How to use Snapchat for business in 2026

Snapchat marketing is a direct line for brands to engage and build trust with younger audiences.

The network has over 900 million monthly active users as of 2025, and continues to grow in popularity, with Gen Z and younger millennials using Snapchat daily to connect with friends, family and creators. This presents an opportunity for brands to become part of these conversations through ephemeral content and influencer partnerships.

In this article, we share Snapchat’s core features, tips on how to build your Snapchat marketing strategy and highlight brands already making an impact on the network.

If you’re new to the platform and need a complete walkthrough of its features, get up to speed with our comprehensive guide on how to use Snapchat.

What is Snapchat marketing?

Snapchat marketing is a digital marketing strategy that uses the network’s features and advertising tools to attract an audience and grow your bottom line. The key is to create strategies that work with how users naturally engage on the network.

For brands catering to Gen Z or younger millennials, Snapchat marketing offers a significant opportunity to impact your business. Snapchat reaches 90% of 13 to 24-year-olds and 75% of 13 to 34-year-olds in more than 25 countries, making it one of the most effective networks for brands looking to target Gen Z and younger Millennials.

Beyond the user base, what sets Snapchat apart is how it’s used. Snapchat’s 2024 How We Snap Report, found that users connect (59%) and share content (49%) with friends and family on Snapchat more than any other social network. They also open the app more than 30 times a day, showing how central Snapchat is to communication and decision-making.

The frequency of use and intimacy make Snapchat a valuable space for brands to engage younger audiences in a way that feels authentic.

To start using Snapchat for marketing, your brand will need a public profile. If you want to run ads, access analytics through Snapchat Insights or unlock features like creating AR Lenses, you’ll also need a Snapchat Business account.

Let’s go through Snapchat’s core features and how to use each one strategically.

Stories

Stories are Snapchat’s most versatile feature. They’re short (up to a minute), vertical video or image Snaps that disappear after 24 hours, and they’re useful. Stories can support just about any marketing goal, from driving traffic to boosting engagement.

The key is to keep Stories casual, timely and built around a strong hook. Netflix gets this right. The example shows how they use Stories to promote new shows like KPop Demon Hunters.

One feature of Stories is that you can add swipe-up or tap-through links if you have a Snapchat Business account. This allows viewers to take direct action, making Stories a valuable tool in your broader Snapchat marketing strategy. And with Sprout Social, you can schedule and publish Stories alongside your other networks, ensuring your campaigns launch at the appropriate time.

Saved Stories (Story Highlights)

Saved Stories, or story highlights, let you pin select content to your public profile so it doesn’t disappear after 24 hours.

Treat it as your “About Us” section on Snapchat. It should be evergreen content that helps new viewers quickly get a feel for your brand. Bumble, for example, uses Saved Stories to share dating tips and brand values, providing a clear snapshot of what it stands for.

Spotlight

Spotlight is Snapchat’s answer to scrollable short-form video. Public profiles can submit video Snaps to Spotlight, giving brands a chance to expand the reach of their Snapchat marketing without adding budget. Spotlight is also a good place to repurpose vertical content that has performed well on other networks (just be sure to remove the watermark) or test new creative. With Sprout, you can easily identify and repurpose successful content from other networks for your Spotlight, and then schedule and publish it on Snapchat all in one place.

If your video is selected, it appears on the Spotlight feed and on your Spotlight tab, giving your brand a credibility boost and wider exposure. Spotlight content tends to perform best when it features relevant trends, leads with personality and fits Snapchat’s casual tone.

Discover

Discover is Snapchat’s curated content feed featuring Stories from media partners, creators and sponsored brand content. It’s personalized to each user’s interests and engagement history, offering a prime spot for visibility.

While organic Stories from public profiles don’t appear in Discover, your brand’s Snap Ads and Sponsored Stories do, putting you alongside trusted content creators. This is what makes Discover one of the best ways to connect with users already looking to engage.

AR Lenses

AR Lenses are Snapchat’s signature feature. They are interactive, enabling users to try on products, play branded games or explore immersive 3D animations.

As an example of a seasonal approach, Carhartt created a gamified Santa Lens where users dressed as Santa flew over homes dropping Carhartt products onto houses. Branded AR Lenses like these are fun and memorable, making them a smart way to promote products and enhance brand awareness and engagement.

Filters

Filters are static overlays that users can add to a Snap after it’s taken, like frames, color treatments or location-based tags. Branded Filters are best used to boost visibility around product launches, holidays, events or store openings by encouraging shoppers to create user-generated content (UGC).

Why use Snapchat for business?

On Snapchat, the ephemeral nature of the content is valuable to brands. Stories vanish after 24 hours, and this drives immediate engagement compared to the slow-burning reach of in-feed content.

When paired with a user base comprising of Gen Z and Millennials who value unfiltered content, it essentially creates an environment where brands meet audiences that are eager to engage and connect.

Here’s a breakdown of how the ephemeral nature of Snapchat is helpful to brands.

Encourage brand engagement

Ephemeral content is one of Snapchat’s defining features and biggest engagement drivers. Because Stories disappear quickly, they create a built-in sense of urgency and trigger FOMO, prompting users to act fast.

The time limit also lowers the pressure to engage. When content feels temporary, it encourages more spontaneous views, clicks and replies. This low-stakes environment helps brands drive interaction in a way that feels native to the network.

Build trust through authenticity

Snapchatters value realness. Almost 80% say it’s where they are their “most authentic and real” selves. When brands meet their audience with the same level of authenticity, it creates deeper loyalty and stronger emotional connections.

A Sprout Social study found that 64% of consumers say they want to feel more connected to the brands they follow. Snapchat’s brand of ephemeral content removes the polish and pressure and delivers on that desire.

Reach Gen Z and Millennials easily

Three-quarters of Snapchatters are under age 35. This network gives you a direct line to Gen Z and younger millennials because Snapchat is already part of their daily habits.

Here are the top five daily activities on Snapchat:

1. 66% Watch stories from friends and family
2. 65% Send messages (to an individual or group)
3. 60% Watch videos
4. 58% Take pictures using the app camera
5. 52% Watch stories from content creators

Posting content frequently that feels casual and spontaneous helps you match the way users already behave on the app.

If your goal is to connect with younger consumers, Snapchat helps you meet them on a network they already trust and use every day.

How to use Snapchat for business marketing

Snapchat has a lot to offer brands that use it strategically.

To do that, you’ll need clear goals, a keen pulse on your audience and a way to measure success. It’s also important to know which Snapchat features, influencers and ad formats align with your goals, because content alone won’t drive results.

A smart Snapchat marketing strategy uses the right tools to deliver the right message to the right people. Here’s how to make it happen.

1. Define your objectives

Your Snapchat strategy should ladder up to your broader social media goals. Here are some examples of what that could look like:

• To increase website traffic, use link sharing in Stories to drive users to your website.
• To boost brand awareness, use Discover or sponsored Lenses to reach a wider audience.
• Focused on loyalty? Partner with a creator or post more frequently on Stories to keep followers coming back.

Decide what Snapchat metrics you want to improve, and create content that will help you get there.

2. Know your audience

Creating a strong social media content strategy comes down to knowing who you’re talking to. Snapchat Insights give you access to audience demographics like age, gender, location and general interests so you can speak directly to the right people. Use this information to refine your content and tailor your creative accordingly.

If you’re working with creators, audience alignment matters just as much. Use Sprout’s Influencer Marketing solution to identify Snapchat influencers and review their Public Stories, Spotlight posts and past brand partnerships to make sure their audience and content align with your goals.

 

3. Create engaging content

The 2025 Sprout Social Index™ found that consumers want authentic, relatable and entertaining content from brands, and Snapchat content is no exception to this.

