22 Influencer Collaboration Ideas for Your Marketing Campaigns

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Consider you’re sitting at your desk, staring at two empty social media accounts: LinkedIn and X (formerly Twitter). While these platforms should be perfect for connecting with industry professionals and sharing bite-sized updates on your work, you’re unsure how to get started.

You’ve thought about posting independently to get the ball rolling, but that feels daunting. Then, you stumble across an article about creator marketing. As you read, you discover how influencer collaborations can help you grow your accounts with organic engagement.

Next, you’re jotting down ideas for your first collaboration with a creator in your niche. This is the exact scenario this guide will help you avoid. You can kickstart your social media growth by exploring influencer collaboration ideas.

Megaphone’s viral on-demand platform is designed to help you grow your social media accounts through influencer collaboration. Using our tools, you can find the right creators for your brand, map out your collaboration, and efficiently track the results of your partnership.

Benefits of Influencer Collaboration for Brands

Amplify Your Brand Presence

When influencers produce content that features your products, the exposure will naturally increase brand recognition among their followers. This benefit is invaluable for newer ecommerce businesses that haven’t yet established an engaged audience. Collaborating with influencers is also an excellent way to generate excitement around a new product or collection launch.

For example, Athletic Greens partnered with TikTok influencers to spread awareness of their nutritional supplements among health-conscious Gen Zers. The social media influencers created content demonstrating how the supplement could become a part of their audience’s daily routines. The campaign’s success speaks for itself. The hashtags #athleticgreens and #athleticgreenspartner have over 90.6 million views and 39.5 million views, respectively.

Enter Untapped Markets

Influencer marketing can help brands identify and reach untapped audiences. For example, food brand King's Hawaiian partnered with food creators on TikTok to create their #foodtok. They worked with 16 creators who produced slider recipes for “Slider Sunday” using the brand’s delicious sweet bread. They used hashtags like #mealinspo to reach new viewers.

The key lesson here is to identify and collaborate with relevant influencers whose social following overlaps with the niche audiences you’re trying to reach.

The first step to encouraging sales through your social media? Build an engaged social following with influence marketing. As influencers talk about you and get their audience's interest in your brand, followers will likely follow you, too.

This will hugely benefit your social media marketing efforts. Partner up on some giveaway campaigns with your social media influencers. The trick of asking people to follow your brand in return for a chance to win a gift will work a charm. After all, everyone loves a freebie.

Gain Valuable Product Insights

You can also use influencer marketing to source feedback on a new product, collection, or product feature. Because many influencers engage with specific niche audiences, they’ll have valuable insights into what your ideal buyers look for in a product. Plus, they can share detailed feedback by trying your products for themselves.

Feminine hygiene company Thinx did just that. They invited 25 influencers for a slumber party event in Los Angeles to get feedback on their new athleisure line. Thinx used the information they gathered to launch clothing their consumers would be interested in and grew their sales by giving influencers unique discount codes. This led to $810,000 in revenue with a per-customer acquisition cost of $35.20.

Build Trust and Credibility

Content that talks positively about your brand can help you build a good reputation and is essential for enhancing brand awareness. As influencers discuss you and endorse your products, you’ll slowly build trust with your target audience. Skin + Me uses influencers and user-generated content (UGC) in their Facebook ads.

From people unboxing their products to before-and-after videos showing how their skin has improved after using their products, this strategy builds trust and credibility with their target market. This tactic has worked so well that customers often post their before-and-after pics in the comments section, showing the improvements they saw in using their products. This adds to the positive perception of your brand when customers are making purchasing decisions.

Drive Sales and Repeat Purchases

Influencers can help increase sales directly as they share discount codes or recommend your product and indirectly as your brand awareness grows. Intimates brand KNIX collaborates with influencers for this reason — using custom discount codes to drive sales. For example, influencer Hilary Henderson promotes Knix's products via her Instagram page.

You can grab her discount code, HILARYHCOMEDY_KNIXLOVE by checking the post descriptions. Every influencer has a different code, so when someone uses it on their online store, it's easy for the team at Knix to know which influencer has had the most impact. Moreover, if your current customers see their favorite influencers share content about your products, they'll feel encouraged to place repeat orders.

