How to Keep the Rights to the Content You Pay Influencers to Create for You

In the wonderful world of social media, user-generated content is a valuable resource for marketers. It helps address content production gaps, it increases follower engagement, and it’s an effective method of word-of-mouth marketing.

But with the multiplication of user-generated content on social media, there also come a barrage of questions about who owns the content, especially in the world of influencer marketing, where UGC is every creator’s bread and butter.

The truth is brands should NEVER be in a position where they have to FIGURE OUT who owns the rights to their sponsored content (even though they often are).

This is super important.

Content rights determine who has the legal right (the brand or the creator) to use and share the content a bloggers, influencer, or social media user creates. This is true even if a brand has paid a creator for the content and it features a brand’s products or services. A brand’s UGC rights still have to be established IN WRITING because in the U.S., copyright are automatically assigned to the content’s creator.

So, in this post, we’re discussing what you as a marketer need to know about the UGC rights, the challenges brands face with UGC campaigns, and tips for structuring content rights for your next UGC or influencer campaign.

The 411 on UGC

So, we’ve talked about UGC quite a bit over the years in different respects….

…. how to drive sales with UGC

…. how to get AMAZING UGC (cause all UGC ain’t amazing)

…. the 5 BIG benefits of UGC (and why brands clamor for UGC)

If you missed our prior memos, we’ll make this explanation short and sweet – user-generated content is the lifeblood of social media and influencer marketing. It’s the content created by contributors (whether solicited or unsolicited, paid or unpaid by the brand) and made accessible to the general public via social media. It includes both sponsored posts AND the stuff users post to their social media feeds about different brands – images, captions, videos, blogs.

At The Shelf, A LOT (like, MOST) of our clients are expecting great UGC from their influencer campaigns. Some brands run campaigns almost exclusively for the UGC.

In general, UGC is a good way for brands to get consumers involved in the content-creation process. It gives customers a chance to share honest feedback on the products. Plus, it creates a TON of content (some of it even great content) for brands to reuse across their own branded social channels (with permission, of course).

Not for nothing, but this form of content creation and word-of-mouth marketing is super effective. That’s the beauty of UGC.

Okay, So Let’s Take a Look at a Few Brands That Are Really Good At the [Free] UGC Game

You know we had to do it because we love examples, and color, and screengrabs that prove our point. So, we put together a quick-and-dirty list of some brands (our go-to UGC examples, no doubt) who are successfully integrating UGC as part of their normal content marketing strategy.

Coca-Cola

This legacy company kills it at creating user-generated content with their “Share a Coke” campaign. Coca-Cola first launched the “Share a Coke” campaign in the summer of 2014.

The campaign originally involved users posting about finding their names on bottles of Coca-Cola, and it worked famously well. Who wouldn’t want to share a personalized Coke? It makes us feel special and happy almost instantly.

The campaign has since evolved around the idea that when customers #ShareACoke, they’re sharing an experience with the people around them. You can go online and buy personalized Coke bottles, so none of your friends ever feel left out of the picture.

Running every summer in the years since its launch, the Share a Coke campaign is now a memorable marker for Coke drinkers around the world. “Once the campaign ends, people want to hold onto the memory,” says Jaideep Kibe, vice president, Coca-Cola Trademark, Coca-Cola North America.

Aerie

Aerie is an intimates brand connected with the larger retailer American Eagle. In the mid-2010s, public scrutiny around photo-retouching of women increased. Aerie made a name for itself by pledging to stop retouching the models in their product photo shoots.

On top of eliminating retouching, Aerie began the branded hashtag campaign #AerieReal. Aerie asked that women post un-edited photos of themselves in bathing suits using the hashtag #AerieReal, and in return they donated $1 to the National Eating Disorders Association for every photo posted.

Aerie tapped into the very real emotions of women around the world to not only highlight their swimsuits on real “models,” but also spark a change in the online fashion industry.

Wayfair

Wayfair is an online dropshipper that has become a staple of all things home décor. Much of Wayfair’s legend can be attributed to social media and UGC. Wayfair encourages customers to share photos on Instagram of their products in the customer’s home using the hashtag #wayfairathome, or in our case, #wayfairprofessional

For brands like Wayfair, allowing users to showcase interior design chops in its feed provides Wayfair with several powerful benefits.

First… It gives Wayfair access to a never-ending source of really great social media fodder. People who love Wayfair LOVE it, and they are more than willing to share the results of their deocrating projects with Wayfair’s massive audience.

Next… The UGC is a powerful method of social proof. It’s a great way for the brand to feature how its décor items can fit into any home or office décor style WITHOUT looking like a sponsored post.

Plus… Wayfair’s feed doubles as a sort of home decorating “look book” that people will follow and access as needed for design inspiration.

