Influencer Whitelisting is a marketing technique employed by businesses and brands to protect their image while using influencer marketing campaign. You wouldn’t want to hire an influencer who would jeopardize your brand by sending the wrong message out there. When you create a list of influencers that match your brand’s messaging and overall tone, a prosperous ROI is inevitable.

Over the years, we have seen business brands utilize influencer paid ads, influencer sponsored as, and branded ads. The purpose of these ads is to get across to more customers, especially using the various social media channels.

WHAT IS INFLUENCER WHITELISTING?

You can see the influencer whitelisting strategy as a marketing technique that involves an influencer granting a business, brand, or partner advertising permission to their social media pages.

It was invented in 2014 by Twitter, but it has spread to both Instagram and Facebook. When it is done correctly, the brand partner creates and pays for Facebook and Instagram ads on behalf of the influencer. There are lots of benefits that come with branded influencer ads which business brands can leverage.

Also, as an influencer, you can drive lots of benefits from influencer paid ads. In influencer marketing, vetting has always been crucial, and brands are currently seeing its importance. As controversies like PewDiePie’s anti-semitic remarks emerge, influencer whitelisting has become increasingly necessary.

Hiring the wrong influencer can put your business brand at risk, especially when the influencer says or does something controversial. Whitelisting Influencers help you to mitigate some of the risks involved with trusting an influencer with your brand image. It helps you as a business owner to highlight influencer marketers who do not post controversial content and has never worked with competing brands.

There are whitelists put together by hand and others compiled by an algorithm. Both methods serve the same purpose and give the same result, which is to uncover harmful contents that work against brands. Some of such contents include hate speech, racist comment, controversial religious or political content, sexist content, tone-deaf remarks, and the likes. Influencer whitelisting provides brands and businesses with a certain level of protection.

BENEFITS OF INFLUENCER WHITELISTING TO BRANDS AND BUSINESSES.

1. Influencer Whitelisting Helps Brands Avoid Controversial Content

Trusting an influencer with your brand’s reputation is one of the most significant risks that come with influencer marketing. Social media provides a place for authentic and immediate thoughts. However, if you fail to use social media carefully; your brand can quickly end on the wrong side of a PR nightmare.

Through influencer sponsored ads, brands can avoid being associated with negative attention from the public. Whitelists help your business brand analyze influencer’s past content to mitigate the risk of controversy. Some agencies regularly vet influencers for controversial content engagement and their previous work with competing brands.

The success of influencer marketing campaigns is highly dependent on the quality control and vetting of influencers. With whitelists, business brands maintain a trusted and stable base of dependable and brand-safe influencers. Most times, deciding what is controversial is not always straightforward. For example, YouTube has a unique way of determining the channels and influencers that are brand safe.

Some time ago, the YouTube platform ran into an ad controversy when advertisers discovered that their ads were being played right before and alongside videos containing some elements of hate speech and derogatory comments. YouTube responded by revising its ad policy and implemented a filter to weed out not ad-friendly videos.

As a brand, your company or business decides what is offensive and what is not. Some brands will be comfortable with political activism. It is in the hands of the advertisers to determine what their audience value so they can whitelist accordingly.

2. Whitelists Help Your Brand Avoid Ineffective Partnerships

You shouldn’t see whitelisting as strictly a way to tackle controversial content; it can also be used to determine the most effective influencer in promoting your brand’s message.

Every influencer relies much on authenticity to make strong & loyal connections with their audience. The money from influencer sponsored ads is essential to an influencer. However, influencers that overwhelm their audience risk losing their essential authenticity.

Many brands love to work with marketing influencers who have not partnered with their competitors. When you are in a crowded industry, one of the ways you can stand out with a specific engaged audience is to partner with a famous influencer. When you partner with an influencer who is also hired by your competitor, your effort to stand out becomes defeated.

Influencer whitelisting helps brands identify the best-suited influencer candidate for your brand. While partnering with marketing influencers, your brand’s reputation is the priority and must be protected. Also, whitelisting allows business brands to leverage great influencer content for other benefits like:

• It gives brands control over who sees the influencer’s whitelisted content. Moreover, brands can target an audience that do not follow the influencer.
• Brands can have the chance to make minor edits or changes to the influencer’s post. You should note that every good brand partner always shows the influencer what the edited post looks like. The brand partner can use tools like SocialCert or simply by emailing the influencer the link to the edited post.

THE BENEFITS OF INFLUENCER WHITELISTING TO INFLUENCERS

Whitelisting does not only benefit business brands, but the influencers are also benefited as well. Here are the major benefits of influencers.

1. Influencers get paid

In the process of helping brands reach more audiences using their social media pages, they get paid. Whether it is through influencer paid ads, influencer sponsored ads, or branded influencer ads; these influencers get paid. As an influencer, you are simply at the comfort of your home, receiving payments for granting brand access to your social media page.

