Letter #45: Earn more of your audience's trust with influencers
Expert interview with Semrush’s team on working better with influencers.
Helllo! 👋👋
It’s been a while — two Tuesdays and no newsletter because I was vacationing in The Maldives and didn’t want to schedule the emails (that struck more as marketing to me than as catching up with you every week).
Anyhoo, the vacation: it was lit ✨ Just what I was looking for to refresh — water the clearest shades of blue and cool breezes, tied with the best cocktails I’ve ever had!
In fact, I got the all-inclusive package for my resort stay. So I keep missing the endless supply of fruit punches, fusion dishes for dinner, and the chocolate platter that I got in my ocean suite every evening.
And honestly: I couldn’t think of work. See? I told you it was one heavenly vacation. Or as I thought at that moment ‘feels like a dream.’
Interestingly, the person who led me to this dream was an influencer who shared her experience at the Heritance Aarah resort over at Instagram.
And it got me thinking (for the zillionth time) how powerful influencer marketing is. The best part? It works not just in B2C but in B2B as well — something our industry often pays less attention to.
But the social proof that influencer partnerships create is very real and very effective. For example, you could:
Pair up with micro-influencers to distribute your content (say a research report) better.
Collaborate with them on educating their audience (and by extension, your target audience) on how to use your tool.
Keep in mind though: working with influencers isn’t a walk in the park.
From identifying the right ones to collaborate with to educating them about your tool so they can talk about it, there’s LOTS to do.
And to help you, I got Semrush’s Influencer Marketing Manager, Nicole Ponce to share her experience.
As usual, I asked her the 3 questions I ask all experts:
A mistake that Nicole has made when working with influencers
An actionable tip to help you work better with influencers
And, a secret tip for winning at influencer marketing
Let’s dive into it:
👉 Learn from Nicole’s mistake: Don’t impose your own schedule.
“Not taking into account that some Influencers have a full-time job/business and that maybe these collaborations are not at the top of their priority list but [are] on mine, made me truly understand how to work with their schedules,” Nicole admits.
👉 Do this today: “Give examples of what you’re looking for”
“And if there are no examples to give, then make the time to create a very detailed brief of what you’re looking for,” advises Nicole.
“Also sometimes being a part of the content creation process helps a lot. Some Influencers don’t LOVE this, but it might help in the beginning, especially if this is the first time you both are working together.”
Best to discuss what workflow suits the influencer and learn their work process before you tell them you’d like to collaborate on content creation.
👉 The secret tip to better influencer marketing: Shift your mindset — it’s not influencer marketing, it’s relationship building.
“It will make all the difference in the world. Take the time to truly give back to the partnership.”
Have you seen some great influencer partnerships in B2B? Share them with me
I’ll see you same time, next week.
Toodles,
Masooma
P.S. I’ll have the vacation pictures for you next week :)