Influencer marketing is a smart way to increase exposure for your brand.
Why tweet something for your two followers when you could get someone with 5,000 followers to tweet it for you?
However, getting influencers to promote you is easier said than done. It takes brainpower, patience, and a little bit of luck to build a network of influencers willing to do this – which is especially useful for relatively unknown business who need the exposure.
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Below are four things companies should consider when establishing an influencer marketing strategy:
1. Offer Value to Influencers
Influencers don’t promote things simply out of the kindness of their hearts, so have something to offer them in return. A common way to connect with influencers is to offer them relevant content for their blogs or social media newsfeeds. People value content from others because it fills up their feeds, and if someone shares a link to your company’s blog, it will increase the number of people who will read it and ultimately visit your website.
The easiest way to do this is by guest blogging. However, you can also mention bloggers on social media (Ex. “check out my blog!”) to get retweets or shares.
Zomato shares tons of blog content to its Facebook page. Imagine what would happen if your blog was featured on their website, and was shared to their Facebook page?
It’s ideal to offer a physical product or service to influencers because if they use it and promote it in a video or post, your company has the potential to get directly in front of a trusting audience. However, this is difficult in industries like the beauty industry, as beauty bloggers are sent countless products and standing out amongst the crowd is difficult without paying for fake, inauthentic, reviews.
Live Nation offers value to artists by promoting their concerts and mentioning them on Twitter. In return, if an artist retweets Live Nation, the Live Nation link (which is where their service exists) will be positioned in front of more people – which will increase the likelihood of people visiting the event page and purchasing tickets from their site. It’s a win-win for both sides.
2. Target Influencers that are Relevant and Influential
Do some homework and research influencers before you reach out to them. Make sure that they have enough of a following that a retweet, mention, share, or post to their blog site will make enough of a difference to drive results for you.
Try using Foller, which gives a breakdown of Twitter users (followers, retweet ratio, reply ratio). If you use YouTube for your influencer marketing strategy (perfect for product reviews), use FameBit, which not only breaks down metrics that matter (like subscribers and average views), it actually lets you message influencers directly.
Also, make sure that the influencers you reach out to are relevant to your industry or niche. By using tools like Hashtagify, you can search for the top influencers in your subject area – ranked based on their sphere of influence.
Remember: Getting in front of someone else’s audience is useless if those people aren’t interested in your product or service, so make sure the influencer’s audience aligns with your goals.
Hashtagify ranks the top Twitter influencers in the subject area that you search for.
3. Build Relationships
If an influencer engages with you, why stop there?
Instead of putting effort into looking for new influencers, sparingly engage with an influencer you’ve already engaged with, again. Influencers who find you valuable (and don’t feel overwhelmed by ‘spammy’ frequent requests from you) will continue to engage with you and want to promote you.
If you continually get retweets or shares from the same person, you will keep increasing your reach with ease, as engaging with someone who already knows you is easier than finding someone new to partner with.
If an influencer engages you, continue offering them value to build an ongoing relationship.
4. Don’t Expect Immediate Results
Building a network of influencers to promote you, like all organic social media, is a slow build. It takes time to find people who will interact with you and even more time to build a relationship with them. However, if you are able to build several of these relationships, and take the time to develop trust and loyalty with the influencer, you will have a stronger and more motivated network of promoters who can do wonders for your brand.
Influencer marketing takes time, but once you build a few profitable relationships your online reach can skyrocket!
Influencer marketing is the future of social media. Contact Treefrog today to learn more about our out-of-the-box social media solutions.
Request a free quote or give us a call at 905.836.4442 today!