Your influencer goals will be to drive traffic, boost sales, build awareness for other brands, and continue to establish yourself as a leader in your niche. It’s not difficult to do these things while still building a loyal following. However, you must always be careful to be transparent.

 

There are dozens of influencers across social media platforms that are not transparent. Their methods, in some cases, border on fraudulent. They don’t follow the rules of their social media network of choice and they promote any company that’s willing to hire them.

 

You want to build your following using methods that are authentic. This means that if you work jointly with a brand or you’re promoting someone, you need to be upfront about the collaboration, sponsoring, or selling.

 

Influencer marketing is a good thing but it has a seedy underside where people use or are tempted to use strategies that violate legal guidelines and cross ethical boundaries.

As an influencer who’s transparent, the information you’re giving your audience should never be deceptive. Don’t hide your collaboration with a brand or other influencer. By acting like you just happened to find this great service or product, you give the reader the impression that you don’t benefit in any way from mentioning or sharing the info.

 

Instead, be honest with your followers about how you “found” something, why you trust the person or product, and how you benefit from the business relationship that you have with the brand behind the promotion. This can be as simple as using #sponsored at the end of your post.

 

If you don’t clearly call an advertisement an ad, then you risk getting into trouble with the social media network. Worse than that, you risk permanently losing the trust of your audience. Once you’ve lost that trust, it can be difficult to rebuild it.

 

There might be situations where only some of the content you’re talking about is promoted. For example, maybe you’re doing a tutorial on how to bake gluten-free cookies.

 

Most of the recipe uses common household ingredients. However, you’re getting an incentive from the company that makes the almond flour. Even when you only recommend or promote one item, you still need to tell your audience that the company gave you a free bag to try, in exchange for your honest opinion.

 

It’s important that you’re transparent as an influencer because what you say can affect the buying decisions of your followers. What some influencers and marketers have found effective is to promise to be ethical. For example, you might say, “I’ll never promote a beauty product to you that I wouldn’t recommend to my sister. I promise to only share products that I believe in 100%.”

 

If you don’t disclose an association with a brand or company, your followers may feel your recommendations were slanted. They may even think that your opinions were “bought” and can’t be trusted in the future.

 

The most important part about being transparent is showing that you care about your audience. They don’t mind if you bring a product to their attention. What they mind is if it’s not relevant, and you wouldn’t use it frequently yourself. If they feel that you’re only promoting it to make a commission or receive some kind of incentive, you’ve just lost their trust and you’ll see fewer and fewer click-throughs.

 

Audiences love what’s honest and what’s real. When you practice that, your outreach can’t help but grow.