Produce New Content for Marketing

Creating new and creative ideas is part of the job of a marketer. But it can get tiring having to continuously think of new ideas, especially if you're a small team. Experienced influencers can bring fresh, out-of-the-box marketing ideas to the table.

They'll have a new perspective on your brand and can offer creative ways to promote your product — with little effort on your part. To find influencers or manage your campaigns, look at our list of influencer marketing tools ideal for small and growing brands.

Collaborate with Micro-Influencers for Cost Savings

Another benefit of influencer marketing — and one your boss will love — is that it can be cost-effective. Running influencer campaigns is 30 percent cheaper than most advertising and marketing strategies. For this reason, Doe Lashes‘ founder, Jason Wong, chose influencer marketing over other paid ads for the first four months of his brand’s launch.

Jason found that sending a shipment of lashes to micro-influencers would cost less than $10 per shipment. And if he made even one sale from an influencer, he’d break even. If he got 2-3 sales, he’d profit and slowly start gaining traction. This is precisely what happened. One month of influencer marketing led to $2.6K in daily sales by effectively reaching niche audiences!

Educate Potential Customers

A non-salesy way to market to potential customers is by educating them on how to use or style your product — depending on what you sell. By thoroughly briefing influencers about your product, you can allow them to create content that educates their target market about your product in an engaging manner. Not only does this help grow your sales, but it encourages customers to create user-generated content featuring your product.

This, in turn, gives you more exposure and grows brand awareness. Take a page from Supergoop's TikTok influencer marketing campaign. The sunscreen brand reached its ideal audience by pairing with influencers in fashion, lifestyle, and beauty niches. Their influencers made creative content that highlighted Supergoop sunscreen's features in a light-hearted and entertaining way.

This aligned with the brand's voice and educated the influencers' followers on the importance of wearing sunscreen. They also showed how Supergoop's clear SPF50 differed from the traditional, white-cast sunscreen people are used to.

Generate a Library of Content for Future Use

Finding time to create high-quality content can be challenging if you're a small or growing marketing team. You're already busy with product shots, banner ads, email campaigns, etc. Working with influencers means that content is created for you, and you can repurpose it across your campaigns and channels. Brands like Starface, for example, use pieces of content created by their customers to enhance their checkout.

Using real people adds a personal touch to your brand's online store, which helps reduce friction when they're getting ready to buy. However, you'll need to keep track of contracts and image usage rights. If you have content from last year's campaign, it is essential to determine if you have permission to reuse it the following year. Using content without permission can lead to some severe brand damage.

Collect Valuable Data to Understand Your Audience

Next on the list of influencer marketing benefits is the advantage of collecting data about your niche audiences. As gathering third-party audience data becomes harder, working with influencers can help you source audience data. The more data you have, the easier it is to create better and more audience-relevant marketing content. Your influencer will have data on audience demographics. That’s age, gender, and location — broken up into the different social platforms they work on.

They’ll also be able to tell you the engagement, reach, and impressions their posts get. This will be useful in understanding how well your campaigns are going and whether they resonate with their audience. For direct sales attribution, it’s worth setting up tracking codes to see who’s clicked through to your website and checkouts.

You’ll need to give this to your influencer before they start the campaign. Remember that not all influencers are open to sharing their audience analytics. Building long-term relationships with influencers can often lead to them giving you access to their demographic data from social media platforms and any other tools they use. This, in turn, helps you make better-informed, data-driven decisions.

Work with Experts to Boost Brand Authority

If you’ve good brand authority, your customers view you as the subject-matter expert in your industry. Growing your brand authority will increase brand awareness and give you a better chance at helping prospects overcome objections. To increase brand authority and focus on enhancing brand awareness, you could interview experts as part of your content strategy, create a podcast, run webinars, and be a guest on other people’s platforms.

You could also enlist the help of an expert influencer. This is something one of our customers, Forthglade, does well. As a dog food brand, they know their customers only want the best products for their furry friends. So, as well as providing lots of tips on their blog, they work with different types of influencers like Dr. James Greenwood on their social media platforms to provide accurate, expert advice on how to look after and care for your best friend.

