After a campaign has run its course. It will be time to see if you accomplished your goals. Don’t get too upset if you miss your goals in the beginning. You may have set the goals too high and as the program progresses you can see what you can reasonably expect. Remember, when you learn more you want to change what and how you are reporting.

Influencer Reporting

When working with influencers, you will need their help in reporting. If you are working in social media you can get some basic information such as likes, shares, and comments. However, you won’t know the engagement rate. If it’s a blog you will want to know how much traffic a post received.

You will need influencers report on any KPI’s you set up in the beginning. This goes back to working with influencers. Make sure you tell them how you want to do reporting and how often. It is after a campaign or monthly. I would refrain from weekly because it could be a lot of work for the influencer.

I have created a spreadsheet to send influencers with all the information that is needed. Just have them fill it out and send it back. You can compile it in a big spreadsheet and slice and dice as needed.  I don’t put formulas in the spreadsheet I send to them. You want to keep it super simple. I usually add them after I receive the information from the influencer.

Keep it as simple for the influencer as possible. I would suggest that you send out links with the appropriate tracking codes. This can be done by sending the full link or a shortened link, such as bit.ly. Also, if something goes wrong you will still have this data. As long as the influencer used them. So it’s important to stress that they do this and for you to double check links.

Brand Tracking

There are several things you want to do when working with influencers. This will allow for easier tracking at the end of the campaigns.

Clicks/Tagged Links – Set up links for each influencer. Use Google URL Builder to keep track of where your traffic is coming from and who is responsible.  Use this for tracking traffic.

Coupon Codes – Give each influencer a unique code. If you give them all the same code you can’t attribute the sale easily. Use a naming convention that works for you. Most use a code with influencer or blog name. An example is on the TWiT network they do the name of the show, such as “Macbreak12”. Use this for tracking sales.

Don’t get overly complex in your links. It seems like a great idea to give influencers links for the blog, social media and more. Keep it as simple as you can. Unless you are giving amazing perks don’t request them to jump through hoops.

As I said in part 1, branding is not easy to judge though traditional analytics. One way is seeing how many times an influencer talked about your brand. Then see what the engagement was for the posts. I would suggest creating a Twitter list of your influencers. It could be a private or public list. Then you can easily see all influencers in one list. Look at it daily and join in conversations as needed. If a person interacting with an influencer has in-depth questions, jump in and answer them.

If you selected branding as your goal. It will be a bit harder to determine. There won’t be any direct action taken to visit or shop your site. One way I have judged branding has been conversations. I put all influencers on a Twitter list. It can be a private or public list. This along with looking at engagement rates are ways to see if you are getting noticed. If an influencer has high engagement on posts about your business

NOTE: This series was set to end but I’m adding 2 additional parts. The next will be types of influencer programs and after will be how I ran a Brand Ambassador program.