How To Use Influencer Marketing To Scale Your Social Media Results

By Bill Achola Otieno

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Have you been looking for alternate ways to advertise your brand or products? Or maybe you want to try something new that will allow you to build a better relationship with your target audience. Then it is the perfect time for you to partner with an influencer to get the game going.

Influencer marketing can be a great alternative if you want to explore the advertising platform that social media gives us.

In this post, we will highlight the aspects of influencer marketing and how it can have an impact on your brand.

Influencer Marketing

The world of social media is constantly busy and has thousands of trending activities going on at the same time. With millions of people spending most of their free time on social media and consuming the content provides a greater marketing platform. Those days are over when a business could survive with organic success only. Now companies use paid media to advertise their brands and products.

But there are also some other ways in which you can garner positive responses about your products. These so-called ‘others’ can be your family/friends or social circle, your existing fan base who love the products and influencers.

Your well-wishers and fans are equally crucial and will have a stronghold in their own way. But if we consider the engagement and impact that influencers have over people who admire and follow them, then they seem to have a wider reach.

So, influencer marketing is all about partnering with social media influencers. They are different from celebrities who have lots of fans with different interests. Whereas influencers have followers who relate to their content and value their recommendations. A decade ago, such influencers were mostly newspaper writers or television artists. But not anymore.

Now, we have influencers who have a huge fan following watching their content and have an impact that is nothing less than A-list celebrities.

Some influencers stick to one social site like Youtube, Instagram or Facebook whereas others like to explore many other platforms. Under influencer marketing, you collaborate with an influencer who talks about your products/brand, which leads to a positive response from their followers.

For example, when an influencer shows off and praises a plus-size clothing brand for women, the fans or the followers of Instagram accounts will have a positive review about the brand.

They are called influencers for a reason. They create their own content which influences other people. With regular tips, recommendations and valuable content, their followers keep yearning for more.

To be an influencer, they don’t need to have a million subscribers like celebrities. They are still an influencer if they can have an impact in their own community regardless of the social media platform they are on.

A person with 100,000 followers on Instagram and someone with 10 million subscribers on Youtube are both examples of influencers. They may have never heard of each other but that doesn’t matter as long as they have dedicated followers on their platforms.

We cannot underestimate the impact and reach of influencer marketing on the masses. The UK government paid £63000 to influencers to spread the word about their ‘Test and Trace’ project to combat Covid-19. The government felt that along with conventional advertising approach in the form of TV, newspaper and radio, they also had to try social media platforms.

5 ways to use Influencer Marketing to scale your social media reach

Let us dive in detail to know how influencers can make a difference in digital marketing platforms.

1. Discovering Potential Influencers

Try to choose influencers who can be the correct spokesperson for your products. You can do keyword searches to find out who is using hashtags or topics that relate to your products. A company dealing with curly hair products should look for influencers who endorse the curly girl method and their posts or videos give elaborate details about products.

It is not always about the number of followers that can make an influencer effective. Someone may have a million followers but hardly a thousand likes on their pictures. This shows that they don’t have an engaging fanbase. Whereas, a micro-influencer with a fairly less number of followers may have more likes and shares which is proof that their content is more engaging.

Try finding influencers who make creative content that get lots of shares and likes from their community. The engagement to their posts is what matters the most as it directly shows how people are consuming their content. And also your brand or products should have a resonance with their content.

Once you find your rightful influencers, try to get in touch with them at a more basic and transparent level. You can follow their accounts, comment under their posts, start tagging them or share their content to let them know that you like their way of creating content. The more organic your relationship is with influencers, the better it will last in the long run.

2. Paid influencers Vs Earned influencers

The idea behind paid or earned influencers is the same: advertising and selling the products. But there are some subtle differences in both of them.

Small businesses cannot afford to have celebrities to endorse their brand but they are plenty of micro-influencers or nano influencers who can do the same without charging much. Instead of paying thousands of dollars for a post to a celebrity, you can pay around $300 to $500 dollars per post to a micro-influencer.