1. Gives the influencer an extended reach

This is one of the major advantages of Whitelisting to influencers. Business brands use influencer marketing to tap into a wider and like-minded audience while also increasing the influencer’s reach. These new audiences may not have interacted previously with the social media channel of the influencer. You can imagine brands paying to put your content in front of people who are very likely to follow you.

1. Increase in your fan base

Influencer whitelisting can help boost your visibility on social media, thereby helping you generate a bigger fan base. With attractive and highly engaging content, viewers will be more likely to share or better yet, start following the channel. In the end, it can lead to greater brand awareness and audience participation.

1. It can help boost engagement

Whitelisted content can help influencers experience exponential growth with their engagements. According to Research from InfluencerDB, sponsored posts are more likely to generate higher engagement than non-sponsored posts. The reason for such a trend is because influencers are poised to create high-quality content when they are sponsored. Also, the Instagram Explore Page Algorithm gives higher precedence to high-quality content.

1. Build lasting partnerships and symbiotic relationships

Branded influencer ads and whitelisting is always a win-win strategy for both brands and influencers. As brands tap into the organic audience of the influencer using their authentic tone. The influencer also experiences an increase in exposure and potential follower growth. This symbiotic relationship paves the way for a long-term professional partnership and an effective influencer marketing campaign.

HOW INFLUENCER WHITELISTING WORKS

The rationale behind influencer whitelisting is to put together the best attributes of Facebook Ads Manager and Influencer marketing. The influencer permits brands to run influencer paid Ads; influencer sponsored Ads, and branded influencer Ads on his profile. This makes the post appear naturally on an Instagram feed and other social media channels of the influencer. Business brands invest in these branded contents and then use Ads manager to target a specific audience and track post-performance.

Influencer marketing campaigns provide an authoritative third-party recommendation. This is a great way for brands to get more out of a partnership other than more views, likes, and comments. Brands can capitalize on influencer whitelisting through some best practices.

THE BEST PRACTICES FOR INFLUENCER WHITELISTING

1. Branded video content is the key

By using video content, you can showcase who you are as a company and brand. It is known that videos generate more and better engagements than static photo ads. The Databox reports that video ads increase click-through rate by a whopping 20% and they also perform 9x better than static photos. If you want your video ads to perform well, make use of the tips listed below.

• Your videos should be clean and straight to the point
• You should make them short and concise
• If your video contains dialogue, ensure you provide subtitles
• Show your audience something that is original

       2. Make use of static posts alone 

When setting up your influencer marketing campaign, there are different types of posts to consider. You have the Instagram stories, polls, pictures, videos, highlights and many more. Ensure your influencers makes use of static posts only. The truth is that you cannot whitelist a carousel post.

1. Ensure you optimize the influencer’s testimonial

Of all the benefits that come with influencer marketing, presenting your brand’s message in different and unique voices is one of the greatest. When you allow an influencer control over how they present your product, you are allowing a natural tone to prosper. However, you need to ensure the influencer gets the message and story correct. To achieve this, you have to optimize the testimonial for maximum brand success and authenticity.

1. Increase the run time for ads

Although marketers disagree on the optional amount of time required for an ad post, in reality, it all depends on the content. Your ads come with a limited time offer, so there is no reason to run past the offer’s end date. Whenever you are in doubt, always make your video for at least 15 days minimum for standard ads.

1. Compare and contrast your performance

When you make use of influencer whitelisting as a form of influencer marketing, the goal is to have a better return on investment (ROI) than traditional marketing techniques. You should always compare your performance with what you were getting while using traditional marketing techniques. Also, you can compare different influencers to determine which one is most beneficial for your business.

 WAYS AN INFLUENCER CAN COMPLETE A WHITELIST REQUEST

When sending a white list request to an influencer, there are three ways the influencer can complete the whitelist request. They are explained below.

• The influencer can give you his/her name and password and trust that you don’t highjack the account. However, most influencers are advised against this approach.
• An influencer can also grant you permission through the FaceBook Business Manager. This might require that you create a new Facebook Business Manager if you don’t already have one. Here, you are required to know your way around Facebook advertising tools.
• You can decide to request whitelisting permission through Yr Influencer. An email will be sent to your potential influencer with a button that will take him or her through an automated flow.

THE RISKS OF INFLUENCER WHITELISTING

As you have seen there are numerous benefits to both the influencers and brands in partnership. A brand partner who has whitelisting access to an influencer’s account can create an ad and run it through the account. You can have branded influencer ads, influencer paid ads, or even influencer sponsored ads all running through your account. As an influencer, you need to be careful with the type of partner you give access to your social media page. Also, the partner can also target anyone, thereby overwhelming the influencer to the point of annoyance.

CONCLUSION

Going through this article, we want to believe that you have been well enlightened regarding influencer whitelisting. You have also seen the application of influencer paid ads; influencer sponsored ads and branded influencer ads. Remember that as a brand, your reputation is your priority. Also, if you are an influencer, don’t hand over access to your account to anyone that appears to have a business. Always know who you are dealing with when it comes to influencer whitelisting.