Develop Long-Term Relationships with Influencers

Another key benefit of influencer marketing is the opportunity to build long-term partnerships with your content creators, leading to increased brand awareness. If they try out your products and genuinely love them, they’re more likely to post about them organically and recommend them to friends and people outside their following.

Just look at this case study from Grin, who helped online brand Inkbox create an influencer campaign to build a community of brand ambassadors. They got over 70 creators to post about their products across different marketing channels. This, in turn, created a 40 percent uptick in unprompted creator posts. If you can cultivate genuine connections with your influencers, you can turn them into loyal brand ambassadors.

Strengthen Your Online Community

Online communities are fantastic places for like-minded people to connect, chat, swap tips, and share advice on particular topics. Communities mainly flourish on social networks, which makes them a great place for brands to build connections with their customers. (Look at big brands like Gymshark and GoPro to see what we mean.) But creating a sense of community isn’t easy. You must establish a loyal customer base, a good online following, and an emotional connection with your audience.

This is where influencers can help. Take Lick, a UK-based paint brand. They took a slightly different approach and encouraged their Director of Interior Design to be their ‘internal’ influencer. Having this regular face show up on socials is essential in building a strong bond with their community. Amie, Head of Social Media and Creators at Lick, says: “It's nice for our community to know that there are real people at Lick, like Tash, who’re there to give our decorators help and advice on particular topics.

This is important for our brand values as well. It's also given us a unique way to lean into video content across our key platforms like Instagram and TikTok. Plus, Tash creates the colors, so who better tell our community about them than the person who makes them?

Generate Higher Quality Leads

As we mentioned, 82 percent of brands say they see better ‘quality’ leads from influencer marketing campaigns over any other campaign, especially when targeting niche audiences. That’s quite an impressive stat, and after learning about the influencer marketing benefits in this post, you can see why. By partnering with influencers who talk about your specific niche, you can reach a loyal audience that’ll be genuinely interested in your products.

22 Influencer Collaboration Ideas for Your Marketing Campaigns

1. Sponsored Posts: The Classic Influencer Partnership

Sponsored posts are a tried-and-true method for collaborating with influencers. The idea is simple. An influencer creates a blog or social media post to promote your product. You’ll pay them for this content. Sometimes, sponsored posts look like regular posts, so they don’t disrupt an audience’s experience when scrolling through their feeds.

In a way, they help you reach your ideal audience, who has no idea of your product or how it can benefit them. Not to mention, the influencer’s influence rubs off on your product. Followers already trust the influencer and will take their recommendations seriously. You must keep a few things in mind to get the best results from sponsored posts: Engage influencers and blogs in your niche.

This way, they can better convert their audience to customers. Go through influencers’ posts to ensure their voice is similar to your brand's. Give influencers creative freedom to create posts their audience will love. With that, the posts will look like their typical posts. Repost some of these posts on your brand account to give them more reach and your business more social proof.

2. Influencer Gifting: A Perfect Starting Point for Small Businesses

Influencer gifting is giving away your products to creators for free. Unlike product seeding, though, there’s scope for asking something in return from the creator — whether it’s requesting them to join your affiliate program or writing an honest review. You can usually spot these posts with a #gifted hashtag. Not only is influencer gifting a great way to get product reviews, but it can also open the doors for a long-term influencer partnership.

For example, the baby clothing brand Hunter & Oak regularly gift products to mom influencers (their target audience) and repurposes the influencer-generated content for their Instagram profile. They also share a discount code with each creator for their audience, making it easy for them to measure ROI. Find creators who’d be genuinely interested in your product. Ask yourself, “Will the influencer’s audience benefit from my product?” If so, the influencer will likely be interested in collaborating with you.

The best way to filter for relevant creators is by using an influencer search tool like Modash. It has a database of over 250M+ creators — listing every influencer with 1K+ followers across Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok. Let’s say you want to find influencers whose audience overlaps your target customer. Your customers are female residents of the United States aged 18 – 24. You can apply these criteria in the “Audience filters” on Modash and get a list of influencers who meet your requirements exactly.

3. User-Generated Content (UGC) Creation: Attract Influencer Attention

User-generated content (UGC), as its name implies, is content customers create about your product. Brands use UGC because it’s a powerful social proof to convert more prospects to customers. Usually, you can encourage customers to produce these content pieces by specifying a hashtag. You can even sweeten the deal with an opportunity to feature on your page. Luckily, there are many UGC examples on Instagram you can follow.

