Working with Influencers: A Handy Guide
As we shared in a recent blog post on how advocacy organizations can reach new audiences through visual social media, for an increasing number of individuals—and particularly young people—social media is their primary source of news. As this trend continues, it is important to meet these audiences where they are, and one way to do so is partnering with influencers. These individuals have the ability to impact their audience’s opinion through their social media accounts, and oftentimes are associated with marketing products. Yet ‘influencing’ can also mean encouraging an audience to learn about a certain topic or mobilizing them to take action for a particular issue.
Essentially, influencers can serve as brand ambassadors of your cause and use their unique online presence to advance a narrative you aim to share. One recent example is the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI)’s #MakeNukesHistory campaign, rolled out alongside the 2024 Academy Awards. NTI partnered with nine influencers across a variety of social media spaces to capitalize on the publicity around the Oppenheimer film to advocate for global nuclear disarmament. In the end, they achieved over 4.9 million views and 338,000 engagements on the content those influencers produced.
ReThink spoke with Ravi Garla, a campaign consultant with NTI who led the #MakeNukesHistory campaign, to gain his insights on how advocacy organizations can learn from their experience. Below is a guide detailing the steps within this process, which we hope will make working with creators much more accessible to your organization.
Influencing is storytelling.
The primary message Ravi shared was that influencers are storytellers. In short videos on Instagram and TikTok, they weave together their personal background with current trends in music, dance, and fashion to share experiences in a novel and meaningful way.
@bocxtop Nukes are terrifying, we shouldn’t have them #fypシ #makenukeshistory #oppenheimer
Take this example from the #MakeNukesHistory campaign from the influencer Prance, known online as Bocxtop, who makes quippy sketch videos on TikTok and Instagram explaining political topics with his friends. In this video, Prance and his friends open with a comment on the Oscars success of the Oppenheimer film, which turns into a conversation on the “crazy” fact that countries still possess nuclear weapons. Through comments like “I heard the risk of nuclear warfare is higher now than any point in the Cold War,” to which a friend jokingly responds, “Fine by me, I’ve been sticking my head in the microwave to build up that immunity,” this influencing team takes a comedic approach to the heavy topic while still sharing important details and communicating the urgency of the situation. Clearly, this tactic resonated with the audience, as the 45-second video gained over 77,000 likes and 152 comments. This example demonstrates that allowing an influencer to take ownership of storytelling about a topic can be highly impactful.
This style of storytelling can also build trust. Influencers build relationships with their audience through their vulnerability and creativity, so having an influencer share your campaign message can bring organic attention to your cause.
Influencing is valuable.
So, working with influencers can be a creative, personal way to engage an influencer’s followers. But what is the value of working with influencers?
First, it provides access to new audiences. As Ravi shared with us, ‘persuadables’—including younger individuals that could be interested in nuclear nonproliferation but are not yet engaged—are not reading thought pieces or watching cable, but they are watching YouTube videos, engaging with “infotainment,” and creating videos themselves. Thus, cultivating relationships with influencers can reach critical audiences and provide meaningful education to likely-aligned but currently-disengaged individuals.
Second, this style of content is intentionally not an op-ed or thought piece. Both forms of content are meant to educate and persuade an audience, but an op-ed does so with a more developed argument aimed toward a targeted audience already thought to be receptive to the topic. Social media posts, however, are not able to be so developed or targeted due to the design of the platform’s algorithms, which prioritize short, snippy, reactive content. By design, a post can go ‘viral’ and reach thousands, if not millions, of people, many of whom are unconnected to the original creator.
Consider again Prance’s Oppenheimer video. Over 77,000 people liked this video, many of whom were not originally following Prance. This is because social algorithms place relevant ‘recommended’ content on user’s feeds, which led to over 2.6 million people viewing Prance’s video on Instagram alone. Each of those individuals is now educated on Oppenheimer and the problem of nuclear weapons, impacting their own activism and personal beliefs.
Third, when you partner with influencers, you are not just educating their audiences, but also educating the influencers themselves on your cause. Because of this, while you may have only contracted with them to produce one single video, they may go on to create more original content on their own and become passionate about this topic alongside their audience. This ‘ripple effect’ can be hard to capture quantitatively, but it is nonetheless a meaningful result.
Influencing takes planning.
It’s clear that working with content creators is a valuable approach to sharing your campaign messaging with diverse audiences. The next step is understanding what this approach requires, and, like any campaign tactic, it first takes a bit of forethought.
Developing a Scope
Start with your scope: what is your objective? Do you want to raise awareness about an issue, persuade people of a certain message, or mobilize for collective action? Depending on your answer, your approach will differ. For example, Ravi explained that a longform YouTube video is not effective for gaining petition signatures, but a well-timed Instagram story could be, given the short nature of the content and the easy ability to link to another website on the platform.
Next, consider: who is your target audience? It is critical to identify which social platforms this group gravitates toward and the types of content those platforms require. Examining the graph below from Sprout Social, it is clear that younger audiences prefer Snapchat, TikTok, and Instagram, while older audiences spend more time on Twitter and Facebook.