It’s win-win-win.

The Challenges with UGC Rights Brands MUST Address

Remember that one guy who said he fought the law and the law won? Assume that’s gonna happen if your UGC ducks aren’t in a row.

Creators Own the Rights… Accept That

We published a post not too long ago on the three social media laws brands and marketers need to know to do business in the influencer marketing space. You can read that post here.

Here’s the thing – with something like UGC, your brand is dealing with the creative output of another person or organization. By default, the U.S. Copyright Law grants ownership of any intellectual property to the content’s Creator – this is true EVEN IF YOU PAID FOR THE CONTENT!

For UGC (and any copyright issue), ownership rights MUST be transferred from the Creator to the brand in writing. At the very least, there should be something in place to outline how content rights will be shared between the Creator and the brand.

Creators like bloggers, foodies, photographers, and videographers (not an exhaustive list) want credit for what they create, and they should get it. A lot of brands understand intellectual property laws, but don’t readily equate social media content with intellectual property.

It is.

Here’s the takeaway that most of us learned as children: Ask for permission before you mess with anyone else’s stuff.

Getting Consent for Unsponsored UGC

Into the nitty-gritty for a second. Bare with us — you’ll appreciate it when you know how to get consent from your audience and avoid the possibility of a crazy lawsuit.

There are a few ways to go about getting consent. Let’s be real — nobody has the time and resources to reach out to EVERY individual whose content you want to use.

There are two types of consent brands can get before utilizing user-generated content:

1. Implied Consent

2. Explicit Consent

Explicit consent means the Creator explicitly gives you permission to use their content. For influencer marketing, the details of how content can be used is included in a contract.

For unsolicited, unpaid UGC, brands will often DM a Creator and just ask if it’s okay to use X piece of content for Y specific purpose.

Operative term there being specific purpose.

According to industry analyst Susan Etlinger, “Organizations must be honest with the user about when and how the content will be used, and whether it will be syndicated to other publishers or organizations.”

The copyright (which legally gives someone the right to publish, copy, edit/modify, sell, make derivative works from) belongs to the person who created the content. If you seek out their content and intend to use it, you better be clear about what you want to do with it and get permission first.

On the flip side, brands can obtain implied consent. Implied consent is good for brands that want to compile a huge library of UGC since you don’t have to reach out to individual content creators to ask for their permission. Score!

Implied consent is the type of consent associated with social media and things like hashtag campaigns and contests. It’s the notion that, by using a branded hashtag or tagging (not just talking about) a specific brand, a user is agreeing to the brand’s use of their related content.

You know what I’m talking about. I bet you see branded hashtags contests and campaigns on your own Instagram feed almost daily. These types of user-generated content campaigns are everywhere and they are GREAT at creating awareness around a product, brand, campaign, or idea.

If you decide to run a branded hashtag campaign on Instagram (as thousands of other brands do), you’re assuming that a consumer is implying their consent to the use of their content by using the hashtag needed to enter and sharing campaign-related content with their own networks.

Branded hashtags are HUGE for brands. Most of the hashtags used on Instagram (like 70 percent of them) are branded hashtags. Instagram posts with hashtags get 12.6 percent more engagement than those without, so many brands incorporate branded hashtags as a core part of the marketing strategy. Often, when we pitch clients, we pitch ideas WITH branded hashtags.

Final thought here… If there is ever a question about who owns the content – and that’s always the case when there’s no contract in place that explicitly lay out who owns what and how content can be used – ask before using someone’s content.

Tips for Structuring UGC Rights Policies for Influencer Campaigns

We know it’s not fun and it sounds pretty boring, but you have to have a UGC rights contract in place for any influencer campaign.

We typically negotiate rights for campaign content to be used by the brand as they see fit, across their social media channels. But the larger the influencer, the more likely you are to have resistance from the Creator. Sometimes that takes the form of an expiration date for the content, or the Creator being able to delete sponsored posts from their feed after a certain amount of time… it can get a little weird and a little complicated.

Still, it’s crucial that you iron out those types of details in a written contract because influencers are well within their rights to ask a brand to take down a post that was part of a sponsored campaign the brand has ALREADY PAID FOR if reuse is not clearly defined within the contract. In an absolute-all-out-worst-case-ever scenario, the influencer could actually sue for copyright infringement.

And FYI, if an influencer is repped by an agency, you can bet there are going to be content rights issues. Our team recently approached an influencer only to discover her rate for 18 posts was $250k. PLUS, the brand would have to pay an additional cost of $2,000 PER WEEK for any image it wanted to reuse in ads. #Facts

Clarity and Transparency Are Crucial

You ever see that episode of Friends where Joey takes a job as the spokesperson for City Free Clinic and ends up with his face plastered all over New York City (including Time Square) on a poster for VD?

