Article URL: https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/codecrafters/jobs/7ljWFvU-influencer-partnerships-manager Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40436206 Points: 0 # Comments: 0
Tag: Influencer
CodeCrafters (YC S22) is hiring an influencer manager (interns welcome)
Article URL: https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/codecrafters/jobs/M2ELjtC-influencer-partnerships-manager
Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39598170
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Adams suggests 'outside agitators' involved in NYC influencer Kai Cenat riot
New York City Mayor Eric Adams on Saturday suggested that the riot involving thousands of young people that unfolded in Manhattan’s Union Square could have been driven by “outside agitators.”
Asked about the incident – sparked by what intended to be a PlayStation giveaway organized by Twitch influencer Kai Cenat – during an unrelated press conference, Adams referenced Cenat, noting that the influencer “had a substantial number of followers” and “people came from outside of the city to be there.”
“We are further looking into where there’s some even outside agitators. You don’t come to get free Game Boys and bring smoke bombs and bring M80s and bring other disruptive items,” Adams said, mentioning a different video gaming system. “We believe there were some outside influencers that may have attempted to aggravate this situation.”
Cenat, a 21-year-old social media influencer who boasts more than 13 million followers across platforms including Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Twitch, had advertised a giveaway of a PlayStation and other electronics in Union Square. The NYPD said thousands of kids and young people showed up, and the Friday afternoon event produced chaos.
Video that circulated online showed some young people jumping atop vehicles, hurling bottles and throwing punches. Other footage showed crowds chanting vulgar anti-NYPD slogans.
During the news conference, Adams also issued a warning on the negative impact of social media on young people, and spoke to his own experience as the father of a now 27-year-old son.
“It is difficult being a parent now with so much weight and so many obligations they are facing,” Adams said. “Our children cannot be raised by social media. Our children cannot get their values, their beliefs from social media and other outside entities. And it’s about being aware that the things that my mother needed to raise me is different from the things that parents need today. Our children are being inundated by influencers, by those who consider themselves to be credible messengers.”
Adams praised the NYPD for how they handled the volatile situation.
“I cannot say enough for the police department yesterday, I don’t think people realized the level of discipline that was showed to take a very dangerous, volatile situation and to be able to bring it to a level of resolve without any loss of life or any substantial damage to property, and without young people harming themselves,” he added.
At a prior press conference Friday night, NYPD Chief Jeffrey Maddrey said 65 people were arrested, 30 of them juveniles. Speaking to both the power and danger of social media, Maddrey said how the giveaway event, which was not sanctioned or permitted, grew “exponentially, rapidly, fast” from just about 300 attendees to thousands in a short time frame.
“We wanted the kids to just comply with us and leave, but we were met with a lot of resistance. We were attacked,” Maddrey said. “My older brother just called and said he saw video of me getting hit in the head with an object. It was a very tough situation out here, and I really have to commend the women and men of this department, the level of restraint they showed in addressing these young people.”
Maddrey said young people destroyed NYPD vehicles, including his own, damaged food carts, and grabbed plates from people outside on the street dining and threw them at officers. At least one person, a 17-year-old, was at Bellevue Hospital with injuries determined to be from fireworks debris.
“When you have M80s and heavy-duty explosives being thrown around a crowd of thousands of people you’re talking about a very dangerous chaotic situation. We can’t let this happen here. We can’t let this happen with our young people,” Maddrey said.
“I had thousands of kids out there. I needed thousands of parents out there,” he added, thanking the few parents who did show up or call. “We don’t want to do this. We want our young people to come out and gather and have fun, but when it gets to the point when they’re disorderly, we want the parents to come and take control.”
Cenat is facing multiple charges, including at least two counts of inciting a riot, unlawful assembly and others, Maddrey said. The influencer was released early Saturday from police custody after being issued a desk appearance ticket, which police issue to require a suspect to appear in court to answer charges.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Influencer Marketing for Small Businesses
You know that today’s market demands every advantage you can get for your organization to succeed. So what can you do to gain an edge? Dive into the world of influencer marketing. Influencer marketing for small business is one of the most powerful marketing methods available for small companies. With more than 4.26 billion social … Continue reading Influencer Marketing for Small Businesses
Influencer Marketing for Small Businesses
You know that today’s market demands every advantage you can get for your organization to succeed.
So what can you do to gain an edge?
Dive into the world of influencer marketing.
Influencer marketing for small business is one of the most powerful marketing methods available for small companies. With more than 4.26 billion social media users across the world in 2021, it’s no wonder that influencers are used by small and large businesses alike to promote their products.
But what is influencer marketing, and how can it actually help your business?
Goal Setting for Small Business Influencer Campaigns
Influencer marketing is the process of working with well-known social media personalities to promote your business. Before you get started with an influencer, first ask yourself: what are my goals?
When it comes to influencer marketing, the biggest mistake you can make is to have an unclear campaign goal.
Think about it: if you post without a plan, you’ll have a hard time explaining to an influencer what you want to accomplish, let alone analyzing your campaign’s success afterward.
That’s why it’s a good idea to understand the purpose of your campaign. What are your marketing goals? If your purpose is to increase followers, the strategy will look different than if you want to boost engagement or generate leads.
Physical goals, like higher sales or increased traffic to your business, should be included in your campaign plan. Remember, the whole point of influencer marketing is to help you make more money.
Once you have clear campaign goals, it’s time to connect with influencers.
Influencers: Not Just for Big Businesses
You don’t have to own a giant corporation to benefit from using influencers in a marketing campaign. In fact, influencer marketing can be a huge boost to your small business campaign!
Build awareness around your brand by allowing influencers to use their voices to spread your message. Through their own pages, each influencer has cultivated audiences with similar interests. With 10k-100k followers, even a micro-influencer can help grow your base at a reasonable price.
By working with influencers, you also gain access to new audiences at a fraction of the price of traditional marketing banners.
How much more effective is influencer marketing? On average, brands earn over $5 for every $1 spent on an influencer marketing campaign. That’s 11x the ROI of using traditional banner advertisements!
Finding the Right Influencers for your Business
So you’ve got your campaign goals set. Now what?
The next step is to find the influencer that fits best with your campaign. When researching influencers, the best influencer marketing platform for small businesses is Instagram, with 79% of brands considering it the most important platform for them. However, Tik Tok is a rising star in the social media world and could eventually become the next top dog. As of January 2022, Tik Tok has 1 billion monthly active users who spend an average of 850 minutes on the app each month!
With so many influencers online, it can appear overwhelming to find one to work with. Don’t let that hold you back, though! There are a few easy ways to narrow down your search.
Search your own social media pages:
- People who are already interested in your brand will be more passionate about collaboration.
- It will also have a more natural feel when a collaboration is announced.
- Look for people who consistently comment on your posts.
- Check and see if your account is tagged in posts. Anyone who regularly engages with your brand is a potential candidate.
- Don’t be afraid to ask your audience.
- Framed in the right way, like with a question sticker or poll, you can find an influencer and increase follower engagement at the same time.
Search hashtags related to your business:
- Don’t have a big following? That’s okay! Influencers in your niche are already broadcasting their interest in products similar to yours.
Peek at the competition:
- Work smarter, not harder! If you have competition, look through their social media accounts for influencers.
Review Your Influencer Options
By now, you’ve combed through your account, searched hashtags, and even took a peek at the audiences of the competition to find influencers. Are you ready to reach out? Not quite yet.
Before contacting your list of influencers, you take some time to inspect their accounts on a deeper level. Also known as influencer targeting, being selective with who you choose to work with is key to any successful influencer marketing campaign.
Make sure that the influencer’s audience is similar to yours. What is their geographic location? What is their age? Do they speak the same language as your market demographic? The goal here is to discover where your audiences overlap with each other.
Next, confirm that your potential influencers are legit. This is one of the few instances where the phrase ‘fake it till you make it’ is counterintuitive. Currently, followers can be bought to artificially inflate audience numbers. Thankfully, there are a few ways to detect “fake” followers:
Demographics. Look at where an influencer’s followers are located. Overall, are they in the same place as the influencer?
- Check how many of their followers have profile photos. How many followers have names that consist solely of random numbers and letters? These are all indicators of a phony following.
Engagement. In addition to the size of an influencer’s audience, you need to pay close attention to engagement rates.
- A huge following is useless unless that audience is engaged. High engagement rates mean followers are tuning in and taking action.
- To calculate an engagement rate, take the number of likes or comments on an influencer’s posts, divide it by their number of followers and then multiply by 100 to get a percentage.
- In general, you want to see at least 2-3% engagement for a worthwhile influencer. 5% engagement is considered great, while anything above 10% is viral and likely some stellar content creation.
Content. The last thing you want to double-check is the content style and quality of the influencers on your list.
- Do they align with your brand?
- Which influencers deliver high-quality content?
- What are their videos like?
- Are they high-end videos, or do they look like they were put together by an amateur?
- Ask questions like these when considering using influencer marketing for your small business.
