Brands have started using key leaders to drive their brand message to a larger audience. These key leaders are individuals who have a very strong internet presence. They may be bloggers with a large following or may have social media accounts with lot of followers. Companies choose these influencers because the audience is more likely to be influenced by the word of these key leaders, rather than the brand directly marketing itself.
Everyone knows that most people do not watch advertisements and try to skip them. This is because they think that a company will show anything to sell its product or service. On the other hand the influencers are individuals who already have a connection with their followers and they frequently engage in meaningful communication with them. The follower of an influencer who is active on social media or a blogger is more likely to be trusted by his or her followers. This is the reason that intelligent marketers have recognized the power that these influencers have on social media.
Do’s of Influencer Marketing
- Focus on the Sales Lifecycle – if you are not aware of your purchase lifecycle then no one is going to pay attention to your influencer message. This is the reason that you need to understand what motivates the target audience to make a purchase decision. Who they engage with while making this decision and where.
- Looking for Subject Matter Experts – influencers are people who engage their followers in meaningful conversation. They have the respect and trust of their followers. Even if they don’t have huge followings they are credible due to their expertise in a particular subject. It is a good idea to choose an influencer who is already engaged in a subject close to your product or service.
- Finding Social Media Influencers with Larger Engagement – Instead of choosing an influencer who has a million followers, but has engaging conversation with only 1 % of them, it is better to choose one who has 5000 followers and 20% of them are engaging in conversation with them.
Don’ts of Influencer Marketing
- You should not choose an influencer who has a totally different niche than yours. For instance there is no point in using an influencer who is a gaming expert to promote beauty products. This is why making a thorough influencer research become important.
- If you think that popularity is equal to influence then you are wrong. This is the reason that using celebrities to act as brand ambassadors is not as successful. Today’s audiences are more likely to listen to the word of a person who they consider to be their peer. This is why it is necessary to choose influencers whose words are listened to by their followers.
- You should also not assume that influencers want to work for free. Most influencers will charge for the services of promoting your brand to their followers. The charges of the influencers vary greatly depending on their number of followers and also their engagement with their followers.
What are Micro-Influencers and Why They are Useful
Micro influencers are social media users and they are very different from typical celebrities, experts or public figures. These are common people who specialize in a particular vertical and regularly share social media content about their interests. The number of followers of an influencer may vary greatly. In modern times, people have realized that working with micro influencers is more profitable rather than opting for the influencers who have very large base of followers. Micro influencers usually have a following of 1000 to 5000 followers. However, they have a strong bond with these small numbers of followers. Due to the less number of followers they are able to hyper engage with them and get your brand message across to them more effectively.
Some people may think that using micro influencers is a counter intuitive measure, but this is not so. It has been proved that micro influencers can get better results for your brand. A study performed on instagram showed that as the number of followers increased the number of comments and likes decreases. In fact the maximum likes were generated by influencers who had 1000 followers only. It is advisable to pursue influencers who have a following ranging from 1000 to 10,000 and carefully check the engagement rate.
This is a great way for brands to achieve higher engagement rates and make their product or service popular with the audiences. Micro influencers also have more targeted follower bases than influencers who have individuals who have hundreds of thousands and million followers.
Top Influencer Marketing Platforms for Business
Nowadays there are a lot many social media platforms for conducting an influencer marketing campaign. These include Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube and many more. There are also the influencers who have their own private blog and have many audiences following their blog. The platform that you choose depends on the method with which you wish to promote your business. If you wish to explain something at length then Facebook is a good platform because on Twitter there are a maximum number of characters per tweet. At the same time, YouTube and Instagram are great for videos
The intelligent way of how to get influencers on these top platforms is to search for the influencers who have their presence on more than one platform. On the other hand you can also opt for different influencers on different platforms. Usually a brand may require more than a few influencers to get the desired result. However, be assured that if you follow the right method then influencer marketing will generate the maximum awareness about your brand and will also generate sales and profit.