THAT’S an influencer’s worst nightmare when it comes to sharing the rights to content that contains their likenesses. You have to remember Creators are working hard to build their brands just like you are… they want to protect their reputations, their audiences, and their future as influencers.

Source: YouTube.com

Clarity and transparency are KEY in negotiating UGC rights, both for brands and Creators. Creators need to know from brands exactly how sponsored content and other UGC will be used and how long it will be used for that purpose.

Contract Elements to Include

Now, like we mentioned before, the rights (and scope) of use for influencer-created content has to be negotiated in your influencer contract.

Think of influencers as their own companies. They are brands in-and-of themselves. So, influencers are looking to participate in campaigns that align with their brands. That said, the use of the content created during a campaign should also align with the influencer’s brand.

How much control will creators have when it comes to conceptualizing ideas and creating collateral for your campaign?

Is your influencer going to be posting directly to their social media channels or is this more of a takeover type of situation? We actually published a pretty comprehensive piece on takeovers that you can read:

1. The Flawlessly Executed Instagram Takeover

2. Four Epic Instagram Takeovers and Why They Worked

The Shelf platform includes a dashboard that allows brands to preview and approve sponsored content for influencer campaigns before it goes live.

Brands often leave creative control up to the influencer, but it’s also important for brands to set up strategies and the message before hiring influencers for their campaigns (that’s largely because the strategies you use and your message will play an important role in your influencer selection process).

Influencers have mastered the art of reaching THEIR audience, not really yours. So, it’s important that the influencer’s audience and the brand’s audience overlap to some degree.

Influencers can be particular about the content they leave on their feeds. If you’ve ever looked at an influencer’s Instagram, you know that they’re selective about how much sponsored content they have on their page. And duh! This makes sense. You don’t want to see sponsored post after sponsored post — it will ruin their authenticity with their audience.

Brands, on the other hand, also need the authority to take down or remove content that doesn’t meet the established brand guidelines. You can’t have bad or misaligned content that you paid for hanging out on the internet.

Include a section in your influencer contract outlining when an influencer can take down sponsored content, and clearly state that you reserve the right to remove any content an influencer produces for your brand.

It’s important for brands to get enlisted influencers to agree they won’t infringe on any other person’s rights, including copyright. Influencers should not incorporate the pictures, content, audio, or video of another creator’s work into any campaign. That’s uber-important.

To ensure you get what you paid for, we always list a set of DOs and DON’Ts because influencers (bless their hearts) will inevitably do weird things. So, you need a record of the hashtags to be used, any people or things that need to be mentioned in sponsored posts and the length of time the post is to stay published to a creator’s site or social channel.

Contracts also include things like confidentiality clauses that require influencers to keep your super duper top secret secrets a secret… and indemnification that keeps you out of court in the event a zombie apocalypse, Yeti appearance or freak accident happens during the creation of the sponsored content.

Contracts are crucial, and the details you include in your contracts can save you time, reputation, and tens of thousands of dollars in litigation. Our iron-clad contracts allow our clients to have stress-free campaigns…but trust us when we say every clause in our contract was the result of a hard-learned lesson.

Final Thoughts

Content rights are actually pretty straightforward – Creators own the content until they agree that they don’t.

For brands that want to include the use of paid or unpaid user-generated content in their marketing campaigns, you can avoid the headaches that will inevitably arise with UGC rights by getting permission to use the content ahead of time.

Not to toot our own horn here, but we’re pretty good at negotiating content rights for brands, and our platform has a built-in transparency that just makes the whole UGC/ post approval process super simple to navigate.

Nano-Influencers: Who They Are, Why They Win, and How Brands Like Suave, Loco Coffee, and Gymboree Are Partnering with Nano-Influencers to Reach Hyper-Targeted Audiences

Influencer marketing has surged in the last couple of years. With 39 percent of marketers planning to increase their influencer marketing budgets, an effective influencer marketing strategy is the key to standing out in a saturated influencer marketing landscape.

The secret to more targeted influencer marketing may be using nano-influencers. Nano-influencers are influencers who have fewer than 10,000 followers on a given platform. So, yeah… someone could be a nano-influencer on one platform and a mega-influencer on another (that’s usually the case, by the way…)

Given the choice between mega and nano, why would a brand want to invest money having anyone with fewer than 10,000 followers promote their brand or product?

Well, there are actually a couple of good reasons.

Nano-influencers are relatively inexpensive to hire for influencer campaigns. They also tend to have much higher engagement rates and ROI than, say, a mega-influencer.

