For around 25 years we’ve become almost completely dependent on email for everything in our daily business lives. It’s been an imperfect system of sending and shifting documents to folders and recording conversations into poorly organized files, never to be seen again. Luckily, apps like WeChat, WhatsApp and Slack have finally started to break through as alternatives within some working teams.
We are on the cusp of seeing email take a back seat to an entirely different model spurred on by our rapidly growing influencer marketing work. A door is opening to a fully integrated end-to-end program management capability that improves every aspect of the work; it’s transparent, efficient and collaborative.
Think about every step in Influencer Marketing process: setting KPIs, trend mapping, influencer IDing, approving, contracting, content management, amplification, and payment – all of which is happening within a single, shared digital workspace. A seamless collaboration inside of this ecosystem will be how the future of this work looks for influencer marketing professionals, and perhaps a model for other collaborative teams.
This matters because the demand for improved real-time communication and metrics is the here and now. We have to migrate multi-disciplinary teams of agency professionals, clients and, of course, the influencers themselves into seamless workflows. Additionally, data security is of the highest priority for all of us, and this level of transparency and collaboration will not only benefit brands, but it will pose a huge challenge to the “fraudsters” looking to breach. It’s also a safe and organized way to manage all communication for each campaign, helping agency, client and influencers alike.
The biggest challenge we face in this transformation is our natural resistance to change. Working in a platform like this means everyone has to be willing to move away from emails and attachments and embrace the new. I’m encouraging our teams, clients and influencers to lean into the transformation as fast as possible, so that it becomes second nature – just like email.
Here are three ways you can use technology to foster a more efficient, collaborative and transparent work environment and, perhaps, do your part to usher in an era beyond email…
1. Do away with Excel spreadsheets to manage your Industry influencers. Embrace platforms like Tagger Media, which we’ve now adopted in and North America, UK, Europe and Latin America as a means to plan, activate and report against our Influencer efforts.
2. Manage campaigns with immediate transparency into reach and media metrics to back up the value. Understanding and communicating campaign strength and allowing for swift course corrections is the new norm.
3. Adopting new technology is scary and clunky until you realize you can’t live without it. Embrace the role of pioneer and beta-tester within your organization.
I truly believe this is the “end of the beginning” of influencer marketing and early adopters of the technology and precision process now have the mastery to leapfrog into a rewarding future.