Finally, what is your budget? The overall cost for a single influencer may range depending on the average reach of the creator’s prior work, the time required to develop the content, or the creator’s personal rates. In 2024, NTI calculated their average commission rate to be roughly $0.04 per view of the creator’s average video performance. They calculated this number by looking at the influencer’s recent videos on their primary platform, selecting about eight posts, and averaging their view count. They focused on view count rather than audience size, as viewership can often extend past this group. Based on this average, use your discretion to decide a number for your influencer pitch. The lesson? Your overall budget will determine the number of influencers with whom you will be able to work, so be clear about your budget limitations. And fear not: if your number is off, creators will let you know!
Selecting Creators and Working With an Agency
Once you’ve scoped your project, it’s time to source your creators, either through a content creator agency or on your own.
Content creator agencies are organizations that partner with social media influencers and connect them to brand deals and campaigns. You might consider Vocal, People First, or Currant, who all work with progressive creators. These groups are paid for their relationships with and management of influencers, and they will likely also manage the contract and payment processes for you. This can be expensive, so Ravi recommended only budgeting a quarter of your overall influencer budget for this. Particularly for smaller organizations, or those that do not hold many existing relationships with creators, this approach can be useful.
Regardless of whether or not you hire an agency, you must consider the types of influencers with whom you want to work, how your campaign fits within their current work, and whether their audiences align with your goals. A creator doesn’t have to have worked on your particular issue area before, but you should assess their delivery style and whether they will help you access a receptive audience. For example, Ravi noted that when they were considering influencers to pitch around Oppenheimer, his team considered the value-add of pitching a film reviewer versus a young activist. In this case, they chose the activist, because while a film reviewer may already be likely to speak on Oppenheimer, they felt an activist influencer may have access to an audience that might not have otherwise learned of the campaign.
This is one of the benefits of communicating on social media, as influencer marketing can take advantage of both user-selected and algorithmic audiences, giving more bang for your buck. In the above example, the user-selected audience refers to the activist influencer’s audience, which was expected to be receptive to the content. This allows for some degree of granular targeting, as you can select influencers whose audiences fit certain demographics, such as age and geographical location. But not everyone will fit into these categories, particularly those in your algorithmic audience. Algorithmic audiences are those individuals who don’t follow the original creator, but who see the content due to the platform’s algorithmic recommendation, usually through a curated feed like the Instagram’s ‘For You’ page, which may bring your content to unexpected audiences.
To develop your list of potential creators, search on your intended platform for relevant terms and see which creators are leading in this space. Then, vet each creator for any potential ‘red flags,’ or areas that might impede these individuals’ ability to represent your organization or cause in the best way. Ravi noted that NTI usually does this research on their own, searching for any worrisome content on both Google and Twitter. Expect your pitch “yes!” ratio to be around 1:3 or 1:4, as creators will consider the relevance of the project to their content, their current development schedule, and their own budget expectations before accepting a pitch.
Developing a creative brief
One you’ve decided on which influencers to work with, you should develop a creative brief about the project. This is a short, one-to-two page document stating what content you want developed, why it is important, and how your organization’s mission aligns with the project goals. You can open with a short paragraph on the campaign and its expected deliverables, then move into next steps, resources, messaging guidance, typical “do’s and don’ts” for the content, and finally a section on your organization.
One of Ravi’s critical suggestions is to ask for a written draft of the script before the creator films any content. This can help avoid any miscommunication in project goals and allow you to correct any errors up front, while still allowing the creator to retain creative direction. In his words, “you are hiring these people for their talent, so you stick to the facts and what would be narrative harm, versus dictating their storytelling.”
Pitching and Contracting
Now that you’ve selected your target creators and prepared a creative brief, you’re ready to pitch. Your pitch should ideally go out at least four weeks before the desired date of the campaign rollout to allow enough time for content development. You should send your pitch via email rather than via social media, as influencers receive a lot of Direct Messages daily and may miss your pitch.
Do not include the creative brief in your initial pitch, but do briefly share the topic, its relevance to the influencer’s work, that this is a paid opportunity from a reputable organization, and the expected timeline. As with any pitch, it is important to show you understand who this creator is and that you’re familiar with their work. This can include highlighting a recent project of theirs, naming their audience or issue area expertise, or sharing a common connection.
Once the influencer has said yes, you can share the creative brief and they can start working on their script. To be prepared for this “yes,” ensure your rates are finalized and a contract template and a spreadsheet to monitor content development are ready to go.
Creative Review
The creative review is a relatively simple process. It involves reviewing the draft script to confirm there is no narrative harm, and then giving the go ahead for the creator to film a draft video. Once prepared, review the video before the creator posts it online to allow for a final mutual agreement on the content.
Remember, as an organization, you control who you pitch and how you frame the project in the narrative brief, but you should let the influencer be creative within those guidelines. Cultivating an environment of creativity will allow for more authentic storytelling, which will benefit your campaign.
Analytics
Finally, now that the content has been published, pay attention to whether or not it succeeds. Wait a week or so to allow the content enough time to gain traction within the platform algorithms. Then, you can go ahead and check both public and back-end metrics. Public metrics include views, likes, and comments. Typically, the most important of these is viewership, which indicates the video’s reach. Access to back-end metrics should be stipulated in your contract; these include information about video “completion rate,” or the percentage of people that watched the video in its entirety, video retention, and viewer demographics.
And that’s it! Overall, working with influencers is a great way to share your message online with new audiences and following these steps will make this process as smooth as possible for your organization.
