When preparing a campaign, setting the creative direction for influencers is a crucial step to ensure alignment with your brand objectives and campaign goals. Here are the steps to follow:

1. Framing the Objective: Begin by articulating your campaign objective clearly. Whether it’s brand awareness, product launch, or user engagement, it influences the creative direction.

2. Defining Messaging: Define the messaging, tone, and voice that aligns with your brand. However, allow flexibility so influencers can customize according to their personal style and audience taste.

3. Providing a Content Framework: While influencers vastly benefit from creative freedom, providing a general framework helps ensure consistency. This could include key talking points, suggested hashtags, or a call-to-action.

4. Establishing Expectations: It’s important to define what’s expected in terms of content format (blogs, vlogs, social posts), platform (Instagram, YouTube, etc.) and frequency of posts.

5. Briefing Your Influencers: Make sure influencers have a clear understanding of your brand, product, or service. A comprehensive brief helps prevent confusion and misrepresentation.

6. Review & Feedback: Have a process in place to review and give feedback on content before it’s published. This ensures that it is on-message and aligns with the campaign’s objective.

Platforms like Flinque can streamline this process by letting you collaborate with influencers, communicate your brand objectives, share creative briefs and track campaigns in real-time. They enable a level of transparency that eases the creative direction process.

It’s worth noting that the approach can vary depending on the specific tools or platform used, whether it’s Flinque or others like Traackr or Grin. Different platforms may offer distinct features assisting in campaign preparation and influencer collaboration, but the suitability ultimately depends on your specific needs.