More brands such as Panasonic, L'Oréal and Universal Studios are turning to self-booking social media platforms in lieu of working with third-party agencies to personally select brand influencers, hashtags and run times of social media campaigns designed to increase awareness.

Panasonic and Universal Studios have partnered with self-booking campaign platform Brandnew that leverages an algorithm for recommending Instagram influencers to brands once they have selected specifics for a campaign. After Universal Studios launched a campaign for German horror film Katakomben and personally chose influencers, it saw overall engagement go up by 1.39 percent, increased Instagram followers for the brand by 38.9 percent and reached 11.62 million consumers.

?Self-booking platforms are a great tool to give clients more direct access,? said Francis Trapp, CEO of Brandnew, Berlin, Germany. ?Of course it is not suitable for all client segments, but for those where it is, booking campaigns becomes much faster, more transparent and more efficient.

?Brands or advertisers can select influencers on a set of criteria, e.g. by country or region, interests, influencer's reach, or engagement with followers.?

Honest content
By personally selecting all major campaign details for mobile device users, brands can feel assured that consumers are receiving honest content on a medium that is often plagued with a plethora of sponsored promotions and aggressive advertisements.

?Working with influencers creating outstanding content for their brand should be one element in a brand's overall social media strategy,? Mr. Trapp said. ?It results in perfectly tailored content for brands created and posted by influencers.

?The content appears in a truly native setting, e.g. when an influencer posting about make-up and 600,000 followers watching the feed, then creates and posts content for L'Oréal's new mascara.?

For Universal Studios? Katakomben film, scary stills from the movie were posted on chosen influencers? Instagram accounts, with requests for followers to upload their own scary setting photos to be eligible to win a trip to Paris. Users then voted on their favorite photos to choose the winner.

?One thing very much in the easier-said-than-done category is honesty,? said James McNally, director of business development at Fuzz Productions, Brooklyn, N.Y. ?People are too smart to respond well when brands or their spokespeople are clearly shilling for a product on social media.  What starts to build mindshare is seeing influencers honestly using a product in their everyday lives, repeatedly, and over the course of time.

?Another key on social is to respect the medium,? he said. ?Instagram is a great example: brands like McDonalds are getting absolutely hammered with cheesy sponsored posts. 

?Mercedes on the other hand is taking the time to court photographers, and produce content that is visually appealing, and therefore perfectly tailored to the platform.?

Innovative media
Rather than posting a standard banner ad on a mobile site, self-booking platforms can offer marketers the opportunity to create innovative content that emotionally resonates with the customer. Panasonic sought to increase its Instagram followers as well as raise awareness for its Lumix G cameras, prompting it to choose four Instagram influencers and give each of them a different Lumix camera that suited their photography style.

The influencers were requested to post at least 30 photos on the social media mobile application in the first phase of the campaign. In the second phase, they each traveled to a choice destination where they felt they could best use their photography skills, and posted at least 20 photos using the hashtag #LumixGexperience.

The hashtag had a reach of 119 million users on Instagram, leading the brand to experience 2.2 million user interactions and an increased engagement rate of 1.87 percent.

?True relevance to the audience is the key,? Mr. McNally said. ?Maybe once upon a time a brand could just look for the most famous / ?coolest? figure for whichever demographic they're targeting, but people who respond to influencer marketing have extremely segmented tastes, and they don't necessarily gravitate towards mega-celebrities.

?For example, if you're running an influencer campaign on Instagram, step one is figuring out who your target audience really engages with; if it's a lifestyle product, get inside the mind of the target demo, and figure out who they aspire to,? he said.

?Avicii has 1.2 million Instagram followers, but that doesn't mean he's the best influencer for every new headphone or sneaker company.  The best way brands can get this stuff right is to work directly with members of their target demographic - hire them - and not just assume that because there's tons of marketing experience in house or at the AOR that they can win at influencing.?

Final Take
Alex Samuely is an editorial assistant on Mobile Marketer, New York