As a freelance Social Media Manager, I've had the pleasure of managing social media for an innovative baby bottle warmer that was designed in Denmark for the past year. As part of this work, I have set up countless partnerships with paid and unpaid Instagram 'influencers' to promote the product and it's certainly been an interesting experience. I wanted to share my views on whether it's worth investing in these type of partnerships.
Beware the 'influencers' operating in groups
First of all, I'm still shocked by the countless number of so-called 'mummy influencers' that exist in the UK alone. There are literally hundreds of thousands of them and, on a regular basis, they approach my client via Instagram direct message to see if they'd like to send free product in return for a review.
I soon learnt that a significant number of these 'influencers' are part of groups that work together to boost likes and engagement on each others' posts - particularly on branded #ad posts where they will comment to say how 'amazing' the product looks. They do this in order to appear influential and receive as many free products from baby companies as possible.
I'm sure similar groups of 'influencers' exists across other industries, although I can't recall ever seeing anything like it when setting up partnerships with beauty influencers for another client in the past, for example. Tell-tale signs can be coded hashtags within the content that all of these individuals use.
As a baby brand, it can be very easy at first glance to think that these partnerships are worth investing in and I know that many baby brands - big and small - send these 'influencers' product to promote all of the time. However, I personally do not think brands will benefit from doing so and it worries me that smaller, independent baby brands may be losing money by sending product to these people.
Think quality, not quantity - and you'll probably have to pay for results
My client has seen the best results in instances where I have researched and approached bottle-feeding influencers myself, and when we've paid for the promotion. And it's not typically the mega influencers that have millions of followers that have generated the best results in terms of website traffic and sales generated.
We've actually seen the best results from medium-sized influencers that don't charge for earth. For example, a mum of newborn triplets and a toddler (I know, I'm exhausted even thinking about looking after that many babies) with 138K Instagram followers who charged just over £300 for an Instagram post and story generated 600 visitors to my client's website within an hour of sharing the content and well over 1,000 visitors less than 12 hours later.
Are you interested in working with the right type of influencer to promote your brand? Please contact me here.