This document discusses best practices for working with influencers to co-create content. It recommends identifying program goals, researching and recruiting influencers, developing content with them, inspiring promotion of that content, measuring results, and maintaining ongoing relationships. Specifically, it advises setting clear expectations, selecting relevant topics aligned with influencers' interests, developing modular content that can be customized and shared widely, and providing influencers with sharing tools to maximize reach. The overall goal is to create mutually beneficial partnerships that increase visibility for both brands and influencers.

1. Masters of CX
Influence the
Influencers -
The Magic of
Co-Created
Content
By Lee Odden
CEO
TopRank Online Marketing
Published by Econsultancy in association with Offerpop

2. Influence the Influencers / Lee Odden
Digital consumers are facing
a deluge of options when it
comes to making information
choices online.
According to a recent study out of the Marshall
School of Business, the average American will
consume 74 gigabytes per day.
That’s roughly 15 and a half hours of media
per person.
// Source: ecly.co/1rq8Kt8

3. New challenges, new opportunities
Today we live in an age of information overload where the speed of
content discovery and the variety of options for media consumption
across computer, tablet and mobile devices present new challenges
for brands and consumers alike.
The natural response for consumers is to filter their choices and focus
those few sources which are most trusted, credible and meaningful.
For brands that want to differentiate and even dominate in their
category, becoming known as ‘the best answer’ for their domain of
expertise will have enormous impact.
The challenge of increased digital sophistication brings an
opportunity: businesses can differentiate and capture market attention
by growing their authority and influence. First, they must embrace a
content-centric, customer-focused model based on an understanding
of target audience preferences for information discovery, consumption
and interaction.
Content is a top priority for brands
According to Econsultancy’s 2014 Digital
Trends briefing, content marketing is the top
priority for marketers and one of the most
exciting opportunities in the field.
But various studies suggest that content also
presents some challenges; companies find it
difficult to produce enough content, as well as
create content that engages and has enough
variety.
Even when companies are able to produce
high quality, relevant content on a regular
basis, the challenge of distribution and reach plagues many. Part
of the solution is to connect content creation with influencers that
already have communities they engage with on the same topics.
Managing the Content Agency
Stefan Tornquist, VP Research at
Econsultancy and Editor of #MastersofCX
Broadly speaking, the best content comes from people who are deeply
invested and knowledgeable in the subject. That’s why Lee’s advice on
influencers is so important – they’re going to provide that knowledge
and passion even though they aren’t in-house.
Many companies are under pressure to efficiently produce a high
volume of content, and they turn to agencies for help. But ask ten
marketers about using an agency for content and you’ll get ten opinions
from negative to enthusiastic. Like any agency vs in-house debate, it’s
all about how the individual relationship is managed;
It’s not turn-key (at least not for a while) – the first
weeks or months of an agency relationship need to be
collaborative. If you want to sit back down the road as
your agency produces great, relevant content, then make
sure to spend the time up front making them familiar with
your company, your products and the content pools they’ll
be swimming in.
Generate ideas and strategy together – even as the
relationship matures it’s vital for the brand (you) to stay
involved in content strategy. One of the best ways to do
that is to be part of regular idea sessions (monthly at
least) where you are the voice of your long-term strategy.
Get past the numbers and be the consumer – like many
things in marketing, it’s a lot easier to measure content
success by volume than long-term impact. One way to
encourage deep positive results like increased retention
rates is to think like your target market. Is the content
you’re producing meaningful or is it just so consumable
that lots of people are interacting with it? Hopefully it’s
both, but you are ultimately the one to speak with the
“voice of the customer.”
1
2
3

4. Consumer content and authority.
Brands aren’t the only non-traditional online publishers. Consumers
are also able to publish through social networks and media, blogs and
increasingly easy contributions to online publications. In fact, there
are now over 250 million Tumblr and Wordpress.com blogs alone.
Besides creating topically competitive content, consumer publishing
has empowered individuals to attract their own audiences and
become as influential as some of the companies they buy from.
In addition to working with established influencers, brands can nurture
future influencers to create a more effective brand community that
exponentially scales reach and engagement.
There are now over 250 million Tumblr
and Wordpress.com blogs alone.
The shock of content proliferation.
As a result of the content explosion, brands are faced with the
reality that the majority of the content they produce might never be
discovered or engaged. At the same time, brands must recognize that
their own consumers are becoming more influential about the same
topics brands are spending advertising and marketing budgets on.
When consumers are empowered to create, consume, publish,
interact and transact anytime, anywhere, how do brands break
through to create meaningful connections and engagement? How
does the dynamic of content and influence help fulfill consumer
information discovery, consumption and engagement expectations
while delivering on business outcomes for the brand?
As a vehicle for influence, content is one of the most powerful tools in
a digital marketer’s mix to attract, engage and inspire buyers to act.

