How to Create the Perfect Influencer Brief
The perfect influencer brief helps content creators to understand the why behind your campaign as well as the who, what, when, where, and how.
An influencer brief should be… well, it should be brief; as short as possible but no shorter. It should provide all the most pertinent details without being overly detailed. It shouldn’t be overwhelming and it should set content creators up for success.
The perfect influencer brief, just like the content it’s trying to kickstart, is part art and part science; part inspiration, part instruction, with a pinch of legal. The goal is to help content creators understand your brand, your values, and your audience; help them see what you’re trying to achieve with your content campaign, and ultimately to get them invested in your success.
We’ve got a handy content campaign influencer brief you can use as a jumping off point. Find that below.
Smart Creator Matching
BENlabs AI-powered Smart Creator Matching uses cluster analysis to surface and stack rank content creators who align with brand values and who have your target audience’s attention.
Introduce Your Brand
Tell content creators what makes your brand tick. Give them your elevator pitch. Share your brand guidelines and some key points around your brand’s “why” (in the Start With Why sense of the word).
You’re trying to build values alignment with creators here. Sharing the short version of your mission, vision, and values is one way to approach this.
Introduce Your Customer
Share insights into your ideal customer. Go beyond demographics to talk about what moves and motivates this ideal customer. Make it clear how the influencer’s content will engage and speak to your ideal customer.
Helping content creators to build a mental image of the people they’re talking to — trying to influence — will go a long way to them creating the kind of unskippable influence content that hits your campaign KPIs.
Share Campaign Details
Share the specifics for this campaign.
What’s the theme?
What are the goals?
Are you launching a new product or line?
What other tactics are you using to launch this campaign (e.g. out of home, SEM ads, paid social).
If it feels relevant, share it. The more clearly creators can see your vision, the more empowered they are to help you achieve it.
Set Up Success
Creators need a clear goal to know when they’re successful. How will you measure creator success? Leading metrics like views and likes are great but they don’t really speak to success. Is click through rate (CTR) the main goal? Are you tracking individual sales with a unique promo code? Will you be fielding a brand recall survey to measure awareness and affinity following the campaign? This is all useful information for creators. Explain it clearly. Better yet, give creators the tools they need to check their performance against campaign goals.
Trust Content Creators
The perfect influencer brief gives content creators guidelines but doesn’t force them into a box. Remember why you enlisted content creators in your influence marketing campaign; they’ve built trust with an audience through their content.
Don’t saddle content creators with a bunch of must-hit marks or scripted remarks that have to be delivered just so. Set the guidelines but leave space for the creator’s creative process. Trust the content creator to deliver your brand messages in the way that will get the best response from their audience.
Save the Legal
Don’t look at your influencer brief as the One Document to Rule Them All (and in the clauses bind them). Refer and link to the contract and any other legal documents as required but let those documents do the heavy-lifting legal stuff.
Remind content creators about FTC disclosure rules around sponsored posts, reiterate top-level contract requirements (e.g. restrictions around accepting other sponsored content opportunities in the campaign period) but don’t overdo it on the legal.
Be Available
Make yourself available to content creators as they go about the creation process.
Let creators know you’re open to brainstorm and collaborate.
Some campaign managers (like the BENlabs client team, for example) will share their email and phone number and invite creators to contact them whenever.
To keep interactions confined to business hours, consider adding a calendar link using a service like Calendly or (this writer’s preferred option) TidyCal.
Go Forth and Brief
The perfect influencer brief is a great SEO term but there is no one perfect influencer brief.
Rather, the perfect influencer brief (wait… are we keyword stuffing?!) is the one that gives content creators the detail they need to execute and the inspiration they need to integrate your brand message into their content.
We’ve created a handy influencer brief template. Feel free to take it, copy it, and adapt it to your purposes.
Or better yet, let BENlabs and our AI tools take care of everything for you.
Influencer Marketing Made Simple
The BENlabs team uses proprietary AI tools to help make influencer marketing smart, scalable, and successful. From finding the perfect content creators, automating A/B testing of content, copy and CTAs, and surfacing clear, predictive analytic insights early, when they can make the most difference, BENlabs is here to help.