Influencer Marketing Platforms for Small Businesses
As influencer marketing grows in popularity and scale, it can be difficult for small businesses to navigate these waters alone. That’s why so many companies are turning to influencer marketing platforms for small businesses
These platforms are designed to take the legwork out of the influencer review process.
Right now, the best influencer marketing platform for small business is Upfluence. Upfluence has tons of information on influencers and their relevant statistics. Users can search for influencers easily with their followers, interests, and engagement all available in one spot.
Don’t worry if Upfluence isn’t for you: there’s more than one influencer marketing platform for small business: in fact, there are quite a few! Sparktoro is a great audience research tool. Brandbassador is another influencer marketing platform for small e-commerce businesses, connecting them to potential influencers that can serve as brand ambassadors for their product, increasing their reach.
Another potential option is influencer engagement marketplaces, where businesses can post the type of needs they have and influencers can reach out if they think they can be a good fit.
Don’t want to deal with the hassle at all? I don’t blame you. Thankfully, there are full service influencer marketing agencies for small businesses as well!
An influencer marketing agency for small business works at all levels of the influencer collaboration process, including:
- Set the target audience for your campaign.
- Locate the right influencer for the job.
- Build a relationship with the influencer
- Set ideal campaign goal strategies
- Help influencers to create better content
- Monitor the campaign
Whether you go with an influencer marketing platform or agency, or if you decide to work in-house, you’ll still benefit from knowing how to reach out and work with influencers.
How to Start Working with Influencers
Now that you or your agency has found influencers to work with, it’s time to reach out.
A good rule of thumb is to check their account or webpage for an email contact. Make sure you introduce yourself personally so that they feel like they know who they’re talking to. This should make them more comfortable and willing to ask questions about your project.
Most professional influencers have a media kit of some kind. Asking for one is a great way to see if you are working with a serious influencer.
Once you’ve made introductions, talk about your campaign. Explain the direction of the campaign and be as transparent as possible about the timeline for the project, important dates, and rates.
What to Avoid When Reaching Out
As with any endeavor, there are certain practices that should be avoided when pursuing influencer marketing for a small business. For example, never use a bot to contact influencers. They come off as impersonal at best and spam at worst, pushing away potential collaborations. Instagram also penalizes bot behavior, which is why it’s best to avoid this practice.
Never reach out via a comment on a post. It’s unprofessional, so instead, stick to email or direct messages.
Another thing to do is never copy and paste the exact same message to every influencer. Again, it comes off as spammy and unprofessional. A better way to approach outreach is to add a few personal touches to your introductory message for each influencer.
Want to go that extra mile? Add some details about their page or their work. To get influencers to work with you, emphasize how they personally would be a great asset to your campaign. Trust me, it goes a long way.
The last thing to avoid is unrelated influencers. What good does talking to a cooking influencer do if you are running a campaign about 3D printing?
When it comes to the world of influencer marketing for small business, unrelated influencers are a waste of time! Confirm that potential collaborators fit your brand.
Best Practices for Small Business Influencer Campaigns
By now you’ve set up your campaign, found an influencer and are ready to start collaborating. Here are a few tips to help your campaign flourish.
- As you enter into negotiations, you’ll want to remain as open and transparent as possible. While rates vary, clear expectations of the influencer should always be made.
- How much you will pay, tasks and deadlines are mapped out ahead of time to avoid confusion down the road.
- Especially with larger projects, think about creating a formal contract for your influencer that outlines the requirements of the project.
- Share your resources! The easier you make it for influencers, the better results you’ll get. If you have a brand style guide that contains your logo, brand colors and taglines, influencers can use that to hit the ground running.
- Communicate your campaign goals, as well as any frequently asked questions about your campaign to streamline things.
- Track campaign metrics to ensure your project is reaching the goals you set out to achieve.
Once your campaign is complete, share the results with your influencers. This not only strengthens professional co-working relationships but can also get influencers to work with you in the future. In addition, you might also get insightful feedback from your influencer team. Used wisely, this can consistently improve future campaigns!
You should note that the FTC requires disclosures of endorsed relationships with businesses any time there is a material connection. This includes payments and gifts. When developing campaigns, make sure you are compliant with all laws and regulations.
FAQs
What are the types of influencers?
Influencers can be broken into groups by follower size. Nano-influencers have 1k-10k followers. Micro-influencers have a 10k-100k audience size, while macro-influencers are followed by 100k-1M people. The largest type is a mega-influencer, which is a person with over 1 million followers.
Can I pay an influencer with products if I don’t have a big budget?
That’s not a problem at all! Gifting products through ambassadorships or referral programs is pretty common among smaller brands. Brandbassador is a prime example of an influencer marketing platform for small business that helps manage ambassadors for your brand.
What is the benefit of using an influencer for my small business?
Working with an influencer can boost your campaigns, increase brand awareness, give you access to new audiences and expand your base.
What should I be cautious of when working with influencers?
When it comes to using influencers for your brand, do your research! Make sure you are working with an influencer who has a real following, aligns with your brand, and has the skills needed to reach your campaign goals.
What can the expected ROI be when working with influencers?
On average, brands earn over $5 for every $1 spent on an influencer marketing campaign. That’s 11x the ROI of traditional banner ads!
Conclusion
Adding influencers to your marketing campaigns can be the next big game changer for your business. However, with so many moving parts, it can be tough to even get influencers to work with you.
Let our agency know if you want help with your next influencer marketing campaign and we’ll be your guide.
Which influencers in your audience fit your brand?
Become An Influencer Using These 19 Easy Steps
Interest in influencer marketing has skyrocketed 90x since 2013. And I hesitate to pat myself on the back, but I’m recognized as an influencer in the digital marketing space.
But how? Why? In this article, we’ll go over how I became one and how to become an influencer in your own field.
1. Start by Becoming an Influencer in a Niche Field
Most great influencers start as a microinfluencer, a person on social media with roughly 10,000-50,000 followers. In a pinch, think of them as having a larger following than your average person, but less than a celebrity or established influencer. This is great because it allows you to start building a dedicated following and see what type of content works for you on a smaller scale.
With this said, though, even if you have a decent size following, you want to always establish credibility with the audience. Micro influencers can extend powerful word of mouth to small groups. As you start out as a micro influencer you’ll develop expertise in your niche. They don’t have the followings of a Kardashian, but they’re more affordable and can still reach enough people to make a difference in product sales.
Research shows they generate double the sales of paid ads and with a 37% higher customer retention rate.
It’s not enough to just pick the field you want to influence.
Take my case for example. Digital marketing is a broad topic, and I didn’t get to the top by focusing solely on a broad keyword.
See How My Agency Can Drive Massive Amounts of Traffic to Your Website
- SEO – unlock massive amounts of SEO traffic. See real results.
- Content Marketing – our team creates epic content that will get shared, get links, and attract traffic.
- Paid Media – effective paid strategies with clear ROI.
I started in the trenches of SEO before learning content marketing, conversion rate optimization, influencer marketing, social media marketing, and more. I worked hard. to get to nearly 432K Twitter followers.
One day you might get to 400K + followers too; but to become an influencer, you have to start with one.
Start as the expert among your friends and peers.
Work toward being the expert in your city and state.
Then become an influencer from there.
2. Create a Content Strategy
Once you have a niche, it’s time to build your content strategy. Content strategy can be a vague concept, but for the purposes of this post, we mean things like publishing cadence, tone and voice of the author, and content elements (text, graphs, etc.).
Even the Content Marketing Institute concedes there is no template for this, because every person and brand’s needs and goals are different.
The Usability.gov website has a handy chart to get started.
For my content strategy, I have strict goals I set for myself to create a set amount of social posts on each network while maintaining blog quality and working on side projects. I also made sure I use the same conversational tone and voice in my content (can you tell?)
Not terribly hard right?
Once you’re armed with this information, you can select your channels.
3. Select Your Channels
There’s no wrong answer for which social channels to be on and avoid.
Besides Twitter, I’m on Facebook.
Facebook is the most popular, with 94% of marketers using Facebook worldwide as of January 2020, followed by LinkedIn with 76%.
Facebook is by far the most popular, with almost 75% market share in 2022. But that dropped from 65% in 2015, and other social channels still have validity.
While I enjoy my time on certain channels more than others, I don’t play favorites when engaging with my audiences.
I do my best to show up everywhere.
My page gets a ton of traffic and has a great conversion rate.
I’m also active on LinkedIn and Pinterest, which I think is even more visually appealing than Instagram. I also think it has more effective content marketing potential than Instagram.
And, last but not least, I have over one million followers on my YouTube channel.
Each channel has a different audience (and audience size) expecting different content.
These are just my social channels. I’m not including my blogging and guest blogging efforts.
You don’t have to stay this active on so many channels, but pick one or two to start building out your influence.
Think of each social channel as another platform for you to reach your customers (and the general public).
4. Network Within the Industry
In order to become an influencer, you need to make real connections.
Everyone wants to sit at home on their couch and connect with influencers on social media.
