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Find an Influencer to Up Your Instagram Game by @lieshapetrovich

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by Liesha Petrovich | Featured Contributor

You see other women killing it on Instagram and other social media platforms. They make it look effortless. But somehow you never quite achieve their success.

It’s time to up your Instagram game and find an influencer.

In mid 2015, Madewell, a women’s clothing company partnered with lifestyle vlogger Stephanie Sterjovski and fashion blogger Bethany Marie to spread the word about their signature tote. Bethany posted this short blurb on her Instagram feed:

Stephanie and Bethany’s followers include lots of young women passionate about the latest fashion trends. Their posts got viral with thousands of likes and comments. In all, Madewell was able to reach over one million targeted users through this influencer marketing campaign.

Influencer marketing is emerging to be one of the most effective ways to build visibility and following for your business. Like celebrity endorsements, this strategy makes use of social media influencers to market to your customers. The difference is that influencer marketing does not have to be expensive and can be customized to fit your budget.

How to Find an Influencer

The right influencer needs to align with the brand on the following three factors:

  • Their followers are prospective buyers of your product
  • The influencer’s brand values align with your own
  • The influencer’s social media feed should see active engagement from their followers

In Bethany’s case, her followers were of the exact demographic that Madewell was after. A significant chunk of her submissions are related to the latest fashion gear and this is the sort of brand value that the business was after. Lastly, each of her posts receives thousands of likes and comments which indicate high engagement rate.

Finding the right influencer is perhaps the most challenging aspect of influencer marketing. There are a number of third-party tools like Ninja Outreach and Snapfluence that can help you discover influencers who cater to your demographic.

Negotiating a Deal

It is fair to say that unless an influencer is a complete fan of your products, they may expect to be monetarily compensated for helping you with promotions. According to some estimates, it can cost anywhere between $500 to $50,000 for an Instagram post depending on the audience size. This makes influencer marketing attractive to businesses of all sizes. As a small business entrepreneur, it is easy to find influencers who fit your specific budget range.

Influencer marketing does not always have to involve money changing hands. Barters are an extremely common and equally effective alternative. If you are a woman selling fashion handbags, you could tie up with a company that sells dresses for women to cross-promote your products. This is of course only possible if you enjoy a great following for your brand on Instagram.

Establishing a Successful Strategy

There are two ways to execute an influencer marketing campaign. You may either choose to execute dozens of influencer marketing campaigns at the same time. The idea behind this is to make sure that your target group is exposed to your marketing message multiple times within a short duration of time. This is an extremely effective strategy for promotional offers.

The alternate strategy is to space out your campaigns over the duration of a month or two. This is handy for brand building since your target group is exposed to your brand several times over a month.

Upping Your Instagram Game

Both these strategies have their own pros and cons. One distinct advantage of spacing out your campaign is it allows your business to measure campaign performance after every round. This way, you could tweak future campaigns based on the lessons learned. Also, executing dozens of campaigns at once does not help with brand recall and usually invites an audience who are more interested in the promotional offer rather than the brand value.

Instagram is among the top three social networks in the United States and many other countries in the world. Tying up with influencers on this platform is one of the most effective strategies to build a brand and reach your target users.

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Liesha’s a freelancer by day and Kyokushin Black Belt by night. Liesha’s the author of Killing Rapunzel: Learning How to Save Yourself Through Determination, Grit, and Self-Employment (her mother hates the title – but it’s a metaphor mom!). She talks freelancing adventures at Microbusiness Essentials and grassroots movements at Kat Tales.

YouTube Entrepreneurs. Make Millions Without Leaving Your House [Infographic]

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Zoe Sugg and Michelle Phan

Over the past few years social media stars have made a fortune online, using YouTube to create their own brand. Take a look at how they’ve made their careers and the money that they’re making. From top YouTubers to the celebs you’d forgotten started their careers online, here we take a look at the secrets to online fame and fortune.

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Youtube Entrepreuners? by Moneypod.

The millennial riddle: how to successfully market to Gen Ys by @tangsdesignjewellery

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by Jemima Ashleigh

Ahhhhh Millennials…riddles wrapped in a mystery, wrapped in an enigma. Or at least that how it feels trying to market to them. Their loyalty is mercurial, their tastes appear fickle and the minute they feel they’re being marketed to they shut up shop quicker than a startled echidna.

But there is a way into their wily hearts and it really is at your fingertips.
I have two words for you. Social. Media. If your social is not on fleek then you need to get busy.

According to Kantar TNS Research, the average Millennial (aged 16-30) with internet access, spends 3.1 hours a day on their mobile devices – the equivalent of 21.7 hours – almost a whole day – every week. That’s 47 days over the course of a year. 47 days!

And these folks are listening to someone – you need to jump on board and wring the hell out of that opportunity.

The importance of influence

Using relevant key influencers, especially when it comes to Instagram, is waaaaay up there in terms of importance. People scouring, following and interacting on Insta are going to be swayed by what their fave people are doing, saying, and buying. Do not be scared to approach your chosen Influencer with the idea of getting them to help you out with spreading the word.

But don’t just jump blindly into thinking someone with 1.5 million followers is definitely your best bet – check out their engagement stats before you send off anything. Someone with a lower number of followers, say only 5000 but an engagement rate of 30% is a much better bet than your 1.5 million follower Influencer who can only dredge up 0.2% engagement. Hate to point this out but your mother was right – always look for quality over quantity. Don’t you just detest it when that happens?

