HOW TO USE INFLUENCER INFLUENCE TO BOOST YOUR BRAND
IN THE WORLD OF ECOMMERCE,
WHO DOESN’T RELY ON SOCIAL MEDIA INFLUENCERS?
Probably too many of us don’t, but let’s face it, if you’re really successful, you probably do.
If you don’t use influencers, then you should!
Here’s another question I get asked all the time:
What is Influencer marketing and how can your social media VAs help me move it along?
For those of you who may have been living in a cave for the past decade, the definition of an Influencer is:
Someone who is well-respected in a given industry or by the public; they have the ability to influence others' beliefs or opinions.
On social media, influencers can help ensure the success of a post, tweet, event or product just by lending their authority to it.
One of the biggest advantages of influencers is that their endorsement can create a ripple effect. Influencers have other influencers as followers and friends - if they promote a particular product or brand, these other influencers may end up taking up the cause too thus spreading it even further.
So back to the question I get asked all the time: Why is Influencer Marketing so important to your brand?
Influencer marketing is the relationship between a brand and an influencer which in the long run enhances brand awareness, engagement and the one most important object, makes sales, lots of sales.
The influencer promotes the brand's products or services through various media outlets such as Instagram and YouTube.
Influencer marketing takes advantage of any platform where a large following with a strong brand reputation was established in a particular niche.
It’s all about increasing brand awareness and driving sales through connecting people who support, promote and endorse your product or brand.
For example, a popular fitness vlogger on YouTube with extensive knowledge in weight training and proper nutrition may be asked to advertise a sportswear product or a supplement brand.
Our social media VAs are trained to find these influencers in your niche and set up the different advertising routes available.
We’ll dive further into this a bit later.
So Why is Influencer Marketing so Important?
Because your brand can promote through a known person that your niche community follows on social media, a person they engage with and truss to tell them the truth.
Regular Social media ads create skepticism in the product whereas your consumers are trusting that if their favorite influencer loves the product, they will too.
Influencer marketing is still the best way for brands to reach consumers.
The growing popularity of mobile video in general, and the continued dominance of YouTube specifically, makes it all the more important for brands to find the right influencers with whom to work.
There are different types of Influencer Campaigns and your social media VA who has tons of experience in this field, will help you decide which way to proceed with your particular brand.
Here are some examples:
Affiliate links are web pages from your domain, they drive traffic to your site. Discount codes are number/letter combinations that your brand or influencer may distribute to consumers who may then use them during checkout.
Often, the best strategy is to use both affiliate links and promo codes together. This way, you have greater control over your bigger offers (discount codes) and can track sales attribution (affiliate links) with pinpoint accuracy.
Your social media VA will set up discount codes and affiliate links for your influencers.
Competitions, giveaways, and contests are excellent avenues for gaining greater brand exposure, generating buzz, and driving engagement.
Depending on your product’s price point, you can easily make room in your budget for giving away a handful of products each month to competition winners or directly to influencers.
3. UNBOXING VIDEOS FROM INFLUENCERS
Through their YouTube channel or Instagram live video, your influencer will shine a spotlight on your product by getting it in front of their entire audience at a minimal cost to your brand.
Some influencers receive so many freebies and exclusive products that they dedicate one day of the week to unboxing all their gifts on social media, thanking the brand that sent them, and either reviewing or using them right then and there on the platform.
Ideally, these prizes or gifts should be lucrative enough to get people excited or should provide early access to products before they’re widely released.
An Easy Way To Drive Even More Engagement Is To Include Engagement Instructions As A Precondition For Entering The Contest
Your social media VA may choose the following options as a precondition:
Building a successful influencer strategy is all about being goal-oriented.
Without a clear destination in mind, you’ll never know which path has the least resistance, is the most cost-effective, and provides the best results. our social media VA is specifically trained to bring you the best results.
TOGETHER WITH YOUR VA YOU WILL DETERMINE YOUR GOALS.
Your social media VA will determine which of these 3 possible goals you’ll be aiming towards:
Once your goals are set, shift your attention to how your social media VA will measure the ROI of your influencer marketing campaign.
Knowing which partnerships are working and which aren’t will help get the most out of your influencer strategy.
Have your social media VA compare the results from influencer marketing against your results from other marketing channels to determine if influencer marketing has an ROI worth continuing.
A critical component of an effective influencer marketing campaign is having your VA find and establish a trusted relationship with a relevant influencer, one who’s in tune with your target audience’s needs and desires and whom your they will look to when they’re making purchase decisions.
To find just the right influencer for your brand, your social media VA will go through dozens of possible influencers in order to understand precisely which one will be the right fit for your niche and how engaging their followers actually are.
Each category has its own characteristics in terms of the number of followers, niche relevancy, and engagement rate. Your VA knows how to choose and collaborate with an influencer in the best category for your niche.
Very often a micro or nano influencer, (because of their very loyal and active followers) will generate more buzz and get more engagement than a mega or macro influencer (which would cost you a fortune anyway) and as a result will be more successful in building brand awareness and ultimately increase your sales.
Expand Your Reach Beyond Instagram
The primary goal here is discovering influencers based on topics of influence and audience demographics, who can deliver on all the vital engagement metrics.
To find the right fit between brand and influencer, your VA will need to find someone who is aligned with your brand’s vision, mission, and identity.
Instagram is typically the first platform that comes to mind when people think about when finding top notch influencers.
Your VA will also try branching out and capitalizing on influencers across Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Snapchat, and YouTube.
Your social media VA will go wherever your target audience is active, and capitalize on the fact that influencers on platforms other than Instagram are likely more approachable and cost-effective for the time being.
To find influencers, your VA utilizes different tools which allow her to search for relevant influencers by topic and analyze their reach by follower and engagement numbers.
Once a list of influencers has been established, their contact info has to be discovered, another challenging task for your social media VA.
There are also tools which help to easily upload the list of influencers, and get all of their contact info at once.
After the rock-solid list of influencers and their contact info has been formulated, your social media VA will kick off your influencer marketing game plan.
The digital landscape is shifting rapidly, and those not keeping up are wasting their ad budgets, losing customers, and shrinking their market share.
Remember, as long as your influencer has a solid reputation and genuine clout, follower numbers are relatively unimportant.
What really matters is that their fans favorably react and respond to their recommendations.
Our social media VA knows how to embrace your target audience via social media influencers that utilize content which provokes emotion, and subsequently engagement and action.
Let the influencers help you get on the road to prosperity.
Good luck!
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