Sometimes, you’ll find influencers who use your product and love it. Maybe they’ve even posted videos of how they use your product. Beyond just reposting on your brand account, you can collaborate with those influencers to create more similar content. This is a potent strategy, especially on Instagram and TikTok. These influencers love your product and will be excited to collaborate with you. And since the influencer already promotes your products for free, the official collaboration may attract lower fees.

Apart from this, you can also reach out to an influencer to create UGC content. In this context, they show off your content like a typical customer. To get the best results from UGC content, consider these points: Engage influencers that create positive UGC about your product. There’s no point in collaborating with someone who thinks your product is meh. Repost their content on your page. Send new products to influencers so that they can show real-life use cases.

4. Hold a Contest or Giveaway: Build Excitement Around Your Brand

Holding a contest or giveaway is a great way to increase engagement with your brand or generate buzz for a new release. The best part is you can easily tailor your contest or giveaway to help you achieve specific goals. Looking to build your audience? Require participants to give you a follow to win. Want to expand your reach? Ask your followers to share the post with a few friends.

You get the idea. Get your influencers involved, too. By asking your content creators to host the giveaway rather than your brand, you can leverage the trust they’ve built with their audience to encourage more participation.

5. Product Review: Build Trust With Your Customers

Product reviews have a simple aim. They explore various aspects of a product so that people who have never used it will know what to expect from it. So, many buyers see product reviews as a part of product research before buying. Today, many people deliver reviews on platforms like Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and blogs. With reviews, prospects can understand your product better and decide if it’s the best for them. But product reviews are a double-edged sword. Positive reviews can move prospects toward the sale; negative reviews can do otherwise. However, if you believe you have a great product (which you should), there’s nothing to fear about a product review.

You’d have to contact an influencer in your niche to collaborate for a product review. Some influencers will request fees in addition to your product, while some are fine with product gifting. Take Forrest Jones, who reviews cars on TikTok, as an example. Manufacturers regularly send him cars to review. But even beyond reviewing cars, a brand like Ekster collaborates with him because most car drivers also use wallets. Consider these points if collaborating with an influencer for product reviews: Seek reviews on your audience’s favorite platforms.

For example, reviews of a SaaS product will work best on blogs and YouTube, while lipstick reviews will work on Instagram and TikTok. Collaborate with influencers who publish content in your niche. Encourage influencers to be sincere about your product. Buyers know no product is perfect and expect a review to mention its shortcomings. Even more, shortcomings help you learn about areas to improve your product. Repost positive reviews on social media as a form of social proof to convince prospects.

6. Brand Ambassador Program: Build Long-Term Relationships With Influencers

When an influencer partner graduates, they become your social media ambassador. They don’t just do posts about your brand on social media — they embody your values, become your company’s spokesperson, and don’t take on offers from your competitors. If you compare brand ambassadors to influencers, you’ll notice their dedication and loyalty to your brand are much higher. As a result, their partnership posts come across as much more authentic and natural than a one-off collaboration post.

These posts often have the #brandambassador or #[company name] partner” hashtag. For example, the skincare brand CeraVe has a lot of brand ambassadors who consistently promote their products using the #CeraVePartner hashtag. Their brand ambassadors include influencers — from lifestyle creators like Niamh Adkins to certified dermatologists like Dr. Adeline Kikam. Have a “test run” before upgrading an influencer to a brand ambassador.

Form a long-term influencer collaboration, measure performance, work ethic, etc., and then move them from a creator to a brand ambassador (if they pass). Brand ambassadors can act as your personal feedback channel, event promoters, and panel moderators — don’t limit their collaboration to social media alone. Offer product updates and support to your brand ambassadors. Help them help you — equip them with insider info, assets, and the help they need to promote your products.

7. Unboxing Videos: Everyone Loves a Good Surprise

Everyone loves getting something in the mail. And it turns out that many people even love watching people get something in the mail. Next time you send your creators some products, encourage them to unbox their gift on camera. Bonus points if they’re also willing to give their haul a review.