People open the app to see and share real moments, so create content that reflects your brand while also meeting that expectation.

Here are some tips for creating engaging lo-fi content for Snapchat:

• Shoot vertically, and use movement, varied camera angles and POV shots to keep things visually dynamic.
• Add captions, filters, frames and music to match Snapchat’s casual, expressive style.
• Use stickers to give your audience a way to participate and make your Stories feel more like a two-way conversation.
• Focus on content that shows humor, challenges, behind-the-scenes moments or real customer experiences. According to the 2026 Social Media Content Strategy Report, consumers say brands should make human-generated content their #1 priority, and these topics feed into that desire.

Looking for ideas to get you started? Try behind-the-scenes stories about your products or people, tutorials, sneak peeks into upcoming launches or branded filters and lenses that inspire user-generated content.

4. Leverage Snapchat’s features

Snapchat offers creative tools to help your brand stand out. Each serves a different purpose, so make sure you’re choosing features that support your goals.

Lenses (AR filters)

Tre best used for brand engagement. These interactive filters let users play with your brand in a fun, immersive way. The average Snapchat user interacts with a Lens for at least 20 seconds, and is likely to share images or videos of themselves using the filter, turning branded content into promotional UGC.

Geofilters

Geofilters are ideal for location-based awareness and in-person engagement. These static or animated overlays appear when a user is in a designated area. Use them around storefronts, events or product drops to boost in-person engagement and visibility. For example, Adidas created a custom Geofilter to celebrate the reopening of its redesigned Oxford Street store in London.

Discover and Spotlight

These are ideal for broadening reach. These areas give you a place to showcase content that’s more editorial, entertaining or creator-driven. Consider series-style Stories, branded storytelling or creator collaborations that fit Snapchat’s tone.

5. Engage in influencer and creator collaborations

Influencer marketing enables you to tap into built-in audiences and build credibility with younger users. The 2025 State of Influencer Marketing Report found that 86% of consumers make a purchase inspired by an influencer at least once a year, and Gen Z is most likely to make purchases based on influencer recommendations.

One option is a Snapchat takeover, where a creator posts directly from your brand’s account for the day. These takeovers encourage followers to engage and often include cross-promotion on the influencer’s own channels.

A tip to keep in mind: Make the takeover content exclusive to Snapchat. It might seem like a good idea to repost stories from another network, like Instagram, but you want to encourage people to follow along specifically on Snapchat.

Another strategy is to supply products for unboxings, demos or reviews and give creators the space to share their unbiased opinions. The more the content feels genuine, the more likely it is to build connection and drive action. The same report found that 47% of consumers said they want authenticity from influencers, even when posting sponsored content.

Whatever type of collaboration you try, aim to prioritize creators who already use Snapchat regularly and match your tone.

6. Invest in Snapchat ads

If you have an ad budget, Snapchat ads offer several ways to reach your audience and drive results. Snapchat ads combine formats (how an ad looks and behaves) with placements (where users see them).

Strong Snapchat ads capture attention fast. Keep them short, use motion, bold text and vertical design, use sound strategically and include a clear call to action.

For targeting, use Snapchat’s Ad Manager to reach users by location, interest, demographics or behaviors, and test different ad types to see what lands with your audience.

Here are the most common ad formats and what they’re best used for.

Sponsored Snaps

Sponsored Snaps are Snapchat’s most basic and widely used ad format. They are single-image or video ads that include a swipe-up CTA and are shown between Stories, Discover or Spotlight. Sponsored Snaps are a fast, full-screen way to drive action without complex creative.

Collection ads

Collection ads are commonly used by e-commerce brands. These ads have shoppable, tappable tiles that link directly to products and are shown in the same places as sponsored Snaps.

Story ads

Full-screen, skippable vertical ads (3–20 frames) shown in the Discover tab. These ads are often paired with an interactive call-to-action link to drive brand awareness, app installs or conversions. Candy Crush ran a Story ad featuring a paid actor giving a testimonial as he plays the game, with a direct CTA to download the app.

Sponsored filters and lenses

Boost reach and awareness with sponsored versions of Snapchat’s most engaging features, Filters and Lenses. These can be targeted by location or interest.

For example, the Superman movie promo featured a full sponsored Lens tab with multiple options, including a virtual movie theater experience co-branded with Toyota.

Commercials

Commercial ads only appear within curated shows on Snapchat Discover. These ads are non-skippable for the first 6 seconds and are ideal for high-impact brand awareness during premium content.

Lead generation ads

Lead gen ads include an embedded lead form, allowing Snapchatters to quickly share details like their email and name without leaving the app. They are great for service-based brands.

7. Measure and optimize

To measure success on Snapchat, you need to track performance consistently. Every Snapchat business account has access to Snapchat Insights analytics, where you can monitor metrics like Story views, average view time, completion rate and audience demographics.

Start by setting benchmarks aligned with your goals and adjust accordingly. If a Story has a high open rate but low completion, test shorter or more visual content. Or if your goal is conversions, track swipe-ups or lead form completions. This is how you optimize for impact.

When partnering with creators, Sprout’s Influencer Marketing platform enables you to track influencer performance across Snapchat campaigns. You can also monitor metrics like views, shares, subscribers and engagement to better understand ROI and refine your strategy with every campaign.

Snapchat marketing strategy examples

Thanks to its playful features and highly engaged audience, Snapchat is full of creative marketing campaigns that brands are using to meet their goals. Here are some real-world Snapchat marketing strategy examples from top brands on Snapchat to inspire you.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC)

The IOC partnered with Snapchat to create a series of AR Lenses for the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris.

To celebrate 100 years since the Olympics were last held in the city, two of the Lenses blended archival visuals with iconic locations. Fans in Paris could walk down the Champs-Élysées or Rue de Rivoli and see them transformed into 1924 Paris. Meanwhile, global users got a glimpse of the original Yves-du-Manoir stadium (see below).

These kinds of immersive experiences show how you can use AR to bring people into a story, and gives you a glimpse into what’s possible when content meets context.

Hopper

Hopper, an app known for finding the best flight deals, ran static Sponsored Snaps that targeted users by location. Users saw deals from their own city, which worked. Snapchat users were 37% more likely to download the app and view a specific flight compared to users from other networks.

This campaign is a great example of how smart geo-targeting can drive results.

Gatorade

Gatorade brought its classic Super Bowl “Gatorade dunk” to Snapchat with a viral AR Lens. Snapchatters could open their mouths to dunk themselves, and send it to friends, turning a well-known sports moment into something fun and shareable.

The success of this Lens is proof that when you can turn a brand ritual into an interactive experience, people want to join in.

Temu

Temu nailed influencer marketing on Snapchat by paying creators around the world to show off their $0 hauls. The campaign promoted a deal where new users could get free items just by signing up and using an influencer’s code. It’s an offer that sounds too good to be true, but with trusted Snapchat creators behind it, people were more likely to convert.

Embrace the future of Snapchat marketing

Used intentionally, Snapchat helps brands reach Millennials and Gen Z, drive traffic and influence purchase decisions.

As Snapchat grows, the demand for authentic, unpolished content remains strong. By prioritizing network-appropriate content, genuine storytelling and smart collaborations, your brand can stay ahead and capture lasting attention on this dynamic network.

Begin incorporating Snapchat into your brand’s social media approach with a free Sprout Social trial.

The post How to use Snapchat for business in 2026 appeared first on Sprout Social.

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Social media in sports: 9 Proven strategies to win engagement and fan loyalty

The role of social media in sports is quite literally game-changing. Far more than just a marketing channel, social media is now the most important way that fans communicate and interact with their favorite sports brands. According to the Q2 Sprout Social Pulse Survey, 80% of consumers watch live events through social media.

