Utilising Online Influencers To Build Your Own Personalised Audience Base

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brand-influence

When advertising becomes a null effort, influence is offering another opportunity for business owners.

Nowadays, companies want audiences, no matter what kind of business they run, and one of the effective ways to connect with those audiences is by leveraging influence of their brands. With the popularity of social media, it’s becoming simpler for them to find and cooperate with talented influencers who create and share branded content for their products or services, and come with their own built-in audiences.

The truth is, if you like and trust someone’s opinion, you’re more likely to follow it. Influencers can have a huge effect on brand loyalty. Even if you’re creating high-quality content that’s worth sharing by yourself, it’s quite hard to attract attention based on the content’s quality alone, especially when it’s estimated that about 1.7 multibillion new pieces of online content enter the picture every day. A good piece of content could take two to five years to naturally gain a large audience, and most businesses don’t have that much time to wait. This is where influencers come into the picture.

Here is just one example: Popular Instagram users often team up with companies to create an image featuring a certain product, which then gets posted to the influencer’s feed and seen by thousands of followers. Photographer Nathan Michael has 77,000 followers on Instagram and has shared images tagging Negra Modelo USA, Pizza Hut, and Verizon. Each image gets about 1,500 likes. Other brands give an influencer full control of their feeds in an “Instagram takeover.” Guest Instagram users can post on a brand’s account throughout a day or week. Photographer Adam Senatori was one lucky guest Instagram user, as General Electric offered up a free trip to the GE Aviation facility and asked him to document the trip for his 879,000 followers.

Besides gaining a new audience, this strategy can increase the “cool factor” of a brand, especially when they focus on newer social networks like Vine. TWhen they partner with a well-known photographer or videographer, marketing suddenly becomes more subtle and less about advertising.

Influencers marketing isn’t just for B2C companies. B2B companies will also find that such partnership with industry leaders can be mutually beneficial as well. These influencers post relevant content on your platform weekly and share it with your followers. In turn, it drives new traffic to their site every day, and hopefully will lead to new customers.

1. Finding The Appropriate Influencers

social-media-influencers

Brands interested in playing this game must find the right influencers first. While there are newly created agencies that specialise in pairing influencers with brands and helpful sites like Traackr or Followerwonk, a lot of searching and a good feeling can provide the similar results.

The influencers in your industry are the ones with the most popular blogs and the most followers on social networks like Twitter and Pinterest. While the numbers are important, it’s also important to pay attention on the content’s quality as well. Decide if this influencer feels like the right partner. The person might has a lot of followers, but is he/she actually interacting with their community consistently? Does her voice fit with your brand? Will he/she be passionate about what you do? Even if you’re a small brand, you can significantly increase the size of a small audience by finding relatively small influencers. The good news is that an influencer with a following of twenty thousand or less may not cost you anything. They might be thrilled to get a free sample.

2. Forming a Strong Relationship

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Partnering with influencers takes a little bit of effort. One personalised email could be enough. Otherwise, it could take months to approach the desirable influencer. A great way to introduce yourself is to schedule an interview for an upcoming article or ask the person to speak at a company event.

Other strategies include organising an informal “influencer-only” event like a blogger breakfast for your product’s new launch. You can also compliment on the blog posts and retweets their content. If you’ve already worked with other influencers, you can utilise a “name dropping” technique.

Still, the best strategy is simple: Have a clear and comprehensive strategy before you speak to them. Invite the influencer to join the conversation and decide how this partnership can benefit the both of you. Set your goal: Do you want to increase brand awareness? Or sell a product? Or increase attendance for an event? Then decide how you can best reach this goal together. Is it content co-creation? Is it an event sponsorship? Is it an “Instagram takeover”? Think about these questions carefully.

3. Measuring Your Success

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There’s no doubt that influencers with a big number of followers will give a lot of positive contribution for your business. The question is,  did those followers convert?

In the future, you’re going to see consultants who are able to craft a much more personalised content strategy with smaller, more engaged audiences. Size doesn’t matter that much—the degree of activation matters. That’s where finding the first step comes back into play: finding the appropriate influencer. The number of followers an influencer has will be less important than the percentage of those followers who engage with your brand. Keep your eye on this metric and act upon it, as some influencers will perform better than others when it comes to your target audience. You just need to find the right one. The right influencers are respected by your audience due to their experience and track record, and they are often viewed by your audience as trusted advisors.