Introductory Guide to AI in Influencer Marketing

Artificial Intelligence (AI) isn't a newcomer to the tech scene. However, it’s the arrival of sophisticated AI models like ChatGPT that has sparked interest and wide-spread adoption in a range of industries, including influencer marketing.

At Kynship, we're not just witnessing the AI revolution; we're actively embracing it in our processes too. Like many others, we recognize the huge value that AI brings to influencer marketing.

While AI on its own isn’t going to convince hearts to become advocates of your brand, baking AI into your influencer marketing processes can save you time.

In this piece, we're going to explore some great AI-powered tools designed to optimize your influencer discovery, outreach, and paid media efforts. Plus, we're also going to give you a hands-on guide on how to use ChatGPT for influencer identification and crafting outreach scripts. 

🔍 AI and Influencer Identification

The days of manually scrolling hundreds of social media profiles is over. With the rise of AI and advanced algorithms, influencer identification has become possible with just a few clicks or prompts.

StoryClash

AI-powered tools like StoryClash can help you find brand-fit creators quicker by using natural language search queries and analyzing vast amounts of data from Instagram and TikTok.  

Storyclash has launched a tech demo called Storyclash.ai, allowing marketers to describe the content they are looking for and search through millions of Instagram posts to find an influencer.

SwipeMagic

SwipeMagic is an AI-powered tool designed to automate and scale up the process of influencer identification and outreach on TikTok. So if you have a strong focus on scaling influencer or user-generated content, this platform is a game-changer. It allows unlimited custom queries and unlimited CSV contact exports to find thousands of creator email per hour for any niche. 

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ChatGPT

ChatGPT is another powerful AI tool that can boost efficiency in your influencer identification process. 

‍How ChatGPT Can Assist in Finding the Right Influencers (Step-By-Step)‍

By using natural language processing (NLP) combined with audience analysis and sentiment analysis, ChatGPT can help you find influencers that not only match your desired demographics but also genuinely engage with their followers. If you don’t have an influencer in mind, ChatGPT can find you one. Here’s how: 

Step One: Broad search for your brand

💡ChatGPT prompt: "Find me an influencer who would be a good fit for {BRAND}."

Step Two: Narrow down your search

Sometimes, ChatGPT might suggest influencers who are slightly outside your brand's reach. No worries, there's a solution for this. 

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💡 ChatGPT Prompt: "Find me an influencer similar to {INFLUENCER NAME} but with less than X followers." You'll be surprised at how effective the AI can be in finding you a suitable alternative.

If ChatGPT is unfamiliar with your brand because it's new, you can just describe the brand in detail. The AI will then provide you with a list of potential influencers.

Step Three: Identifying Competitors' Influencers

You can take your strategy a step further by asking ChatGPT to identify influencers who work with your competitors. 

💡 ChatGPT prompt: "Find me an influencer that works with competitors of {YOUR BRAND NAME}."

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Step Five: Finding Lookalike Influencers

Once you have a competitor's influencer in sight:

💡ChatGPT prompt: "Find me a lookalike to {INFLUENCER NAME}."

Step Six: Leveraging the TikTok Creator Marketplace

Now, it's time to use another free, but powerful tool— TikTok's Creator Marketplace. Search for the influencer that you've identified in this platform. Check out their profile, which will recommend "Similar Creators". This is how you can transform the single influencer that ChatGPT found into potentially hundreds more. 

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This discovery process is slightly more manual than the two AI tools mentioned above, but that could be a good thing if you want more control over the discovery process.

Next up, influencer outreach!

📨  AI and Influencer Outreach

A persuasive outreach strategy can be the determining factor in the success of your influencer marketing program. Leveraging AI's potential to streamline processes and personalize messages can save you a lot of time.

📩 How ChatGPT Can Help Your Craft Outreach Scripts

ChatGPT offers a lot of room for creativity and planning your entire influencer outreach strategy.

1. Outreach Initial Message: ChatGPT can be prompted to create an engaging, personalized first outreach message that succinctly expresses why you're contacting the influencer. A message might include a brief introduction of your brand, an explanation of why you believe the influencer is a good fit, and a no-strings-attached proposition.
2. Follow-Up Message: If the influencer doesn't respond to your first message, a well-crafted follow-up can be crucial. ChatGPT can assist in writing a polite yet persuasive follow-up email that reiterates your interest in the influencer and your proposal.
3. Content Rights Request: Once an influencer shares content featuring your product or service, you may want to use it for your own promotional purposes. ChatGPT can help generate a professional message asking for the rights to use their content, ensuring to clearly communicate that all credit will be given to the influencer.
4. Negotiating Collaborations: In case of potential partnerships or collaborations, ChatGPT can draft negotiation emails, specifying terms of the partnership, potential compensation, and expectations.
5. Regular Communication: Beyond initial outreach, ChatGPT can assist in maintaining regular contact with influencers, aiding in relationship-building efforts. This might include sending updates, sharing information about new products, or simply checking in.
6. Thank You Messages: ChatGPT can help draft sincere 'thank you' notes after a successful collaboration, reinforcing the positive relationship with the influencer.
7. Dealing with Negative Responses: Should you receive a negative response, ChatGPT can aid in crafting a respectful and understanding reply, showing appreciation for their time and leaving the door open for future opportunities.