Whether it’s tracking real-time scores, searching for the latest event or getting excited about product launches, fans get all the biggest news from social media. The Q1 Sprout Social Pulse Survey also found that 49% of people use social media to discover breaking news, ahead of TV, podcasts and news apps. It’s more important than ever for brands to capitalize on this by learning how to harness social media in sports marketing.

We’ll outline the critical elements of social media management for social media marketing in sports based on insights from some of the biggest sports teams in the world: the Detroit Tigers and Chicago White Sox.

How social media is impacting sports

Social media is directly tied to every side of sports at a national and global level. According to our Q1 2026 pulse survey, 93% of Gen Z and 85% of Millennials follow live events by tracking social posts (via official event channels, attendee uploads, influencers or news outlets). Teams now use official accounts on socials to feed and grow their passionate fandom before, during and after the game.

Social has also created a fundamental shift in how we interact with sports, athletes and teams. Beyond follower counts, these team accounts build dedicated niche fan communities, fostering collective engagement across channels. This level of connection also extends to individual players and their interactions with fans, with many of the world’s most famous athletes working as social media sports influencers and brand ambassadors.

Brands need to not just acknowledge this new level of connection, but dedicate time and energy to building their own communities across socials.

The influence of social media in sports marketing

The increased influence of social media over all things sports has completely changed the way teams are marketed. It’s also introduced new fan expectations that brands need to be aware of to continue thriving across all networks. These are some of the most important social media marketing shifts in sports happening right now.

Fans expect real-time, always-on engagement

What used to be a one-way broadcast is now a conversation with the masses. To succeed, teams first need to keep up—which is easier said than done.

Today’s sports fans expect real-time updates from teams. Certain updates are particularly important, like breaking news, scorelines or injury updates. Think of each sport as an ecosystem where fans want to feel connected to what’s happening at all times. They want to be in the loop.

Sports brands have to consistently deliver these updates from official channels to please fans and keep control over their communications and narrative. That means social accounts, particularly on key breaking news platforms like X, Reddit and Instagram, need to be managed on and off-season.

Sports content lives beyond game day (videos, memes, interviews, behind the scenes)

Sports content is about so much more than what happens on the field. Just ask Tim Brogdon, Director of Digital Content for the Chicago White Sox. In a recent interview with Sprout, he shared, “While there is fan focus on the games themselves, sports marketing is so much more than those individual events. We strive to authentically grab attention and engage with our audience year-round.”

In the past, sports fans only saw game-day footage captured by professional broadcast crews using high-tech cameras and audio equipment. Today, meeting fans’ growing demand for content requires a small army of contributors. Everyone plays a role, from digital content teams and fan services to the athletes themselves, ensuring a steady stream of engaging content.

Brands need to be creating pre- and post-game content such as interviews, training updates, recaps and commentaries. Your fans want to engage with teams beyond game day, and know how the team is preparing for the future and what they can look forward to. Game days are vital, but an effective sports social channel has several content pillars, with different types of content being published every day.

The shift from passive audiences to active communities

With social, sports fans aren’t passive observers anymore—they’re participating in active communities with evolving opportunities for engagement. According to the 2025 Content Benchmarks Report, organizations in the leisure, sports and recreation sectors typically receive 623% more inbound engagements on their content each day compared to other industries.

This means all the content you’re creating for a sports brand should target more than just views—it should be made with fan interactions in mind. Whether it’s inviting user-generated content or event sign-ups, sports fans want to feel like they’re a valued part of a much bigger community.

Benefits of social media in sport marketing

Sports marketers who step up to the social media plate can score major rewards for their franchises. Here are three ways social media strategies can benefit the teams they support.

It promotes fan engagement—even during tough seasons

A social-first media strategy allows teams to connect with fans in a less corporate, more relatable way, making teams less reliant on wins for positive engagement.

This is a key way sports marketing accounts foster a strong sense of community among followers. Support becomes a two-way street, where teams can express appreciation to individual followers and encourage them to keep the faith through tough times.

It expands reach into new audiences

Thanks to the rise of the algorithmic feed, a stranger is just a fan who hasn’t come across your content yet.

“Our strategy doesn’t hinge on follower growth,” explains Brogdon. “The algorithms are feeding people content whether they’re following the Chicago White Sox accounts or not. Instead, we want to create content that encourages people to pause, view, like and comment. Shares and sends (DMs) are also important, because that impacts virality.”

Here’s a recent example of the Chicago White Sox using the celebrity first pitch trend to create Instagram content. By partnering with an influencer, their account is getting in front of highly-engaged followers in addition to their own.

It creates new revenue opportunities

Corporate sponsorships have long been a key revenue stream for professional sports teams, but in the past, opportunities for promotion were mostly limited to stadium signage and jerseys. With social media, however, the potential for lucrative partnerships has expanded dramatically.

Here’s another first pitch content example, this time from the Detroit Tigers. They partnered with Kellogg’s, having Tony the Tiger throw the first pitch of a recent game to bridge the team with a global brand.

Sports social media trends shaping 2026

Sports social trends are evolving all the time, and teams need to be aware of the latest strategies to stay in the game. These are the most important trends shaping sporting content on social media, including popular format types, partnerships and campaign ideas.

Short-form video is driving discovery and reach

Sports lend themselves well to short-form video content. Clips of games, interviews and recaps and other video content give fans what they’re already wanting to consume most on social. They’re also a smart way to build the reach of your team’s account and bring in more fans.

According to Sprout’s Content Benchmarks Report, 32% of all Instagram content from leisure, sports and recreation accounts was in the form of a single video post. Here’s a recent example from the Miami Heat, who posted a short-form highlight of the team’s defensive capabilities in the previous season to keep the momentum going.

Long-form content is building deeper fan loyalty

Long-form content is another ongoing trend and an effective way for teams to engage fans. Where short-form videos are perfect for reach, long-form is better catered to existing fans who are interested in more in-depth insights into your team.

Networks like TikTok and YouTube lend themselves well to long-form videos. They also work effectively as episodic content series, which is a popular entertainment format on social media. Here’s an example from the Toronto Blue Jays and their recurring content series Extra Innings.

Creator partnerships are outperforming celebrity endorsements

Sports have long been associated with celebrities, with many star players becoming globally recognized names. But when it comes to social content, creator partnerships can be a smarter choice than traditional celebrity endorsements.

Creators bring more of a fan-focused, community-driven element to campaigns. It allows teams to continue to build their own communities hand-in-hand with creators, which can be particularly powerful if the creator is already a fan themselves. With Sprout Social Influencer Marketing, you can find influencers who are already fans using our AI-powered search and check for brand alignment with the Brand Fit Score.

Here’s a recent example of a successful collaboration between Jesser and the Chicago Bulls, which resulted in almost 50k likes.

Women’s sports are creating new growth opportunities

An ongoing positive trend for sports on socials is the growing popularity of women’s sport. Interest continues to build in female teams, as well as individual female athletes who are advancing their sports on a global level.

Focusing on the women’s game across your sports brand account helps you tap into this popularity, while also contributing towards an important win for diversity and inclusion. Women’s teams are seeing successes with dedicated accounts. Here’s an example from WNBA Champions New York Liberty, who have over 400k followers on their Instagram.

AI-powered personalization is changing fan engagement

New AI technologies are also offering sports brands greater opportunities to foster more engagement from fans. AI allows brands to offer personalization to individual fans at scale. Exact implementations continue to emerge, but the world’s leading sports brands are already starting to pull away with their own AI solutions.

For example, Ferrari recently partnered with IBM on an AI-driven redesign of their fan app. This collaboration aims to offer fans more interactive tools, including an AI assistant and AI-driven race recaps. These AI features and personalization capabilities are likely to become more common across all social platforms as the trend develops.