8. Product Collaborations: Create a New Product With an Influencer

Product collaboration involves collaborating with an influencer, from creating to promoting some products. Usually, this collection will be named after the influencer. This influencer collaboration idea makes sense for an influencer who is well respected in a field. Think about Nike creating a Michael Jordan collection. Product collaboration helps you leverage an influencer’s popularity in a product category. People who love the influencer may buy your products because the influencer is involved. A working relationship with an influencer is essential before collaborating on a product.

For example, you can go through a few sponsored posts to see the influencer’s ROI before going a level higher with product collaboration. For example, Tommy Hilfiger collaborates with Shawn Mendes to create a collection in his name. Here are some points to consider for product collaboration: Get the influencer’s input while developing products. Add the influencer’s identifier to the product branding. Create a product collection page on your website. Offer discounts or other forms of product promotion.

Account takeover is when an influencer posts from your brand’s social media account. They announce the date and time in advance to their followers so the audience can interact with them via your brand’s account. The creator can post in-feed posts, answer frequently asked questions, or do a series of posts on a specific topic. Example: Aliza Eliazarov’s collaboration with chicken brand My Pet Chicken is a commendable example of an account takeover influencer partnership.

The creator posted chicken portraits from the brand’s account throughout the day. She also informed her followers to stay tuned to My Pet Chicken’s brand page during the takeover. Decide on your takeovers' format, duration, and content in advance. How long will the takeover run for? Will the influencer post image or video content? How many posts will the influencer make throughout the day? Clear all the details before running the takeover to avoid any mishaps on your social media feed.

Make account takeovers a win-win partnership by helping the influencer promote something they’ve recently launched (that they might want to expose to your followers). Promote your takeover multiple times to create excitement and gain more eyeballs. Create a sense of urgency around the time-boxed takeover to direct new followers to your account. Building a new hashtag around your takeover, like “[influencer name] x [your brand name],” can boost the hype along with making the collaboration content easy to find.

10. Guest Blogging: Reach New Audiences With Influencer Blogs

Guest blogging means creating and publishing blog posts on other blogs. With guest blogging, you can reach a big audience on other blogs and bring them to your website. While the idea is easy, executing guest blogging requires a proper strategy. For instance, you’ll get better results when you guest blog on authoritative websites in your niche. So, in this case, you may be looking for industry influencers who also run popular niche blogs.

However, other industry blogs will also work well. But you must do your homework before you can publish on authoritative blogs. You have to uncover topics their audience will love that the site has not addressed. Then, conduct keyword research to give your guest post the best chance of ranking in Google searches.

For example, Leo Widrich used guest posting to grow Buffer’s users from 0 to 100k. Gregory Ciotti, a marketing strategist at Help Scout, is another excellent example of using guest posts to build awareness.

Here are some points to remember when creating a successful guest blogging strategy:

Publish guest posts on authoritative websites in your niche. This way, you’ll reach people likely to be interested in your product. Use guest posts to target a vital business keyword to get more people in Google search. Send topic proposals that the blog has not covered. After all, you don’t want to present a basketball as a gift to LeBron James. Aim to provide value through guest blogs rather than promote your products. If you can’t write, hire a writer to deliver your message correctly.

11. Content Collaborations: Create a Valuable Backlink to Your Website

Content collaboration is partnering to create content in exchange for promoting your brand. For example, you go as an expert guest on one of your industry’s podcasts hosted by a key opinion leader. Or you could write a helpful article on your industry’s leading blog to get some valuable backlinks to your website. Example: a great example is Zapier’s guest post by L. Michelle Smith, the founder of media and consulting company no silos communication LLC.

Michelle shares helpful information about how brands can create social media content that sells and shares results she’s garnered for her clients. She can share her story in her own words, talk about what’s important to her, and get valuable backlinks from Zapier. Find publications and podcasts with high engagement. Ask for the domain rating, number of listeners, and/or traffic metrics before agreeing to a guest collaboration. You don’t want to waste so much effort on creating content if it barely gets you any results. If you opt for a guest blog post — submit a killer piece.