Let’s dive into everything you need to know about nano-influencers — more information on who they are, how they’re being used by media superstars, and why they may be a better fit for your campaign than some of the bigger influencers.

What (Exactly) Are Nano-Influencers?

The overall goal of influencer marketing is to find people who have the credibility to influence the purchasing decisions of large segments of the people in their social networks. Nano-influencers are influential people who have a smaller following — usually between 1,000-10,000 followers (think of them as that one really popular friend you have).

But being a nano-influencer isn’t just about having 3,000 followers. Nano-influencers possess very distinctive traits that PROVE their influence.

Nano-influencers regularly post to the social media platform on which they wield influence. They are also responsive on social media – they respond to comments, winks, likes, pokes, and shares from their audience members. And perhaps most importantly, their followers actually do seem to like what they post; that is, the audience demonstrates positive sentiment toward the nano-influencer’s social media content.

Nano-Influencers vs. Bigger Influencers

Influencers fall into different tiers based on the number of followers they have. Contrary to popular belief, nano-influencers are not the same thing as micro-influencers. We like this colorful little chart from Mediakix (okay, you got us… we recolored it so it’s cuter).

● Mega-influencers — Have more than a million followers and are often more famous than influential. Mega-influencers offer brands HUGE potential reach and expansive exposure, but often at a hefty price.

● Macro-influencers — Have between 100,000 and one million followers. This is what most people think of when they hear the term “influencer.” Most macro-influencers differ from mega-influencers because their fame is self-made, usually through the internet itself — think of fitness influencers like Whitney Simmons (on Instagram @whitneyysimmons) or fashion Youtubers like Patricia Bright (here’s a link to her channel). They usually have a more targeted audience than mega-influencers.

● Micro-influencers — Have between 10,000 and 100,000 followers. Micro-influencers focus on a niche audience and are usually considered an expert in their given industry. Marketers who want to employ micro-influencers can count on the influencer’s audience being interested in whatever made the influencer popular.

Nano-influencers have smaller audiences, so they can’t really offer huge reach on their own. BUT these influencers do tend to demonstrate a closer connection to their audience members than just about any other tier of influencers.

For nano-influencers, their lack of fame doesn’t compromise their influence. In fact, it’s just the opposite. Nano-influencers are everyday people who may wield considerable selling power just because they engage frequently and directly with the people in their small, niche, and highly engaged audiences. Therein lies the prime benefit for brands and marketers.

The Benefits of Choosing a Nano-Influencer

Nano-influencers are a great option for brands that have never worked with influencers before. You don’t have to have thousands of dollars laying around to secure sponsored posts from nano-influencers, and you can count on high engagement rates on the content they post.

Let’s talk about some of the primary benefits of working with nano-influencers.

Engagement

High engagement rates are one of the key distinguishing traits of nano-influencers compared to larger influencers who have greater reach. Small influencers consistently outperform larger influencers when it comes to responsiveness and audience engagement. That’s a BIG DEAL.

Most marketers use engagement ratio as a key performance indicator for the success of influencer campaigns. Nano-influencers outshine every other influencer tier in that respect.

Digiday reported that nano-influencers are able to engage up to 8.7 percent of their following, whereas the average engagement rate for macro influencers with millions of followers is 1.7 percent and that percentage usually dips below one percent for celebrities. That’s over 5x higher engagement rates nano-influencers produce with their content!

Source: Influencer Marketing Hub

Nano-influencers personally know their audience, or at least most of them. This familiarity helps them craft organic and authentic messages that resonate with their followers, leading to higher engagement rates. The smaller amount of followers also means that nano-influencers can respond to most every comment or personal message, further improving their authentic image (and usually resulting in a following that is consistently growing).

Authenticity

Having intimate knowledge of the people in their networks means nano-influencers can be an effective vehicle for word-of-mouth marketing. Nano-influencers become key opinion leaders among their following. That gives them influence over the purchasing decisions of the people in their network.

Think about it. How do you typically research a product before you buy it? Most Millennials won’t make large purchases AT ALL without first researching reviews of the product online, that includes asking people in their existing social networks.

As a buyer, you’re more likely to believe the rave reviews of someone you know than a paid celebrity endorsement. Let’s face it… who really thinks celebs use the same stuff the rest of us do?

But if it’s someone you know, there’s nothing to stop your from hitting them up in the DM to find out the real deal. Nano-influencers help companies connect with customers by allowing the influencers to share with their online community the real experiences they are having with different products.

Cost

Nano-influencers typically don’t charge excessive fees for their sponsorship like larger influencers do. There are a few that will either wittingly or unwittingly charge a higher fee than their influence warrants, but mostly… nano-influencer fees will be pretty fair.

