As any marketer knows, staying on top of your influencer community and nurturing relationships are key strategies in driving long-term retention and maximizing the ROI of your influencer program.
At Tribe Dynamics, we believe that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to managing your community, and that in order to effectively engage your influencer network, you must first understand its unique dynamics.
Our software helps your brand segment your community with intention, categorizing influencers not by their follower count (though we have those metrics too!), but by something much more actionable: their affinity to your brand—as determined by their posting activity for the last six months. Tribe Dynamics’ software automatically organizes your influencer community into four main categories: Potential Fans, New Fans, Retained Fans, and Lost Fans (learn more about these groups here), allowing you to craft a more informed strategy and better tailor your outreach to the varying needs of each group of influencers. And now, we’ve taken things one step further.
We understand how challenging it can be to keep up with all of the content being created by your community, especially when it comes to identifying if and when an individual’s posting behavior is changing—for better or for worse. That’s why we’ve created Community Groups based on posting momentum. Our software will automatically assign members of your community a tag when they are creating significantly more (“Trending”) or significantly less (“At Risk”) content about your brand. Better yet, soon you will be able to filter your community to see all influencers marked as “Trending” or “At Risk” in one place.
This will allow you to easily add these groups of influencers to re-engagement and nurture campaigns and track their response to your activations. Since the “Trending” and “At-Risk” tags are updated every day, you’ll be able to keep a pulse on the latest posting trends in your community. This ensures that you stay proactive in your influencer relationship management and strategically plan and execute outreach that drives community retention.
An “At Risk” tag will automatically be applied to any ambassadors who have created significantly less content about your brand in the last 28 days than they did in the previous five months, and are thus “at risk” of slipping away from your community. We recommend evaluating your relationships with these influencers to determine whether they’re worth re-engaging before they’re gone.
Some things to keep in mind before re-engaging: is the ambassador a good fit for your brand? Do they create engaging content around your brand that resonates with their followers? Have they ever posted consistently about you? While the Posting Momentum Badge is a good starting point, it’s important to examine the influencer’s relationship to your brand holistically using the suite of metrics available to you in your Tribe Dynamics account, such as their engagement rate, EMV, post count, and potency (EMV per post). If you find that the relationship may not be worth the investment, it’s okay to let the influencer go—so you can focus your efforts on the relationships that are.
However, if you think the influencer is still a promising brand partner and want to continue investing in the relationship, then it’s time to show them a little extra love. It could be as simple as engaging with their social media content, or sending a DM to see if they would like a refill of their favorite product or want to test out a new launch. Or, you can invite them to an (in-person or virtual) educational workshop or community-bonding event. However you choose to re-engage, it’s important to foster a personal connection with the influencer, and make them feel like a valued member of your community if you want to inspire continued content creation.
Apart from flagging any brand fans in danger of slipping away, Tribe Dynamics’ software also identifies influencers in your account who are creating significantly more content about your brand than they used to. These are the rising stars whose affinity to your brand is growing, and they will have a “Trending” badge in your account. While this designation is a great sign, it’s important that you don’t take it for granted. More posts now don’t guarantee more posts later, so it’s a good idea to continue to acknowledge and celebrate these “Trending” influencers to strengthen the relationship and keep the momentum going.
As your brand’s rising stars, you should give these influencers the VIP treatment. You can start by commenting on their posts that mention your brand to thank them for their support, or giving them a special shout-out by reposting their content on your brand’s page. You can also send them personalized gifts with their favorite products from your brand, as well as other items specifically curated around their personal interests and aesthetic. As you continue to strengthen your relationships with these “Trending” influencers, you can even consider adding them to your brand’s VIP program, and grant them exclusive early access to new launches, and eventually, invite them to participate in more of your behind-the-scenes brand operations. Ultimately, to foster long-term partnerships, it’s important to show these influencers that you see and appreciate their continued support, and value their feedback and expertise.
By understanding shifts in an influencer's posting behavior, you can more proactively evaluate the health and sustainability of your current relationships to achieve broader community retention goals. Your brand should use Posting Momentum Badges to set up targeted, re-engagement or reward campaigns—and be sure to monitor influencer participation and content potency data in these campaigns to refine your strategy. But remember, effective community management is not a one-and-done endeavor: your brand should work to build an always-on, evergreen outreach program, where posting behavior serves as a key alert system for who you need to be paying more attention to on a given day.
If you're interested in learning more about how Tribe Dynamics' influencer marketing software can help you to manage your influencer marketing program, let's set up a demo!