In May, we attended Adweek’s Social Media Week, which was all about how businesses can harness the influence of creator marketing. During the week, we learned how marketers can collaborate with creators to push digital content that can monetize, grow and engage with a variety of audiences.

To effectively work with creators, you should focus on strategic engagement. This means not rushing engagement and learning the combination of highlighting the right message on the right platform for the right audience.

Here are a few things that we learned during Adweek’s Social Media Week:

1. Let Creators Create

If your brand wants to have full control over the advertising, creators are probably not the best channel for that. Working with creators or influencers means trusting them to know that they understand their audience the best. Creating a concise brief for creators to reference when creating their content will be your best bet at making sure all key points are mentioned and not missed.

2. The Consumer Journey is Key

Think about your strategy and campaigns in a 360-degree way. With a social-first approach, tailor your content specifically for individual platforms rather than repurposing existing content. This strategy acknowledges that each platform has their own unique characteristic, user demographic and content formats. Examples include taking a YouTube or horizontal video and editing it to a 9:16 format for Instagram reels. Focus on:

• Awareness + Branding: Establishing awareness ensures that your target audience knows about your brand, while branding strategies enable you to differentiate your brand, evoke emotions and build long-term relationships with customers.
• Retention + Advocacy: Retention efforts are aimed at retaining customers, fostering loyalty and turning them into advocates who actively promote and recommend your brand to others.

3. Be More Authentic

Greater authenticity means looser guidelines. Where are you more comfortable giving up control? The best campaigns and/or creator programs are ones that involve solving a customer’s need. Think about going beyond promoting your product and focus more on building community.

4. Cultural Relevancy

The brand and consumer relationship are important for any campaign. Cultural relevance creates brand love. 40% of consumers say that “people like them” are the most influential in shaping culture. People want companies and brands to have a positive impact, provide entertainment, appeal to the masses and influence pop culture.

People don’t want to be sold to too hard. Doritos launched their Triangle Tracker campaign to appeal to Gen-Z by leaning into one of their core assets. During this campaign, Doritos offered a grand prize of $250,000. Using Snapchat’s AR lens, people could point their smartphone at ANY triangle, and a Dorito would appear, generating a code to claim. It was a successful campaign targeting a younger audience by turning what would be a typical ad into a “game” (spot the triangle).

5. Become a Pioneer of Social Media

Social media is ever-evolving and staying on top of trends like AI will be essential to social growth. If you have the budget, it’s smart to allocate some of your budget to projects that you won’t see an ROI on immediately, but you will over time. Whether that’s AI or Tiktok ads – staying ahead of trends especially as an agency is important for current and potential clients.

Overall, we learned that oftentimes to bridge the gap between your brand and consumers, it’s smart to connect and work with creators and/or people like the audiences that you are trying to reach. This type of content will allow you to strengthen the bond between the individual and the brand.

Interested in creating authentic social media for your business or organization? Reach out to us!