That’s simply not an option. Popular tech influencer iJustine, for example, has 1.8 million Twitter followers.
She’s very active with her followers, but can’t possibly engage individually with all 1.8 million in any meaningful way.
Where you can network with Justine Ezarik is at technology trade shows like CES, the Webby Awards, the Streamys, and several other events. You can follow her social accounts to see which events she attends.
Event marketing is a big trend and being able to boast influencer attendance is huge.
Why not make it a priority for marketing yourself?
Get off the couch, get out the house, and get to major events related to your niche. Or, even easier, attend online events, which are becoming more popular in the post-COVID world.
You can start your search at the Trade Show News Network for listings of trade shows around the world in every industry.
5. Participate in Off-site Forums
Becoming a popular social media influencer does have its advantages. For example, in 2020, the most popular YouTubers earn more than a billion dollars a year from advertisements and sponsorships.
Not all of us can be that lucky. The rest of us have to venture outside social media and participate in forums, comment wells, and other online discussions so we can boost our following.
Every discussion you can be a part of online enhances your reputation, influence, and connections.
6. Create a Website or Blog
Conversations don’t end on social media.
You’ll always have more to say than can fit in a tweet or Instagram post as a social media influencer.
With a website or blog, you have a place to direct your social followers as you gain them.
Personally, I’m a huge fan of blogging.
One of the best content management systems for creating either a website or blog is WordPress.
Be prepared to lead your followers into your well-designed conversion funnel by building out your blogging content strategy. Start with including a link to your blog in your social media posts. A link to your website or blog can actually increase your audience engagement on social media.
And it goes without saying the longer blog content needs to provide even more value than a social post to get clicks.
7. Provide Value to the Conversation
If you’re not providing value to the conversation, you’ll never reach the ears of anyone influential.
When trying to become an influencer, remember you need to be the person people are talking to each other about.
Word of mouth is the most influential element driving purchase decisions today.
If you can impress people enough with your knowledge and conversational value, they’ll sell everybody else on you.
Then they’ll tell two friends, and so on…until you become an influencer!
8. Stay Ahead of Current Events
There are two types of content, evergreen and topical.
Evergreen content stays forever relevant, such as an article about a historical event.
Topical content is hot right now, but will soon be forgotten. Basically, everything happening today.
When writing a blog post, I’d stay as evergreen as possible since you don’t want to have to update your content constantly. But on social media, staying informed about current events is the key to being shared.
Every year since 2003, Starbucks has been able to rally up customers for their seasonal drink. For example, in 2021 they expanded the offering of the beloved Pumpkin Spice Latte to stores in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. They were able to expand customer reach and created a quiz to strengthen their #PSLlovers community.
Using this seasonal tradition with user-generated content created a brand win for Starbucks by appealing to customer loyalty through a festive time of year.
Staying topical is how you go viral on social media.
You can use tools to stay on top of social media trends. You can also set a Google News alert to monitor the entire Internet for specific keywords and phrases.
Do what you have to do to stay current.
9. Understand All Channels
Even if you don’t use a particular social media channel, if you want to become an influencer it’s still important to understand who does.
I’m not a big user of Snapchat, for example, but I understand its 250 million+ (mostly younger) users can’t be ignored.
TikTok may not be for you, but the platform has doubled it’s worldwide users between 2019 and 2021. It’s also the most engaging channel of all the popular platforms today. So, if you’re looking to build a community, the numbers don’t lie – it makes the most sense for you to build a following there. Because the demographics of who uses each channel are so varied, each social network requires a different strategy.
For example, here is a chart showing best practices for posts you can share on each channel during the Holiday season:
While minor, these differences make a world of difference in determining whether you’re a hero or a zero in your industry.
This type of chart helps you prepare posts to schedule in advance.
10. Stay Authentic and On-Brand
Going back to the Super Bowl, it’s an interesting event. Why? Because brands have made the commercials as anticipated as the actual game. Many come through with epic TV spots that tell their brand story.
The takeaway: it’s important to be authentic and stick to your brand voice to become an influencer.
Digital ad spend grew 18% in February 2021 compared to a year prior. TV ad spend declined nearly 27% over the same period.
This means an authentic voice on social media is more critical than an expensive Super Bowl commercial.
It’s free to do, and it’ll help you rise through the ranks from nobody to micro-influencer to major influencer.
11. Respond to Comments
If you’ve ever visited my blog or social media profiles, you know I actively respond to comments.
Here’s an example from a recent blog post I promoted on Facebook several years ago.
My followers love to ask me questions and comment on things, and I love to respond.
This is how I built a social community that participates and engages with my content.
When responding, be sure to stay consistent and friendly.
Don’t respond to trolls and other haters, unless you have a great zinger that will help your brand image.
12. Engage with the Community
It’s not enough to simply respond.
To become a social media influencer, you need to start conversations.
Rather than creating content for social media that promotes your brand, create content that actually helps people in your online community. This could include short-from videos, as Lush does frequently on their Instagram and other social channels:
This type of engagement is what social media was designed for.
It’s easy to do on platforms like Twitter where scaling Twitter engagement is the main function of the channel.
And people remain engaged on these platforms.
The more you engage with the community outside of your feed, the further you spread your influence. Don’t just respond to comments on your Facebook page.
Post in groups, post on friend’s pages, and tag other influencers to engage the community.
Don’t be afraid of starting a Facebook group of your own to draw in even more followers.
13. Consistently Publish Fresh Content
I’ve been publishing at least one blog a day on this site for a long time now.
It’s not easy, but I do it. Why? I want to keep fresh content online for my readers.
I also have a content-driven online marketing strategy that’s fueled by my blog.
It’s the heart of my Facebook page content and my Twitter content.
I can also broadcast my blog to my other social channels.
Focusing on my blog gives me a wealth of content to share across all my other channels.
It’s the center of my long-term digital marketing strategy.
My blog is foundation of how I got where I am today!
14. Listen to Criticism
Being a creator of any kind or in the public eye for any reason involves handling a lot of criticism.
Even the President of the United States or the richest man in the world can’t avoid criticism.
No amount of money or power can eliminate criticism!
Yet so few of us can handle it.
Here’s a Venn diagram of people who need and can handle constructive criticism.
If you become a person who can actually handle constructive criticism, critics will mold you into a more polished influencer.
Being an influencer isn’t about dictating what people do. It’s about creating a movement, and constructive criticism is essential to that.
Nobody wants to be surrounded by yes men.
Which reminds me…
15. Remain Approachable
Phil DeFranco is one of the most influential YouTube users with his SXEPhil account.
The reason is somewhat because of production values and length of service.
More importantly, however, Phil remains approachable, despite his success.
Tackling topics as diverse as politics, social media, pop culture, and nuances of the YouTube platform itself, Phil maintains an everyman approach.
Never let yourself get so caught up in social media fame that you become a prima donna, disconnected from reality in your ivory tower. If you do, there could be consequences.
The more approachable you are, the more influential you’ll be.
16. Research New Topics Daily
I can’t stress enough how important it is to constantly generate new topic ideas.
It’s harder than it sounds over the long term. That’s why I use Google Alerts.
I can set alerts to deliver to my email anytime my name is mentioned on any frequency I like.
There are a ton of other customization features.
In addition to setting up Google News alerts, pick a handful of publications to stay informed on.
I check blogs like Moz, Entrepreneur, and Hubspot daily to keep ideas for fresh topics in my head.
The more knowledgeable and well-rounded you are, the easier it’ll be to gain influence.
17. Automate Posts
Automation is the latest marketing trend, and it’s easy to see why.
You gain efficiency and speed, along with valuable data.
There are plenty of free tools to automate social media posts and let you schedule your content in advance using content calendars.
This is how professional publishing and social agencies work.
Also, keep in mind blog posts can automatically be set up through the blog CMS to promote on social media channels.
Whatever you use, be sure to automate posts so you have a steady stream of content.
18. Follow Influencers and Give Shout Outs
To be an influencer, you need to know other influencers.
Who you’re following is almost as important as who follows you.
To expand your influence, you need to show people they’re influencing you as well.
On Twitter, there’s a hashtag group called #Teamfollowback that believes in reciprocating every follow.
I don’t go that far, but I do try to follow other influencers to engage their audiences along with mine.
Many social media influencers also love giving shoutouts to followers, fans, and subscribers.
Shoutouts make people feel like they’re personally contributing to the community. They incentivize participation.
And last, but certainly not least, is the data we’ll need to quantify all this work.
19. Quantify Your Efforts With Data
Each social media site will show your impressions and audience engagement numbers.
It’s usually on the front page.
This only shows half the picture of your real influence.
However, with a website and Google Analytics, you can see the rest.
We can tell which social channels are getting clickthroughs to our site and how many people are converting from there.
Once you understand how many posts it takes to generate a conversion, you’ll be able to calculate an ROI for your social media efforts.
This isn’t the only benefit of being an influencer.
Like I said at the beginning, you can influence other influencers and drive the conversation.
Just be sure to use your power for good.
