Although influencer marketing is not a new concept, it appears to be evolving faster than other kinds of marketing and promotion. As more artists join the market with the intention of becoming paid influencers, wise brands and the agencies with whom they collaborate understand that effectively collaborating with an influencer requires more than simply a huge number of followers. This year, the influencer market is projected to expand to a whopping $16.4 billion industry.
The idea is to use the organic influence of the appropriate individuals to build deeper interaction between their followers and your company, and a plethora of variables will influence your strategy.
What Is Influencer Marketing?
Influencer marketing is a method of using an individual’s prominence inside your business to raise the visibility and standing of the firm as a whole. Many influencers utilize their reputation and network to create their own businesses or consultancies.
The names of many of the world’s biggest influencers are associated with the names of their organizations. Larry Kim, the company’s founder and Chief Technology Officer, is regarded as a thought leader in the sponsored search, content marketing, and social media arenas. Larry routinely talks at conferences across the world, and his considerable knowledge and thought leadership in search has raised not just his own but also WordStream’s image.
Influencer marketing, on the other hand, is more than just using someone’s image to boost sales. More often than not, influencer marketing entails establishing that person as a trusted authority in their field and defining the dialogues that revolve around a certain issue; in Larry’s case, sponsored search, content marketing, and social media.
Here are eight influencer marketing methods to help you become more visible in your business and make people want to know you.
1: Find Influencers in Your Industry
Although you’re presumably aware of who the main players in your field are, you’ll need to identify – and follow – these individuals to see what they’re talking about.
Social media is by far the most convenient way to search and find influencers.Find out who is having discussions and who is making their voice heard by searching by subject. Take a look at who notable people follow and who they follow. Participate in frequent industry-related dialogues (for example, the weekly #ppcchat Twitter discussion).
You can also monitor who is circulating your (or anybody else’s) content and how influential they are using free online tools like BuzzSumo .
2: Shape the Conversation
To be considered as a true influencer in a certain field, you must create and define the debate, rather than just advocating for whatever is being discussed.Are you posing new questions that no one else has thought of (or dared to ask), or are you simply repeating what others have said? Is your point of view on a topic actually unique, or are you writing about the same things everyone else is? Do your views and ideas challenge industry norms, or do they get lost in the shuffle?
If you want to become an influencer and reach people who are already prominent in your area, you must define the dialogue rather than simply nod your head.
3: Own Your Niche
You must own your specialty if you want to become an expert in your field. It’s not enough to know a lot about a few things; you must home down on one hyper-specific area of emphasis and make it your own.
4: Aim to Influence the Influencers
Many individuals believe that in order to be a successful and acknowledged influencer in their industry, they must reach out to as many people as possible. Things, however, are a little more complicated than that.
Influencer marketing is about more than simply reaching a large number of people; it is also about reaching the right individuals. After all, if your ideas are to acquire momentum, you’ll need at least the tacit support of other professionals in your industry.
This does not imply carpet-bombing Twitter with links to your newest excellent blog article, but rather ensuring that the correct people notice and share your work. What should you do first? Begin sharing the material of other influencers.
It’s important to remember that reach isn’t the same as impact. It’s more important that your message reaches the right people than that it reaches the most people.
5: Do What Works For You
When you’re attempting to build a reputation for yourself, it’s all too simple to copy methods and ideas used by your peers (or personal idols) for your own goals. While this may work in some cases, openly imitating someone else’s approach to influencer marketing may not always provide the intended outcomes. In certain situations, it may even be detrimental to your personal brand and trustworthiness.
Rather than imitating someone else’s methods for becoming an influencer, concentrate on the material you’re creating. However, don’t just focus on providing great material to your usual audience; instead, focus on developing captivating, original content that is expressly tailored to capture the attention of industry influencers.
Citations from well-known influencers are possible if and only if you publish material that is worthy of citation.
6: Build a Happy Community
So, we’ve established that sharing other influencers’ material and generating your own unique content are both important components of influencer marketing, but one mistake that many individuals make – even recognised experts – is failing to recognise the value of community in their sector.
Even if your content is excellent, keep in mind that consumers connect with you and your company in a variety of ways. Yes, you should create content to attract the attention of other influencers, but understanding the community in your industry is critical to expanding your reach and making an impact.
Fo example, if you sell courses online and if you have community, you have another chance to interact with your audience in a meaningful, effective, and transforming way. This way you can build your reputation.
7: Be Genuine, Accessible, and Responsive
People’s online interactions have changed as a result of social media. This implies that, whether mistakenly or not, people expect to be able to immediately contact the individuals they follow and admire.
I’m not proposing that you answer to every single tweet or personally respond to every Google+ mention, but I am advising you to avoid being the type of influencer who simply tweets links to their material and never engages with their followers. If you utilize the social media analytics program BuzzSumo, you’ll recognize these people as broadcasters.
Improving your position and visibility in your field may be greatly aided by projecting an image of accessibility. Social media is a really strong tool for influencer marketing, but don’t lose sight of the “social” component of social media. Interact with your followers and participate in the community.
Also, don’t be scared to be human in your online presence. Rand Fishkin’s candid, honest piece on his problems with depression and the stress of developing a business struck a striking chord with Moz’s readership (including me) and served as a reminder to the SEO and digital marketing communities that we’re all human.
8: Be Patient
Success does not come immediately, and this is especially true in the world of influencer marketing.
In many ways, becoming an influencer in your field is similar to content marketing as a discipline. After sharing the best content they could for a long time with little or no demonstrable impact, many would-be influencers quit up. Consider the graph below, which is taken from one of Rand’s SlideShare slides on why content marketing fails:
If you want to be an influencer in your area, you must be ready to put in the hours (and days, weeks, months, and maybe years) required to make a name for yourself. This will be difficult, and you will be tempted to give up at some time, but you must endure if you are to succeed. Those who wait will be rewarded.
Conclusion
Influencer marketing is a crucial tool in today’s highly competitive marketing scene. Unfortunately, there is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all strategy for influencer marketing. You must be willing to experiment with new ideas and observe what works and what doesn’t in your unique niche.
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