Great question, I feel very bad about influencers promoting products that they don't use. Anytime you do a sponsored post you should be spending a week with that product, at least, beforehand, getting to know it, getting to understand it. I know brands now send you these long briefs and they say, "What are the key messages? What are the do and don'ts? What's the mood board look like? What's the creative direction? They give you everything that they want. A lot of ways you could create an on brief post for that brand without ever using the product.

This is especially true of, let's say, something of beauty or hair care or skincare. You could shoot a flat lay, you could hold the product and you could list out the key messaging that they sent you without ever using it. We have been trying to push this idea of something that we call conversational conversion. It is a kind of roll your eyes buzzword that explains a fairly simple concept which is we are trying to get influencers more and more to speak to their communities as if they're trying to convince a friend of something.

If you tried this new moisturizer that you really, really loved, and you went to dinner with a friend, and you were raving about this moisturizer talking about why they should use it. That language that you would use to convince your friend is the same language that you should be using on your feed, conversational conversion. You are having a conversation with your audience. You can't get too tripped up by the key messages of the brands. Now, you have to hit what the brand wants you to talk about. You need to make sure you do it in your voice.

I encourage all influencers to do two things when they are doing a sponsored post for a brand. One, use the product for a week, think about what makes it different. How is it different from competitors? What does it make you feel like? What does it make you look like? What is special about it? What is interesting about it? Talk to people about it, "I'm using this thing, I'm doing this," try and form an opinion about it. Now, you're being paid, you're going to have to speak well about the product and I assume you wouldn't do a post for a brand that you didn't support. Going through this process of actually using it is going to help you build what that caption is going to be, what the creative is going to be for the post, how are you going to speak about it.

Then once you've used it for a week, you go to do your post, think about convincing a friend to use it. Think about the language you would use to do that, and try and use that language. Sometimes the sponsored posts are feeling too cold. They're feeling too mechanical. They're feeling too controlled by the brand. You have to be able to use your voice, and not just your voice in that you are kind of irreverent, you make a little joke, but I'm talking about the voice you would use to convince a friend to use a product. Try and use that same reasoning on your post for the brand. It's a simple thing. I don't think a lot of people do it. It is rooted in your ability to speak confidently about the brand. That ability is rooted in you actually using the product and understanding it and understanding its benefits.

Absolutely, paramount. I would be very disappointed if we worked with an influencer and they didn't have a lot of experience actually using the product before they posted about it. Yes, good question, should you use it after the collaboration? I think folding those products into your life as a part of your life makes total sense. I think it helps with credibility for your followers, showing that to them a couple times, tagging it in Insta stories. Sometimes you don't even have to tag it.

I talked with Erica from Retro Flame, she talked about this. She said in the weeks leading up to a collaboration and then the weeks after collaboration, she will show the product on her stories and sometimes she won't tag it but at least people get used to seeing that brand so that when she does the post she could say, "You all have probably seen this laying around my house. I've been using it for a few weeks, I love it." That is such a more compelling story than, "I love the soft feel of this new moisturizer, it leaves my skin feeling silky smooth. You should try it today." You're like, "Fuck you." Someone sent you that caption, that you don't believe any of that. Make it a part of your life before and after the campaign.