Crafting Effective Social Media Influencer Creative Briefs

Social media creators are experts at engaging and connecting with their audiences. They know what content resonates, and when and how to deliver messages for maximum engagement.

Creators don’t necessarily know YOUR business, however. As brand managers and influencer marketers, we help creators to understand our brand, our products, and our business. When we marry the three together effectively, magical things happen!

This is where creative briefs come into the picture. While your early conversations with influencers will add a lot of context, sharing detailed guidance in a creative brief will really set your partnership up for success.

“This is your opportunity to communicate to the creator what you would like to see and then let them do their own thing.”

- Bren Daniel, Associate Director of Partnerships at Caraway.

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What is a creative brief for influencers?

A creative brief is a document that provides detailed guidance to help creators understand your brand, products, and campaign or program objectives. A solid brief sets up a partnership for success by communicating clearly what you would like to see in their content, while also allowing room for the influencer's creativity and understanding of their audience to shine through:

“There is a fine line between scripting your partners and no direction at all. The benefit to working with influencers is their inherent organic nature, that the content feels perfectly positioned within their existing content. We don’t want to force narratives.”

Lily Comba, CEO at Superbloom

An influencer creative brief should include:

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Clear campaign objectives

What do you want to achieve with this campaign? Whether it’s raising brand awareness, driving sales, or promoting a new product, stating what success looks like in your creative brief will set the tone for the entire collaboration.

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Brand story and guidelines

Every brand has a story and a list of “brand safe” guidelines. Give them a glimpse into your founder’s story, history, values, and mission, and highlight what makes your brand unique in your category. Also share any important guidelines or facts that must be accurate in copy or speech, and content “do’s” and “don’ts” upfront.

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Product details

If you plan on promoting a product or set of products, tell your creators as much about the product as you can. Most likely, you will have gifted the product to the influencer so they can develop their own testimonial, but it’s a good idea to recap all of the key information, such as:

• Relevant ingredients
• Customer testimonials
• Key USPs (unique selling points)
• Materials
• Pricing
• Where to buy it
• How to buy it

Obviously, it’s not realistic for an influencer to cover ALL of the above points in a single piece of content; it would also feel salesy and unnatural, and unlikely to resonate with their audience. But giving them as much information upfront as possible allows the creator to decide what and how they want to talk about your brand:

“In their content, they should answer at least two of the four questions - what is it, why do you like it, how do you use it and where do you buy it.”

Lydia Lee, Chief Executive Officer at For The Clout.

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Audience insights

Creators know their audience well, but they may not know yours. Although there’s going to an overlap here (if you’ve done your sourcing and vetting properly!) it’s best practice to provide insights into your brand’s target audience. This typically includes demographics, interests, and behaviors—and if you want to go one step further, into the feelings: their dreams, struggles, and what excites and motivates them.

While you want creators to develop narratives that resonate with their audience, it can only help them to understand who you care the most to reach.

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Key messages and themes

You should always align on the core brand messages that you want to convey via an influencer’s creative. These should tie in your campaign objectives and reflect your brand’s values. Be clear about the themes and topics you want to emphasize, but also leave room for the influencer’s creativity. As Delaney explains, the best content happens when creators are given looser guidelines:

“I’m not a fan of providing scripts. The most authentic real content comes from providing high level talking points or thought starters.”

- Delaney Henson, Head of Social and Influencer Marketing at ŌURA.

Their unique voice and perspective are what make influencer marketing so powerful. So, avoid giving them a script to follow or telling them what to say and when they should say it. Trust them to bring your messages to life in a way that feels authentic to their followers.

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Content guidelines and requirements

While it’s important to give influencers creative freedom, providing clear guidelines ensures consistency and alignment with your brand, and avoids needing to do re-shoots to fix problems with content. Aim for a balance that maintains your brand’s integrity, while also allowing the influencer’s personality to shine through.

Be sure to share how your brand manages content approvals. This includes who is involved, how many rounds of revisions you expect, how feedback will be communicated, and who is the ultimate approver of content.

“Set creators up with guidelines, not requirements.”

Korina Sanchez, Performance Marketing Manager at Chomps.

Specify the type of content you’re looking for—whether it’s static posts, Stories, long-form videos, etc. Detail any specific requirements such as Calls-To-Action (CTAs), hashtags, mentions, links, or codes that need to be included.

💡 Pro tip: Don’t forget to include Federal Trade Commission (FTC) guidelines!

