So I’ve seen Barbie, but not Oppenheimer. And yes, I wore pink, as provided by my operations manager… which, yes, means I made my first hire! Which we’ll talk about another day, because it’s an employee model I’ve wanted to try for a long time… but I digress. Until I can grab 70MM Imax Oppenheimer tix, let’s talk about:

—Jack Appleby

Why your brand should use Influencer Marketing Platforms to work with creators

Alright, Marketers—I know you know it’s time to take Influencer Marketing more seriously. The creators themselves are certainly ready & waiting—86% of influencers say they want to increase the # of brands they work.

But I also get that it’s not particularly easy to get started with Influencer Marketing. You’ve gotta peel off budget, set KPIs, find creators you wanna work with, vet said creators, find someone internally to manage those creators, brief ‘em, approve content, monitor the campaign… I’ll cut myself off there before I scare you away, because there is a solution.

Let’s back up a bit & talk fundamentals of Creator Marketing.

How do brands hire influencers?

Most Brand + Influencer relationships fall in one of three buckets:

As a marketer, I’ve tried ‘em all. They all have unique pros and cons depending on your influencer knowhow, budget, and how much time you’ve got.

Direct Relationships: more control, more work

Direct relationships give more control, but are easily the most work. Are you gonna scour the internet for influencers yourself? You gonna find new ones when your first picks are too expensive or not available? And how are you even going to find their contact information and guarantee you’ve reached them? Plus, you’ve got time to manage the back-and-forth, right?

Brands often work directly with influencers when: you’ve got a specific creator you’re targeting that you know how to reach, have a downscaled influencer program, or when you want to very closely manage the Influencer/Brand relationship.

Influencer Agencies: more cohesiveness, more money

Influencer agencies should be a great answer, but they’re gonna cost ya. I worked at two advertising agencies that had sister influencer agencies I was required to include in pitches. One had 100% mark-up on the creators. That’s not a typo. You basically paid the agency double to build the campaign, which, hey, it’s a campaign, but your wallet will hurt. Agencies also rarely let you speak directly with creators—they wanna own that relationship. Makes sense, but is that right for you?

Brands work with influencer agencies when: you need help crafting a cohesive story for a large-scale influencer campaign and have money to blow.

Influencer Marketing Platforms: ease, ease, ease

Influencer Marketing Platforms are your one-stop shop. You log into a platform that’ll house your entire initiative—discovery, recruitment, briefing, performance analysis, social listening, two-way comms, payment, and more–all the works. Generally, they have their own database of influencers they pull from and conduct outreach to, making the whole process streamlined for both parties.

Take impact.com, my frequent partners and sponsor today. I recently demoed their platform and was very happy to see clear explainers at every step of their tool’s onboarding process. They’ve got a deep pool of creators, too—80,000+ opted-in, ready to work with you. The platform’s even friendly on the creator side, making deal alignment very easy—important considering 84% of creators say they get more requests than they can handle.

You should work with Influencer Marketing Platforms when: you need an automated and thorough process across the full funnel, want to foster long-term relationships, and to measure ROI across all touchpoints, and wish to pay creators via various options and compensation models–and want to do all of these with ease and automation. It’s the cherry on top when one of these companies offers managed services in addition to their software.

Let’s talk about my favorite Influencer Marketing Platform, impact.com / creator

You’ve heard me sing impact.com’s praises throughout the newsletter today—they recently became the takes deep breath first performance platform to let you discover, create, manage, and scale full-funnel influencer marketing programs, all from a single interface, that’ll also get you access to their opt-in network of 80,000+ creators. Additionally, with impact.com Studio, you have access to a team of strategic experts to scale your program. They’ve been wonderful partners, working together as sponsors of today’s newsletter!

Trust me—you want an all-in-one influencer tool like this. I’ve worked with the good folks over there a few times now—big brains. You’ll get so much more than simple brand awareness if you’re using a platform like theirs.

Social Cues

There are so many social big thinkers out there, writing all kinds of amazing strategies, analysis, and breakdowns. All ships rise with the tide, so here are a few reads from other places I think you could learn from.

An employee’s guide to building a personal brand (SparkToro)

Amanda Natividad is one of my favorite Twitterers… err, Xers? What do we call those people now? Anyway, she’s sharp & does a great job representing herself & her employer, SparkToro. If you wanna start tweeting about work, check out her guide.

Twitter’s new Creator Ads Revenue Sharing Program (Twitter Help)

Elon’s trying to attract Creators to the platform that’s historically done nothing for Creators. His tactic? Money. Read about the new Ad Revenue Sharing model’s rules here. I qualified for the program and will be tweeting my thoughts once I get my first return.

Your career is just one-eighth of your life (The Atlantic)

I really worry about how closely we all tie our identities to our jobs. Give this a read for some perspective.