Reason one – Buying content
Picture this, you’re a big Puma fan, you wear their kit and share their hashtag loads, then you get a call from Adidas, as they’ve seen that you have 150,000 followers and offer you a five-figure sum to wear their kit and take some snaps, well for that much money, then why not? Sorry everyone, but the youth market see right through this

Reason two – paid product endorsement is not influencer marketing
You ask someone to endorse your product and you pay them money to do so – many of these people regularly endorse products for loads of brands, they literally run a business or have joined a platform that pays them to endorse products – the more products they endorse the LESS influential they are, they love sport, they were endorsing Adidas last week, this week its Puma – people see right through this

Reason three – Influencers are influencers in their own channel
You have engaged with a global food influencer based in the USA who has 400,000 followers; you hire them to promote the global launch of your new FMCG product. The channels you’re using are Out Of Home, Retail, TV, Press and Radio – a tiny fraction of the people who walk past your advert or see your TV commercial know they’re an influencer, reason being, they’re an influencer in social media, not in printed press, OOH or TV, to most of the public they are just a normal person.

Reason four – Setting up highly curated photo shoots
We have recently seen some shocking content that has gone viral for all the wrong reasons, setting up highly curated Instagram photo shoots pretending that they are natural lowers trust in your brand, we all know the importance of authenticity and providing high-end photo shoots presenting these as natural situations is harming your brand equity, people see through this and its damaging to your brand.

Reason five – paying for reach
We know that just one tweet from Kim Kardashian can create amazing reach, yes the top 10 percentile of the social web is a place of glory for reach – however, the more those top influencers influence the less influential they are – we all know why Kim’s lollypop posts were so successful and it might not have been for the quality of the product or her followers feedback, more to do with the fact for the right money, most of the top percentile influencers will endorse just about anything – the same thing again, people see right through this

So where is the magic? How can you use Influencer marketing effectively without lowering trust in your brand?

 Here are our top five tips:

1. Only engage with micro-influencers who have ‘actually’ engaged in your brand or vertical via hashtags or mentions
2. We know that It’s the 60^th and 70^th percentile of people who have the most amount of engagement, comments, likes etc, so reach out to those people
3. Never try and work with an influencer for a vertical they have no experience with
4. Never set up a photo shoot for an influencer campaign, If it’s not natural you will just be harming your brand in the long-run
5. Use Influencers within their intended channel, if they are a TV influencer, then use them in our TV ad, if they are a social influencer then use within your social campaigns