Metrics

To determine whether your influencer’s social media activity is effective you will need to be able to measure whether or not it is meeting your objectives.

To do this, there are three key areas you need to analyse:

1. Social media metrics – for example, the influencer’s shares views
2. Click metrics – the traffic being driven to your content and brand
3. ROI – are you getting the right revenues or profits for the time and money you are investing?

At the outset of any influencer marketing campaign it is crucial that your key objectives are set out so that everyone is clear on the purpose behind this activity, and the metrics they are aiming to drive.

These are likely to be:

• Grow brand or product awareness
• Develop new audiences in social media
• Engage social audience
• Drive sales and loyalty
• Improve brand reputation

Based on these wider goals, use SMART objectives to create precise goals to work towards.

It is possible to have multiple metrics determining the success of an objective. ‘Engagement’, for example, can be achieved on several platforms through different mechanics. For this reason, try to be as specific as you can. Consider bundling metrics together to form your objective.

Let’s look now at how to record the results from each influencer, and/or a group of metrics together into categories for you to assess and compare.

There are no predefined benchmarks, although, in time, you will discover your own. In turn, this knowledge will have you identify the influencer which is best for your brand.

If you’re starting with no previous data, consider engaging influencers for shorter bursts within your campaign. This way you have the chance to bring in some new ones and replace those who didn’t perform well enough.