If you’re looking to grow your social media presence, influencer marketing could be the best way to go about it. After all, the effectiveness of influencer marketing can’t be disputed – according to Forbes, businesses who partner with influencers are 55% more likely to have positive ROI than their non-influencer counterparts. But this strategy can be complicated if you don’t know where to start. Here are 5 ways to use influencer marketing in your social media strategy to maximize your business’s return on investment.
Social media influencers are individuals who have reputations in their industries, have a huge fan following, and can influence the perception of their fans with impactful sales recommendations. If used properly, influencer marketing is fast evolving to become a key tool for brand promotion.
Before you start reaching out to social media celebrities and Instagram influencers, you need to determine what your social media goals are. Do you want to increase brand awareness? Drive traffic to your website? Generate leads? Sell products? Once you know what you want to achieve, you can start developing your influencer marketing strategy.
The outreach impact goals will help you shape the kind of influencers you want to collaborate with. Mega influencers with more than a million followers enjoy celebrity status. They are the ideal influencers to endorse global brands with a potential digital marketing budget. For regional brands, mid-level influencers with 50k to 1 lac followers can work, depending on the budget. Finally, Nano and micro-influencers are the best to help leverage popularity amongst niche communities and work well when geo-targetted. Suppose you are struggling to put a budget in place; better start with a micro-influencer.
The influencer marketing approach is layered with aspirational motives rather than direct sales pitch. People tend to listen to those they like. Influencers work as trustworthy or credible sources who lead people to trust a brand. Recommendations, reviews, and personal commentary are some of the popular structures influencers use to promote brands.
Before you jumpstart collaboration, analyse the influencers’ engagement rates, content, and audience to see if they’re a good fit for your brand. For example, social media allows fake fan purchases, and some influencers might take that path to increase their fan base. Therefore before contracts are signed, look into this aspect. After all, you don’t want to associate your brand with a personality with credibility issues. To find social media celebrities, search hashtags, look in blog directories, or contact companies that specialise in social media marketing.
Since influencers know their consumers thoroughly, they should be able to give you an original promotion idea. At best, provide them with the marketing objective, the budget, and the end goal. It’s no secret that social media has taken over the world, and how brands can interact with consumers through social channels is growing exponentially. Influencer marketing is not only increasing, but it’s here to stay! If you’re not using this tactic yet, it’s time to take notice of its benefits like positive brand impact, a spike in organic reach, and excellent ROIs, and get started today.