If you are a business, you would know that scrolling through social media you will see some form of influencer marketing and no matter where you look, there are influencers that are everywhere showing various products that are relevant to their niche. From the cliché Instagram posts to the stories on Instagram, social media influencers are always on the lookout to find new ways to add sponsored content on their favorite social media platforms.
To be an influencer, you have to be the kind of person who loves people before even trying to lead people. Which simply just means that even if you just have one follower, you need to have the power and ability to influence that one follower to have a positive reaction to the said brand you are promoting on your social media pages. You need to constantly gain instagram followers, likes, comments and just generating engagement in order to feed the algorithm and to grow your following.
- Know your goals.
As a brand, you need to evaluate your goals, and know what exactly will help your brand reach out to potential target audiences, and can convert those leads into sales. One of the main reasons why brands prefer using influencer marketing for expanding their business is that through this form of marketing, they are able to reach out to new target consumers as the whole marketing campaign is literally extending your reach as a brand to the influencer’s followers. Make your goals simple and effective. Understand that the goal is to simply reach out to new customers and not to make the sale right on the top. Sales fall on the third most campaign goals for many influencer marketing campaigns.
- Know exactly who you are trying to influence, because this plays an important role as well.
One of the best and effective influencer marketing strategies always requires you to use the right tools to find the right people in order to speak to the right people, aka influencers and their audiences. Which is why the second most important step is to know who exactly is your audience and whether they will be right for your marketing campaign or not. Creating audience personas is another effective way to understand who exactly are your audience and who are you trying to reach out too. You may even end up reaching out to a new audience or even more of your current target audience.
- Find influencers that are relevant in your niche.
This has to be one of the most important steps of your influencer marketing strategy because finding influencers that are not only relevant in your niche but also have an active and engaging audience is important, without as a brand you will not be able to gain brand awareness and recognition. One of the best and easiest ways to find influencers for your marketing campaign is through social media. You can always search by the keywords or the popular topics in the niche your brand belongs to and understand who the influential individuals are, and who they follow. There are also various online marketing tools that are free, which will help you find influencers that will suit your brand and the ethos of your brand. There are many other ways where you can find the best influencer for your brand. It is really up to you to find which way would be more ideal for you and which will suit your business better.
- Do your research and make a list of influencers you want to work with.
You need to trust the influencer you are about to work with because the target audience of that influencer trusts and respects the opinion of the said influencer that you are about to partner with. Moreover, if you do not trust the whole process of content creation and the partnership with the influencer, you will find that you are not going to be able to attain the results that you wanted. So, how exactly would you know that the influencer you choose for your brand can be trusted? It all comes down to just one word.
Engagement. You need to look for an influencer who has an active engagement that matches their audience numbers. From the views on their videos, to the likes, comments, shares and a lot more. An active and interactive engagement rate also means that the influencer has an active audience that is interested in knowing what this influencer has to say and put out there. The tone at which the influencer promotes your products and services also has to be appropriate because in the end, the influencer and the tone of voice this influencer uses to promote your products represents your brand and how it looks to your target audience and customers. This is why you have to make sure as a brand that things do not feel and look disjointed in yours, and the influencers social media accounts and posts.
These are a few ways you can use influencer marketing to expand your business and to reach out to your target audience. Make sure that you follow these points along with your own research that would be suited for your brand, and watch how your business expands!