Influencer marketing has quickly become the hottest form of marketing, but some brands still struggle with it. By partnering with influencers that complement your brand, you can grow your online presence, increase website traffic and even boost your sales. It looks and sounds easy enough, right?

It’s easy to make mistakes, yes. And since the power of the influencer stretches far and wide, you want to get it right. Of course, practice makes perfect, but in the meantime, we can already spare you a lot of valuable time with these 5 do not’s.

In any case, avoid:

1. Unattainable expectations

Yes, influencer marketing can get you some great results, but remember: Rome wasn’t built in a day.

We see a lot of brands put some unrealistic expectations on their first campaign. You can’t expect the efforts of one campaign or one influencer to reach all of your audience at once. It’s going to take more than that.

You can only reap what you sow, and influencer marketing deserves to be an integral part of your strategy. Only then, after a consistent and long-term planned effort, you’ll get close to the results you dreamed of.

2. Wrong choice of influencer

When looking for an influencer to collab with, brands usually look at the number of followers. While that may have gotten you lots of reach a couple of years ago, it simply doesn’t work like that anymore.

These days it’s all about community and whether the audience interacts with the content. The Instagram algorithm rewards a high engagement rate and favors communities, so focus on the relationship that the influencer has with their audience and choose accordingly.

On top of that, it’s wildly important to thoroughly check the person you want to work with. They really have to align with your brand, not only now and in the future, but in the past as well. Who knows which clients or even competitors they may have worked with already?

Luckily, we’ve made a handy guide to help you find the exact right influencer for your brand.

3. Not listening to creators

Even if you’ve found a great influencer to work with and they’re a perfect match with your brand, none of that will matter if you treat them like a simple pawn in your game. They are not. They are giving you direct access to the audience they worked really hard to build, so respect them and their creative input.

If they have feedback or an opinion, listen to them. They know their audience and their job better than anyone, and they want to help you get better results.

In order to get across to their followers, your collab needs to be an authentic co-creation, not a dictation. Now more than ever, people crave authenticity. They’ve had enough of the picture-perfect feeds, so trust your influencer’s take.

4. Sticking to what you know

Absolutely not. The world of influencer marketing and internet trends is constantly evolving, and so should you(r marketing). Don’t keep clutching onto the ‘good old days’ and traditional ways.

A lot of social platform algorithms will reward and push you if you diversify your content. So do try out Reels, TikTok, or other video content, find out if Clubhouse is a match for you, look around to see what else is out there that’s new and might be relevant to your brand.

If you keep an eye on our Hub, you can rest assured that you will always stay informed on the latest influencer marketing trends!

5. Tracking the wrong metrics

The world of social media metrics can be an overwhelming one and we often see brands focusing on the complete wrong statistics.

You can only get the right idea of a campaign’s success if you set concrete goals beforehand, look up the benchmarks for your niche and define the right metrics to track. Otherwise, you won’t get a clear picture of what’s important, you won’t see the true power of a successful campaign and you’ll miss out on possible future opportunities.

Luckily, we’ve made a useful overview of the metrics every brand should know and track.