If you plan on negotiating usage rights for content, it’s a great idea to set a section aside in the creative brief for additional direction regarding ad placements and testing. While this is technically contractual in nature, it helps ensure that your influencers are keeping this top of mind as they create content:

“Most of the time, a brand will want to make edits to organic creator content to allow for additional testing - like different hooks or CTAs, unique product feature points, sound options, text overlays, or to optimally fit the video for specific ad placements. Discussing these ahead of time can help you set expectations with the creator as well as ask for any additional content cuts they can make for you in the first shoot that might be useful for your video editors later on.”

Fractional CMO and Growth Marketing Leader at Ideabox.

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Visual and aesthetic direction

Influencers are visual storytellers, so providing visual guidelines helps them to create content that aligns with your brand’s look and feel. Share examples of existing brand and influencer content and any specific visual elements you want to incorporate. This visual direction serves as a source of inspiration, enabling influencers to produce content that’s visually cohesive and emotionally compelling.

“Include a mood board and creative examples to help creators see your brand’s aesthetic and creative positioning.”

Ali Appelbaum, Influencer Marketing Leader at Tonal.

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Timeline and Deliverables

A well-planned timeline allows influencers to schedule their work effectively, avoiding last-minute rushes that could compromise content quality. Specify all your key dates, such as the content creation deadline, review periods, and the go-live date. This helps manage expectations and ensures that the campaign runs smoothly.  Build in adequate time for content review cycles (especially if you have more than one internal stakeholder) and understand that if you haven’t completed contracts yet, this could further delay timeframes.

Make sure the influencer has enough time with your product(s) to form their own opinions and talking points on it. For example, if your brand has a skincare line or supplement line, or any product that takes time to see results, they will need a lot more time to create content if you want a really organic review from the influencer.

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Contact Information and Support

Finally, provide contact information for the primary point of contact. Encourage open communication and make it clear that you’re available to answer questions and provide support. A supportive and responsive relationship fosters collaboration and ensures that any issues or concerns are addressed promptly.

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Additional considerations when writing your creative brief

“Be intentional. Personalize your creative brief for each paid creator partner you’re working with and be sure the direction you’re suggesting matches the style of the creator's content”
Molly Savage, Omnichannel Growth Marketing Leader at Bobabam.

When putting together a brief for a creator, it’s always a good idea to bear in mind the “what, who, how” framework:

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The ‘what’

Is there a specific platform or placement you’re hoping to test, and does this creator specialize in that type of content? Are you setting them up for success by asking for the WHAT i.e. the specific formats that align with your objectives?

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The ‘how’

Are you planning on using the content as UGC or creative outside of the organic environment, as an ad, posted as authored content by the creator, used on brand pages, or as a part of a collaboration post? Creative guidelines or requests may be different depending on HOW you plan to use the content.

Ad creative that’s performing well on Paid Social/Performance Marketing may not perform well for an influencer—approach everything with flexibility and tolerance.

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The ‘who’

Is this creator a customer or someone who knows your brand well? Or are you writing your creative brief for an influencer who has never worked with you or tried your product before?

If you do know the creator, what kind of relationship do you have? Is it purely gifting, flat fee, affiliate commission, or a first-time or repeat partner who want build a specific cadence with?

Knowing WHO the brief is for will allow you to tailor it accordingly to the right level of experience.

Creative briefs are an integral part of working efficiently with influencers. By taking the time to provide creators with all of the information they need to produce relevant, educational content that resonates with their followers, your partnerships are going much more smoothly—not to mention achieve better results for your brand.

But creative briefs are just once ingredient to developing trusted, long-term partnerships with influencers. Check out the next chapter for the full recipe for building strong creator relationships!

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How do you set clear objectives in a creative brief?

Before you draw up a brief for an influencer, you need to understand what you are wanting to achieve from that collaboration. While certain brand guidelines will stay consistent regardless of the type of partnership, others will differ depending on whether brand awareness, engagement, or conversions are the goal. For example, if a partnership is oriented toward conversions, make sure that your brief clearly outlines how the influencer needs to communicate their offer, including the placement of a link and code and how to share it in the video. Clearly defining what success looks like in the brief will set the tone for the entire collaboration.

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What are best practices for product details in influencer briefs?

Your influencer brief needs to provide key information about the product(s) that are being talked about. This includes relevant ingredients, testimonials, unique selling points, pricing, and where/how to buy it. Unless its a large deliverable i.e. a dedicated YouTube video, an influencer will not be able to provider all of this info in one piece of content, so think carefully about what is most important for a creator to share with their audience.

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How do you establish visual direction for influencer content?

As part of your creative brief, share examples of existing brand and influencer content that aligns with the look and feel you want for your brand. Mood boards can also be very helpful to illustrate your brand's aesthetic and creative positioning, especially for brands who haven’t had many prior partnerships. Ultimately, your guidelines should provide inspiration for an influencer’s content, while still giving them flexibility in how to execute and engage their audience.