If your writing skills aren’t the best, hire a ghostwriter. Discuss the nitty-gritty of your brand promotion before writing the post or setting a time to interview. Many publications put a cap on the number of links you can add for self-promotion — you want to know about that in advance to determine if the website or podcast is a proper fit. Engage with the commentators and listeners of your guest post. Don't miss it if you can respond to readers' comments or chat with listeners. It creates an additional opportunity to talk to potential customers directly.

12. Interview in a Podcast: Build Brand Awareness With a Target Audience

A podcast is just like a radio show but online. A host presents information about a topic for 20 minutes to 1 hour. But in most cases, podcasts feature guests who answer questions about their expertise in a field and how they became successful. Put simply, podcasts are popular.

According to Edison Research, more than 6 in 10 U.S. consumers above 12 have listened to at least one podcast. That’s 177 million people in the U.S. alone. People listen to them when working out, doing house chores, or even driving to work. So, it’s a great option to collaborate with influencers. While podcasts may not be great for selling products directly, they work excellently for building brand awareness with a target audience.

Since a podcast will usually be about a broad topic, you can find ones that address topics in your industry. Or host one. For a podcast, collaboration can be in 2 ways: You can invite influencers to a podcast you host. You can offer to sponsor an influencer’s podcast episode and be a guest on the episode. For example, Lilach Bullock, a marketing influencer and coach, regularly interviews business executives on her podcast.

Here are some points to remember: Ensure the podcast addresses topics relevant to your business and ideal buyers. Talk more about your personal and business values on podcasts. People who listen to podcasts don’t expect a hard sell of your products. Research a podcast's audience and engagement numbers before showing up on it.

13. Commercials: The Classic Influencer Partnership for Big Budgets

Commercials are when you partner with an influencer for a classic ad. It’s best for mega-influencers who are household names in your industry. Example: The Beard Struggle frequently shoots social commercials with its influencers — showing their product in action and how their influencers use them. Find an influencer who’s famous in your niche.

A fashion influencer — no matter how popular — promoting a health product will not have the same effect as a niche influencer. Keep the influencer’s personality intact in your ads. People love the influencer for their voice — keep the relatability and familiarity factor high to see success. Tie your advertisements around a theme, occasion, or product launch to excite your audience and derive the maximum benefit from this influencer partnership.

14. Embrace the Holidays (or Make Up Your Own)

Brands should always take advantage of busy holiday shopping seasons. Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, Black Friday, and Cyber Monday are the big ones for ecommerce brands. But nothing is stopping you from making up a holiday of your own. National Pizza Day? Yes, please. National Margarita Day? Sign me up. If you have a product people love, create a memorable occasion around it. And don’t forget to leverage your influencers to help spread the word.

15. Co-host a Webinar: Educate Your Audience and Generate Leads

A webinar is a web seminar. In it, you can explain important concepts to your audience. The great thing about webinars is that you can use them to acquire leads, apart from educating your audience. To boost brand awareness, you can co-host a webinar with an influencer. In this case, the influencer will be a known expert in the topic you want to address in your webinar.

Since the influencer will promote the webinar to their audience, you’ll get more people to your webinar. For example, for a SaaS webinar, Wynter partnered with copywriting expert and influencer Joanna Wiebe. Here are some tips to remember: Ensure the influencer is an expert in the webinar topic. Promote the webinar to attract your ideal audience.

16. Commit to a Cause: Build Trust and Credibility With Your Audience

Consumers like brands that stand for something and feel good when they buy a product that supports a cause. Lucky for you, plenty of brands have already written the blueprint for how to do this successfully. For example, Warby Parker donates a pair of glasses to someone in need for each pair sold.

TOMS and Bambas also leverage a similar successful business model. But you don’t have to give away free merchandise to support a cause. Even bringing awareness to issues you feel passionately about is an effective way to share your brand story and help you seem more relatable.

17. Feature Your Employees: Create Authentic Content for Your Brand

Your employees can be some of your best content creators. Ideally, they already have a ton of knowledge about your brand and can help you share your story and brand vision. Plus, consumers generally love seeing behind-the-scenes looks at their favorite brands and are interested in seeing what a day in life looks like on-site.

18. Embrace the Latest Technology: Stay Relevant to Your Audience

It’s essential to keep up with the latest trends and technologies so you can identify opportunities to give your audience a unique and engaging experience. Right now, AR and VR are having a moment. For example, IKEA created a mobile app called IKEA Place that allows customers to see how items will look in their homes before they buy them.

