Influencer marketing primarily involves leveraging the clout, following, and influence of a particular individual to market a product or a service to a target audience. The good thing about social media today is that it has offered almost everyone a platform to air their thoughts and ideas. Social media usage and sign-ups continue to rise by the day – a testament to the growing preference for social media platforms for everything from networking to information sharing.
Some people have leveraged these platforms to make names for themselves. Consequently, this has seen them grow their numbers in terms of following.
Social media influencers command followers ranging from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands, and in some cases, millions.
These influencers can, therefore, market to a broad audience where the chances of generating leads and getting conversions are very high.
Proper social media influencers can reach to their audience, market a product, and generate and sustain conversation and engagement around that product. All this is because influencers have cultivated an audience and built trust over time.
Settling on the Appropriate Social Media Channels
There is a wide variety of social media platforms today, and these platforms have different audiences. Instagram is known for sharing photos and videos, and a content marketing strategy that does not have visuals, despite the clout of the influencer, won’t have the impact it would were images used.
Other platforms like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Snapchat also have unique users and audiences.
Proper influencer marketing in social media calls for a selection of influencers well-versed with a specific platform and putting them in charge of your marketing plans on that channel.
This way, the marketing campaign or marketing strategy is highly likely to be a success.
Select an Ideal Influencer
You need to ensure that you pick an ideal influencer with regards to your intended outcome or objective. When it comes to social media influencer marketing, there are various categories or types of social media influencers.
Some influencers have more than 1,000 followers, thus referred to as micro-influencers, some have more than 100,000 followers, hence referred to as macro-influencers, and some have more than 1,000,000 followers, and these are the celebrities.
While the micro-influencers have a tight and close relationship with their followers, the macro-influencers have a large and more diverse audience, while the celebrities have a vast following.
The decision to select an influencer will depend on the nature of the target audience. It will also highly depend on the type of product or service.
Since these varying categories have their unique strengths and weaknesses, you can check for a type that best matches your needs.
Budget Well for Influencer Marketing
When you select an influencer, you should know who you are working with and how they will expect to be compensated.
Depending on the type of the influencer, whether a micro-influencer, macro-influencer or a celebrity, it is crucial that you get to understand how much they will work for.
When you know the quantum of their pay, you can plan other budget items in your marketing campaign.
It is prudent to cut costs whenever necessary so that you do not end up overspending.
Craft Your Key Performance Indicators
- Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are metrics that help to assess and measure the progress of what you are doing.
- It could be a project or a campaign, or any activity that has specific key objectives but will take some time to execute entirely.
- A marketing campaign takes some time to implement and complete, and this could range from a week to a month or more.
- In this sense, therefore, you must set your KPIs so that you can check them against the progress to ensure that you are on track.
- If the marketing efforts are not as expected, then you will be in a position to respond appropriately.
- KPIs also help you to fast-track the progress of the marketing campaign with regards to set goals. This way, you can adequately assess the effectiveness of influencer marketing and determine whether it is helping you achieve your goals or not.
Work on the Type of Content
The type of content to use when working with an influencer may be a decision the influencer has to make, or you.
However, in most cases, it is ideal to leave this to the influencer as they correctly understand their following.
Different followers have different preferences when it comes to content consumption.
Some may be in favor of visuals, while some would prefer blog posts.
Considering account takeovers where you take control of an influencer’s social media account and later share your content is a good idea but also comes with its fair share of risks.
Giving the influencer latitude over content creation since they have more knowledge about their followers and how the platform works.
Since most folks all over the globe have access to social media, it is important to consider availing content that people can read in their languages.
An often-used strategy is where influencers use translation services online to help in availing content in various languages. The outcome is content that is custom for folks in various parts of the world.
Consistency
When it comes to influencer marketing, you must remain relevant throughout the campaign. On social media, things could quickly get out of hand, and this could ruin your entire marketing or promotion campaign. This could cost you immensely.
If it is matters regarding content, ensure that you and your influencer cooperate to maintain a particular level of consistency. You have a good chance of reaching a broad audience, generating more leads, and getting more conversions by being consistent.
Stick to Your Plan and Make Modifications When Necessary
Veering off your initial goals and objectives is something that may end up costing the entire campaign. Just like any endeavor, setting clear goals is the first thing.
Putting a plan together to achieve those goals. However, social media spaces evolve, just like how technology changes over time.
In this sense, while it is good to stick to the plan, it is important to revise and revisit parts of the plan that might be affected by new and emerging developments.
However, in case of modifications or adjustments, they should be for a good reason.
Modifications should pivot towards the improvement of the campaign. This will help to improve the outcome of the campaign, which is a win-win situation for you.
Influencer-inspired Social Media Contests
In today’s age, social media contests are quite a thing. Those who can easily pull off social media contests are influencers since they have the numbers. With the numbers, they can reach a wider audience without using more resources than your average social media user would.
It could be a voting contest, where followers and other users get to pick one choice from some options.
It could be a photo caption contest whereby followers get to caption photos, and the best caption is up for some prize.
There are various social media contests that influencers can organize, and the good thing about them is that they have the potential to rally the attention of followers towards a particular topic. In the meantime, the product in question gets some publicity and marketing.
Do Not Saturate the Whole Thing
While social media platforms are open spaces where users have a lot of leeway and latitude in terms of posting content, pushing influencers to overdo their marketing could have some negative effects.
Creating a timeline that dictates how often influencers should post could help to prevent saturation.
Overposting could saturate the entire campaign, meaning that at some point, it could lose its relevance.
Moderate marketing will equally drive the message home, and it is essential to be conscious of how you embark on your influencer marketing strategy.
To sum this up, influencer marketing can yield some good results if done correctly.
Social media usage has grown astronomically over recent years, and this trend will only get better.
By leveraging influencers, you are projecting and marketing your product to a vast audience, and the chances are overly high that you will get some impressive rate of conversion.
KPIs can come in handy here, and they can give a road-map on the performance of the marketing campaign all along.
