How important are social media influencers to your business? According to an Oracle survey, 37% of consumers trust social media influencers over brands. Another study by Matter Communications shows that 82% of consumers considered purchasing or purchased a product or service because an influencer posted about it. 

You need influencers to support your brand and you need a way to manage those influencers. Finding the right tools to enable such partnerships for your brand can boost your business.

Read on to learn more.

Key takeaways

  • Discover new influencers, manage influencer relationships, and monitor campaign performance.
  • Build transparency between influencer partners and your brand.
  • Save time and scale your influencer marketing initiatives.

In short, you need influencer marketing tools to manage your influencers and campaigns.

Why influencers are important to your business

According to the Influencer Marketing Hub, the influencer marketing industry would be worth $16.4B in 2022. 

Another survey by Shopify reveals that 61% of consumers trust influencer recommendations and 38% rely on branded social media content.

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Why managing influencer relationships is essential

Influencer relationship management tools help you track your interactions with the people who spread your message on social media. In essence, influencer management is all about building and maintaining relationships with influencers, much like customer relationship management (CRM) is about building relationships with customers.

Stronger relationships with influencers can super-charge your marketing campaigns. You'll be able to use your influencers' social media authority to reach your target audience and convince them to buy your product.

Influencer relationship management can also help you keep track of the latest activity and developments with your influencer contacts. When you know which ones are posting frequently and engaging your target audience, you'll be even more knowledgeable and prepared when it comes time to engage them.

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The many components of influencer relationship management

What exactly is involved in influencer management? Building one-on-one relationships with a small army of influencers may sound simple, but it involves many discrete activities, including:

  • Identifying and attracting new influencers
  • Onboarding new influencers and determining their payment rates
  • Tracking followers, posts, and engagements for each influencer
  • Monitoring each influencer's posts and online reputation
  • Examining each influencer's audience demographics
  • Ensuring that all posts adhere to your brand guidelines and FTC disclosure rules

Of course, influencer management is more than just the sum of these individual activities. It's also about maintaining strong relationships with your influencers, which requires a hands-on approach.The following video offers some tips for managing influencer relationships.

Three ways to manage influencers

There are three primary ways you can manage your influencer contacts. The method you choose, to a large degree, depends on how many influencers you have and how close a relationship you want to develop.

1. Manage directly

When you manage influencer relationships directly, you can establish more personal relationships with those who reach your target audience. Unfortunately, direct management is only feasible if you have a small number of influencers (or a lot of time on your hands).

2. Employ an agency

Another option is to hire an influencer marketing agency. Because agencies have existing influencer contacts, they can easily identify influencers you can work with. They'll also handle all influencer management and campaign logistics. 

While there are numerous benefits to using an influencer marketing agency, keep in mind that agencies need to charge fees for their services, so the cost is higher than doing it yourself. Working through an agency can also make it difficult for you to establish direct personal relationships with influencers, since the agency is managing everything on your behalf.

3. Use influencer marketing software

The third approach is to use an influencer marketing platform. Influencer marketing software lets you manage a larger number of influencers than you could otherwise manage on your own. Such tools also help you manage your influencer marketing initiatives at a lower cost than an agency would charge. 

By managing all your influencers in-house, you make more personal connections and develop the expertise to improve your influencer campaigns continually.

How to manage your influencers

As you can see, there's a lot involved with managing influencers, and the job gets bigger with each new influencer you add.

An influencer marketing platform is the best way to manage all parts of your influencer marketing initiatives. 

Here are a few ways that influencer marketing software can help you manage all your influencer relationships in one place:

Manage interactions with influencers

Influencer relationship management software can help track all of your communication and interactions with influencers, including:

  • Initial introductions
  • Negotiating rates
  • Recruiting for new campaigns
  • Outlining deliverables and expectations

Many influencer marketing tools include built-in messaging features and conversation tracking, so you can perform all your communications within a single platform.

Analyze influencer performance

The best influencer marketing solutions include robust analytics to evaluate your influencers’ performance for a given campaign. Say goodbye to screenshots and building static campaign reports. It's much easier to analyze real-time performance using influencer marketing software with direct API connections to Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, TikTok, and other social platforms.

Evaluate influencer campaigns

You can also use influencer marketing software to evaluate and analyze the performance of your influencer campaigns. You'll learn which influencers reach certain types of customers, how consumers respond to specific posts, and how often your audience shares posts with others.

Let Brandwatch help you manage your influencers

When you want to centralize and automate your influencer management, turn to the experts at Brandwatch. We offer a complete influencer marketing platform to securely manage your influencer relationships and campaign data.

Schedule a free demo to see how we can help you find the right influencers, manage your influencer relationships, and track campaign performance.