Influencer Marketing is the Partner Content Marketing Needs

Marketers and copywriters alike wish we could say the (paraphrased) adage ‘if you write it, they will come’ was still true (if it ever was). If you still believed it, Buzzsumo and Moz’s recent study will dispel that immediately with their revelation that 50% of content gets 8 shares or fewer. While individual creators and social media influencers are still able to build traffic purely on their amazing content, brands are fighting ‘content shock’ where their audiences struggle to even find content that they really want to see, much less brand messages. With traditional promotion of branded content struggling against ad-blocking software and the decreasing value of paid search, content about products and services can easily be lost in the over 200 million elements on online content created per minute.

Influencer Marketing can help and smart marketers are starting to ensure that this strategy is part of their content marketing efforts. For example, Toyota’s new ‘Toyota Effect’ Documentary Series is a high-production branded content project but part of the launch includes an influencer marketing campaign to help amplify their work through trusted sources more likely to draw them traffic. Toyota knows that engaging influencers in the automotive social media space will drive a larger audience that trusts that the content is worth viewing if influencer curated it for them.

Better yet, as Content Marketing expert Michael Brenner (and creator of the newly-christened Marketing Insider Group) recently noted, is to work directly with influencers that you have already identified as a trusted source for content that engages your target audience. If you involve them in the content creation process, you have more opportunity to tap into what they know is effective on their existing channels. Remember that social reach isn’t everything; the best creators for your influencer marketing campaign are those that have the strongest connection to your products and the audience interested in them. For example, Marriott’s “Book Direct” campaign saw them partner directly with YouTube influencer Grace Helbig to highlight the benefits of booking travel through Marriott’s own service and the campaign generated 3 million views for the two videos on which they collaborated.

Even if you are not interested in co-creation as part of your content marketing campaign, influencers can be an important part of giving you early feedback on how your content will perform. Before launching content marketing campaigns, expose influencers to your plan and find out how they will react. Influencers are more dialed-in than an average member of your customer base, meaning their advice can be gold when determining how content you create will engage and ultimately perform. Even if you have completed your effort on the content included in your campaign, influencer marketing naturally lends itself to ‘add-on’ content where the influencer may take your content to new places that help make it more relatable to the audience you target as you roll it out. Burberry has been doing this for years, previewing products and marketing messages to engaged influencers and brand advocates to get feedback how they will communicate with a broader audience so they can add that feedback, tweak messaging, and even incorporate the creative ideas of influencers who are passionate about their products and the fashion industry right into their content efforts.

No one argues with this adage, “Content is King.” That is more true than ever in this age of viral user-generated content. Tapping into influencer marketing as part of your content marketing strategy can help ensure your content truly has those regal qualities (and the engagement and revenue they will produce) and the earlier in the process you start, the better chance you have for your content marketing strategy to succeed.