According to Mike Dossett, VP and director of digital strategy at RPA, marketers can use the low cost of nano-influencers to their advantage. Low-cost nano-influencers means brands can work with a larger number of influencers, “each of whom can create and share their own content about the brand.”

Value

Nano-influencers aren’t just low cost — most nano-influencers tend to over-deliver. In fact, whenever a client wants to generate tons of UGC from an influencer campaign, we direct their ad spend to nano-influencers and micro-influencers, NOT macro- or mega-influencers. You would pay less per piece of content created for your campaign, and you’re far more likely to get the UGC rights you want (and need).

In addition to being a more affordable option for influencer marketing, nano-influencers tend to offer marketers a huge ROI.

Over the course of a year, you could easily hire 100 nano-influencers with 10,000 followers each for a combined reach of 1,000,000 people. And the campaign(s) would probably generate between 200 and 600 unique pieces of content for your brand to reuse across your own social media channels and in ads.

How Brands Are Using Nano-Influencers

Nano-influencers aren’t just for brands with small budgets. Nano-influencers are starting to proliferate marketing campaigns across every vertical with the help of endorsements from big media companies.

Companies like CMSwire, Hubspot, Vayner Media, Influencer Marketing Hub, and even the New York Times are already touting the success of nano-influencers — and other brands are taking notice.

According to research by Brian Solis, principal analyst at Altimeter Group, only 32 percent of consumers follow big-name influencers, compared to 70 percent who are influenced by their family and friends online. Trust is the name of the game when it comes to influencer marketing, and nano-influencers are uniquely positioned to stand in as trustworthy sources of information in the eyes of their respective audience members.

Brands are also paying attention to a particular demographic that relies heavily on the opinions of nano-influencers — Generation Z. Gen Z grew up surrounded by social media, and they’ve never existed in a world without it. Youtubing is a legitimate career path for Gen Z-ers, and their Instagram feeds are over-saturated with sponsored posts.

Social media is their main source of content, and where they discover most of the products they buy. Gen Z nano-influencers are using social media because their friends are too, which makes them a huge potential market for brands across the globe.

Gymboree

Take a look at some of the brands making use of nano-influencers across Instagram.

Source: On Instgram from Sarah Christensen

Parents love to seek out the advice of other parents, and Gymboree is smartly taking advantage of this with their influencer marketing campaign. Parents trust products used successfully by people they know, probably more so than any other target market. Gymboree’s use of nano-influencers was a smart way to spread the news about the classes they offer through word-of-mouth marketing.

Sarah’s post got 71 likes and six comments, earning her an engagement rate of 5.2 percent among her 1,472 followers.

Glossier

Source: On Instagram by @ammal

This relatively new skincare and makeup brand is taking the term nano-influencer to the next level by turning every customer into an influencer for the brand. Emily Weiss, Founder and CEO of Glossier, says the idea that everyone can be an influencer is ingrained into the makeup of the company and their marketing strategy.

According to Vox, Glossier has mainly relied on word-of-mouth to sell its products, and with huge success. The skincare company is partnered with over 500 ambassadors and has raised over $90 million in venture funding.

The post above from Ammal post received 215 likes and 16 comments. With 1,265 followers, the engagement rate for the post was 18.26 percent!

Suave

While Suave’s instagram account @suavebeauty may be relatively young (it only has 18.6k followers) the brand is sure making use of influencers’ audiences to promote its products. A quick look at the company’s Instagram feed reveals that Suave using influencers from multiple tiers to reach a large audience and reach engaged audiences.

Using the hashtag #SuavePartner, influencers for the brand both large and small are highlighting the benefits of a new Rose Oil shampoo and conditioner.

Source: On Instagram from @nicole.marshall

With 21 comments and 295 likes on this post, Nicole’s post for Suave earned a 4.4 percent among her 7,082 followers.

Loco Coffee

It’s not just beauty brands using nano-influencers. Loco Coffee (on Instagram @DRINKloco)is a new coffee brand with no added sugar and only two ingredients in the drink. The brand itself is new and only has 5,000 followers on Instagram, meaning they need a lot of bang for their buck in terms of their marketing strategy,

That’s where their nano-influencers come in. With something in the food and beverage industry, ease of use, taste, and ingredients are important. Nano-influencers for Loco Coffee can highlight any of these features in their sponsored posts while being authentic and relatable to their audience.

Source: On Instagram posted by @heykatemarie

This post of Katie’s generated 165 likes and 8 comments, meaning the engagement rate for the post was 6.8 percent based on her 2,520 followers.

Suave, Clinique, and Loco Coffee have all made use of the same nano-influencer — Alexis Baker on Instagram @alexisbakerrr). Alexis’s most recent sponsored Suave post garnered 213 engagements (comments and likes) — a 7.3 percent engagement rate based on her 3,000 follower audience.