Quick Tips For Influencer Success
- Become an Influencer in a Niche Field
Start small; pick a niche topic and become an expert in that. Over time you can expand your influence.
- Create a Content Strategy
Decide how often you will post, what your tone will be (casual versus professional, for example), and what elements you’ll use in the content you publish.
- Select Your Channels
Decide which social media channels to focus on.
- Network Within the Industry
Get to know other experts in your industry by connecting with them on social media and attending industry events.
- Participate in Off-site Forums
Expand your reach by participating in forums, comment discussions, and other online discussions.
- Create a Website or Blog
Create a blog to give followers a place to get to know you better and to show off your industry expertise. A blog can also give you more engagement data to show marketers who want to pay you for ads and endorsements.
- Provide Value to the Conversation
It’s not enough to just put out content. You need to provide value to your followers by providing content that is new or offers a unique perspective.
- Stay Ahead of Current Events
Stay abreast of what’s going on in your field and share about it on your social channels. If people can look to you for breaking news in your industry, it will go a long way towards helping you become an influencer.
- Understand all Social Media Channels
Figure out what channels are most relevant to your industry and focus your efforts there.
- Stay Authentic and On-Brand
Tell your brand story often to engage and grow your followers.
- Respond to Comments
When people comment on your social media or blog posts, take the time to respond. People will be more likely to follow and interact with you if they feel like they know you.
- Engage With the Community
Maintain a presence outside of just your own channels. Start conversations, tag other influencers, participate in Facebook groups, etc.
- Consistently Publish Fresh Content
Publishing fresh content keeps and grows your follower list and pleases the algorithm gods.
- Listen to Criticism
By listening to and incorporating criticism, you can become a better influencer.
- Remain Approachable
No matter how big you get, stay humble. Arrogance is a turnoff and could cost you followers and sponsorships.
- Research New Topics Daily
The best way to stay on top of industry trends is to set Google alerts. You should also spend time reading industry blogs. If you subscribe to any industry newsletters, spend some time reading those as well.
- Automate Posts
Make your life easier by creating your posts in advance and scheduling them to be posted automatically using tools like one of these CRM software platforms.
- Follow Influencers and Give Shout Outs
Get noticed by other influencers by following them and tagging them in your posts. If you can gain their trust, they may be willing to reciprocate. This could make some of their followers follow you in turn.
- Quantify Your Efforts With Data
Use the analytics tool most social media channels provide to track your followers, engagement, and other data. These figures can help you gain sponsorships since they help prove your influencer status.
FAQs
How many followers do you need to become a social media influencer?
There isn’t an official set number of followers you need to become an influencer. The number of followers you need varies by industry. For example, startup skincare brands can invest in nano or micro influencers because of their tight-knit audience for brand reach. Known athletic brands like Nike can use athlete or celebrity sponsorships as influencers to help gain more brand loyalists for their products.
How much do social media influencers get paid?
The money you make as a social media influencer depends on your industry, how many followers you have, and the terms of your arrangement with the business paying you to promote their product or service.
What qualifies you as a social media influencer?
Most would consider you to be an influencer if you are paid to promote goods or services to your followers.
How can I get more followers so I can become a social media influencer?
A couple of ways to get more followers are to research and use popular and trending hashtags on your posts, seek out a mentor who is already an influencer in your field, start by becoming an influencer in a niche community and expand from there, and taking advantage of the full suite of features different social media platforms offer to maximize your exposure and grow your follower list.
Conclusion
Influencer marketing is the latest trend in digital marketing because social media influencers are now able to quantify their audiences.
What started as a hobby for many has become a big business, and influencers like PewDiePie often outearn celebrities, politicians, and other prominent professionals.
I’m an influencer today, but I wasn’t always.
Everyone starts at square one with no followers and nobody knowing who they are.
It’s the steps you take to build a following that ultimately determine how influential you are.
If you’re interested in growing your brand and want help doing so, reach out. I have a team of experts who can help you reach your influencer goals!
Who are the most influential people in your niche?
What is an Influencer: Types, Examples, & How Much They Make
If you don’t know what an influencer is, where have you been living for the past decade? Influencers have transformed the way customers and brands use social media.
For most brands, they are part of a core marketing strategy that drives awareness, traffic, and sales. Influencers wield a lot of power. If you can get an influencer to endorse your product or brand, you can tap into the audience at the influencer’s disposal, which may be far more vast than your own following.
In this article, I’ll explain what an influencer is and how influencer marketing works. I’ll let you know how much you can expect to spend and how to get started today. Ready to increase your reach? Then let’s begin.
What Is an Influencer and What Is Influencer Marketing?
To put it simply, an influencer is any person who influences the behavior of others. In a marketing context, influencers are individuals who collaborate with brands to promote products or services to their audience.
Now that word-of-mouth recommendations and criticisms spread through social media faster than fire in a dry field, influencers are more important than ever. They usually have huge followings on social media and are brand advocates as well as niche promoters.
True influence drives action, not just awareness.
Jay Baer
What Is Influencer Marketing?
Influencer marketing is a social media marketing strategy that sees brands leverage the audience of influencers to drive awareness and sales. Influencers are paid to endorse or promote a product to their audience, who, in turn, buy the product from the brand.
Influencer marketing has been growing in popularity for years and will once again be one of the leading marketing trends for 2022. Almost three-quarters (72.5 percent) of marketers are predicted to use influencer marketing in 2022.
Who Uses Influencer Marketing?
While it seems that some companies don’t want to let go of their outbound marketing practices, fashion ecommerce sites are targeting influencers like pros. Many are reaching out to reputable fashion bloggers and sending them clothing and accessory items to be reviewed. The blogger then posts photos and writes about the garments, often linking back to the site where their audience can buy the items being reviewed.
ModCloth, a vintage clothing site, does a great job of this. They are active in sharing (on social media platforms) the images their audience members provide showing them wearing ModCloth’s clothing. This makes their audience feel special, which encourages more posts about the clothing.
I’ve seen many fashion sites send their items to an influencer, and then the audience could enter a contest to receive them. Or sometimes, they will send a credit to an active fashion social media user, magazine writer, or blogger so they can go to the site, pick out some clothing, and then review the experience as a whole.
What Are the 4 Types of Influencers?
There are several different types of influencers. Influencers can be celebrities with millions of followers, or they can be a normal person with a few thousand followers. Typically, influencers are grouped into the following four categories depending on their audience size.
Nano-influencers
Nano-influencers have the smallest audience size with 10,000 followers or fewer. These people may be experts in very niche areas or people who are just starting their influencer journey. Their audiences may be small, but they are incredibly engaged.
NYC-based self-care and exercise Instagrammer Jen Lauren is an excellent example of a nano influencer. She has a small but highly engaged community and creates niche content.
Micro-influencers
Micro-influencers have audiences that range from 10,000 followers to 100,000 followers. These people are typically niche experts with reasonably large and engaged audiences. They aren’t celebrities, and you’d walk past them in the street without knowing who they are.
Travel and lifestyle blogger Miette Dierckx is a micro-influencer with a carefully curated audience who follow her globe-trotting adventures. She works with a range of companies like sunscreen brand La Roche Posay and chocolate brand Cote D’or.
Macro-influencers
Macro-influencers have audiences sized between 100,000 and 1 million followers. These are some of the most accessible influencers with the biggest audiences. They tend to be B or C-list celebrities or online-native influencers who have worked hard to build up a big audience.
Fashion blogger Amy Jackson is a macro influencer who works with a huge range of brands like Celine and Cuyana.
Mega-influencers
Mega influencers have the biggest audiences. Influencers have to have at least 1 million followers to be considered a mega influencer.
These are usually celebrities who have gained fame offline and translated that into online earnings — think Ryan Reynolds or the Jenners. Some, however, are native internet and social media users. People like Zoella or MrBeast are great examples of this.
How Much Do Influencers Cost?
Successful influencer marketing campaigns do not come cheap. In fact, brands will spend $15 billion on influencer marketing in 2022.
While you may be able to send free products to nano influencers, don’t expect a huge amount of traction. Influencers with larger audiences expect to be paid and campaigns can quickly reach five, six, and seven figures.
There are several ways you can pay influencers. Most will charge a flat fee for a post. Some may request an affiliate commission rate where they receive a percentage of every sale they make.
How much influencers cost depends on a number of factors, including:
- audience size
- platform
- engagement levels
- niche
Rates vary broadly. A report by Fox Business found that influencers with over one million followers can charge more than $100,000 per post. Micro-influencers, on the other hand, charge up to a few thousand dollars per post and can make upwards of $100,000 per year.
Why Do Influencers Matter For Your Brand?
Consumers trust recommendations from a third party more than from a brand itself, particularly if they are seen as knowledgeable and trustworthy. An influencer is a great example of this kind of third party. Working with influencers passes the trust they’ve built with their audience to your brand and makes you seem much more credible.
