How a 'marked' influencer can destroy your brand
There are thousands of influencers out there, from micro to macro, lifestyle to fitness, living on YouTube, Instagram and TikTok.
When done correctly, influencer marketing is an incredible way to organically promote your brand to an audience who already has trust in what the influencer is promoting. It's a fast-track way to get your brand seen in front of new people, grow your social media following and provide excellent marketing materials for your brand.
We can't emphasise enough "when done correctly".
There are many elements you need to check before choosing an influencer to work with, such as:
Is their following real? If over 30% of their following is considered "fake", do not work with this influencer.
Is their engagement high? Do the number of views, likes, and comments match the claimed following?
Is the engagement genuine? Are the comments spammy? Friends of the influencer? Bot accounts?
Received a deck from the influencer? Are they direct screenshots, Excel spreadsheets or simply numbers on a deck? Never trust an Excel spreadsheet or numbers and ask for direct screenshots.
Are the previous brand collaborations recent? Don't be fooled by influencers promoting themselves with their "hay day" results. The lifespan of an influencer is often short. If the results are over 12 months old, ask for more recent results from the past six months.
Now the main area you need to research when deciding to book an influencer is ensuring that they have never been "cancelled" / caught in a controversy. Essentially an influencer who has been "marked" or had their reputation "tarnished" by their past actions.
It's so important to remember that when you work with an influencer, you're publicly supporting them. This means that if they were cancelled at some point in their influencer career for, let's say, old Tweets coming out of them saying racist / homophobic statements. You, as a brand, are supporting these comments in a very public way simply because you didn't do your due diligence of checking the history of the influencer.
It's an easy mistake. You can be fooled by great engagement and presume the influencer is clean. We can't express enough to never assume that an influencer is clean. You can genuinely destroy your brand's reputation with one influencer post.
If a 'marked' influencer promotes your brand, you can expect to become flooded with comments of hate, disappointment and refusal of future purchases. You could even risk lousy PR if the influencer is a big name.
So, how can you spot a 'marked' influencer?
The easiest way is to work with an agency like us, we use software which can spot influencer red flags, plus we have significant knowledge and are clued up with what's happening within the influencer world.
If you do not have agency budgets, here's a checklist of the obvious signs:
A large gap in posting.
Search their name on Google under the "news" tab - any news stories?
Comments on Instagram are set to "limited."
Comments on YouTube are "hidden."
Likes on Instagram are set to “and others.”
Apology videos/posts.
Search their name on Twitter and Reddit. They're the main social media platforms, where influencers cannot control what's written about them.
Tagged photos on Instagram are limited.
Stagnant following with slow growth or declining numbers.
Check out Social Blade. It's free! You can quickly check drops in following or get a rough idea of how slow new following is coming in.
Google the influencer's name and see if forum sites, such as Tattle, pop up. Although these sites are not nice or friendly (we cannot stand them), they can help spot any controversies. If the influencer has many negative forum pages written about them, it's a safe bet they've done wrong at some point.