Influencer whitelisting is a relatively new technique that can help you improve the ROI of your digital marketing campaigns. It works as a bridge between organic and paid content so you can boost your content across a variety of platforms and expand the reach of your influencer campaigns.
Because this approach is new to influencer marketing, many brands are still not up to speed. To help you out, we’ve created this short guide that tells you everything you need to know about what influencer whitelisting is, how it differs from paid collaborations, and how it can boost your brand’s exposure. . We’ll also discuss the pros and cons of this technique to help you decide if it could be a useful strategy for your influencer marketing campaigns.influencer marketing.
What is influencer whitelisting?
Influencer whitelisting is a relatively new marketing tactic that helps influencers and brands increase their reach on social media platforms. Simply put, it involves using targeted social ads to reach relevant and receptive audiences and expose the influencer to a larger audience.
In essence, with this approach, a brand gets permission from an influencer to post paid content directly through their influencer’s profile. The influencer thus gets help in reaching a larger audience which, in turn, helps the brands they indirectly promote to gain more engagement.social proof, reach and engagement.
Today, influencer whitelisting is available on a number of platforms. For example, on Facebook and Instagram, influencer whitelisting is known as creator licensing . With this tool, brands have access to an influencer’s Facebook Ads Manager account and promote sponsored posts on both platforms working in a call center from home simultaneously. TikTok is also working on its own creator licensing tools, suggesting that influencer whitelisting will soon be a mainstream influencer marketing strategy.
How is it different from paid collaborations?
Influencer whitelisting is not the same as a paid collaboration. A paid collaboration is an organic post from an influencer. The word “paid” simply refers to the fact that a brand pays the influencer to promote it. With influencer whitelisting, a brand pays the social media platform to promote an influencer’s post as a sponsored ad (separate from whatever they may be paying the influencer to have access to their influencer account).
By creating influencer whitelists, brands have more control over the content and campaigns they promote through an influencer. They also gain more direct data on the performance of a campaign through analytics provided directly through the social media account.
What is dark posting?
Dark posting is promoted content that is not shared organically. These posts do not appear on an influencer’s profile or organic feed. Instead, they are only shown to specific audiences as sponsored posts.
This can be a good option for whitelisting if an influencer doesn’t want their feed and profile filled with sponsored posts. You can even repost an influencer’s existing posts as dark posts if you want to re-promote one of the campaigns they’ve already posted for your brand without bombarding their regular followers with the same content.
What are the pros and cons of whitelisting for a brand?
Let’s wrap up this short guide by taking a look at the influencer whitelisting pros and cons of using influencer whitelisting to promote your brand.
Pros:
- It’s a powerful way to increase the reach of the content you promote through an influencer. And because you’re using paid ads, you can target a specific demographic and reach a more relevant audience .
- Your brand exposure grows, increasing thebenefitsthat you get from influencer marketing.
- Using paid targeted ads also helps you build brand awareness .
- You have more control over an influencer’s campaign.
- You can access campaign metrics directly from an influencer’s social media account page.
- You can repurpose existing campaigns instead of creating new influencer campaigns from scratch.
- You can compare an influencer’s paid and organic posts to see what works best.
Cons:
- Influencer whitelisting is not (yet) available on all platforms.
- If used frequently, brands risk over-saturating an influencer’s content feed and alienating their followers, unless they opt for dark posting.
- Similarly, brands having more control over content could take cell phone number away from the authenticity that makes influencer marketing so valuable.
- There is a risk that you may be targeting the wrong audience if you don’t use an influencer whose content is in line with your brand values or if you don’t select the right demographics when preparing a paid ad using their profile.
- Your influencer may not be willing to give you access to their social media account. Even if they are willing, there is a degree of administration involved in assigning permissions.
- There is a potential for disputes over content usage rights unless you establish influencer whitelisting guidelines in your agreement with the influencer.