9 Strategies to win social media in sports: What high-performing sports brands are doing differently

Several of the biggest sports brands in the world are already racing ahead with their social strategies. We’ve listed some of the key things they’re doing to stand out, alongside insight and examples directly from teams like the Chicago White Sox and the Detroit Tigers.

1. Use social insights to understand fan sentiment and drive momentum

Gathering social insights and intelligence is a core way for sports teams to use their social followings to better understand their audience and what they expect from the brand.

The Director of Social at the Detroit Tigers, Emma Nye, couldn’t overstate the importance of listening to a social audience enough in her recent webinar with Sprout: “I’ve learned a lot about what culturally is important to people in Detroit and what matters to them. The voice we’re building on social really plays into all that—really listening to and paying attention to that audience.”

This cultural understanding can drive all other activities on social. By conducting sentiment analysis, you can also gain deeper insight into how commenters feel about your team right now, emotions that can then guide future content strategies.

2. Collaborate with the right athletes and influencers that audiences connect with

After listening to your audience, fan sentiments can be leveraged further for successful social campaigns, which is exactly what the Detroit Tigers did during a recent season.

They jumped onto an existing song created by the musician Gmac Cash, integrating it into social content and eventually inviting him to perform at the end of the season. An opportunity like this was only possible because the brand was listening intently to their audience and what they were already engaging with and creating themselves.

The campaign worked firstly because of existing fan sentiment, but also because it involved the right influencer that people were familiar with. As seen in Sprout’s 2026 Social Media Content Strategy Report, Nike has found similar social successes by partnering with athletes from celebrities to influencers with niche followings.

3. Create social-first campaigns instead of repurposed ads

Most major sports teams also feature heavily in traditional advertising forms like television, radio and billboards. The most successful sporting brands don’t just recycle that content; instead, everything they post is created with social in mind.

Socials are a unique form of marketing because they also exist as a communication channel. Fans can’t engage directly with a TV ad or a billboard; they can with anything you post on social. That engagement potential has to be considered—and encouraged—in social-first campaigns that really speak to the community you’re building.

4. Use memes, trends and culture without feeling forced

Memes are now an inescapable part of a social strategy, but the most successful meme posts are carefully crafted or chosen. “We would literally go into meetings with printed out memes to share as examples during presentations,” shares Brogdon, explaining how memes must pass sense checks before being used. “We had to prove that our ideas were grounded in best practices while breaking our normal cadence. We wanted to move forward with a more relatable version of our existing brand voice, but wrapping that up in a presentation that appeals to executive staff takes some time, effort and energy.”

If a meme passes these tests, it can become incredibly successful content. The Detroit Tigers took this one step further with their Magnum PI campaign, which was built for socials and the home ground. They leveraged the popular meme of Magnum PI watching a game, which their fans had already turned into a community-led annual tradition. It ended up being their best-performing TikTok of 2025.

As Nye explains, the campaign succeeded because it used the niche obsession with Magnum PI and how it intersected with the Detroit Tigers. “It made for the perfect social media moment because of listening to our audience and how it was something unique to them.”

5. Match content formats to platform behavior

Social networks are all used in different ways thanks to how they’re set up. X encourages conversations, whereas TikTok values views and shares. Reddit builds deeper conversations and communities, whereas YouTube is where your fans settle in for longer watches.

A lot of this behavior is driven by which content formats are popular on each platform. When creating your strategy, match your content formats to the platforms where they’ll perform most effectively. There might be some overlap; TikTok and Instagram, for example, sometimes share content. But overall, you should plan distinct content approaches for each network you’re active on.

6. Build community through behind-the-scenes content

One of the best ways to make your audience feel included is to bring them behind the curtain. Behind-the-scenes content gives your fans what they want to see; a more personal look at your team. It’s also the perfect type of content for social media, where everyone values more personal stories.

For 2026, the Chicago White Sox partnered with Rate to present an eight-part content series on YouTube called Beyond 162. The series takes fans BTS to see how the team is training and dealing with the many ups and downs of the season.

7. Use live moments to drive conversation and shares

Sports teams are blessed to have many live moments to draw from when managing social accounts. Part of the reason why the Detroit Tiger’s Magnum PI campaign was so successful is because it also involved something happening live in the stadium. This meant the team could share not just recaps, but also live footage of the reveal.

These live moments make fans feel like a greater part of the club. They naturally build conversations and shares around your brand. They also encourage followers to attend more games in person so they don’t miss these experiences, which helps drive ticket sales and can increase the team’s following over time.

8. Build two-way conversations instead of broadcasting

Even though sports games are broadcast traditionally, you shouldn’t take that same approach with social content. The most successful teams recognize that social posts are all two-way conversations that invite collaboration directly from your audience.

Here’s a recent content example from the Detroit Tigers on Instagram, where fans were given a short music competition outside of the stadium. Not only is the act of content creation itself encouraging conversations, this post also fosters comments and engagement from viewers. It’s one of several strategies the biggest teams are using to make fans feel included on all sides of their social accounts.

9. Adopt sponsorships that feel native to social platforms

Global teams often partner with different companies during a season. Not all of those belong on social media; your social should be promoting the sponsorships that feel native to the platforms you’re on.

The Detroit Tigers’ Kioh + Co Creator Clubhouse is a great example. They used creators to drive the collaboration, and picked the right influencers using an influencer marketing tool. As Nye explains, they then created a distinct event at their stadium called Girl’s Day Out at Comerica Park and continued “using creators to really drive the conversation,” later sharing everything on socials. As Kioh + Co are a retail brand local to the team, they were a smart choice for a more personal, social-led sponsorship.

Social media best practices sports marketers need to know

When it comes to professional sports, a great strategy can’t be built in a silo. There are countless other teams and individuals that’ll impact and be impacted by your efforts. To create more seamless social-first experiences, you need to work with all of them. Here are five best practices for getting it done.

Use social listening and predictive analytics to never miss an opportunity

Teams often have millions of fans and followers from all over the world. Without the right tools, it’s easy to miss key conversations or sentiments that could’ve been game-changers for social reach. Social listening helps teams hone in on the real feelings behind comments, messages and conversations across all social platforms.

Outside of direct socials, media monitoring tools like NewsWhip can help teams predictively analyze conversations surrounding their league and team. This can help social and comms teams prep upcoming content based on how the season is looking. An AI agent like Trellis can turn this data into actionable social intelligence, turning these conversation spikes into successful social campaigns that speak to your audience.

Sports all move quickly, and so does social media. Tools like Sprout help your team stay on top of the conversation. Your social team can continue delivering online, whilst your players continue to deliver on the field.

Take the time to secure internal buy-in

In a perfect world, all of your colleagues would be on board with your strategy after a single presentation. In reality, it’s never that easy, but the time you take to secure internal buy-in plays a critical role in the success of your strategy.

“Communicating and building relationships with other people who have the ability to enhance your strategy can’t happen overnight,” says Brogdon. “It takes time and effort to sell your strategy internally. There are so many stakeholders that need to buy in, including the social and video teams, marketing, sponsorship and supervisors, etc.”

Take the time to talk with individuals across your organization, share the rationale behind your ideas and listen to critiques. This will help you create a stronger business case.

Lean on your network

The role of social media in sports marketing is major, but teams are still smaller than you might expect. If you’re a sports marketer in need of some creative inspiration, try looking beyond your organization for help.

“One of my favorite things about sports marketing is the community,” says Brogdon. “It’s much smaller than people realize. You’re able to see a lot of cool success stories from people you’ve worked with or run into over your career.”

Sharing victories and losses with other social media professionals working in the sports industry can spark big ideas. “Everyone creates content around their core and secondary audiences, all while taking their brand identity and account demographics into consideration. It’s interesting because we all get access to the same data, but everyone does something different with it.”

