Marketing tactics are always changing, and it’s important to keep up to date on new and improved methods for advertising and marketing your brand. One example of this is social media. Before the years of MySpace and Facebook, there were no social media platforms to advertise on. Once social media took off, marketing through these channels because more and more popular.
With the birth and massive growth of social media, the social media influencer was born.
What is a Social Media Influencer?
A social media influencer is a social media user who has a large following and uses that large following to promote products and services. These content creators are popular on many different applications, but most commonly YouTube, Instagram, Twitch, and TikTok.
Social media influencers get their following by posting in the following niches:
- Gaming
- Beauty
- Storytelling
- Cosplay
- Parenting
- Fitness
- And more
Most influencers who post on Instagram often post pictures and videos documenting their daily life. These people are often models, actors, or just people with awesome personalities that their followers enjoy listening to. Depending on the platform they use, they may post different content. For example, Twitch is great for live streaming video games, art, and more.
By using their following to get brand deals, they can get paid for their work while also promoting your products or services. It’s a win-win.
How Does Partnering with a Social Media Influencer Benefit Your Brand?
There are many reasons why partnering with a social media influencer benefits your brand. You’ll increase your reach, find new customers, and increase your engagement across different social media outlets. Overall, you’ll be able to increase brand recognition. If you’re a small brand that manages to partner with a large influencer, more people will begin recognizing your brand when they see ads for it across the internet.
New Channels for Posting
Using social media influencers will also allow you to stretch out your content. Before partnering up with influencers, you may have only posted to one or two channels. Maybe you used your website and one social media account. With an influencer, you can put out content in a variety of other places. One partnership may get you content on YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, and more. It really just depends on who you decide to partner with.
How Are Influences Changing the Marketing Game?
Influencer marketing trends aren’t going away. In fact, they’re growing each year. According to the Influencer Marketing Hub, influencer marketing is expected to grow to be worth $13.8 billion by the end of 2021. On top of that, 67% of brands are already using Instagram for influencer marketing, and the percentage of brands using TikTok for influencer marketing increases every day.
Vast Audiences
The vast audiences that these influencers have are probably the biggest benefit of partnering with one. They often have hundreds of thousands to millions of followers on their platforms. If you’re a relatively smaller brand, you can still partner with smaller influencers, who have tens of thousands of followers. It will still increase your reach!
Built-In Trust
When people choose to follow influencers, they usually trust their opinion. Therefore, when an influencer promotes your product as something that they love, their followers will trust them and be interested in trying the product for themselves. You should always choose influencers who are excited about and actually like your product. They’ll be better at selling it to their fans.
Beat Ad-Blockers
Many people are annoyed by ads that show up on random websites and searches. To combat this, they use ad-blockers that keep their internet browsing free from spam ads. By using influencer marketing, you can reach the people who have ad-blockers turned on, as influencer posts won’t look like ads, they’ll just look like regular posts! For example, if you hire a YouTuber, they’ll say something about your product at the beginning or end of their video, but an ad-blocker won’t catch it.
Relatable Content
When an advertisement comes from an influencer, it often seems more relatable. This is because there’s an actual human being using the product or talking about how much they love it. While sometimes influencers can be falsely genuine, many of them truly care about the products they promote, and their followers can see that.
How to Partner with a Social Media Influencer
To partner with a social media influencer, you need to know what you want—meaning you need to have a strategy. Having a social media marketing strategy is the first step in any good business model. How will you get the word about your product or service out there, and how do you want it to be promoted by others?
You’ll then need to scout the internet for influencers you think might be a good fit. You’ll pitch them your ideas and the amount that you will pay them (in money or goods), and see what happens. Many influencers have agents to go through, making this process easier.
If you’re looking for a marketing agency to help you with marketing strategy and influencer marketing tactics, contact Site Social SEO online or at 407-712-0494.
