Influencer marketing is now accepted as a powerful strategy for gaining followers, building trust, and increasing brand awareness. It has become a widely used tool in PR and marketing circles.
Now a new form of influencer marketing has emerged: co-creation or participation marketing. Brands now are co-creating content together with influencers as way to add reach, substance and trustworthiness to their influencer marketing campaigns.
Co-creation involves a mutually beneficial relationship that entails more than paid endorsements. Although some influencers receive monetary compensation, many appreciate the intangible rewards of having access to a real budget and other resources. Others recognize the leverage and prestige they gain by working with an established brand. Some may even cooperate in co-creation campaigns purely out of enthusiasm for the brand and the project. One excellent way to develop relations with influencers, other than paying them, is to propose co-creation ideas that help gain exposure for their own expertise without necessarily endorsing a brand.
Benefits for Brands
Collaborating with influencers to create and promote content allows marketers to capitalize on an influencer’s already-established network, add news voices to their campaigns, keep their messages fresh, and highlight real-life examples of people using their products. Importantly, co-creation adds authenticity to marketing campaigns.
“Co-created content is not just a buzzword or the next new shiny object that will solve your business problems,” says Pam Moore, owner and partner of Marketing Nutz. “It’s also not something you should run off and implement as a Random Act of Marketing (RAM) disconnected from your overall business goals, objectives and strategic marketing plan.”
Co-Creation Examples
PR and marketing teams can ask influencers to:
- co-write an ebook,
- contribute quotes or tips for an infographic or SlideShare,
- participate in a webinar or video, or
- provide input for a blog post.
“Co-creation not only makes a brand look authentic but makes its influencers feel good about the recognition received,” notes Fabrizio Perrone, CEO and co-founder of Buzzoole.
“Nurturing relationships with influencers is crucial to all areas of influencer marketing and is especially helpful when it comes to having influencers to co-create content with on a regular basis,” stresses Kristen Matthews, director of digital marketing at GroupHigh.
Tips for Implementing Influencer Co-creation
Be careful to select the right influencers is the first step. A common pitfall is placing a priority on people with large followings while ignoring the quality of their content and the depth of the relationships with followers. A social media listening tool can determine influencers’ engagement levels, saving you substantial time by assessing post frequency and engagement across multiple social networks.
After you collect content from influencers, assemble, edit and package it into a promotable format. Then share a preview to inspire their continued participation, advises Lee Odden at TopRank Marketing. Sharing your timeline for production, publishing and promotion will help set expectations.
Provide influencers with tools and content, such as images to share, pre-written tweets, embed codes and short URLs. Making it easy to participate and promote can substantially increase the success of your influencer content program.
“Offer influencers feedback on what’s working and what is not. Since they’ve invested in the creation of the content, it’s in their interest to see the promotion succeed,” Odden says.
Bottom Line: While influencer marketing is an effective PR and marketing strategy, co-creation with influencers is even better. Co-creation can dramatically increase brand awareness and add authenticity to campaigns. Brands are most likely to succeed when they collaborate closely with influencers, carefully nurture relationships, give the influencer a real voice in the campaign, and share the plaudits with the influencer.
William J. Comcowich founded and served as CEO of CyberAlert LLC, the predecessor of Glean.info. He is currently serving as Interim CEO and member of the Board of Directors. Glean.info provides customized media monitoring, media measurement and analytics solutions across all types of traditional and social media.