Other companies like L’Oreal, Sephora, Volkswagen, and more have created similar apps to allow customers to “try before they buy.” If you don’t have the budget or the know-how to develop an app with AR or VR capabilities, Snapchat has several filters and lenses you can leverage to take advantage of the technology.

19. Leverage Multiple Platforms.

Don’t limit yourself to a single social media platform. Spend most of your time where your audience spends most of it, but you should still branch out and take advantage of features unique to each platform. Snapchat, as we’ve mentioned, has some great AR features.

YouTube is the most popular for long-form videos, while TikTok is the king of short-form videos, and Instagram has become a jack-of-all-trade. Lean on your influencers to help you determine the best approach for each platform, and don’t be afraid to get creative!

20. ‘Challenge’ Your Audience.

A new TikTok challenge is going viral almost every day. So, why not take advantage? Create a hashtag and see if your audience is “up to the challenge.” If done correctly, you’ll generate plenty of valuable UGC and put your brand at the center of the latest trend.

21. Partner With a Like-Minded Brand.

Also known as co-branding, brand partnerships involve two or more brands playing on each other’s strengths to promote their products in a single campaign. McDonald’s and Coca-Cola are probably the most famous co-branding examples.

The two companies have been partners since the 1950s and have collaborated on numerous marketing campaigns, including the popular “McDonald’s Coke Glasses” campaign. But you don’t have to be an industry giant to take advantage. Find a brand that compliments you nicely and devise a strategy that benefits both parties.

22. Create a Series.

Creating a “series” of related social media content is a good way to help build brand recognition, create an emotional connection, and encourage followers to engage with your content over more extended periods. One example is Nike’s “Better for It” campaign featuring several well-known celebrities, headlined by Serena Williams. The campaign aimed to celebrate women at every stage of their fitness journey. Nike also created a hashtag to encourage fans to post their journeys on social media.

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10 Examples of Successful Influencer Campaigns

1. Bobbie’s “Your Best is Best” Campaign: Normalizing Feeding Conversations

Baby formula company Bobbie launched the “Your Best is Best” campaign to normalize parental conversations about feeding. The initiative featured model Ashley Graham sharing her story about breastfeeding and transitioning to formula. Their partnership helped to destigmatize the use of formula and promoted Bobbie’s organic product as a healthy option.

2. Topicals' Bermuda Trip: Creating Community Through Engagement

Skincare brand Topicals hosted a trip to Bermuda to celebrate their third anniversary, inviting influencers to create engaging content. This strategy generated buzz and fostered a community around the brand.

3. Fashion Nova's Ambassador Program: Collaborating with Micro-Influencers

Fashion Nova, a leading eCommerce fashion house, built its brand by partnering with micro-influencers and later collaborating with celebrities like Kylie Jenner, turning them into "Fashion Nova Ambassadors." This approach significantly expanded their reach.

4. Miro's Template Promotion: Showcasing Practical Applications

Miro collaborated with influencers across platforms like Instagram and LinkedIn to showcase their versatile templates. This campaign increased engagement and conversions by demonstrating practical applications of their products.

5. Fiji Water's "BodyWoreWhat" Campaign: Inspiring User-Generated Content

Fiji Water partnered with fitness influencer Danielle Bernstein to create workout videos emphasizing the importance of hydration. The campaign inspired over 2,000 user-generated content and significantly boosted brand visibility.

6. Dunkin's National Donut Day: Sweetening the Deal with Influencers

Dunkin' Donuts collaborated with influencers to promote National Donut Day, offering a free donut with any beverage purchase. This campaign effectively increased customer engagement and foot traffic.

7. L'Oréal Paris' "Walk Your Worth" Campaign: Building Media Impact Value Through Celebrity Partnerships

In 2024, L'Oréal Paris achieved the highest media impact value among beauty brands, primarily driven by its celebrity-studded "Walk Your Worth" runway show at Paris Fashion Week.

