Social media is now a part of our everyday lives, both personally and professionally.

If you’re a business – large or small – involved in sponsoring another organisation or event – large or small – it’s important to consider how social media can also be leveraged to promote your business, because that’s what sponsorship is all about! Reaching a new – relevant – audience.

Here are some tips for what to ask for when arranging a sponsorship agreement…

Follow back:

• Provide a list of all digital and social media channels that you use and request a Like/Follow/subscription on each one.
• This could even include them posting an update to their network suggesting that they follow you, however, this is where you want their network to be a relevant one. Quality over quantity!

Engagement with your content updates:

• Request that they keep an eye on your channels, during the sponsorship period, and like/comment/share your posts accordingly with their channels.
• It doesn’t need to be every single one, as that can appear forced and spammy, but hopefully, there is a reciprocal relationship there and a natural alignment with content updates.

Inclusion in their content updates:

• Be included/featured in some of their content updates.
• This will depend on the sponsorship duration and type, as to how many and what kind.
• If the sponsorship relationship is relevant, there should be a natural opportunity to say…

• “Many thanks to our sponsor X for taking these photos at our recent launch party!
  Feel free to tag, and check out their Page for more great photos!”

• The MOST important thing is that they tag you in any updates, so that users can easily click on the link to find and follow/Like, rather than having to search.
• Make sure you monitor these, so you can like/retweet/reply/comment etc. Even a “Thanks for sharing, we’re really excited!” can help show their audience that you’re a socially engaged organisation.

Share content and updates:

• Keep each other up to date with what is going on, and share photos/news that each other can share through your channels.
• There’s a lot going on on the internet, so it’s helpful to share ready-to-share graphics, or links directly to posts that can be retweeted/shared etc.

Give and get:

• These recommendations go both ways as well…
• If there is a natural synergy between organisations, then you can like/follow/share/engage/include in your updates etc as well.
• This will demonstrate a stronger and more realistic relationship to all followers and result in a wider reach and better results.

Measure the results!

• You may want to put some figures in the agreement, e.g. 1 mention in a Facebook post per week of the sponsorship campaign etc…
• If you do, it’s important to monitor whether or not this is being done, and also look at the results, not only engagement on the posts, but is it resulting in any clicks through to your website? New Likes/followers? Enquiries or sales? (these metrics will depend on your business).
• It’s important to monitor during the campaign, not just afterwards. That way if it’s not hitting the mark, you have an opportunity to adjust an update.
• However, it is still very valuable to do a thorough review at the end of the campaign, recording overall results, and anyways you could improve next time, either with the same sponsor, or a new one.
• And make sure you tally all of your account Likes/followers BEFORE the sponsorship starts so you have a benchmark!

What other social sponsorship tips would you suggest? Let us know in the comments!

Social Media Sponsorship – what to ask for to get the most out of it