Your more Micro Influencers are also less likely to want cold, hard cash for their blessings, but it doesn’t hurt to offer a little somethin’, somethin’. Always, and I mean always, offer your product or service for free to them and make sure everyone is on the same page when it comes to expectations of how many posts, links in their bio to your site and so on..

Choose your weapon

Now here’s a thing…guess what social platform Millennials jump onto first thing when they wake up?

Insta? Nah.
Facebook? Nope.
Snapchat? Bingo!

If you want to reach your M peeps – than you gotta get snappy about it! Millennials account for 7 out of 10 Snapchatters. If you can afford to walk away from a platform 70% of your target market is sitting on…. well you’re a bigger (wo)man than me.

So I hear you have a beauuuuttifuulllll website? Hate to break this to you – well no I actually I don’t, it’s my job – but unless you are spruiking a link to your website through social media then Millennials ain’t going to visit. They get their online cues from social platforms and don’t just do random searches. That was so yesterday. They buy through Insta and Facebook and they are heavily influenced through Snapchat. Having a website without social media drivers to it is the same giving a bicycle to a fish. You get my drift.

Final word
You need to incorporate your brand seamlessly into the social world these Millennials inhabit. Straight up advertising doesn’t work with them, you’ll be ignored and at worse slammed by them. Just ask Kendall Jenner.

 

SOURCES:
http://www.tnsglobal.com/us/press-release/tns-millenials_study_111915
https://www.emarketer.com/Article/Want-Reach-Millennials-Say-Hello-Snapchat/1011871

 

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Jemimah is the Creative Director of Tangs Design and one half of The Business Experiment podcast. Jemimah is passionate about breaking through myths and misconceptions of entrepreneur-hood and thrives on helping other females in business succeed.

Jemimah has extensive studies in the fields of security, intelligence and speaks several languages. She is an astute, engaging entrepreneur with a one-of-a-kind skillset, including a finely honed understanding of emotion and behaviour that she puts to good use in her business career.

Jemimah works as a mentor, comedy writer, a speaker and a social media guru. She is also blogger and a regular contributor to multiple media outlets. Jemimah brings an original, quirky sense of humour and a fun loving attitude to everything she does. She is passionate about helping people to express their individuality and creativity.

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The 3 Tips Your Business Needs to Attract Influencers

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The 3 Tips Your Business Needs to Attract Influencers

by Diedra Taylor

The great thing about influencers is that they are organic endorsements for your brand, that is, they choose to work with you because they believe in what you’re doing. Influencers can draw larger audiences to your website and social media feeds, potentially increasing conversions. But, because influencers are not paid to promote you, how can you show them that your message is worth paying attention to? Here are the three tips your business needs to attract influencers.

1. Be authentic.
Before you start looking for influencers, you ideally have already spent time building an online brand for yourself. That means you post regularly on the platform where you hope to gain reach, either your blog or a particular social media platform , or a combination of the two if you use social media to promote your blog. The best way to build your presence is to offer your authentic views, injected with your individual personality.

You may have a business persona that is more subdued than the “you” you show to closer friends and family, and you certainly should be professional online. But people are more likely to listen to someone who sounds like a real person rather than an anonymous voice of a business. If people can’t tell what you and your brand stand for, they can’t tell if they are a part of your community.

What does community have to do with influencers? The most important step to connecting with an influencer is connecting with the right one. And that means finding someone who appeals to your targeted niche, not someone with the widest reach. Remember, wide reach is not the same as heavy influence.

2. Engage smartly.
Once you know who you are trying to reach out to, there are a few best practice guidelines for making the right impression. First, you don’t want to seem desperate to gain their attention—i.e. don’t stalk them on Twitter. Instead, take some time to read the kinds of messages they are currently posting without trying to comment or get noticed. Pay attention to what their current projects are.

Second, do not start liking, sharing, retweeting, or responding to every post they put up. Your goal is to make them aware that you see what they are doing, but you should appear to be responding in an intelligent manner. Rather than filling their feeds with your name, choose the messages that resonate the most with you, and provide a thoughtful response to just those few.

Third, be consistent in your efforts. Continue to be an intelligent voice in your target influencer’s community. By doing this, you carve out a place as a peer, not someone tagging along on their coattails.

3. Show what you have to offer.
After you gain an understanding of the type of content that is relevant to your target influencer, try sharing links that may be beneficial to them. If you get a positive response—they interact with your message—then you know you have succeeded in establishing yourself as a peer. At this point, you can attempt an email query requesting a particular action from your influencer. Be sure to propose a request that is mutually beneficial. For instance, you could offer to write a guest post for their blog on a topic on which you are an expert and that would be useful to their audience.

They key takeaway is that attracting influencers to your brand is a slow and steady process of building relationships within your niche, not something you accomplish with a few quick gimmicks. Make a plan and start connecting with key players in your field.

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Diedra Taylor is a Content Writer at BookingAgentInfo.com, an online database for entrepreneurs, businesses, and non-profits looking to connect with celebrities. She loves helping small businesses and start-ups to actualize the full potential of their marketing campaigns with targeted content.