It makes sense if you think about it in a more personal context; you don’t usually trust a person at a cocktail party who comes up to you and brags about himself or herself and spouts fun facts about his or her personality to convince you to be a friend. Instead, you often believe your mutual friend who vouches for that person.
An influencer is the mutual friend connecting your brand with your target consumers.
An influencer also significantly expands your brand’s reach. When you align your brand with an influencer, not only do they bring their audience, but they also bring their audience’s network as well. Because of the loyalty of their audience, an influencer has the ability to drive traffic to your site, increase your social media exposure, and flat-out sell your product through their recommendation or story about their experience.
With the fall of traditional outbound marketing, influencer marketing is becoming one of the most effective ways to attract customers and clients. Modern-day consumers are self-sufficient and want to research a brand on their own and hear about it from someone they trust.
How do influencers assist with your inbound marketing? They generate content about your brand, they recommend your brand to their loyal following, and they insert themselves into conversations surrounding your brand. Getting them on your side before your competitor does can make a huge difference in the success (or lack thereof) of your company or product.
How to Get Started With Influencer Marketing
Working with influencers is a great way to grow your brand on social media.
Determine Your Goals
Do you want to increase brand awareness or make more sales? These are the two most common goals of influencer marketing campaigns, but achieving them requires significantly different strategies.
If you want to make more sales, for instance, you may choose to focus on micro-influencers who have small but engaged audiences. If you care about raising brand awareness, however, it will probably be better to work with a handful of macro and mega influencers.
Think About Your Audience
As a marketer, you already have a solid idea of the audience you should be targeting for your brand. To locate the ideal influencer, you need to take it one step further and think about the types of topics, blogs, and Twitter handles that your audience would follow.
Since I market a blogger outreach tool for my company, the influencers that I target are PR and marketing blogs that focus on content and influencer marketing. Followers of these blogs usually are PR professionals and marketers who want to keep up with the latest technology and trends in their field.
Thus, hopefully, they find my company relevant when a blogger they follow recommends it. However, had I gone after bloggers who write about finance, even though a particular blogger might like my software, their audience most likely wouldn’t care.
Find the Right Influencer for Your Brand
With your goals and target audience established, you can start to find influencers who are a great fit for your brand. There are three factors I recommend bearing in mind when choosing influencers.
Context: Is your influencer a contextual fit? This is the most important characteristic when targeting the right influencers for your brand. For example, Justin Bieber is known as one of the most “influential” social media users with his 37+ million followers. Would his tweet about your software really bring in sales, though? Probably not, because the target audience for tech software and Justin’s target audience aren’t the same; his endorsement isn’t really relevant.
Reach: In addition to wanting an influencer from your field, you also want them to have reach. This is so they can share their awesome content or positive recommendation of your brand with as many of the right people as possible. If your online business sold clothes for “tweens,” then maybe a mention to 37 million girls from Justin Bieber wouldn’t be so bad after all.
Actionability: This is the influencer’s ability to cause their audience to take action. This characteristic comes naturally when you target individuals that are in contextual alignment with your brand and have a far enough reach.
Influencers don’t force themselves upon an audience. They are an “opt-in” network. Their audience chooses to follow their blog or Twitter handle. Thus, their audience is engaged and is there to hear about the topic being discussed. Hence, the need for a contextual fit.
I want to note that there is a lot of market research coming out about mid-level influencers. These are the influencers who have a decent reach but don’t have such a large audience that they can’t nurture relationships with their audience and harness loyalty. A loyal audience soaks up recommendations like a dry sponge. If in doubt, these are the influencers you should aim for.
Where to Look for Your Ideal Influencer
The final step in getting started with influencer marketing is to find those influencers who meet all of the criteria we’ve listed above. Here are my favorite ways of finding them.
Social Media Monitoring
Brand advocates are the loudest influencers your brand will have. Not only does their audience follow them because what they write aligns with your brand, but they also talk loudly and actively about how much they like your company. By tuning in to your social media mentions and blog posts about your brand, you will find influencers and advocates you didn’t realize you had.
Social media monitoring also allows you to find influencers who advocate for the genre or niche you outlined in step 1. For example, someone may post and tweet heavily about yoga gear but not mention your website as an awesome place to buy yoga apparel or equipment. Well, this is someone you want to engage with and expose your brand to.
Research Hashtags
Identify the hashtags that your target influencers are using. For my company, I follow #bloggeroutreach and #influencemktg. By tuning in to the conversations surrounding these hashtags, I have not only identified active talkers in these categories, but I’ve also identified blog topics that I wrote to appeal to these influencers as well.
Once you start finding influencers that seem like a good fit for your brand, I recommend putting them in a Twitter list so that you can organize and follow them most effectively. I use HootSuite to organize my Twitter channel. Here is what my hashtags look like in their platform:
Google Alerts
Set alerts for keywords pertaining to your brand to identify people who actively write about topics in your realm. You also should create alternatives for the name of your brand so that you can find posts and articles containing your mentions and identify advocates who already are in place.
Mention
Mention allows you to type in your company’s name to discover mentions on different outlets such as YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook, just to name a few.
Blogger Outreach
Bloggers arguably are the strongest spoke in the wheel of influencers. One of the bonuses of targeting bloggers is they almost always are active across many social media platforms.
When locating influential bloggers for your brand, start by searching for blogs in your genre and find the niche(s) by reading through the posts to determine if they write about relevant post topics. After making a list of the contextually relevant bloggers, then it’s time to locate their SEO stats and social media information to pinpoint the ones that equal the best reach for your brand.
Manually sorting through blogs to find all of the criteria that you outlined when you gave your influencer an image can take a long time. Luckily, there are a lot of really good blogger outreach tools out there to make this process easier. There is a tool to cover every part of the spectrum.
Influencer Marketplaces
Influencer marketplaces like AspireIQ and Famebit connect brands with influencers in their industry. They often help track the ROI of campaigns, manage payments, and track engagement metrics. They do, however, take a cut, so make sure it’s a good fit for your campaign before investing.
Examples of Influencer Marketing Matches
Callum Snape and Sun Peaks Resort
Macro influencer Callum Snape is one of Canada’s best-known wilderness and travel photographers. That made him a perfect partner for Sun Peaks Resort, an alpine ski resort in British Columbia. His incredible images and videos created hundreds of thousands of views and likes, driving massive awareness for the resort.
Chrissy Teigen and BECCA Cosmetics
Launching a new product alongside a mega influencer can result in a huge boost in awareness. That was the case for BECCA Cosmetics which launched its new Be a Light palette with Chrissy Teigen. Her promo video garnered 2.7 million views, which has helped launch an incredibly profitable product line.
Gymshark and Multiple Influencers
Gymshark has built a billion-dollar business on the back of influencers. The brand’s recent 66-day challenge is a great example of how you can raise brand awareness and engagement on a massive level by working with multiple influencers across several channels at once. By partnering with influencers like Melanie Walking and Laurie Elle, Gymshark garnered 241.3 million views on TikTok and 750,000 posts on Instagram.
FAQs
What is an influencer?
An influencer is an individual who wields influence over an audience of people. In a marketing context, they have a large social media following and work with brands to promote products and services.
What are the four types of influencers?
There are 4 types of influencers: nano-influencers, micro-influencers, macro-influencers, and mega-influencers.
How much does it cost to hire an influencer?
The cost can vary based on industry, the campaign, and the influencer’s reach. Smaller Instagram influencers make between $100 and $300 per post, large celebrities can make thousands or hundreds of thousands.
Where can I find the right influencer for my industry?
Consider using influencer engagement marketplaces or searching relevant hashtags and brands on your platform of choice.
How do I track ROI for influencer campaigns?
Pairing influencer campaigns with affiliate marketing is the easiest way to track ROI. By providing influencers with a unique link makes it simple to track sales and engagement.
How successful is influencer marketing?
Like any marketing campaign, it depends on your strategy and goals. However, 80 percent of marketers find influencer marketing is effective, and 89 percent say it is as effective or more effective than other channels.
Conclusion
Influencer marketing has evolved since it first became a digital marketing strategy, but the technique continues to be successful for many brands.
It’s easy to make mistakes with your first influencer marketing campaign. If you want help creating an influencer campaign for your company, let our agency know and we can help guide you through the process.
Where do you look for influencers for your brand? Cheers to a good discussion in the comments below!
Influencer Marketing: Examples and Strategies for 2021
You’ve likely heard the term “influencer” thrown around a lot the last few years. It generates mental images of YouTube stars promoting energy drinks and Instagram stars raving about weight loss supplements.
This is called influencer marketing, and it can be a very successful strategy if you execute your campaign correctly. Let’s find out if you should try this strategy yourself.
What Is Influencer Marketing?
Influencer marketing is the process by which brands leverage well-known figures who have influence over their target markets to promote their brands.
This doesn’t mean you need to be able to afford to pay Michael Jordan to promote your new athletic wear line.
In fact, many of the most successful influencer marketers are not extremely famous.
