While blog posts, podcasts, or a valuable thread on marketing Twitter can offer an insane education on influencer marketing, there’s nothing quite like reading a book cover-to-cover to get into the weeds of a subject.

To wit, we asked 7 marketers, working in the trenches, to recommend the best influencer marketing books they’ve read. The kind of books they keep on their desks to refer back to whenever they need to unlock a new strategy. 

Here they are in no particular order:

1. Micro-Influencers – A Complete Guide on How to Create Brand Awareness and Get Traffic through Micro-Influencers on Instagram  

Authors: Larisa Herbai and Marcel Marculescu

Year: 2020

In this book, you’ll learn how to find micro-influencers on Instagram and power up your brand awareness. The authors uncover all the truths about micro-influencers and their potential to grow your customer base continuously.

“What I particularly like about the book is that it nails Instagram marketing from top to bottom, laying an emphasis on influencer marketing. It provides a clear and concise framework for consolidating an Instagram profile, creating a strategy, crafting relevant content, contacting micro-influencers, and keeping the audience engaged. For the latter, we’ve been effectively using Instagram videos, giveaways, and contests, applying the methods suggested in the book,” says Fernando Lopez, Marketing Director at Circuit.

Pick a copy here.

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2. Influence Marketing: How to Create, Manage, and Measure Brand Influencers in Social Media Marketing

Authors: Danny Brown and Sam Fiorella

Year: 2013

Here’s why Brigitta Sandström, Head of Digital Marketing at Simpleshow, refers to this book regularly:

“We, marketers, rarely give due importance to the way the consumer’s psyche works on social media, because we rather hunt for influencers instead of customers. This book shows how wrong we are in this case. We should reinforce customer-centricity by understanding the psychological drivers in buyer’s behavior and segmenting influencers accordingly.

Our marketing dep uses this guidebook on emotional influence as a go-to resource. It helps us create sentimentally resonant videos on social platforms, harness the power of situational impacts, and use positive emotional contagions for crowd stimulation.”

Focusing on the crucial psychological factors that impact consumer’s decision-making processes and the techniques to filter influencers to get emotionally connected customers, Sam Fiorella and Danny Brown share the four Ms of influence marketing:

1. Make
2. Manage
3. Monitor
4. Measure

The authors demonstrate how you can track and forecast, as well as measure influencer marketing.

Get it here.

3. The Influencer Code: How to Unlock the Power of Influencer Marketing

Author: Amanda Russell

Year: 2020

Does fame equal influence?

You wish.

Amanda Russell, a Professor of Marketing, debunks this myth as well as some other widespread misconceptions about influencers.

She teaches you some practical and easily applicable tips on setting your goals, creating influencer contracts, building and managing relationships, making stable connections with brand ambassadors, and more.

“Whether you’re a marketing specialist or a brand owner, you can’t but trust this book like yourself and rely on its three-step code to enhance your social media visibility.

The Influencer Code is a well-researched guide that helped me decipher between the four types of influencers and use the power of nonprofits, awards, and even movements as influencers too. Spoiler: an influencer doesn’t have to be an individual or even human,” shares Eva Decker, Marketing Manager at Idigic.

Get it here.

4. Influencer Marketing Strategy: How to Create Successful Influencer Marketing

Author: Gordon Glenister

Year: 2021

“If you don’t have a sound influencer marketing strategy, your collaborative endeavors with brand ambassadors are doomed – that’s the key message from this book which I absolutely agree with.

We’ve been embracing the tactics from the book with open arms in our agency. Following Glenister’s strategy, we’ve started a successful partnership with the renowned influencers among Roblox gamers who take our surveys, promote their Roblox profiles with the dedicated gift cards, and share their opinion on social networks,” says Jerry Han, CMO at PrizeRebel.

Influencer Marketing Strategy is one of the best influencer marketing books with new ideas and a comprehensive strategic approach to influencer and affiliate marketing. It explains how to pay influencers, ensure a long-term collaboration, and keep an eye on the legal implications.

Gordon Glenister also elaborates on each of the following social media sites for creating a powerful brand ambassador program:

• Instagram
• LinkedIn
• YouTube
• Twitter
• Snapchat
• Pinterest
• TikTok
• Facebook
• Twitch

Get it here.

5. TikTok Mastery 2-in-1 Bundle: Grow Your Personal Brand, Master Influencer Marketing and Grow Your Business on the Newest Social Media Platform

Author: Samson Floyd

Year: 2020

Are you considering jumping on the TikTok train? Not sure it’s for your brand, though?

TikTok is for everyone, says Samson Floyd.

“TikTok Mastery gives you the secret key to TikTok where you can settle your company firmly and effectively. We used its potential as a part of our strategy to grow our follower base to nearly 600,000 and receive over 30 million likes.

We also discovered the social bonding mechanism between friends who are actually micro-influencers for TikTok users. Challenges and questions work the best for our brand. For example: What color would your friend choose for your custom T-shirt? We’ll do that one next! Our viewers tag friends, share their thoughts about colors, and see those created in our next videos. At this point, we achieve a higher user engagement rate and more customers driven to our website," shares Michael Nemeroff, CEO & Co-Founder of Rush Order Tees.

Get your copy here.

6. Influencer Marketing: Who Really Influences Your Customers?

Authors: Duncan Brown and Nick Hayes

Year: 2008

What’s the difference between effective and ineffective influencers?

You’ll find it out in Influencer Marketing: Who Really Influencers Your Customers by Nick Hayes and Duncan Brown. It’s packed with lessons on how to find relevant influencers based on a specific ecosystem of decision-makers.

Having tried some practices from the book, Kyle Zien, Director of Growth Marketing at Felix, shares:

“An eye-opening discovery from this read is how buyers form their own decision-maker ecosystems (DMEs), often subconsciously, and what role influencers play in them.

Referring to the guidelines from the book, we launched skin care and acne treatment campaigns and experimented with the two influencer categories that have a persuasive authority for the selected DME: dermatologists and beauty bloggers. Unexpectedly, people were more likely to follow the recommendation from an experienced dermatologist than that from a celebrity beauty blogger.”

Find it here.

7. Winfluence: Reframing Influencer Marketing to Ignite Your Brand

Author: Jason Falls

Year: 2021

Jason Falls, the Founder of SocialMediaExplorer, believes that word-of-mouth (WOM) is “the Holy Grail of influence marketing”.

But for the WOM to work, you need to know the five essential ‘tudes of your audience:

• Amplitude
• Attitude
• Habitude
• Altitude
• Aptitude

A part of the book is devoted to social media content, and Jenna Nye, CEO at On The Strip, comments on it:

“You can’t expect social media brand ambassadors to pull magic posts out of thin air. In Winfluence, Jason Falls clarifies why they often fail to deliver the content you might need and how to build a content arsenal yourself. The author also provides straightforward instructions on how to make a flexible system to react instantly to any change that happens on social channels.”

Get a copy here.

With these books in your hands, in your eBook reader, or in your audiobook player, you can apply your learnings to expand your reach on social networks and find success with influencer marketing. 

No time to read? No problem. Visit the Modash Academy for quick tips about starting & scaling influencer marketing.