But such relationships are going to be purely transactional and you may be just one brand among the other 50 brands that the influencer endorses. There are high chances that the influencer may even lose interest in your brand.

There is a better way to create organic and healthy relationships with your potential bloggers. Instead of directly asking them to endorse your brand, try to involve them in activities that give them the liberty to express their views and ideas about the products.

For example, you can invite such influencers for an event or join a live Instagram or Twitter chat. Or maybe you could recommend and tag them in your posts. All these will encourage a smooth flow of conversation where they can engage with you and you can ask for their ideas or views regarding the brand.

Instead of directly asking them to talk about your products, try sending them free samples. If they like the product, they will definitely share good reviews on their social media platforms. Without spending hoardes of money, just providing influencers with free products or services will also lead to a positive impact on your brand.

As influencers with high followers become more expensive, you can look for micro-influencers or nano influencers. These influencers will have an engaging fan following even though they may have only some hundred thousand followers.

Another advantage of partnering with micro-influencers is that they will have fewer brands to endorse which means they can give more attention to your brand. It can help to build better relationships with influencers as you mutually help each other to grow.

3. Set clear goals and expectations

The most common reasons for trying out influencer marketing is to endorse your products and to increase sales. But try not to stick to only these two goals. You can look for some other areas that influencer marketing may help you cover.

It can be about including a certain age group or trying out products that deal with specific issues. When influencers speak about a product, they target a specific group of people who value their thoughts and perceptions about a brand. Make sure that you have a clear idea about what areas they emphasize in their reviews about your products.

Don’t have unrealistic expectations from influencers even though they endorse your products. You cannot bombard them with emails or expect them at every event that you hold. Influencers are basically content creators who are busy creating and editing content so you need to respect their time and privacy.

4. Reaching out to influencers

Before you reach out to any blogger, sit back and do a thorough research. Check out all social media platforms like YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, Tiktok or Snapchat to find out right influencers.You cannot deal with 1000 influencers at the same time so try to aim for 10 to 20 influencers.

Try to look for influencers who:

  • Post about products or services that are similar to yours.

For example, if you are a plus-size clothing brand then look for influencers who endorse body positivity and post a lot about plus size clothing.

  • Are legitimate and have genuine followers. To get an idea about this, go through their posts and check the engagement rate. If the ratio of followers and the number of likes and shares do not match then something is fishy.
  • Have worked with similar brands. Such influencers will be able to present a clear portfolio of their work experience. Of course, you can also work with first-timers provided they have a good engagement ratio on their posts.

Now you need to decide how to contact them. If you are aiming for nano influencers then a direct message on the same platform will be enough to get the conversation going. And the bigger ones may have a link that states contact details for endorsements.

5. Start a conversation

After you get in touch with your target influencers, look back at how you made the approach and who got back to you.

You will get a clear idea about prices and expectations and then you can adapt according to that.

Choose influencers who share the same vision with you regarding the prices and expectations about the relationship.

Once you have sent a message or email, let them know that you follow each other on the social platform. You can also use some of their posts as reference and tell them how much you loved their content. Before stating any deals, try to engage with them at a deeper level so that both of you are able to build trust.

Make it clear that you want to spread positive feedback about your product. Instead of directly asking for a blog post or review post, ask them to let you know about the feedback regarding the products.

You could also send them free products or anything to show your appreciation regarding their views. Or maybe send them products that they can use as a giveaway for their followers.

Summary

By now you should have a clear idea about the aspects of influencer marketing and how it can be the perfect tool for your marketing strategy.

At the end of the day, the most important thing for a business is to earn profits with a solid customer base. And what better marketing platform than social media enthusiasts who live off their life creating content.

Engage with influencers who are steadily increasing their fan base and who are relatable with your product range. Build an organic relationship with them so that you trust each other which in turn will give benefits to your brand.

Key takeaways from this post:

  • What is Influencer marketing?
  • Impact of influencer marketing.
  • Strategies to use influencer marketing.

Conclusion

What do you think about the impact of Influencer marketing?

Comment below and let us know your thoughts.

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