Take, for example, Murad and Nataly Osmann. There is a good chance you recognize the style of their photos:
One simple photograph of Nataly leading her boyfriend by the hand has morphed into a massive online following — and a branding empire.
According to Adweek, “They’re working with top marketers like Macy’s and Napa Valley Beringer Vineyards to create compelling ads, and they’re launching a platform to match brands with bloggers.”
The #Followmeto project has also morphed into TV and book deals. The couple hosts a 20-minute travel TV show on Channel One Russia that takes viewers behind the scenes of their online photos.”
Sometimes, the best influencers aren’t people at all. Toast, a well know dog, uses her Internet fame to promote a variety of brands, including coffee, bottled water, and even thigh chafing sticks.
Instagram isn’t the only place you can find influencers.
Lance Stewart, a well-known influencer, has more than 50 thousand followers on Facebook alone:
He is also active on Snapchat, Instagram, and Twitter.
Finding influencers isn’t necessarily about finding the most famous person.
Instead, it’s about finding a person your audience trusts and leveraging that influence to promote your brand.
Outline the Goals of Your Influencer Marketing Campaign
I’ve discovered that influencer marketing works well for brands that don’t have much of a following.
You’re leveraging someone else’s platform for your own gain.
However, before you create the content, before you find an influencer, and before you do anything else, you need to outline the goals of your influencer campaign.
Why?
It’s simple: Every decision you make is informed by your goal.
The platform you choose, the influencer you partner with, the type of content they create; all of these factors come into play.
Let’s work from an example to make this easier to illustrate.
Say you’re working with a client (let’s call them Client A) in the gaming industry — specifically in the smartphone app gaming industry.
Mobile gaming is a pretty competitive industry. iTunes offers 18 categories of games and hundreds of popular puzzle games.
Company A has been in business for five years and has a solid portfolio of games of medium success, including one highly popular game that was downloaded 25 million times.
They have a new puzzle game coming out, and they want to leverage influencer marketing to get tons of downloads and create buzz around the new launch. Ideally, this buzz would extend to their brand and give their entire game portfolio a good boost.
How can you help them get the most out of influencer marketing?
First, let’s outline the goal.
The goal should have three parts:
- find out the influencer’s demographic data
- determine what the influencer will help you do
- plan how the influencer will help you do it
Example Goal for Company A’s Influencer Marketing Campaign:
There are a plethora of formats to outline your goals. In this example, Company A has written the goals of the campaign in paragraph form:
This campaign will partner with a young, highly connected influencer with access to the tech-savvy millennial group. Ideally, they will be into technology and use an iPhone because downloads from the Apple Store exceed those on Android.
Through this campaign, we will exceed the download numbers of our last game by 45% in the first 30 days.
The campaign will include at least 1 video of 30+ seconds to showcase how the game is played, and two or three other social posts on Instagram and Snapchat where our demographic is most active.
This goal is detailed. It includes specific numbers and platforms. There is a chance that some of these factors will shift.
For example, you might find out that YouTube is a more effective platform for your video game company to use for influencer marketing.
Changing the details of your goal is fine, but the outline should serve as a starting point for all the other decisions.
This template will help you outline your goal:
Influencer marketing campaign goal plan
Who is the influencer?
Name:
Age range:
Popular on what platforms?
Campaign end goal:
Number of posts:
Which platform:
Special considerations:
Now that you have your goal outlined, it’s time to move on to finding your influencer.
How to Find Effective Influencers for Your Brand
Choosing the right influencer is vital to the success of a killer influencer marketing campaign, but it is far from easy. Ryan Schneider, Chief Brand Manager at Insomniac Games, says this:
[A] lot of leg work goes into finding the right influencer…If I were a PR person, and I was trying to find the right reporter at The Wall Street Journal, I could do that … probably within one Google search or two mouse clicks. Targeting the right influencers can be a lot more complex.
According to Tap Influence, there are four main ways to find influencers: searching manually, using databases, tapping networks, or exploring marketplaces.
Manual Searching
This method requires conducting individual searches, scanning web pages for information, and then adding the information to a spreadsheet. It’s extremely time-consuming and not very effective.
Start by creating a spreadsheet in Google Docs or Excel, then create a column for each piece of information you want to pull about each individual influencer.
Column names will likely include:
- Name
- Industry of influence, including the specific niche (for example, if a gaming influencer’s audience is mostly female, or under the age of 16)
- Total followers (combination of Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Snapchat, or the top platforms your audience uses)
- Facebook link
- Instagram link
- Twitter link
- Snapchat link
- Pros
- Cons
- Email/contact info
- Special notes: Do you already have a relationship with them, or do they regularly post about topics closely related to your brand? Add any other information you want to include here.
Next, search Google and relevant social platforms for keywords, mentions of your brand, and related hashtags.
In a highly competitive industry like mobile gaming, you should go after high-tier influencers so you’ll have the most reach. Compile a list of these people.
The next step is to search on the most popular platform for our target audience. In this case, I head to YouTube.
The most effective strategy is to look at videos with the highest engagement, either from my brand or my competitors’, and then look at who shared or engaged with those posts.
From there, I would be able to find the top influencers.
I am using a fictitious example, so I can’t search for our brand.
Since we are in mobile gaming, I am going to search for Two Dots, a popular puzzle game. Based on a quick search of the brand name, I see a possible influencer:
The top video is old and won’t be a good fit for our gaming site.
The second video is from the actual brand Dots. It’s also not a good fit.
The third, from ZoeTwoDots, might represent a good fit. Her videos showcase strategies for different games, her channel is active, and the channel has more than 200,000 followers. Looks promising!
I would add her to the spreadsheet and keep going.
Keep in mind, all this research garnered me just one possible influencer to target.
Manual research is extremely labor intensive. However, for smaller brands looking for very niche influencers, this is likely the best choice.
Databases
These are tools that will do the site-scraping for you by pulling publicly available data. These can be good places to start, but vetting each influencer can prove time-consuming.
Basically, instead of manually doing the searches, databases do the heavy lifting. They’re less time-intensive than manually searching and are cheaper than other options.
One example is Inpowered.
Inpowered has a list of clients it has worked with in the past, including case studies:
For our mobile gaming company, this doesn’t seem to be a good fit. A more traditional brand might find this database useful.
Lean on Your Networks
This method of connecting with influencers sits in between databases and marketplaces. A network has built relationships with influencers, but you have to go through their profiles to reach out.
Networks tend to focus on specific genres, such as Dad bloggers, lifestyle influencers, or food enthusiasts. Examples of popular influencer networks include Activate.
After a little research, I come across a good fit for our mobile gaming company: MatchMade.
They make it super simple to search for exactly the type of influencer I want, including allowing me to sort my options based on reach, location, subscribers, and engagement.
Another benefit of networks is that they often offer more tracking and analytics. Matchmade offers a full dashboard:
There are a lot of pros to choosing a network — you are able to select exactly the type of influencer you want based on many different factors. Tracking is included, making it easy to see if you are reaching your goals.
However, this also tends to be the most expensive option.
Marketplaces
A marketplace offers the best features of a database by pulling in real-time information, but it allows you to avoid middle men. Marketplaces tend to offer less tracking, but they are also more affordable.
Examples of market places include Tribe, HYPR, and Brand Snob. Much like dating sites, marketplaces allow you to look at hundreds of profiles of different influencers.
Here is an example of an influencer profile on Tribe:
I can easily see her reach and an example of her work. This is much easier than sorting through thousands of Google search results.
Choosing the best method for finding an influencer that fits your needs can be complicated. Ultimately, you are looking for a partner, and just like any partnership, you need to take your time and consider all the options.
The final decision is likely going to be based on what resource you want to spend — time or money.
Getting the Most Out of Your Influencer Marketing Campaign
You have outlined your goals, chosen an influencer, and started to build a relationship with them.
Now it is time to create your actual campaign. Here are tips for getting the most out of your killer influencer marketing campaign.
First, be authentic. The reason traditional ads aren’t as effective today is that people crave authentic connections.
Even though you are paying for the influencer to talk about your brand, you must keep authenticity in mind to be effective.
Shannon Fure of Convince and Convert says it best:
If an influencer doesn’t fit a brand’s ethos, the authenticity factor is going to plummet. Choosing the right influencer is the first step toward maintaining authenticity.
Second, choose the platform you use carefully.
Pay attention not only to where your audience is most active but also what type of content performs best on each platform.
Take, for example, this video created by Harry’s Razors:
On Facebook, the video got three thousand views.
On Instagram, Harry’s chose to post a screenshot of the same video:
Even though Instagram supports video, they tend to perform better on Facebook.
According to Murray Newlands, “different platforms are used to reach different audiences and demographics, and the same goes for what product or service you’re marketing: beautiful photos of your product belong on Instagram, while eye-catching videos will perform better on Facebook.”
Take the time to build a real relationship with the influencer. This gives you and the influencer a chance to see if you are a good fit and increases authenticity.