5. Content is
the currency
for building
relationships
that can boost
credibility,
influence and
action.
The content + influence solution.
A content and influencer marketing strategy can be one of the most
effective combinations a marketing and communications organization
can make. By incorporating relevant influencers that can inspire
action with content marketing efforts, marketers can reach new
audiences with brand messages that are credible and trusted.
Influencer-driven content marketing is also one of the best examples
of how digital marketing and public relations are converging. The
integration of messaging, content, social media and engagement
right along with the promotion of information and media, designed to
inspire transactions, should be the focus of any business that wants
to differentiate and grow.
Buyers trust influential experts.
A study from inPowered & Nielsen reveals that 85% of consumers
seek out trusted experts when considering a purchase. Additionally,
expert content resulted in an 88% lift in brand familiarity and 38% lift
in purchase intent over branded content.
While brand content and native advertising are effective, working with
industry influencers to co-create content is an approach that yields
surprising results.
85%
of consumers seek
out trusted experts
when considering
a purchase.
88%
lift in brand
familiarity as a
result of expert
content.

6. Influencer eBooks Get Results.
A recent influencer content program run in conjunction with Content
Marketing Institute and sponsored by Curata yielded a series
of eBooks and infographics featuring influencers from 40 major
brands. Within 30 days the series attracted over 125,000 views on
SlideShare, over 3,000 PDF downloads and 800-plus requests for
more information. These metrics are in addition to blog and media
coverage, social shares and links which will contribute to continued
exposure of the campaign assets via search and social media.
By connecting with market and niche influencers and working with
them to achieve mutually beneficial goals, modern marketers can
create invaluable relationships with authoritative experts. These
connections can result in the creation of high quality, relevant and
authoritative content that serves the interests of the influencer and
the brand as well as providing access and reach to the influencer’s
community.
Everyone is influential about something.
Influencers can be industry professionals, they could also be inside a
company as subject matter experts or a company’s own customers.
Influencer relationships with brands often include a value exchange
of some kind and it’s up to the company and influencer to decide
whether that’s an exchange of information, visibility, compensation or
something else.
The essential questions.
To be effective when working with influencers, businesses need
to consider what they want the influencer to do for them beyond a
simple endorsement.
• How will the influencer’s involvement help the company reach a
particular business goal?
• What will an ongoing relationship with influencers mean to the
brand’s marketing efforts and reputation in the industry?
• Also, what kind of content does it make the most sense for the
influencer to contribute to?
• How does the brand want to be known and which influencers
already have that credibility and authority?
These questions and more will be answered in the following model for
influencer content co-creation.
Influencers are credible, authoritative individuals who have
an engaged community that follows and acts on their thought
leadership.
Influencer marketing is working with influencers to effect
change in thought and action among a network towards
goals that are mutually beneficial to the brand, the influencer
and their community. Whether it is a partnership to co-create
content or more general advocacy, influencers open doors
for brands to connect with engaged consumers they might
otherwise never reach in a meaningful way.

7. Influence the Influencers / Lee Odden
best practices for working with and influencing
influencers to co-create content:
1
2
3
4
5
6
Identify Influencer
Program Goals
Research, Engage
and Recruit Influencers
Develop Co-Created
Content with Influencers
Inspire Content Promotion
Influencer Measurement
and Program Optimization
Ongoing Influencer
Relationships
Six

8. 1. Identify Influencer Program Goals
Serving different audiences (influencers,
brand, prospects, industry media) requires a
strategy that identifies distinct goals. While
most influencers desire increased visibility,
brands will want to grow their expertise for
a topic among a target audience and attract
new business. Consumers of the influencer
content will want expert information from
someone they trust. Industry news media
will want examples they can reference and
subject matter experts they can cite.
Just starting out, co-created influencer
content can be as simple as a value
exchange: increased exposure for both the
influencer and the brand with the objective of
attracting new target audience engagement
and influencing a spectrum of conversion
actions: subscribe, download, register,
request information.
As an influencer content program matures,
goals can become more sophisticated and
multi-faceted to include public relations,
recruiting, customer marketing and more
advanced customer acquisition.
Influencer content programs should be tied
into the content marketing plan and editorial
calendar. An important part of designing an
effective influencer content program is to
identify the specific topics to be covered.
Specifying topics and themes will drive all
subsequent actions in the program from
influencer recruiting, to planning which media
type to create, to content promotion.
2. Research, Engage and Recruit
Influencers
It’s important to identify the key themes
that represent topical focus for the brand,
the product or service and the campaign
or program that you will creating with
influencers. The sooner your company
specifies these topical areas of focus, the
sooner influencers can be identified and
engaged.
“The time to start
recruiting influencers
is long before you
need them.
Romance takes time.”
It’s often useful to start with executives,
marketing, communications and product
managers to develop a list of topical experts
and even nominations of specific individual
influencers. Attending industry events can
also reveal influencers who are presenting,
and meeting them in person can initiate a
relationship.
Influencer sourcing and engagement
takes time. Many influencer co-created
content projects will draw from both existing
influencer relationships and involve making
new influencer connections. Initial recruiting

