Remember, briefs are not scripts – we still need to allow the influencers to put their creative spin on the content to ensure it feels authentic to their pages and audience, but the brief can give them guardrails and direction on how to integrate the brand and brand messaging.
Help the influencer get to know your brand personality and your product’s features and benefits. Share a few sentences explaining your company’s brand and a style guide that outlines your brand voice. You can even include examples of past campaigns you’ve run with influencers to offer a feel for your brand and product.
“By providing clear and concise direction to the influencers within the briefing process, you have a better chance of top-notch content with limited revisions during the review process. Setting the campaign up successfully during the briefing process will allow for a smoother and faster executional phase.”
What is an influencer brief?
Last, but certainly not least, include disclosure details the influencer needs to know for the campaign. Make sure that the influencer knows the FTC guidelines for sponsored content, such as adding the #ad hashtag or otherwise indicating that a post is sponsored content. Influencers are required to disclose any relationships they have with a brand when sharing its products or services. If the influencer is hosting a contest or giveaway, additional legal requirements may apply depending on the platform.
Influencer marketing is one of the fastest-growing marketing channels, and, based on predictions for 2022, it shows no signs of slowing down. Over 90% of consumers engage influencers on a weekly basis on Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, and Snapchat.
Here are some of the most important pieces of information to include in your influencer brief.
What should an influencer brief include?
Next, let the influencer know what kind of content you want them to post and what you want them to include therein. Do you want a product demo, or a more subtle inclusion or mention of your product? The content you ask your influencer partner to create will depend on the goals of your campaign.
An introduction to your brand and product
All in all, an influencer brief is essential for setting your campaign and influencer partnership up for success. Keep in mind that each campaign and influencer partnership is different, so each influencer brief will ultimately be unique.
Campaign overview
Explain the concept and goal of your marketing campaign, as well as your target audience. You can even include a “mood board” to provide images that fit the style and tone you’re looking for in your campaign. Include any specific messaging you want to make sure the influencer adds to their post, story, or caption. Clear messaging points help make sure that the posts work toward your campaign goal. If there are any features or benefits you want the influencer to highlight, indicate those here. Most importantly, any calls to action should also be called out – if we are trying to get their followers to take an action, we need to make that clear.
If you want the influencer to tag your brand or include a specific hashtag in their caption or story, include that information as well.
An influencer marketing brief is a document that you share with influencers before they begin creating content for a campaign or project. The brief lays out the goals, timeline, deliverables, guidelines, brand/product details and calls to action (CTAs) for a campaign. 
Campaign deliverables
– Crystal Duncan, SVP of Influencer Marketing at Tinuiti
Again, you don’t need to give your influencer partner an exact script or boilerplate to copy and paste in their caption. To give them the creativity to show their own personality – and avoid posts that come across as overly corporate – limit your brief to a few key messaging points.
If you choose to make influencer marketing part of your 2022 marketing strategy, finding and partnering with the right influencers is only the first step. For that partnership to thrive once you start running campaigns, you need to maintain communication and alignment – and an influencer brief can help you do exactly that.
For example, if you’re working with an Instagram influencer, your brief should include what kind of content you want them to create, how many posts and stories the influencer will share, the dates and times for each post, and any account tags or branded hashtags to add.
Messaging
You should also include details on your campaign’s goals and how you plan to measure success. Are you trying to drive sales? Increase engagement? Reach a new audience? When you share those goals with your influencer partner, you make sure that you’re on the same page and set up for success. Your influencer partner needs to know what platform and accounts you want them to post on, as well as what types of content you want them to post. Many influencers have more than one account on the same platform, so clear information on your expected deliverables helps make the campaign go smoothly. You should also include a posting schedule for the campaign.
Technical details
Briefs are an excellent way for everyone involved in a campaign to get on the same page. They offer a clear overview of your expectations, guidelines, and goals, which in turn helps influencers create content that gets results.
In this article, we’ll explain what an influencer brief is and how to create a brief that sets you and the influencer you partner with up for success.
