It’s easy to make fun of the often absurd world of social media influencers. While delivering 11 times higher return on investment (ROI) than traditional marketing, influencers have taken over the world, and the companies who are hesitant to jump on the influencer marketing bandwagon are missing out.
The concept of an “influencer” may seem abstract to some marketers, but influencer marketing has become increasingly complex over the last few years. Companies need to know how to simultaneously leverage the right levels of influencers to maximize their brand awareness and drive the greatest results. Here’s how it works.
It’s like getting a recommendation from a close friend who cares.
While some companies have dismissed influencers as superficial or not important, your potential customers have real and authentic relationships with them through social media. Product tutorials and endorsements from trusted sources are influencing people to buy things on social media and influencers carry more weight with customers than anyone could have previously imagined.
Influencers are EXPERTS. They offer deep expertise in a specific area. When a beauty influencer features a makeup brand that she uses every day, her followers are going to trust that she uses “the best products” because they trust her recommendations are authentic. Influencers gain the trust of their followers by bringing them into their inner circle and sharing their lives while using the products.
Influencers are CONNECTED. It’s not always about the number of followers on a platform. Social media influencers, including nano- and micro-influencers, have higher engagement rates of quality followers. This deep level of interactivity builds relationships and is critical to why social influencers are so valuable to any marketing strategy: it’s a platform of trusted fans that facilitates a receptiveness to a brand.
Influencers are AUTHENTIC. The best social influencers are authentic; they have a passion for a brand or product, which shows in what they endorse or recommend to their followers. To their target audience, they are the authority in whatever niche they’re occupying. They’ll tell it like it is with no filter.
Seeing is believing…
Ok, you believe you need influencers, but where do you start? It’s time to find fans of your product or brand. The biggest challenge for most marketers today is finding relevant influencers, people who believe in their brand.
To be successful in influencer marketing, you can’t work with just anyone on social media. You need to find the influencers who would actually believe in your product or service. If they love your product, they will talk about it to their audience in a way that is authentic. If you interact, engage, and help promote them, they will be brand promoters for life.
When looking for influencers, you also want to consider the following:
- How do they interact with their fans when not promoting content. What types of comments do they write back to their fans?
- What is their content style? How do they create content and does it align with where your brand is going?
- What have you done to engage with them? Influencer marketing is a two-way street, so you can’t expect to get what you aren’t willing to give.
PeakActivity has an incredible social media marketing team that can get in touch with the right influencers for your business. They’ve done it for a bunch of companies with a crazy amount of success. No, for real, they know what they’re doing. Visit our website to learn more.