Here's an example of how to prompt ChatGPT for an initial outreach message:

💡ChatGPT Prompt: "Write me a personalized, no strings attached message to an influencer for my brand."

Now, let’s look at how ChatGPT can help you with a follow-up message: 

💡ChatGPT Prompt: “Help me answer a negative response from my influencer outreach email.” 

Once you've worked out your outreach script flow, you can begin to incorporate the AI-generated script into an email automation tool.

Influencer Outreach Guide: Steal Our Strategy & Templates to Get Started Quickly

🚀 Scaling Influencer Outreach with Automation Tools

To take your influencer outreach process to the next level, use automation tools such as Instantly and Apollo.

Instantly

Instantly offers unlimited email warm-up, ample contact space, and a single inbox to track email opens and replies.

Apollo 

Apollo is another robust influencer outreach tool that helps in scaling your outreach efforts.

You can copy and paste the messages generated by ChatGPT into these tools and let them handle the mass emailing. Then, hiring a virtual assistant or intern to manage the inbox and mark interested influencers can further streamline the process.

While AI-powered tools like ChatGPT provides efficiency and scale, it has its limitations. It can't find broad influencers, determine payment, draw up contracts, or provide whitelisting instructions. 

Another thing to remember: AI is not a replacement for human touch. Be sure to add your personal insights, genuine emotion, and unique understanding of your brand in your communications. 

These human elements are crucial for building meaningful relationships with influencers and turning them into passionate advocates for your brand. 

✂️ Leveraging AI in Generating Ad Copy Creative Variations

Once you’ve banked a whole library of influencer-generated content (user-generated content), launching iterations of the creative takes a lot of manual work.

Here are several AI-powered tools can assist you in generating creative variations at scale:

Marpipe

Marpipe uses automation and generative AI to give brands ownership over the design and performance of their Dynamic Product Ads.

Kitchn 

Kitchn is an AI-driven platform designed to optimize Facebook ad campaigns. It generates and tests multiple ad variations, identifying high-performing ones to maximize ROI. Its integration with the Facebook Ads platform simplifies campaign management and implementation. 

Pencil

Pencil is an AI-powered creative platform that generates and optimizes ad content for marketers. The platform uses machine learning to produce ad variations, learn from audience responses, and improve subsequent ad generations, aiding in more efficient and effective advertising campaigns.

Treat

‍Treat, an AI platform that just finished its first seed funding round, offers powerful image generation capabilities that steamline content creation, enabling you to effortlessly produce visuall appealing brand visuals at scale. With Treat's AI-powered creative insights and effortless image generation capabilities, marketers can generate highly personalized content from influencer collaborations, fueling engaging and impactful influencer marketing campaigns.

🙅AI Limitations in Influencer Marketing

While AI has proven to be a valuable tool in influencer marketing, it does have some limitations that marketers should be aware of. 

Here are a few key limitations:

1. Lack of Human Connection: AI systems struggle to build genuine relationships and maintain the human touch that is crucial in influencer marketing. The ability to connect with an audience on an emotional level and create authentic content is something that humans are better at.
2. Contextual Understanding: AI algorithms may have difficulty understanding context and cultural nuances, leading to potential misinterpretation of influencer content. This can result in ineffective or inappropriate messaging, which could negatively impact brand reputation.
3. Ethical Considerations: AI can inadvertently contribute to the spread of influencer fraud, as it may generate fake influencers or amplify inauthentic content. Use your own judgment to ensure ethical practices in influencer marketing campaigns.
4. Limited Sentiment Analysis: While AI can analyze data and sentiment to some extent, it may struggle to fully understand the nuances of customer emotions and their responses to influencer content. Again, use human judgment for accurately gauging audience sentiment and crafting appropriate marketing messages.‍
5. Creative Limitations: AI-generated content, including ad copy and influencer scripts, may lack the creativity and unique touch that comes from human creativity. The ability to think outside the box, adapt to changing trends, and develop innovative ideas is a strength that humans bring to the table.

It's important to recognize these limitations and strike a balance between leveraging AI's capabilities and incorporating your own expertise to ensure successful influencer marketing campaigns.

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