With all that's gone on in the influencer marketing industry, it's normal to be hesitant and put up safeguards to protect your brand. We recommend three key items to keep your brand safe. 1. Set Clear Expectations: By setting expectations upfront, you'll prevent the influencer from misrepresenting your brand and also ensure you get what you need from the relationship. 2. Implement a Binding Contract: This is the most important asset that protects your brand. It should include more just payment negotiations, but include your clear expectations, important delivery dates, and the behavior expected of the influencer while you're partnering with them. Including items about what the influencer cannot do during the partnership is often left out of most influencer contracts. Another common mistake we see in most contracts comes when legal teams get involved. While there's nothing wrong with having your brand legal team review the contract, they tend to favor the brand and include language that makes the contract very one-sided. Influencers can see this and are likely to decline work or increase their fees as a result. 3. Monitor for Compliance: Simply put, influencers don't always read everything you send them. This isn't out of disrespect, but many influencers are constantly on the go and working from their phones. Even though there's a 10-page contract and multiple emails with back and forth information, they simply don't have the time or resources to go through all of those assets when they're publishing their content from a cell phone. Because of this, mistakes happen, but if you're team is monitoring the content after publication you should be able to catch mistakes before they become a big deal.