Make the most out of time with players

Players are your greatest content creators, but their main focus is on performing on the field. So how can you prep them to capture social content without disrupting their game?

The Chicago White Sox social team maximizes their limited time with players by integrating content strategy into existing touchpoints. “We have two major opportunities to educate our players on social media,” explains Brogdon. “We connect with newly acquired players at a social media session in the fall in Glendale and hold a full team session during Spring Training”

These sessions not only allow the social team to introduce the White Sox digital brand but also give players a glimpse of how the social and video teams will work with them throughout the season. It’s a relationship Brogdon describes as ‘symbiotic’—players learn how to support the social team’s efforts, while the social team helps players amplify their personal brands.

Develop a reporting infrastructure to support corporate partnerships

When the Chicago White Sox sought a new social media management solution, Sprout Social’s Tagging feature stood out as a game-changer.

“The ease and convenience of reporting through custom Tags stood out to us immediately,” says Brogdon. “Being able to provide marketing, PR, corporate partners and senior leadership with precise, channel-level data is huge for us.”

MLB isn’t alone in recognizing the benefits of this feature. The Atlanta Hawks social media team also uses Sprout to implement their sophisticated Tagging strategy.

“Everything we post gets a content pillar tag and a content medium tag, at minimum,” shared Katie DuPre’, Atlanta Hawks’ Social Strategy Manager, in a previous interview. “We also create campaign ID tags for any larger marketing campaigns. For example, when we were at All-Star Weekend, all live content coverage got a specific tag. After the event concluded, we were able to go back and recap the success of our event coverage.”

The future of sports marketing is social-first

Sports marketers across countries, teams and leagues are doing some big things on social. These efforts don’t just impact marketing KPIs, they introduce franchises to the next era of fans.

The most important part of successful social media marketing in sports is always being able to listen to your audience. Find out more about Sprout’s social listening capabilities and how you can use them to gain a new layer of insight into your fans and community.

The post Social media in sports: 9 Proven strategies to win engagement and fan loyalty appeared first on Sprout Social.

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Influencer management strategies: How to manage influencers at scale

The right influencer partnerships can skyrocket brand visibility and build deep audience trust. But building these partnerships effectively requires intentional, programmatic influencer management, thinking beyond the next campaign to create a scalable network of brand partners.

From finding and vetting influencers that fit your brand, to planning content, aligning calendars and agreeing on terms, a robust influencer management strategy empowers you to oversee every aspect of a creator-driven content program.

The right approach can transform your creator partnerships from occasional gifting to recurring activations, where creators become reliable brand ambassadors. With the right influencer management tool, you can also shift processes away from manual tracking and towards structured collaboration that will grow and evolve with your brand

What is influencer management?

Influencer management involves discovering, selecting and collaborating with influencers to help promote your company. ‌Brands can have specific goals, but generally, the objective is to work closely with influencers to create attention-grabbing content that engages your audience, generates buzz and amplifies your brand’s reach.

This level of management goes beyond administrative tasks and should be a strategic priority. Think of it as an ecosystem with a lifecycle, encapsulating creator discovery, outreach, contracting, content creation, measurement and payout as a repeatable, integrated process.

Dedicated tools, like Sprout Social Influencer Marketing, that create a unified workspace make this process much easier, centralizing collaboration among social teams, media buyers and agencies. As Anna Larson, Director of PESO Content at Flint Group, has experienced: “Tools like Sprout Social Influencer Marketing have helped us significantly accelerate our creator and influencer marketing offering. We’re able to identify highly aligned creators much faster, spend less time on manual research and focus more energy on strategy, relationship building and development.”

The benefits of programmatic influencer management

Programmatic influencer management means creating a system that can scale your creator strategy. It’s often achieved by leveraging dedicated influencer marketing tools that can automate, maintain and grow your creator strategy. These are some of the main benefits your team can achieve by adopting a programmatic approach.

Predictable campaign timelines

With many moving pieces and distributed resources, creator campaigns can become unpredictable, particularly if the strategy is not clear from the get-go. With a programmatic approach, it’s far easier to automate, track and plan influencer collaborations.

Predictability is created through clear standards for your creator strategies. Setting a standardized approach for outlining, creating and delivering your strategies makes it easier to predict how long they’ll take to produce and start showing results. With unified interfaces and clear tracking tools, it becomes much easier to keep your campaigns on track, from production to publishing and analysis, helping you dodge bottlenecks and keep your content plan on track across partnerships.

Creative consistency

Working with influencers lets you leverage their expertise, communities and creative direction to tell your brand’s story. Inviting new voices to speak for your brand can be a huge benefit, but it can also threaten creative consistency, particularly when managing multiple creators at once.

This is particularly important given the most successful influencer campaigns are often driven by value-aligned partners and creative ideas. A recent example from Doritos in the UK is their Doritos Loaded Month, which featured a combo of creator and restaurant partnerships. London-based influencers visited different participating restaurant locations and created their own reels. The creators’ posts consistently showcased the Doritos bag, branding and explained the promotion all while not compromising their individual style.

With a programmatic approach, you can set clear creative strategies from the very start of campaigns. Setting these expectations keeps everyone aligned on campaign outcomes, making the creation process smoother for brands and creators.

Compliance and brand safety

Influencer oversight demands extra attention to brand safety, since you can’t directly control an influencer or their following. Mitigating this risk requires proper research and vetting before agreeing to work with a creator, but this process can become tedious and time-consuming.

A programmatic approach to influencer management means creating clear guidelines when researching your influencers and vetting them. This means you’re more likely to find an influencer that fits well with your brand and its values from the start. Clear communication also extends to setting specific guardrails when setting expectations with creators.

When searching for the right influencers, you can leverage tools, like Sprout Social Influencer Marketing, that streamline the process. This makes it easier to align influencers beyond their size, reach and content, but also in how well they match with your brand and audience’s interests. By streamlining briefing and contracting processes, this approach to management makes it easier to comply with any regulations, keeping everyone in the loop on compliance expectations at every stage.

Long-term creator retention

One-off campaigns can work for any brand, but they’re rarely as valuable as long-term influencer partnerships. Working with the same creators over time means they become more closely associated with your brand, increasing trust and the potential for their community to join yours. Building and maintaining these relationships also minimizes setup for each new creator campaign, lowering costs and increasing efficiency by working with creators already familiar with your brand.

Trisha Paytas’ long-term collaboration with Benihana is a strong example. Benihana promotes her as their most devoted fan, even adding her signature order on their menu. And Trisha embeds Benihana into her social presence, giving the brand long-term value.

Investing in seamless processes, as well as consistent communication and feedback with creators helps build strong relationships and fast-tracks them to become reliable brand ambassadors.

Continuous stream of fresh content ideas

Influencers are tuned into the latest social media trends since their work revolves around creating highly shareable, engaging content. They know what their audience loves, so they can develop original sponsored content ideas to make your brand stand out.

By working programmatically, you can build in campaign planning time to brainstorm with your creator partners directly. This gives you more one-on-one time to build relationships with them and ensures that their voices are heard in the planning phase, making them feel valued while contributing to fresher campaigns for your brand.

Stronger data benchmarks

Influencer marketing is often an iterative process. Social marketers need to have the time to try new things, reviewing what works and what doesn’t to build more reliable successes in the future. That’s only possible if you have access to campaign data.

It’s important to first set clear success metrics for your creator content, so you have benchmarks to judge performance against.

Tools like Sprout Influencer Marketing include features like Reports that offer you detailed insight into campaign performance. You also have access to real-time competitor share of voice and benchmarks, which means you can replace guesswork with concrete intelligence. The stronger your data is, the faster you can deliver and improve on your creator collaborations.

