Whitelisting Social Media

A new buzz in the world of digital marketing and a strategy that seems to surpass the returns of traditional advertisement, influencer marketing is a fancy for marketers to drive engagement to their brands. Considered more efficient than a traditional marketing approach, influencer whitelisting is nowadays a marketer’s go-to strategy to bring the experience as close as possible to a potential customer.

But, what gives whitelisting a hint of authenticity? How is it capable of bringing both awareness and revenues to the brand? Despite being a relatively new concept in the digital world, research indicates influencer marketing to be perceived as the most trustworthy form of communication by the brand.

To learn more about the myriad of opportunities brought by whitelisting, let us delve deeper into whats and hows.

What is Whitelisting on Social Media?

Behind this fancy whitelisting is a process through which a brand obtains permission from a social media influencer to run campaigns and promote itself under the person’s identity. It is a framework through which the influencer allows a brand to advertise through its platform, create awareness, and increase revenues in exchange for a monetary benefit.

Influencer marketing is a form of paid media through which an influencer grants permission to a brand to run campaigns through their social media ads manager. The brand gets the opportunity to optimize its content through adding call-to-action options, offering promotions, or just increasing viewability through naturally appearing content.

Bound by a contract, both the brand and the influencer mutually benefit from the partnership where the former is able to closely target the customer base, and the latter benefits by increased traffic and a new audience to their platform.

How to design an influencer marketing strategy?

Influencer whitelisting is the new hype among marketers due to its ability to build trust about the brand in the customer base. Instead of promotional content coming directly from the brand, whitelisting offers a third-party recommendation to customers, subtly strengthing the brand image.

To get the most out of every whitelisted influencer content, here are the practices to aid you through:

Develop Strong Content

Just like the main goal of any marketing communication is to grab the attention of your audience towards your offering, the key to influencer whitelisting is to showcase the content of what your brand stands for and what it has to offer. Put your investment in the right bucket and develop content that showcases your uniqueness.

It is advised to make use of video content in influencer campaigns which are known to create more engagement than a photo or verbal ads. According to Databox, Video ads have a higher Click-through rate and result in 20% more conversions than static ones.

While developing the content, make sure to

• create aesthetically-pleasing visuals
• choose a theme that goes along with your brand identity
• make the content interesting enough to capture the viewer’s attention in the first 5-10 seconds
• keep concise
• add subtitles if it includes dia or monologues

Design Static Posts

For different marketing campaigns, there are different mediums on social media platforms. For example, Instagram stories, Facebook polls, TikTok reels, etc. However, for influencer marketing, make sure to use static (photos, videos, stories, highlights, etc.) posts only. Facebook Carousel post can not be whitelisted.

Bring Neutral Voices

The finest bonus of influencer marketing is the third party involved in vouching for your brand. Influencer content allows your brand to reach the target audience through a neutral, unique voice that is often perceived as an authentic source. To make sure that the influencer portrays the right brand message, work on developing an understanding relationship before the contract.

Optimize paid media through using specific brand-related keywords in the content, drawing a positive message, and designing a checklist of dos and don’ts for the influencer.

Manage Ad run time

Keep it optimal. Before launching the campaign, prepare a calendar to plan the adequate time for every post. There is no use in running the ad for the summer collection when autumn has already hit. For standard ads, the optimal time frame is 15 days.

What do you need to learn about Influencer Whitelisting?

Since now you have explored what is whitelisting and how to design one, it is time to know how to optimize this marketing strategy. The challenges faced while relying on organic posts also come along in paid ads. Hence, to get the maximum of sponsored content, here are a few additional measures that need to be considered:

Identify the right influencers

A media strategy is developed to portray what a brand is about through every touchpoint. An influencer campaign is also carried out to turn a brand’s identity into its image. While doing so, it is important to recognize which influencer stands for or is a perfect fit for your brand so the effort is translated into brand awareness. For example, if you sell athletic gear or workout wear, the most appropriate choice will be to partner with a gym/sports enthusiast.

Moreover, it is important to verify that the influencer you approach for whitelisting has a business and a verified account in order to give you the required permissions to target and build a lookalike audience.

Discuss whitelisting permissions

The process of granting advertising permissions to run ad campaigns is a tricky part. This involves varying steps depending on whether the influencer channel has a business manager, the type of account, and the requirements of granting advertising access for Facebook and Instagram ads. For this, the brand partners often plan detailed live sessions with influencers, make use of software solutions, or outsource an agency to aid the process.

Provide explicit details of the permissions required in the contract to avoid any form of disagreement while amplifying influencer content.

Decide the compensation

Depending on the level of access required, the length of targeted ads, and the usage rights, influencer partnerships are compensated with monetary returns. These marketing efforts must be worth the investment for the whitelisted ads hence, make calculated estimates.

Estimate ROI

Paid ads don’t aid the work attached with measuring the success of your campaign. Just like organic content, influencer ads are run through Facebook ads manager or branded content tools to calculate the impressions, conversions, and hence the success of paid advertising.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

What are the best platforms for Whitelisting?

As long as there are influencers and content creators, any social media platform can be utilized to carry out influencer marketing campaigns. However, the most efficient ones have been Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok.

Facebook and Instagram, besides having a large audience base, are also equipped with built-in tools, such as Facebook business manager account, to ease the process and add to the experience of whitelisting.

How do you whitelist influencers on Facebook?

While whitelisting influencers on Facebook or Instagram, the partner brand needs permission from creators through Facebook Business Managers. The influencer must have a business manager account linked to their Facebook page or Instagram account. Once the brand requests to add the influencer as a business partner, the influencer will have to provide the business manager ID, acceptance of which will allow the brand to use the account for influencer whitelisting.

What is whitelisting on TikTok?

The process of whitelisting on TikTok is similar to other platforms. TikTok allows creating the target audience based on age, gender, and geo-location. Brands can also make custom audiences while influencers whitelisting on the platform.

One fancy component that TikTok ads to Influencer Whitelisting is creativity. TikTok is built with numerous editing functions such as effects, transitions, reels, etc. that enable the influencer to market your brand with creative freedom.

What are dark posts?

Dark posts are a form of paid Facebook and Instagram ads that appear only to your target audiences without showing up on general users and the influencer’s feed. This feature allows a brand to target varying audiences without creating clutter on influencer’s content while eliminating the need to continuously modify the captions.

Create influencer dark posts to enable targeted social media promotions and the ability to amplify existing influencer content.

What are the best practices for an influencer marketing campaign?

While one partner is investing and the other granting access to one’s social media, the partnership’s gist should be to maximize the output for both.

Here are some practices that make successful influencer marketing programs:

• Start with a well-thought-out plan and convey the expectations beforehand to create a bond of trust and mutual understanding for both parties
• Find the right social media account, discuss contract terms, convey requirements while whitelisting influencers
• Form a legally bound contract to avoid complications
• Track the results through ad managers to measure success and aid future digital marketing campaigns

And there you go with all you need to know about influencer whitelisting on social media! Make the influencer content resonate with your brand, run paid ads, and create dark posts to increase brand awareness, earn a new audience, and rule the market with your distinctive offerings.