Angela Stringfellow of CODA Concepts suggests:
Start slowly by following them on social media, sharing their content, commenting on their blogs, and engaging them in relevant conversations whenever possible. Establishing a relationship of mutual trust is the key to successfully engaging your market’s thought leaders as brand advocates.
Empower your influencer through information and access to your brand, but don’t take creative control. Ideally, you’ve chosen an influencer who is already engaged with your brand.
If not, make sure they truly understand your brand’s voice and what you stand for.
Invite them to your offices, offer tickets to your events, and share interesting stories about your brand and the people you help.
But remember, they are popular with your target audience for a reason. To keep the interaction authentic, you need to relinquish creative control.
Influencer Marketing Conclusion
Influencer marketing might seem like just another buzzword born of a generation obsessed with smartphones. However, the practice is nothing new.
Put simply, people trust people more than they trust brands. Influencer marketing allows you to leverage that trust to create goodwill towards your brand.
The steps I outlined above will help you find the best influencer and get the most out of your partnership.
Have you implemented an influencer marketing campaign? What were your results?
What Are Influencer Engagement Marketplaces (and How to Use Them)
Influencers are everywhere.
There are roughly 37 million influencers on Instagram, and around 1.5 million of them work on YouTube.
Every day, these creators promote brands across social media, talk up great products, and directly influence how people spend their hard-earned money.
Sounds great, right? There’s just one problem.
It’s really hard to actually find a great influencer to grow your business.
Whether you’re digging through social media platforms for ideas, or spending hours pitching creators, it’s a time-consuming process. In fact, according to Mediakix, 61 percent of marketers struggle to find the best influencers for their campaigns.
What’s the answer?
You need a more effective means of sourcing influencer talent and making connections. Influencer marketplaces can help you do just that, so let me show you how they work.
Why You Should Use Influencers in Your Marketing Strategy
Before we get started, let’s touch on influencer marketing more generally. Is it worth your time, or should you leave the influencer trend behind?
While influencer marketing isn’t for everyone, I think you should give it a go if it makes sense for your business.
Why? Because influencer marketing works.
- According to Instagram, 87 percent of users have bought something promoted by an influencer.
- You can make $5.20 for every $1 spent on influencer marketing, as reported by the Influencer Marketing Hub.
- Over 89 percent of marketers agree that influencer marketing works for their business.
While I’m not suggesting you should rely solely on influencer-based marketing, the trend is here to stay, and it’s worth trying.
If you’re still not convinced, here’s another way to think of it. Around 26 percent of consumers use ad blockers to hide ads and improve their browsing experience.
There’s a high chance those ads you’re paying for won’t reach their intended audience! For sales-based companies, influencer marketing could be a promising alternative.
Ready to find influencers for marketing campaigns? Let’s explore the mysteries of the influencer marketplace.
How Businesses Find Influencers
You can find influencers online in four major ways:
- Social media platforms: There’s no shortage of social media platforms to browse for influencer talent, albeit this is a time-consuming process.
- Search engines: Google is a great way to find competitors and identify which influencers they use for their campaigns.
- Influencer marketplaces: These marketplaces help you match with various influencers in your niche.
- Influencer agencies: You can hire an agency to match you directly with the influencer they think suits you best.
Although we’re focusing on influencer marketplaces, remember it’s not the only strategy for finding influencers to market your business.
What Are Influencer Marketplaces?
Influencer marketplaces match businesses with influencers working in their niche, whether it’s beauty, fitness, food, and so on.
It’s a simple premise. You sign up and post a brief describing the services you’re looking for and wait for influencers to respond. If you find an influencer you’re happy with, you can hire them to create content, promote your brand and, well, influence people to buy your products.
You’re not limited to one influencer, either. You can work with multiple influencers across the platform, and you can recruit more talent as you go.
The upshot? Whether you’re running a one-off product campaign or you’re looking for a more stable relationship, influencer marketplaces could work for you.
Some of the more popular influencer marketing platforms include:
- Influence
- Intellifluence
- AspireIQ
- Webfluential
- Famebit
- Influencity
It’s common for influencers listed on marketplaces to work across two or more social media platforms. For businesses, this is great news because you can use one or two trusted influencers for all your content marketing.
Upfluence, for example, primarily pairs businesses with Instagram influencers, but there’s some scope to access influencers working on TikTok and Facebook, too:
While HypeAuditor matches you with influencers working across the likes of Twitch and YouTube:
There’s a huge range of marketplaces out there, so be sure to explore your options. Here are a few things to consider:
Platform Fees
Whichever marketplace you choose, you’ll usually pay a fee for signing up and using their services, so be sure to factor in the cost before you join.
Some platforms, though, like Influence, let you set up a basic account for free. The problem? You’re limited in terms of how many messages you can exchange each month, and how many profiles you can see in the search results. While this might work for one-off campaigns, it may be less sustainable for long-term influencer marketing.
Weigh up the pros and cons of the different fee structures before you commit.
Influencer Marketplaces Vs. Influencer Agencies
We touched on this earlier, but to be clear, influencer marketplaces and influencer agencies are totally different things.
- Influencer marketplaces allow you to work directly with your chosen influencer. You put your brief out there and look for talent.
- Influencer agencies, on the other hand, do some of this work for you. They vet their influencers against your brief and select the ones they think are best suited to your needs.
You can use both marketplaces and agencies if it suits your marketing strategy. Just bear in mind that they’re not the same thing.
In short, think of influencer marketplaces like a matchmaking service. While there’s no guarantee you’ll find the right influencer to collaborate with, there is a chance you’ll find a long-term creative partnership.
How to Use Influencer Engagement Marketplaces
Are you excited to give influencer marketplaces a try? Great! Before you jump into a subscription, though, here are some steps I suggest you work through.
Identify Your Goals
Before you even join an influencer marketplace, be clear on what you’re trying to achieve. For example, are you trying to increase sales, generate hype around your brand, or boost your engagement levels?
Jot all your goals down and try to identify which one is your priority.
Next, clarify your target audience and how they best respond to influencer marketing. That way, you can figure out precisely what role the influencer will play in your campaign.
As an example, say you’re a brand looking to launch a new product aimed at millennials on Instagram. You want to build hype and increase sales. Your main goal is to sell the product, so you’re looking for influencers who can not only help you but who can speak your target audience’s language.
Determine Your Budget
Once you know what you need from an influencer marketplace, it’s time to set your budget. How do you know what’s a “fair” amount to pay your influencer, though? Unfortunately, there’s no right answer, but asking yourself the following questions can serve as a guide.
First, what kind of content do you need? You might, for example, pay more for an in-depth product review video than a few short posts on Instagram.
Next, which platform are you targeting? Each platform requires different creator resources, so they command different rates. On average, you might pay an influencer $10 per 1000 followers for an Instagram post, but that goes up to $25 for a Facebook post.
How big is the influencer’s audience? The bigger the influencer, the more they can charge for their time.
Finally, is it a one-off or long-term campaign? You could potentially get better rates if the influencer knows they’ll get steady work from you. Seasonal campaigns could cost you more, since there’s higher demand around this time.
Don’t forget you’ll need to budget for a monthly or annual marketplace subscription, too. Be sure you can afford the fee before you sign up.
Research Influencer Marketplaces
Should you join every influencer marketplace out there? No.
Instead, research your options and choose one or two platforms to start out with. Here are some tips for moving forward.
- Ensure the marketplace is focused on your industry. For example, if you’re a fitness brand, don’t join a marketplace with only culinary influencers, and so on.
- Make sure the influencers on the marketplace actually work on your chosen social media platforms. Why join a YouTube marketplace if you’re only marketing on TikTok?
- Check the marketplace hosts influencers in your price range. There’s no point opting for a platform where you’ll only find hugely popular influencers, i.e., those with a million or more followers, if your budget doesn’t allow for this.
My suggestion? Look to see if a marketplace offers a free trial, or at least a free membership option, before you commit to a paid plan. This lets you test out the platform without putting a dent in your marketing budget.
Remember, if you’re unhappy with the results, you can always review your strategy and try out different marketplaces. Influencer marketing is flexible like that.
Find Influencers Who Fit Your Business
You’ve set a goal, determined your budget, and signed up with a marketplace. Next comes the hardest part: finding the best influencer for your needs.
Honestly, there’s no “right” way to go about this. However, here’s what is most important to consider when shopping for an influencer.
Engagement
If followers engage with an influencer, for example, by leaving comments or sharing their content, there’s a good chance you’ll see better engagement on your content. Influencers with large follower counts but low engagement levels may not be the best fit.
Authenticity
Authenticity matters. In fact, according to Stackla, 90 percent of customers value authenticity when choosing which brands to buy from, so any influencer you work with must come across as “real” and authentic.
Reach
To be clear, you don’t need influencers with millions of followers. For some niches, it’s even better to target influencers with much smaller audiences, but higher engagement levels.
As a general guide, reach matters, but it may be less important than engagement.
Resonance
Does the influencer resonate with your brand identity? If not, it doesn’t matter how impressive the influencer’s follower count is: they won’t help your marketing strategy in the long run, and they may actually deter your target audience from shopping with you.