How to manage influencers: A step-by-step playbook

There are influencers for every industry, social media network and budget. But all flavors of influencer management follow the same playbook. Elevate your creator campaigns to be a core marketing function with these six steps on how to manage social media influencers:

1. Automate discovery and alignment

First, you must clearly understand your target audience and brand to know what you want in an influencer. Then, evaluate potential partners by reviewing their interests, past collaborations, engagement metrics and follower demographics to find your perfect fit.

When researching, lead with what creators are talking about on their accounts, as algorithms reward topical focus. Sprout uses an AI-powered natural language search that helps you find creators simply by describing the type of content they create.

You can confirm their fit further by using Brand Fit Score, which instantly determines how well-aligned a creator is with your brand, eliminating the need for tedious manual audits. This also expedites the approval process, helping you quickly justify creator selections to leadership by demonstrating their fit score. Larson uses Brand Fit Score when sourcing influencers, adding: “We typically begin by establishing the right Brand Safety and Brand Fit Score criteria based on the client’s goals, audience and values. The Brand Fit Score helps validate what we’re looking for and surfaces creators who align with the brand.”

2. Expediting recruitment and contracting

Start with a pitch template, which is an outline you can use to standardize influencer outreach. By incorporating pitches into your influencer outreach email template, you can quickly contact them about a campaign with all the relevant information about your brand and preferences.

Use Sprout’s Creator Lists to manage your influencers in a dedicated CRM. Within Creator Lists, you can leverage AI-driven suggestions, recruitment forms, built-in compliance support and further guidance on what to include in your influencer contracts.

Once you’ve agreed to collaborate, make sure your contracts are consistent and comprehensive, as this reduces campaign confusion later down the line. Create an influencer contract template so you can streamline this process when delivering at scale in the future.

3. Setting up the creative brief

As with contracts and outreach, the best way to approach creative briefs is to first create an influencer marketing brief template that already includes basic brand information.

Then customize the campaign direction to guide an influencer through your vision without suffocating their own voice. You should create a balance of hard requirements (non-negotiables for your brand like verbal calls-to-action, tag placement, etc.) and more flexible guidelines where you’re hoping to lean more on their input.

4. Streamline content approvals and compliance

Because content creation is a creative process, it requires strategic feedback loops for review and approval. Map out a content approval workflow to build in clear deadlines for drafts and sign-off. With a tool like Sprout Influencer Marketing, you can create workspaces for agencies, brands and creators to collaborate in a shared space that streamlines what might otherwise be complex approval lists.

Be sure to track industry-specific disclosure regulations, regional requirements and platform rules, and keep your creators well aware of these standards to protect your brand. Leverage features like Sprout’s Brand Safety Reporting, which lets you customize red flags unique to your brand, even utilizing automated safety audits across a creator’s entire posting history to check for things like profanity, controversial topics or misaligned themes. This offers an extra layer of security to keep creator content on-brand.

5. Campaign launch and paid amplification

For launch day, further standardize your go-live procedure and how posts will be amplified. By spending the time to standardize ahead of time, it becomes much easier to replicate each campaign launch moving forward.

Set clear reminder processes and schedule your posts so you know when all of your content will be published. To connect your top-of-funnel impressions with your final results, spend the time to create UTM links, promo codes and conversion pixels before posting.

Establishing a single unified workspace and source of truth for campaign launch and management enables visibility across teams, so everyone is informed of vital details. Larson’s team finds strong value in a shared workspace: “What saves the most time is having the data, creator discovery and presentation tools all in one place. Instead of spending hours across multiple platforms and spreadsheets, we’re able to focus on evaluating fit, building strategy and providing clients with thoughtful recommendations backed by data.”

Make sure stakeholders have access to reporting and listening dashboards, and refer to them regularly during and after the promotion. This enables your team to monitor performance and inform real-time optimizations.

Make further use of integrations like Sprout’s Meta Partnership Ads Integration to further streamline network-specific amplification. This means you can boost posts directly from where you’re already managing your influencers, rather than jumping between different solutions.

6. Reporting and payouts

Campaigns don’t end at publication—reporting is essential for continuous improvement. Automated reporting capabilities within Sprout enable you to create custom data visualizations tailored to the needs of specific teams and stakeholders who need visibility into creator metrics.

Make sure influencers and creators are paid appropriately and on time to maintain strong relationships with them. State payment terms clearly in your contract, and keep to industry standards like net-30 days. Sprout’s payments functionality includes built-in integrations with PayPal and Lumanu to enable globally compliant payouts directly from the campaign workflow, so you can deliver payments on time. Transparent, fast payment processes should be a standard, and make it far more likely that creators will want to collaborate again in the future.

Overcoming influencer management challenges

Influencer management involves frequent coordination and communication. Everyone has their own schedules and preferences. It’s your job to manage expectations, get everyone on the same page and keep track of all the moving parts.

Here are several common issues that can come up with influencer management and how to handle them.

Not following the campaign brief

If the influencer doesn’t understand the brief or misses essential details, they might create content that doesn’t fit your brand’s needs. To avoid this scenario, be crystal clear about what you want from the beginning by sharing a detailed campaign brief.

Further to the brief, schedule regular check-in calls to answer questions and provide examples of what you’re looking for. Beyond keeping creators on task, this helps you leverage their expertise and deepen collaboration.

Timing issues in campaigns

Timing can make or break a campaign. If an influencer posts about a product launch too late, the campaign won’t generate enough attention. An influencer posting too frequently or infrequently can also impact the results. These issues are why setting clear deadlines is essential. Use scheduling tools to keep everything organized, making sure to build in a buffer around launch time so you have some breathing room if anything is stalling. This also makes space for any problems outside of your control. Lean on automated reminders to keep everything flowing.

Poor content quality

If an influencer’s content isn’t up to par, it might be because they didn’t have enough resources or understand what’s required. To avoid this, have the influencer submit content drafts well before the campaign goes live and offer feedback to help them refine it. Be clear and transparent with them at all times, and work together to solve any problems.

High reach but low engagement

This issue can arise with macro and mega-influencers with broad audiences. These influencers may have millions of followers, but their audiences aren’t the most engaged. To avoid this issue, don’t just partner with the biggest influencers you can find: campaigns can be far more impactful when you partner with influencers who have a highly-engaged following. As Larson emphasizes, “At the end of the day, we’re looking for trust. Whether a creator has 1,000 followers or 1 million, the most effective partnerships happen when audiences believe the person behind the content. That’s something no follower count can measure on its own.”

Micro and nano-influencers may have smaller followings, but they often curate highly-engaged niche communities. If the interests of these communities overlap with yours, it’s far more likely they’ll interact with the collaboration and want to follow along for more.

Inadequate reporting post-campaign

Without good reporting, you miss out on learning what did or didn’t work. One way to avoid this is to identify the critical influencer marketing metrics and results you’ll track from the start. For example, Sprout Influencer Marketing offers link-tracking that enables users to add UTM parameters and platform pixels to gather full-funnel performance insights. Alongside Sprout’s automated reporting features, you can customize your reports so they’re as relevant as possible to your campaign goals.

Late influencer payments

The more influencers you work with, the more difficult onboarding and paying creators becomes. When a campaign wraps and compensation is due, teams often have to navigate multi-step administrative due diligence and manual workflows.

If you’re relying on a siloed system to pay creators for you, you’re more likely to risk delayed or non-existent payouts. Sprout Social Influencer Marketing’s built-in payment solution enables you to compensate creators right from your active campaigns. Marketers can track and initiate payments seamlessly, while finance teams can fund invoices and set up a single master vendor via Lumanu to make onboarding more efficient. Ensuring creators are paid quickly makes managing the relationship easier and cements a positive experience for the influencer.

Choosing an influencer management tool

Ultimately, the best way to manage an influencer marketing campaign is to use influencer marketing tools. These platforms are designed to streamline and organize every part of a campaign. They help you move away from manual processes towards an automated system.