9. might be limited to small, easy projects that
advance the relationship to more robust and
substantial time commitments.
The most common mistake businesses make
with influencers is to qualify them based
purely on network size (fans, friends and
followers) and affinity to a certain industry or
area of interest. Without the ability to affect
the way a network thinks and how they act,
an influencer isn’t really influencing anyone.
It’s more likely that they are a ‘brandividual’.
Those characterizations will be useful with
influencer discovery tools like Followerwonk
or Little Bird which both focus on Twitter.
There are also robust tools like Traackr,
BuzzSumo or GroupHigh.
After you use a tool to identify and initially
qualify influencers for each topic, then you
can bring that list back to your internal subject
matter experts to manually review and filter.
Of course, no influencer discovery tool is
perfect. Correlation among multiple tools
and sources might take more time, but it’s
a best practice for distinguishing between
brandividuals and effective influencers.
When recruiting influencers, there are several
important considerations:
• Relevancy and effort to ask ratio - It
has to be timely and on message with
what they stand for. It also has to be
easy for them to do. Popular, smart
people are busy!
• Be clever or humorous - Nothing
cuts through the crap like humor but
most of all, be a real person when you
communicate, not salesy, pushy or
entitled.
• You are a known entity - Having a
reputation as a brand or being a well-known
person in the industry is very
useful. Previous personal contact with
the influencer is even more valuable.
• Vision of the project - Be able
to articulate what the influencer’s
involvement will be and what it will do
for them personally. Also show how the
project will help others.
• Optimize for attract - Create influencer
projects so good and so well known,
people compete to be involved.
What doesn’t work
Presumptive, high expectation recruiting
pitches with no personalization and little
upside for the influencer rarely work. It’s the
equivalent of a stranger approaching you and
saying, “Let’s get married”.
The time to start creating relationships with
influencers is long before you actually need
them. If a company is thinking that working
with influencers is even a remote possibility,
they should start identifying, qualifying and
engaging with them now. That way, when the
time comes to work together on a project,
there’s already some familiarity and credibility
before “the ask”.
Effective influencer recruiting for content
co-creation projects comes down to being
relevant and interesting, respectful and
delivering a great experience that results in a
desire for more.
3. Develop Co-Created Content with
Influencers
The content marketing plan for co-created
influencer content should identify the primary
and sub-themes, the influencers to work with
for those assets, the types of contributions
the influencers will make, the type of content
to be created, deconstructed component
parts, social share messages and details on
repurposing.
Go modular
Modular content planning allows pre-promotion
of the co-created content project
to build momentum for launch and then
deconstruction of the content for customized
repurposing and social promotion on
networks, blogs, and the media.
“A brandividual is popular.
An influencer is effective
at creating popularity.”

10. Select topics
Topics represent the themes and areas of
focus for planning editorial and for sourcing
influencers. Topic alignment between brand,
influencer and community is essential for
mutual value to be created.
Identify type of content or media mix
Types of content are often determined by the
content marketing plan and target audience.
At the same time, there are some types
of content more amenable to co-creation
with influencers such as eBooks, reports,
blog posts, quoted infographics and video
compilations. A clear line of sight must be
present between the co-created content and
the content objectives in the marketing plan.
Once influencers, topics and media types
are identified, a campaign to request content
is initiated. Setting expectations during the
recruitment phase for how participation will
work is essential. Influencers are busy people
and providing a timeline with due date, clear
instructions and even examples will result in
a higher participation rate.
Influencer content collection requests are
effective when a few A-list influencers are
already on board with the project. Leverage
their name recognition to influence other
influencers to participate.
Be prepared to send two to three content
collection emails and when the deadline
arrives, do not be afraid to use a fear of loss
pitch. But by all means, be cordial, helpful
and respectful.
4. Inspire Content Promotion
Influencer communications should provide
expectations and clear timelines along
with the benefits for all when a co-created
influencer content project is successful.
Providing influencers with tools such as
sharing images, pre-written tweets, embed
codes and short URLs can substantially
increase promotion participation and reach.
There are four important considerations when
encouraging influencers to help promote the
content they helped your company create.
Create content worth sharing. Topics that
address issues that are important to the
influencer will get your foot in the door and
useful, visually compelling content will inspire
them to open that door and share. Reaching
out blindly and asking to share doesn’t work
as well as having a connection first and then
asking.
Let the ego do the talking. Content that
includes an influencer’s contribution will
probably get shared even more. Because
let’s face it, people love to see themselves
get recognized. Better yet, ask them to
participate in the creation of the content.
However, when mentioning influencers in
content it’s essential that it be credible, high
quality and creative. Most influencers have
caught on to the tactic of simply mentioning
famous industry people just to get them to
share. There must be value created that
inspires and earns the share.