Final Thought

Nano-influencers are the next big thing for influencer marketing in 2019 — they are a low-cost option and they produce high engagement rates for the brands they work for. Any brand can make use of nano-influencers in their marketing strategy.

To get started working with nano-influencers, sign up for a demo or check out our resources section for more information.

Should You Make a Fashion Blogger the Face of Your Non-Fashion Campaign?

You’ve probably seen them, people who have hundreds of thousands of online followers because they have mastered the art of looking good and dressing well. No small feat. These fashion bloggers possess measurable influence within their online communities. From a marketing standpoint, it makes sense that brands want to do business with them.

If you’re a brand that sells clothing accessories, and beauty products collaborating with the right social media influencers is probably on your list of things to do. Just make sure that the influencer you target has influence over YOUR target audience.

Or… don’t.

I’m going to be very specific here. In this article, we’ll explore some of the strategies you can use to target fashion bloggers if you’re not a fashion brand. We’ll also look at some examples of this done right to give you some inspiration. BUT I want to insert the disclaimer here that this post is  not encouraging you to target any influencer who has a large following just to sell your thing. What I am saying is with the right creative strategies, you can grab the attention of an audience that may not – at first glance – seem like the most obvious choice.

Why fashion influencers?

You might be wondering why you would want to target fashion influencers if your brand has nothing to do with fashion. That’s the same question we answered in this post on how to get in on the Thanksgiving shopping frenzy with a product that had nothing to do with Thanksgiving. .

These influencers can still provide you with a great deal of value as their content has such a wide reach. With tens or even hundreds of thousands of loyal followers, getting your brand name mentioned in one of their posts could expose your brand to thousands of new users. This could lead to new followers and increased interest in your brand and its products or services.

The key, however, it to find a link between your brand and the kind of content that the influencer posts. If the influencer doesn’t see a logical link or just isn’t interested in your brand, then he or she is unlikely to agree to team up with you.

For influencers, their reputation is everything. Their reputation is a valuable asset that they leverage to wield their influence. In short: They’re not gonna let you come in and mess that up. Preserving their online business means protecting their reputation – even if that means protecting it from you.  But your audience may include a segment of the influencer’s audience. And therein lies your opening.

What’s fashion got to do with it?

Let’s say you run a travel experience company that likes to target Millennials who are interested in taking a few months or a year out to travel the world. Yes, there are fashion bloggers who travel. But there are also fashion bloggers  that appeal largely to the type of Millennials who are adventurous, have time flexibility, and who are okay going it alone.

A fashion blogger who targets Moms might like to share recipes or products related to children. Fashion bloggers who do well with middle-aged men could team up with a brand that sells recreational sports equipment or hand tools.

It might take some imagination to ensure the posts don’t look like the most obvious product placements in the world, but the point is that cross-section where the influencer’s audience intersects with your target audience is your sweet spot.

Now, let’s get into some good, old-fashioned digital marketing strategies.

Strategies for targeting fashion bloggers

Influencer marketing isn’t something you can just dive right into. Your strategy should be well thought out in terms of a number of things:

• Which influencers to target

• How to approach them

• Which products or services to promote

• What kind of content to create

Luckily, the fourth bullet point listed there is made easier by the fact that these influencers know what they’re doing and tend to have a lot of ideas of their own for content creation. You know your product. They know their audience. So, you must be willing to give your influencer a large degree of control over the content being created while having criteria in place to ensure the message stays true to your brand’s values and deliverables.

This leaves the first three bullet points as your main responsibilities. Do lots of research into fashion influencers to determine which would be suitable for you to work with. Once you’ve selected a handful, it’s time to start engaging with them.

If you contact them out of the blue and propose a partnership when you don’t know them and they don’t know you, expect a no.  Follow the influencer first. Comment on their posts, share content with them. Do whatever you can to build a relationship before you reach out.

When you do eventually approach them, you will know what they are about and have a bettr idea of the best ways to approach them. with a proper proposal. Then you can tell them about your product, what you’re thinking, and how you think this particular collaboration could prove mutually beneficial.

A Handful of Powerful Tactics to Promote Your Product without Making the Influencer Sound Like a Pitchman

Blend into the background

It may sound counter-intuitive, but sometimes, the best way to stand out is to blend in. This is an easy strategy for working with fashion influencers. They’re taking pictures of their latest outfit on a regular basis, often every day. Unless they opt for a super close-up shot, there will likely be a way for you two to seamlessly integrate your product into the post and to make it better without seeming overdone.

For example, an influencer could promote the brand that sells the furniture they’re sitting on, a piece of artwork on the wall, a TV or computer that’s on the table behind them. It’s easy to work these kinds of products naturally into a photo that they would be sharing anyway.