Some must-have features when looking for an influencer management tool include:

• Influencer discovery: Features that make it easier for you to research and vet influencers.
• Integrations: The ability to integrate with other tools you’re already using.
• Automations: Features that let you automate recurring processes to streamline campaign management.
• Content support: Content creation capabilities that mean you can assist your influencers with the creative process where needed.
• Brand safety: Further brand safety functionality that can safeguard you and your campaigns.
• Streamlined collaboration and approvals: A system that can help you fully streamline recurring processes and work better as a team.
• Payments: The ability to pay creators directly from the platform, which makes it easier to track your payments and deliver them on time.
• Publishing calendar: The ability to publish and track your campaigns directly within your management tool, across several different networks.

Here are three of our top recommendations.

Sprout Social Influencer Marketing

Sprout Social Influencer Marketing is an end-to-end AI-powered influencer management tool. It’s built for evolving social algorithms that prioritize discovery over followers. Sprout includes many time-saving capabilities, from custom landing pages that attract, qualify and capture prospective influencers to social listening, competitive analysis and reporting templates.

The platform also has in-app portals for real-time communication and integrations with Reddit, Salesforce, Shopify, Dropbox Sign, Meta Advertising, PayPal, Lumanu and Okta.

Heepsy

Heepsy offers tools for discovering and working with influencers. It provides access to influencer data like engagement rates, growth trends, follower demographics, and interest and behavior data. The tool allows users to analyze influencers’ past posts to predict future campaign performance and check if an influencer is legitimate.

Pitchbox

Pitchbox helps users save time on influencer outreach with customizable pitch templates and automated follow-ups. It allows users to track their progress with campaign performance reports and custom data analytics.

The key to efficient influencer management processes

Influencer management is a highly collaborative process with a lot of stakeholders involved. Success is driven by clear communication and mutual respect across all parties.

Fortunately, you don’t need to build a process from scratch. Start optimizing your influencer management strategies today by trialing Sprout Influencer Marketing, a comprehensive tool that streamlines every side of influencer marketing. Sign up for a demo today.

The post Influencer management strategies: How to manage influencers at scale appeared first on Sprout Social.

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The secret to influencer relationship management success

Influencer marketing shouldn’t feel like you’re chasing a revolving door of creators, emails, and spreadsheets. But for many teams, that’s exactly what happens when influencer partnerships end after one campaign.

This is where influencer relationship management (IRM) comes in. It’s the long-game strategy that helps you turn one-off collabs into lasting partnerships.

When done right, IRM supports everything from better engagement to stronger ROI. It builds the kind of trust that keeps collaborators coming back.

What is influencer relationship management (IRM)?

Influencer relationship management is the ongoing process of building, maintaining and improving long-term partnerships with content creators and influencers. It includes everything from finding the right creators and negotiating terms to campaign communication and performance tracking.

And there’s good reason to invest more time and energy into influencers.

Most marketers (90%) agree that influencer content gets more engagement than organic posts and 65% are confident they can prove the ROI of influencer relationships. But without a solid IRM process, that value is hard to sustain over time.

Conventional influencer marketing campaigns are often short-term by design. You find influencers to boost product launches, spotlight promotions or support seasonal campaigns. But the relationship usually ends once the post goes live.

This kind of quick-hit approach can certainly drive awareness, but it rarely builds lasting brand loyalty as the influencer never mentions your product again.

In contrast, influencer relationship management focuses on sustaining relationships that grow in value over time. The goal isn’t just a quick injection of reach or impression. You’re aiming to create customer loyalty from repeat collaborations with content creators who actually influence your target audience.

That shift—from transactional to relational—has a powerful effect on how audiences perceive your brand.

When audiences see their favorite creators using your product over and over, it creates authentic consistency. The content feels less like a paid promo and more like a genuine recommendation. By building trust over time, customers come to believe in your brand, making them more likely to buy.

Strong influencer relations are built on structure. Here’s what makes IRM strategies work.

• Influencer identification and vetting: This element goes beyond the basic influencer search. Instead, you use real-time data to evaluate creator relevance, brand alignment, audience demographics and platform performance.
• Outreach and negotiation: To build authentic influencer relationships, you send out tailored outreach that respects the influencer’s brand. Each negotiation—including deliverables, creative involvement, timelines and rates—is personalized and transparent.
• Contract management and onboarding: You need to set expectations early around usage rights, content guidelines, approval and compensation structures. This helps to kick off the partnership smoothly.
• Relationship nurturing and communication: Regular, meaningful contact keeps creators in the loop. When you share feedback, campaign previews and strategic updates, influencers feel well-informed and invested.
• Performance tracking and reporting: Monitoring content engagement, conversions and influencer reliability helps you inform future campaigns and optimize influencer relationships.
• Payment: Timely compensation keeps influencers content, so the relationship stays strong.
• Compliance: Influencer marketing often has to comply with stringent regulations. You need to manage usage rights while meeting all regulatory and platform-specific disclosure guidelines.

Why should you focus on influencer relationship management?

Ongoing influencer relationships give you a strategic advantage. Influencer relationship marketing management helps you build deeper trust, increase performance and scale your creator partnerships with intention.

By shifting your focus from short-term wins to long-term impact, you’ll see more tangible, trackable results. But this trust isn’t built overnight. It’s earned through authentic content and sustained creator connections—two pillars that make IRM so effective.

Authenticity = trust

Authenticity is important to consumers. Our 2025 Influencer Marketing Report found that 47% of consumers expect influencer posts to feel genuine, even if they’re sponsored posts.

You don’t get that kind of trust from one-off campaigns. Not only does this content feel scripted, but if the creator never mentions the product again, watchers won’t believe they use or support it.

Trust comes from sustained creator relationships. IRM gives creators the time and space to genuinely connect with your product and show their audience how it fits into their real lives. That ongoing presence creates consistency and memorability—it gives audiences more opportunities to see, trust and recall your brand.

Plus, continual endorsement signals that the creator actually uses and values your product. And if you’ve built the right relationship, they will. That’s what makes the content feel honest and trustworthy—it’s not just a convincing ad. It’s real.

Consistency = conversions

Influencer marketing is a proven driver of revenue. Half of consumers say they make a monthly purchase based on an influencer’s recommendation, according to the Sprout Influencer Marketing Report.

With IRM, you capitalize on the momentum of these recommendations. When creators consistently share your product in ways that feel natural to their audience, they’re nurturing highly targeted leads. This repetition builds familiarity, reinforces trust and keeps your brand top of mind. So when it’s time to buy, you’re already on the shortlist.

Less chaos = scalability

Whether you’re a social media manager running multichannel campaigns, juggling affiliates or scaling user-generated content (UGC), IRM gives you the infrastructure to grow with intention.

An influencer relationship management software platform streamlines the entire process. It helps you organize communications, manage contracts and payments and track performance—all without losing the personal connection that makes influencer content work.

6 steps to create high-impact influencer partnerships

Building strong influencer relationships doesn’t happen by accident. It takes intention, structure and consistency.

Here’s‌ a quick step-by-step guide to show you how to set your program up for long-term success.

Sprout Tip

If you want a full framework for building an influencer strategy, check out our Influencer Marketing Toolkit.

 

1. Identify objectives and audience alignment

Before reaching out to any creator, clarify what success looks like for your brand. Are you aiming to drive conversions? Build brand awareness? Create high-performing UGC?

Knowing your goals makes it easier to identify creators who align with your brand and your audience.

The clearer your objectives and ideal personas are, the easier it is to search for the right creators. Having that context—like audience demographics, content style or campaign goals—helps you filter more effectively and avoid wasting time on creators who aren’t the right fit.