Determine Performance Metrics
You need to find a way to track your marketing campaign to ensure it’s working for you. How do you do this? By tracking key performance indicators, or KPIs.
The KPIs depend on your overall goal, but common metrics worth tracking include your impressions, engagement levels, follower count, and conversions.
Ultimately, it’s an influencer’s job to leverage their followers to your advantage, so if you’re not getting more traffic than usual, there could be a problem with your strategy.
Here’s the bottom line, though. You’ll know if your influencer marketing is working if you achieve your goal. In other words, if you set out to sell more products, the campaign most likely worked if you sold more products!
Unsure how to measure your performance? Be sure to check out our consulting services.
Review Your Partnerships Regularly
Just because an influencer comes across well on a marketplace doesn’t mean they’re the best fit for your business. Maybe their communication style doesn’t mesh well with yours, or you just find them difficult to work with.
Whatever the reason, it’s okay to cut ties. Just remember that if you do end your contract with an influencer, do it professionally. Influencers talk, and you don’t want a reputation as a difficult client!
Conclusion
Influencer marketplaces make it easy to match influencers and promoters who can help grow your business and generate hype around your products. That said, these marketplaces aren’t for everyone, and you might prefer curating your list of influencers and reaching out to them directly.
My suggestion? Spend some time researching the different marketplaces before you commit to a subscription, and remember to keep a close eye on your metrics to ensure your influencer partnership is working for you.
Have you tried an influencer marketplace yet?
How to Integrate Paid Ads With Influencer Campaigns
How can you take your influencer campaign to the next level? You may want to include another angle, such as paid ads. Some of the best marketing campaigns integrate several elements, so potential customers start to see your brand in different places and from different angles.
There are many ways to layer marketing campaigns. Today, we’ll talk about one of those combinations: paid ads with influencer campaigns.
What Does It Mean to Have Paid Ads Integrated With Influencer Campaigns?
Before we get into the details about how and why you should combine an influencer campaign with paid ads, let’s break down those two elements and learn more about how each one works on its own.
An influencer campaign is about leveraging the influencing power of an internet celebrity or similar with a lot of followers and, as the name implies, “influence.” It’s a kind of word-of-mouth marketing using the fact that people trust the recommendations of others.
During your influencer campaign, the influencer posts about your product or service, sharing their review or recommendations on a blog, social media, or other platforms. This can be in return for free products or services or a fee.
Paid marketing campaigns consist of online ads, like pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns or social media ads. Paid ads are shown to people who search for keywords you include in your campaign or whose demographics you’ve decided to target. This also includes users interested in brands or organizations similar to yours or are otherwise part of your target audience.
To integrate paid ads with influencer campaigns, set up a series of ads showcasing the same products or services the influencer shares in their campaigns. In this way, you are showcasing your product from two sources, connecting with more people.
Think about it from the buyer’s perspective.
First, they see your brand from the influencer. It may be the first time they hear about your brand, but they could decide to learn more since they trust the influencer.
So, then, they may Google your company and read a blog entry. Or, they may see other mentions about your brand from that same influencer or other influencers they trust, giving you more credibility in their minds.
Examples of Paid Ads Integrated with Influencer Campaigns
Radha Beauty took a real-time, multi-personality approach to their integrated campaign. Working with Carusele, they partnered with several influencers who created social posts about the beauty brand.
The brand watched which posts were getting the most traffic, then promoted those posts using the platform sponsored ad options to audiences reflecting those posts’ followers’ demographics. Their web traffic exceeded their stated goals.
Schick Intuition used influencers to spread the news about their new razors. In addition to influencers sharing their experiences with the razors and a coupon code to push sales, the company integrated video bumper ads and other in-video ads. They reported an increase of 229 percent for ad recall and a purchase intent rise of 113 percent.
Kettle & Fire worked with influencers to create photographs of their products. Leveraging the talent of those influencers, they gained brand awareness as well as compelling images. They were also able to see how well those images performed and reuse them for Facebook ads.
Why You Should Integrate Your Influencer and Paid Ad Strategies
The most basic reason to integrate a paid ad campaign with your influencer campaign is to cover more ground. It allows people to see your brand more often in a shorter period. The more people see it, the more likely they are to buy.
Statistics vary regarding how many times people need to see an ad or other information about a product before they act on it. Some say it takes seven times, also known as the “Rule of 7.” Still, others say it takes 11 times.
No matter which number you believe, the reality is it’s always more than once.
Buyers aren’t likely to make a move while scrolling through their favorite social media app or catching up on a blog or video stream if seeing a brand for the first or second time. Even if the influencer campaign is engaging and persuasive, statistically speaking, the viewer will probably need to see your brand a few more times.
This is true even if the influencer talks about your product more than once. Most influencer campaigns aren’t prolific.
Paid ads, along with influencer posts, give you the chance to be in front of buyers again and again. This allows you to hit that magical number and potentially make sales.
It’s a timing question too. Think about how you catch up with your favorite influencers on TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, or blog posts. You’re scrolling and consuming, probably for entertainment alone—you’re probably not shopping. You’re not very likely to stop watching a video to go to an online shop and purchase.
When are you primed to make a purchase? When you go shopping online. For many of us, that starts with a Google search. Before we order a gift for a loved one—or ourselves—we head to a search engine and type in what we’re looking for.
We rarely just type in a URL during our initial searches for items we’re shopping for. Instead, we type in the name of an item. This is the prime place for your ad to appear.
The influencer has already told your potential customer how great you are. Maybe a couple of times. Now the influencer’s fan goes to Google to look up a product in your industry, and there you are with a product they remember seeing.
Even if they didn’t click on the ad, perhaps they see your name next time they’re scrolling on social media, and their curiosity is now piqued enough to give you a click.
It’s also good to think about ad fatigue. To overcome it, users need to see something new. That’s where those paid ads come in. You can showcase much of the same information but in a slightly different way. Even just being an ad on a different platform may make enough of a difference.
If not, you can also try a different approach to your message. Maybe you share more about your product. Maybe you can show it in different styles, flavors, or other variations than the influencer did. The goal is to get the viewer interested in checking out this brand they’ve heard about.
A Step-by-Step Guide on How to Integrate Paid Ads with Influencer Campaigns
Who should best represent your brand? Influencers who hold your brand’s values and are invested in using and sharing products like yours.
You can use a tool such as Upfluence or, after digging through social media, reach out directly. Once you know where and when they’ll be sharing your products, you can build your plans around theirs.
Choose Where Paid Ads Should Go
Placing your ads on the same platforms as the influencer improves people’s chances of seeing your brand more than once. You may also want to think about keyword-driven ads, such as Google ads, to increase your target market’s views. You can target people searching for your influencer as well.
Set the Time Frame
To get the most out of this multichannel approach, you may want to set time parameters reflecting your influencer campaign. This is about reaching the same viewers with your ad, so working within a similar time frame helps assure that.
Design and Press Go
In the copy and images of your paid ad campaign, you should reflect a lot of what viewers have already seen before to remind them of your brand. You can introduce a new facet of your brand but stay recognizable to those who have seen your brand with the influencer already via similar messaging, product types, and even brand colors.
When Should You Use This Strategy?
The short answer to when you should combine an influencer campaign with paid marketing is when you need to get the word out in a short amount of time.
Below, you can find suggestions about when some of these timely campaigns could be.
Seasonal Products
If a holiday, season, or other deadline drives your sales, integrated marketing campaigns can help you reach a wider audience quickly. This is great for seasonal items intended for use during a specific period. By showing up in influencer posts and ads, you can paint a picture of being everywhere and being the hot item everyone is talking about this year. Influencers may even show what the product looks like in their homes—so if, for instance, you sell Christmas ornaments, they may show them on their trees.
New Launches
Another good time to think about using multiple campaigns simultaneously is when you launch a new product or service. Getting the word out through various streams can help build brand awareness and provide constant exposure to get people excited about giving you a try.
Jumping on Trends
Much like seasonal products, trendy products have deadlines, albeit abstract ones. Eventually, the trend will dissipate or evolve. If you’re trying to ride the wave of a cultural phenomenon or something happening in society at large, running marketing campaigns while these things are happening may help drive more eyes to your product and let you leverage the popularity while it lasts.
Leveraging a Spokesperson Opportunity
Even if you don’t feel pressed against time, sometimes putting some paid advertising behind an influencer campaign just makes sense. If you have an exciting opportunity with an influencer, you may want to put money and effort behind it to spread the word and leverage that spotlight.
Conclusion
Integrating paid ads with influencer campaigns can help you get the most of the investment you are making in working with that influencer.
By leveraging a multi-channel marketing approach, you can reach more people, more often, with your brand message, increasing the chances and number of conversions. It’s not the only way to get those conversions, but it may be a fruitful one, taking advantage of great content already being created about your brand.
Who is your dream influencer for your next marketing campaign?
The post How to Integrate Paid Ads With Influencer Campaigns appeared first on Neil Patel.