HOW TO BE A BETTER INFLUENCER - INFLUENCER MARKETING TERMINOLOGY YOU SHOULD KNOW.

So you're in a negotiation process and the brand is throwing a whole bunch of terms at you that you don't necessarily understand. Here is some influencer marketing terminology to give yourself a better understanding of the lingo used in the influencer marketing space at the moment, to help you feel confident while you negotiate:

Affiliate marketing.

You may hear the brand asking you if you want to be an 'affiliate' of theirs. What this means is while you promote the brand on your social platforms, said brand will give you a unique link/ discount code to use and any sales made through this unique link/ discount code, you will get a commission from them. Affiliation means you don’t get paid to post but through any sales they make through you (using your link) you make a commission, which can range anywhere between 5% - 30% depending on your involvement.

Brand ambassador.

A brand ambassador role is usually a longer term role where the influencer is paid to promote said brand over a length of/ series of posts and time. Not a once off post - it’s usually longer term and can last anywhere from 3 months to a year. This is when you're basically working with a brand in a long-term capacity producing different types of content for them in a paid way.

Deliverables.

What you’re assigned to do. Brand says "Post 2 stories, 3 carousels and 1 reel", these are your deliverables. This is often in a paid capacity or sometimes as a trade exchange. The deliverables of a campaign are always decided ahead of time and isn't something that you wing; you want it to be very clear of what the deliverables are before you go into contract because the deliverables will be stated in the contract and is what you need to hand in or deliver on.

Dedicated vs. Integrated content.

This is very YouTube specific but you may see it on Instagram too: dedicated content versus integrated content. If a brand is asking you for a dedicated piece of content, that means they want the entire video to be about them; like a review of the brand or product, this is a more expensive buy-in because it's all about said brand, versus integrated content which is usually a minute or 2 where you talk about the brand and plug them into an overall story; it is usually in the very beginning of the video. An example of integrated content would be: You are providing value on YouTube, you’re doing bullet points and the brand can be spot number one in the story. This is something a lot of brands are looking to get in on because it's basically allowing the Creator/ Influencer/ the Thought Leader to mention the brand in an authentic way versus a whole dedicated review on the brand. It’s far more authentic.

CTA or call-to-action.

You may hear this a lot. This is what you put in your post that will drive some sort of benefit to the brand - either in the form of a swipe up or asking your audience to click a link and visit a website, these are the different call to actions. Obviously these are always determined ahead of time but that's what CTA stands for.

Impressions.

People often get confused between impressions and reach. Impressions are the number of times that a piece of content is shown, it is not unique views, an impression counts even if it's being scrolled past on a regular page. Being exposed to it counts as an impression. Reach is how many eyeballs actually see the post. 

KPI or Key Performance indicators.

This is how brands set their goals when conceptualizing a campaign. It’s about narrowing the goals down: maybe a KPI is brand awareness or follower growth or lead generation; what will show that the campaign was viable? Knowing what this means will help you, as the creator, give valuable input to help the brand succeed and you show that you understand HOW YOU can help them reach their goals using YOUR audience i.e. the brand is looking to grow their followers on instagram and you say “oh can you post this and do a giveaway because giveaways are a great way to help you grow followers better”.

ROI or Return on investment.

Brands that are working with influencers don't just want to pay and not see any return, so that's why it’s important to understand what that return on investment looks like. Let's say a brand has a goal of growing their follower count, they've budgeted a R10 000 spend for that, and as an influencer you are able to help generate 2 500 followers. To calculate the ROI, said brand would take 10 000 divided by 2 500 = 4. R4 per follower; that's how the brand is able to show what they are paying per follower within their budget, so this is a win for them versus if the ROI came in at R30 a follower, which would be too high. ROI is how they are able to measure success.

CTR or click through rate.

As an influencer you're going to want to know your ability to drive clicks, and this is a metric that brands often measure your success on. Measuring the click-through-rate is simple: the number of people that clicked a link that they are seeing divided by the number of people exposed to the link multiplied by 100%. If the brand asks you to please send over the CTR or the click-through rate, that's the number that they're looking for. So remember it's dividing the number of people that click the link by the people that were exposed to the link multiplied by 100%. This is also very similar to conversion rate.

That's it for now.

Reach out to me if you'd like to chat about your Influencer journey.