Social media is one of the prime platforms for reaching a bigger audience and establishing a trustworthy brand.
On top of their massive user base, social media networks like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram also have advanced user targeting that will help you reach the right audience with your content.
However, not a lot of entrepreneurs have the knowledge nor the time to keep an effective social media marketing campaign running. Most of them, particularly solopreneurs and one-man webmasters, probably have their hands full with developing their core product and managing their primary marketing campaigns, be it SEO, PPC, and general content marketing.
That’s why plenty new brands turn to influencer marketing to help them break into their niche. This encompasses practices that involve connecting with popular influencers, pitching collaborative projects, and leveraging their online reach to raise brand awareness.
It may sound intimidating, but influencer marketing really isn’t rocket science. In fact, we’re confident that executing an effective campaign can be done with only three steps.
Got your attention? Good.
Let’s dive right in.
1. Looking for Social Media Influencers
Put simply, an influencer is someone who’ve already amassed a following which they can use to promote your content.
Of course, you need to look specifically for influencers in your niche that also aren’t your direct competitors. For example, if you run a content marketing agency, you should look for influencers who specialize in social media marketing, SEO, PPC, and other areas that are related to (but aren’t too similar) to your brand offerings.
Unfortunately, searching for influencers who fit the bill can be difficult, especially if you rely solely on the built-in search features of social networks.
What you need is to look for influencer research tools that can crunch the numbers and generate a list of potential influencers from relevant keywords.
FollowerWonk, for example, is a straightforward tool that will enable you to discover influencers on Twitter. You just need to enter a seed keyword that describes the type of influencer you’re looking for.
Apart from identifying influencers in your niche, FollowerWonk also allows you to compare different accounts. Doing so will enable you to identify which influencers to prioritize based on their number of followers, engagement rate, and social authority score.
A good alternative to FollowerWonk would be Traackr, which can supply you with recommended influencers across multiple networks, like Facebook, YouTube, and LinkedIn.
2. Execute Your Outreach Campaign
After identifying the right influencers for your brand, the next step is to plan an influencer outreach campaign.
Before anything else, you need to set goals that will help you mold your outreach message later on. These must align with how you want your influencers to participate in your campaign.
For example, if you’re targeting marketing experts, then some of the opportunities you can explore include:
If you’re contemplating different strategies for different influencer types, segment your prospects accordingly and prepare templates for each group.
For example, if you have a list of influencers whom you’d like to include in a roundup post, here’s what your outreach email template may look like:
Take note that the example above actually represents a very basic outreach email that can be drastically improved. There are several other elements you can add to make your outreach email more compelling.
Referring to the influencer’s previous posts, for one, will show them that they’ve been in your mind before you even planned to create your roundup post. You may also include a couple of guide questions that makes it easier for influencers to provide their take.
Here are a few more tips that can help you win more positive responses in your outreach campaign:
3. The Follow Through
So, you got a handful of influencers who responded to your outreach campaign.
The next step is to make sure everything else goes smoothly by being appreciative and highly responsive to their questions. Most importantly, make sure you don’t disappoint them with your content in case your strategy involved collaborating on a post.
Since you’re trying to establish your presence on social media, it would greatly help to use different content formats that do well on these networks.
For example, statistics show that Facebook posts with images get 2.3X more engagement than posts that only contain text.
The good news is, you don’t need to hire a professional graphic designer to produce impressive visual content. With a tool like Canva, you can concoct a professional-looking Instagram post, infographic, or blog featured image within a few clicks.
Also Read: 12 Image-Creation Tools to Create Stunning Images for Your Social Media Visuals & Blogs
Just remember to preserve the performance of your website as you incorporate more visual content. Some strategies include using a lossless compression tool, leveraging a CDN service, and stripping away unnecessary elements on your website.
What’s Next
Influencer marketing is a low-risk, high-reward strategy that can help small brands carve a name for themselves in the social media sphere.
It may not be easy, but it’s more than doable if you focus on the three key steps highlighted above.
Got any more tips you’d like to share with other readers regarding influencer marketing? If so, feel free to leave a comment below — we’d love to hear your suggestions. Cheers!