Influencers: Powerful or Powerless?
You need to know these three things about influencer marketing.
1. What is Influencer Marketing?
Influencers are personalities or brands that have an existing affinity for products or ideas you are trying to sell and/or build awareness for. They are a means of mass marketing without having to bankrupt your yearly marketing budget.
Influencer marketing doesn’t have to involve celebrities. While it certainly doesn’t hurt to have millions of followers, influencers only need to have a few qualities – trustworthiness, a bigger following than your business or organization and multiple open forms of communication. Influence marketing is a form of word-of-mouth mixed with native advertising.
Marketers must form partnerships with those who align with their goals. Influencers then share content in line with what they’ve either shared in the past or could seamlessly share in the future. The goal is for the influencer to generate income without the feeling that they are “selling out.”
2. It’s OK to start small
Are you a food truck vendor looking for exposure? Partner with a food blogger. Are you a wedding planner looking for a boost for the summer season? Try attaching yourself to fashion designers or established photographers. Need help launching a personal training program? Build a team of influencers including nutritionists, bloggers, vloggers and Instagram fitness mavens to shape your image while you get others into shape.
You don’t need to sign multi-million follower influencers right away. Just like top spokespeople, top influencers require more money. Depending on your geography, finding your ideal influencer may be as a simple as seeing someone on the news or in a local publication.
For more detailed profiles on influencers, sites like NinjaOutreach or Tomoson provide information on influencers who can create the content you need on a global level.
3. Know Your 5Ws and 1H
Knowing how to pick the influencer is often not the hardest part. Once you have the who, you still need to figure out what product or which service sell. Where you wish it to be displayed. Why it’s important to share. And when you want the influencer to share it online.
Campaign needs include social deals, feedback, social mentions, unboxing videos and sponsored content. An influencer list typically includes rising YouTube stars and bloggers looking to cut their teeth on their next assignment. Bloggers have the ability to produce highly thorough content that is great for search engine optimization and landing pages.
Instagram, while great for visuals, are even better for the personalities behind them. With customizable content in the form of one picture, story or image package, one influencer could easily have between one and a dozen different handles, each supporting a sub-niche within a given category or hashtag.
For instance, a fitness trainer could have one account each for men, women, couples, select routines for specific muscle groups and nutrition, all while not interfering with their personal account.
Unboxing videos are tremendously popular on YouTube and other video-sharing networks. Unboxings play into the try-it-before-you-buy-it need many consumers have when researching products.
Influencer marketing on Twitter may yield the largest followings, however, the character limit on tweets lead many to users to originate content on other sites like Facebook and Instagram.
Snapchat is also a less-than-ideal source of influencer marketing, as the image impermanence of the app reaches a significantly smaller audience than competitor Instagram.
Valorous Circle provides many marketing services, including the creation of social media accounts and blogs. Fill out a form or schedule an appointment to find out how you can get started sharing your business.