The example above is from the Instagram of Rachel Pitzel, a fashion and travel influencer who regularly posts photos of herself spending time with her son and daughter. In the post above, you see an overhead shot of Rachel cuddling with the kids, but she’s doing it on a comfy custom sofa from Joybird. And the entire sofa is in the shot.

So, your product doesn’t have to be up front and centered to have an effective sponsored post. Blending in can be a more effective placement.

This strategy works for: Furniture brands, device manufacturers, and pretty much any brand that sells physical products

Focus on what’s underneath the clothes

No, this tip isn’t just about having an influencer show some cleavage in an IG post (although that may have been their strategy in this example). This is all about making the most of the fact that fashion bloggers are all about looking good. And that isn’t just about the clothes, jewelry, and makeup they’re wearing, but also about how their health impacts their quality of life and their bodies affect their self-image.

In this example, @thehautebrunette shared a sponsored post chronicling her at-home workout.  She mentions fitness company p.volve and a specific piece of fitness equipment they sell – the p.ball.

The post predominantly features Alyssa Melendez herself sporting active wear, so followers can still get a taste of what she wears in her day to day life. The p.ball is then positioned next to her with the p.volve logo facing the camera, so the brand is featured in the picture without being overly promotional or in your face.

This is a great way for health, fitness, and wellness brands to work with fashion influencers since their followers are interested in how the influencer pulls off certain looks. A fitness brand could increase brand awareness by partnering with a fashion influencer who also extols the virtues of maintaining an active lifestyle.

This strategy works for: Fitness brands, personal trainers, skincare brands

Make it onto their menu

Everybody eats, even (or expecially, depending on the influencer) fashion influencers. So, food and drink brands can get in on the action by being an influencer’s snack, beverage, or grocery store of choice.

This can be as simple as having your food or drink featured in the background of a post where a fashion influencer is showing off their latest outfit. For greater prominence, the fashion influencer could be holding or actually consuming the food or drink in the photo.

Of course, fashion influencers are often more creative than this, like the above example of Sazi Hills, aka @fashion_53. In this sponsored post for Pepsi, she takes things a huge step further than the simple can of Pepsi Max in her hand. She’s taken the product and used it in an innovative way, and a way that’s relevant to fashion and style, no less.

If you look closely, you can see she rolled her hair with empty Pepsi cans!

The post is original, trendy, stylish, and sort of hilarious, really. And this post stays in line with the influencer’s brand.

Her followers loved it. The post garnered more than 5,000 likes and comments in appreciation of her unique style.

This strategy works for: Food and drink brands, food delivery services, restaurants, supermarkets

The ‘aww’ effect

Kids and puppies. They make post just a little better. And if you put them together… (eye roll) You can liven up an otherwise humdrum sponsored post by partnering with an influencer who has kids. What’s cuter than a tot in a 3-piece suit, sitting down to do his taxes? Or plan for retirement? “No time to waste. I’ll be 5 before I know it!”

Ha!

Well, if your brand isn’t super glamorous, a good way to win the hearts of your target audience is to throw in a few handfuls of cuteness. And when it comes to cuteness, we all sort of soften for the innocence of a child or a cute pet.

Kids

Fashion bloggers who are also parents often post about the clothes that their kids wear and the brands that provide them, as well as their own clothes. So, what other types of brands can use the ‘aww’ effect that kids provide when they’re collaborating with influencers?

This strategy could cover a wide variety of brands because parents need a lot of supplies to look after their kids, so they can potentially promote lots of different things. So, let’s look at a couple of good examples.

This post from @walkinginmemphisinhighheels, aka Laura Lee, came at an appropriate time – that miserable time when everyone is suffering from colds and flu. She is promoting the cold medicine she used to help her daughter recover from “the sniffles,” Matys Chest Rub.

This cute picture of her and her daughter is a nice, wholesome sponsored post that warms your heart while also offering a solution for any parents who want to keep their kids from suffering through a cold. As an added bonus, this post is also a giveaway in partnership with Matys.

Kelly and her daughter Kennedy are the dynamic duo  featured in most of the posts shared on @_thevintageblonde_. She often mentions her daughter’s stylish outfits, and poses alongside her daughter in posts like this one, to promote brands she finds useful as a parent.

In this post, Kennedy adorably poses eating Cuties Citrus easy-to-peel oranges, with a cheeky smile on her face that would make any parent want to go out and buy some for their own kids.

This strategy works for: Any brand designed with kids or families in mind

Pets

A cute dog in a photo can help you sell just about anything. But, a fashion influencer with cute pets, especially ones that regularly make appearances in the influencer’s posts, presents a great opportunity for brands targeting pet owners.