2. Search for relevant influencers

Finding the right influencers isn’t about chasing the biggest follower count. It’s about identifying creators who genuinely connect with your audience and deliver real engagement.

And relevance starts with values. The most effective influencers are those whose personal brand aligns with yours and your customers’ values. In fact, “shared values” is the top quality consumers look for in an influencer, according to data from Sprout’s Influencer Marketing Report.

And creators feel the same. When picking partnerships, the most important factor is whether those brands ‌reflect their beliefs.

Value-based alignment creates the kind of harmony to drive sales. The creator feels confident sharing your product, so the content reflects your brand authentically. As a result, the audience is more likely to trust what they see and buy into it.

But how do you begin your influencer search?

Sprout Social Influencer Marketing makes influencer discovery easy. You can filter potential partners by niche, audience demographics, engagement rate and brand safety. With these insights, you go beyond surface-level stats to find creators who naturally fit your brand and workflows.

3. Outline clear expectations

Clear communication is the backbone of every strong influencer marketing strategy. Set expectations around campaign goals, timelines, content formats, creative direction, pricing and deliverables before any work begins.

When you outline expectations, you’re not just protecting your brand. You’re also respecting the creator’s time and creativity.

Most influencers prefer clarity on usage rights, deadlines and compensation upfront. According to Sprout’s Influencer Marketing Report, 71% of influencers offer lower rates for long-term partnerships and are open to negotiating discounts for multipost campaigns.

Influencer Marketing by Sprout Social offers contract templates and centralized campaign briefs to help you maintain consistency so everyone’s on the same page from day one. This makes onboarding smoother and faster, especially when working with new influencers.

4. Foster ongoing communication and collaboration

Trust is the glue that holds influencer marketing programs together. Consistent, open communication throughout influencer campaign management reinforces that trust and encourages future collaboration.

Don’t go silent between campaigns. Staying in touch keeps the relationship flowing and shows creators they’re valued beyond a single post. Follow up with product updates, preview upcoming launches and keep them in the loop with what’s new.

But communication isn’t a one-way street. Influencers offer value beyond simply acting as a messenger for your brand. By communicating performance insights and inviting them to brainstorm new ideas, you can leverage their creative freedom and audience knowledge to strengthen future campaigns.

This level of involvement is exactly what influencers are looking for. Our Influencer Marketing Report found that 35% of influencers want earlier involvement in creative brainstorming, while 30% say being included in product development would deepen partnerships.

But managing influencer conversations across scattered tools slows everything down. Instead, Sprout Influencer Marketing brings all creator communication, feedback and asset sharing into one centralized platform. You get streamlined workflows, better organization and forward-moving campaigns that maintain momentum.

5. Streamline payments to secure lasting loyalty

Creator payments can turn into a PR nightmare. When brands don’t pay swiftly, creators call them out in the press and on social over late invoices. According to a March 2025 Influencer and Crowd DNA report, 41% of creators worldwide cite payment delays as their number one frustration when working with brands.

Brands aren’t failing on purpose. The traditional payment process simply cannot scale with this new way of working. When a campaign wraps and compensation is due, teams are often left navigating several hurdles:

• Vendor setup stalls the process because your finance system doesn’t know the creator, triggering a grueling onboarding process for each new partnership.
• Administrative due diligence buries teams in individual invoices, global tax IDs and W9s that create an endless back-and-forth to chase down information.
• Momentum dies because the sheer volume of manual work stalls every payment, turning days into weeks, and leaving your team exhausted and creators alienated.

Brands need a modern system that adapts to how the creator economy operates. Sprout Social Influencer Marketing has a built-in payment solution so you can compensate creators right from your active campaigns. Whether you prefer PayPal or Lumanu, every transaction lives in a single source of truth. Marketing can initiate and track payments seamlessly, while finance and accounts payable teams maintain a complete, export-ready audit trail without ever switching tools. Ensuring creators are paid with speed and precision builds lasting trust, which secures the ongoing loyalty of your top-tier partners.

6. Measure performance and ROI

Your influencer marketing efforts should drive results. You need to look beyond surface-level metrics such as likes and impressions. To measure performance effectively, you need insight into both individual campaigns and the overall partnership.

Campaign metrics might include reach, saves, shares and conversions. But your IRM metrics should also look at relationship indicators—like response rates, rebooking frequency or how often influencers refer other creators your way.

Sprout Influencer Marketing gives you a clear, real-time view of influencer performance at both the campaign and partnership levels. You can track everything from affiliate code redemptions and e-commerce conversions to platform-specific engagement and follower growth.

This level of insight helps you understand which creators drive results, which messages resonate and how influencer content contributes to broader business goals.

How to measure the success of your influencer relationship management initiatives

To truly understand the value of your IRM strategy, you need to measure engagement quality, relationship health and long-term ROI. These metrics help you refine your influencer marketing strategy, justify spend and scale what’s working.

Engagement quality

Don’t just focus on likes or follower count. Track deeper signals like saves, meaningful comments, click-through rates and video completion. These metrics show the content that prompts action.

Whether you’re partnering with micro-influencers or famous creators, high-quality engagement helps you identify the best influencer relationships to build upon. Add social listening to the mix, and you’ll get a fuller picture of brand sentiment and content impact beyond each individual post.

Relationship signals

Strong influencer relationships lead to powerful results. Don’t simply monitor creator content—measure creator engagement as well.

Track creator responsiveness, re-engagement rates and whether influencers bring ideas or refer others. These behaviors signal long-term potential and true brand alignment.

Using an influencer marketing platform with a built-in influencer database can help you automate this process and scale relationship insights without losing the human element.

Campaign ROI

Finally, measure outcomes that tie directly to business goals. Monitor affiliate lift, conversions and overall reach versus results. This shows you which creators deliver and which strategies drive growth.

With the right data, your influencers become a revenue-driving engine—not just a content channel.

How Sprout Social helps with influencer relationship management

As your influencer marketing program grows, it becomes tough to manage everything manually. Sprout’s Influencer Marketing solution helps you streamline every stage of IRM in one centralized platform. That way, you can scale your strategy without losing the personal connection.

Discover and vet aligned influencers

AI-powered search and filtering tools help you identify creators who align with your brand’s values and audience.

Pair these capabilities with Sprout’s performance insights and audience data to assess how well their content converts, how their audience engages and whether their style lines up with the kind of messaging you want to use to express your brand identity.

Centralize communication and campaign assets

Sprout brings everything together—briefs, contracts, messaging and feedback—so you can manage each relationship without jumping between tools. With everything in one place, it’s easier to collaborate, assess the direction and value of the relationship and respond in real time.

Track performance and build lasting partnerships

Real-time analytics connect influencer activity to business outcomes. Measure campaign ROI and spot high-performing partners so you can double down on what works. These insights show you how to grow the relationship—and what content will actually move the needle.

Accelerate creator payouts with a centralized system

Take control of your campaign finances by paying creators through PayPal, Lumanu or by securely tracking off-platform payments. Monitor your total spend, payee onboarding status and transaction activity across every campaign from a single view. Initialize and release funds without ever leaving the platform. By sending fast, frictionless payments directly within your campaign workflow, you eliminate bottlenecks and scale your creator partnerships with confidence. 

Why influencer relationship management matters for your brand

Influencer marketing is no longer a side tactic—it’s a key part of any modern digital marketing strategy. But as the space matures, so do expectations.

Creators want to work with brands that respect their creativity, pay fairly and collaborate with transparency. Audiences want content that feels personal, useful and real. And you need the infrastructure to meet both expectations and scale responsibly.

This is why IRM is the most valuable investment you can make to grow fruitful influencer relationships.

Ready to build influencer relationships that last? Book a demo of Sprout Influencer Marketing.

The post The secret to influencer relationship management success appeared first on Sprout Social.

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