Marketers and brands are fast embracing the fact that real power lies in consumer’s hands and that their voice is more important than what a brand has to say about itself. Most people want to buy services and products from trusted brands, and only after receiving positive recommendations from their family and friends. This is where influencer marketing comes into the fray.
Influencers are highly active on blogs and social media, participating as niche promoters and acting as brand advocates. However, there is no silver bullet for identifying them and working them into your marketing strategies but there are a few guidelines that one can follow that should make you more likely to succeed, some of which we look at below as follows:
What constitutes an influencer for your brand?
An influencer can be defined as an inspirational person in the eyes of your target clients. They connect with your target consumers in a more powerful way and are the driving force that spreads your brand message. Their experience and opinion carries an element of trust and authentic weight that is not always evident coming from the brand on its own. Influencer marketing thus provides a brand with a scalable way of reaching new people on social media platforms and quickly converting them into a client.
Such socially savvy people provide value to a brand because they inspire trends, create consistently engaging content, and know how to grow a loyal following. In fact, social influencers have such a high level of respect and credibility that their opinions influence others to take action. A strong reach, contextual fit, and an influencer’s ability to stir action from their audience- this is exactly what brands need to increase sales and grow their business.
Provide your influencer with an image
Providing your influencer with a persona and image is vital to choosing the right person for your campaigns. Detailing exactly what you are looking for and then matching those traits to your prospects should give you a much better chance of building long-lasting relationships that will help you achieve your goals.
Some elements that you may want to consider are the type of reach, topics, niche, genre, and personality. Therefore, take time to work through and document the process in order to make sure that the end goals are achieved. If the person you are after has a personality that already fits your brand’s voice or they are already talking about the topics that you are trying to market, then the relationship should effortlessly come together and in turn, the message will be viewed as honest and authentic.
Where to find the ideal influencer
Identifying the ideal influencer is not an easy task as it requires putting in the appropriate time to do outreach and research. And one of the first steps in this process should be to participate in already on-going conversations. Tune in to your blog posts where guest posting is encouraged and social media mentions and you will be pleasantly surprised to find advocates and influencers that you did not realize you had. Some of the ways that you could do this include:
- Setting up Google alerts for keywords associated with your brand so that you can identify people who actively write about topics in your realm.
- Monitor hashtags on Twitter such as #influencemktg and # bloggeroutreach and make lists that organize your potential influencers on this platform.
- Search social media mentions about your brand on various platforms to establish who are already believers and fans.
- Conduct a blogger outreach in order to identify strong influencers- do not forget to check out their social media information and SEO stats to ascertain that they have the appropriate reach.
Content creation
Having done the hard work of finding and vetting potential influencers, you need to come up with a plan for creating and sharing content so that your efforts are not in vain. It takes specific instruction and careful planning to not only share information from your influencers, but to ignite their excitement as well. Therefore, generate as much content as you can from satisfied clients and their love for your brand will inevitably spread to the masses. Also, do not be afraid to ask clients to upload videos and photos of themselves using your products.