This could range from the less interesting necessities such as pet insurance, to more exciting things like clothing for pets.

In the example above, fashion and beauty blogger, @krystintysire is promoting Icelandic dog treats with the help of her gorgeous assistant, Bella.

This kind of post can attract attention from dog lovers because Bella is simply adorable. The dog treat brand is likely to get some more traffic, more views, and even new customers because the cross-section of Krystin’s followers who are also dog owners may be compelled to check out Icelandic dog treats on her recommendation.

This strategy works for: Pet brands

Giveaways

One easy way to get your product into a fashion influencer’s post is to offer it up as a prize. This gives you a lot of flexibility when it comes to partnering your unrelated brand with a fashion influencer. If you have products, gift cards, or other freebies that can be given away as prizes, then you can get involved with an influencer in that way, particularly if there is a holiday on the horizon (like July 4th, Father’s Day, or Halloween) that would make a non-fashion gift card or store credit seem like a pay-it-forward opportunity.

Most influencers will partner with a brand as long as they like and believe in their products or the brand itself. Influencers are unlikely to partner with you if they don’t support or agree with the way you work or what you stand for.

In the above giveaway post,  @ashleyspassionforfashion has partnered with another blogger and Nooga Boutique to offer a huge giveaway. Some of the prizes included are fashion related, including items of clothing and a Nooga Boutique gift card. However, there is also a $25 Starbucks gift card included in the prize.

Starbucks is trendy, but it has very little do with fashion. The company still gets mentioned in Ashley’s posts by partnering with her to offer the gift card. If your company can offer a desirable prize, you can make the most of this strategy. Products such as iPhone’s and tablets are also very popular prizes in giveaways. As you would expect, these kinds of high-value freebies can attract a lot of attention and contest participation.

This strategy works for: Stores, cafés, and restaurants, tech companies

Be part of the experience

Looking at this picture, you probably wouldn’t notice right away that it’s a sponsored post, which is good. If a post is blatantly an ad, it can really turn people off. Followers are more likely to scroll past without engaging if the post doesn’t fit naturally with the rest of the account’s content.

The image in this post is of a group of well-dressed women, which fits in with the usual content of @fashionistamomma. The caption then makes it clear that this photo is of Megan Ballard and her cadre of other moms enjoying a day out in Temecula Wine Country, courtesy of a company called Aall In Limo & Party Bus.

Even though the brand isn’t featured in the photo, it still gets a mention in the post as a company that has made this experience possible, giving them some exposure. It’s a great example of simplicity in influencer marketing.

This kind of company could have actually made it into the photo in a logical way, as the women could have posed in the same way in front of their limo. BUT this strategy provides a “way in,” so to speak, for certain experience companies that wouldn’t naturally generate interesting photos with just product placements.

This strategy works for: Service providers, experience companies, travel companies, photographers

Join in with the festivities

There are certain times of the year where almost everyone is looking for presents to buy their loved ones. Christmas and Valentine’s Day  immediately spring to mind. If your brand sells anything that would make a great gift for one of these holidays, you can use this to your advantage when targeting fashion influencers around these seasons.

Influencers all over Instagram were sharing the gifts they were buying for their friends and family over the holidays, and giving the brands they bought them from a nice big shout out. The example above shows @feralcreature backing the benefits of eBay gift cards as presents.

Other examples include lifestyle blogger, Abby Smith (@twistmepretty) promoting Stein Mart by showing off all the gifts she bought from the store (see her post here).

Beauty blogger Jamie Rocker got creative with her sponsored gift giving by customizing her shoes with acrylic paint from Reeves.

Playing the gift-giving or pay-it-forward angle can quickly widen your net because mostpeople will, at one point or another, find a reason to give someone else a gift. So, influencers can put your product in front of people who are closely connected to members of your target audience.

So, while an influencer’s followers may primarily be interested in fashion and beauty, their parents might really enjoy golfing or be looking forward to cruise season.

This strategy works for: Brands selling anything that makes a good gift idea

Now it’s your turn…

So, there you have it! Seven killer strategies to help you take advantage of the sway fashion influencers have over their followers. If you look and plan strategically, an opportunity present itself.

Influencer marketing is the perfect example of brands sharing each other’s successes. Make the most of the fact that some people have a million followers on social media and use their influence to turn some of those followers into your new customers.

TheShelf.com is a platform that’s here to match you up with the best and most relevant influencers. So, take some of the challenge out of that first step of deciding who to collaborate with by letting us help you with your influencer marketing strategy. We also run influencer marketing campaigns from start to finish.

Click here to find out more about The Shelf and how we can help you get started with successful influencer marketing.