11. Make it fun and easy. When emailing a
promotion request, consider making it funny
or at least clever. We’ve gone so far as to
write outlandish examples of what NOT to do
or suggest fake prizes for contributing like his/
her beard scarves or beef jerky underwear.
Also make it especially easy for the influencer
to share. Capture their attention, succinctly
explain what it is and what you want them
to do. Then offer pre-written social share
text that’s even personalized just for them.
You may even create a resource page with
images and other share options for them to
use.
Pay them. Either compensate the influencer
with information and promotion or simply pay
them to share your content. Once you start
down this road, it’s pretty difficult to get off, so
plan for continued compensation once you
start.
5. Influencer Measurement and
Program Optimization
Individual influencer promotions of the co-created
content project can be measured
based on social network shares, sentiment of
those shares, engagement on the topic, links
and blog pickups.
Embeds used by influencers to create blog
posts can be tracked for referred search
traffic along with referred social traffic from
their links. Referred traffic that results in
website visits can be further analyzed for
metrics such as time on site, categories of
content consumed, leads and sales.
Overall reach, engagement, traffic, leads and
sales for the content project can be tracked
as well, taking note of the contributions made
by influencers towards key performance
metrics like growing affinity between a topic
and the brand as well as business outcomes
like leads and sales.
6. Ongoing Influencer Relationships
Beyond the campaign or program at hand, do
make the effort to continue the relationship
with influencers you have worked with. Focus
on creating a great experience for them and
they’ll be very interested in working with your
brand again on future projects.
The more influencer programs you
develop, the more influencers you will have
connections with and draw from. When it
comes to promotions, you can ask past
influencers who are not part of your current
program to help, since they are aware of the
value that would bring and the effect of “a
rising tide lifts all ships.”
“The more influencer
programs you develop,
the more influencers you
will have connections with
and draw from.”
Ways to stay
connected with
influencers in a
meaningful way
include:
• Offer them feedback after the
program about the effect of
their contribution
• Cite influencers in your future
blog posts
• Connect and engage with
influencers on social networks
• Refer influencer expertise to
other companies that could use
them (i.e. help them get work)
• Cite influencers in contributed
articles to industry magazines,
newspapers, web sites and
newsletters
• Include them in future projects

12. Influence the Influencers / Conclusion
Whether your brand is engaging with
influencers to provide useful information or
you’re co-creating content with influencers to
create a useful industry resource that will be
shared with new communities, there’s a value
exchange that can benefit everyone involved.
Content is the key to that value transfer
between brand and consumer, brand and
influencer and for the overall community
involved.
// Lee Odden

13. About the Masters of CX Published by Econsultancy in association with Offerpop
The Masters of CX series features true marketing thinkers
and industry heavyweights, covering the issues surrounding
your customer experience approach and strategy.
These unique reports will be published between October
and December 2014, along with two dedicated webinar
sessions where you can gain first-hand insight from the
authors on the key issues raised.
We’re delighted to be working with some of the most
influential authors within digital marketing.
Reports in the series include:
Winning Hearts in
Real-time
by Jay Baer
Influence the Influencers
- The Magic of Co-Created
Content
by Lee Odden
Beyond the Sale: Building
Customer Relationships
for Life
by Brian Clark
Empower your Employees
to Power your Customer
Experience
by Ted Rubin
Customer Loyalty
Lessons from Medieval
Times
by Mark Schaefer
Why Brands are Stuck on
Like and Failing at Love
by Mitch Joel
Find out more about the authors and reports at
hello.econsultancy.com/masters-of-cx and
join the discussion using #MastersofCX
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