, and compel the audience to take action.