8. Kylie Jenner's Collaboration with Coperni: Showcasing the Potential of Celebrity Partnerships

Kylie Jenner's appearance at Coperni's Disneyland show during Paris Fashion Week contributed $17.9 million in media impact value, showcasing the significant influence of celebrity partnerships in the fashion industry.

9. Elf Cosmetics' Original Song Campaign: Going Viral on TikTok

Elf Cosmetics created an original 15-second song titled "#EyesLipsFace" in October 2019, which went viral on social media platforms like TikTok. This innovative approach significantly increased brand awareness and engagement.

10. McDonald's Grimace Shake Trend: Capturing Viral Trends

In June 2023, McDonald's introduced the Grimace Shake, which inadvertently sparked a viral trend on social media. Users created videos depicting humorous and exaggerated reactions to the shake, leading to increased sales and online buzz.

Megaphone: What Is It and Why Should You Care?

Megaphone is a viral on-demand platform designed to boost your online presence authentically and organically. Our software connects you with influential creators in your niche, helping you grow impressions, followers, and leads without relying on paid ads. Using Megaphone, you can increase impressions, followers, and leads without relying on paid ads. Key features include:

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Megaphone caters to startup founders, marketers, emerging creators, and ghostwriting agencies seeking to amplify their digital footprint and social proof. Our complex matching algorithm ensures you partner with your field's most suitable and valuable creators. Go viral today with our viral on-demand platform.

6 Tips for Efficient Influencer Collaboration

1. Leverage Megaphone for Effective Influencer Marketing Campaigns

Megaphone is a platform that connects brands with influential creators to boost online visibility organically. If you want to expand your digital footprint and improve social proof, Megaphone can help you find relevant creator partners in your niche. The software's sophisticated matching algorithm connects you with creators who align with your goals and target audience. With Megaphone, you can run efficient influencer campaigns that drive results without relying on paid ads.

2. Set Clear Goals and Messaging Before You Reach Out to Influencers

Establishing clear objectives will help you measure the success of your campaign later. The most common goals of influencer marketing are to raise brand awareness and increase sales. The unique thing about working with influencers is that they reach particular audiences, making it a more effective strategy to help you achieve your marketing goals. Next, determine the key messages you want to convey to the influencer's audience. While you want to give influencers creative freedom to communicate with their followers, establishing a few guidelines will help keep your campaign on track.

3. Identify Your Target Audience to Find Relevant Influencers

Knowing your target audience will make identifying relevant influencers to work with much more straightforward. This tip isn’t unique to influencer marketing, but it’s vital here because influencer followings are often so niche. Verifying that an influencer’s audience aligns with your target buyer persona is critical in ensuring you get a return on investment. The influencers often align with your target audience, making this step even more straightforward.

4. Compile a List of Relevant Influencers to Work With

The key to driving a successful influencer marketing campaign is identifying relevant influencers who share your target audience to promote your brand or product. Just like public relations professionals must do their research to determine the appropriate reporters and producers to pitch, you’ll want to take your time finding the right influencers who share your target audience.

Experienced influencers will have a media kit to share with you, breaking down their audience demographics, reach, category of content, and compensation expectations. When deciding on influencers, you should determine how much their audience trusts them.

A large follower count is great, but you might not achieve your goals if those followers don’t engage with the influencer’s content. Therefore, looking at an influencer’s engagement rate is a must. High numbers of views, likes, comments, and shares any influencer receives on their posts are significant indicators of a healthy engagement rate.

5. Reach Out to Influencers and Pitch Your Brand

Reaching out to influencers about a possible partnership looks like public relations pitching. Many influencers will provide an email address on their social media accounts, but reaching out via direct messages is common. When you’re ready to inquire about a partnership, sending a personalized message to each influencer will increase the likelihood of a response.

Compliment their content and tell them how much it would mean to work with them, but try not to come off as too sales-y. Your pitch should include as much information as possible about your brand, the campaign you’re recruiting them for, and how working with you will benefit the influencer beyond the flat rate. Are you willing to send them free products? Will you provide an affiliate link from which they can receive a commission? These are all things to quickly note in your pitch.

6. Review Influencer Content Before It’s Published

While you should give influencers creative freedom to make the content look and sound like them, reviewing the images, videos, and copy before they’re published online to ensure they align with your brand messaging and campaign requirements is essential.