When executed properly, influencer marketing can be one of the most effective strategies to help build your community and establish your company or brand as a trusted industry voice.
What Are Influencers?
Influencers are industry leaders on social media platforms. These are the businesses and organizations that have extensive social followings. They are knowledgeable resources, and they are often at the forefront of social trends. Achieving an @mention—or a share!—from an industry influencer could equal a substantial boost to your content reach and community size.
Do Your Research
Not every social media influencer is right for your community or brand. Choosing the wrong influencer to leverage could fail your marketing goals and significantly damage your social reputation and voice. Once you identify a few influencers you think would help grow your reach, take a closer look at the content they are producing and their social engagements. Ask yourself:
- Does this content fit my niche market and target audience?
- Would I discuss this content with my audience?
- Does my typical content complement this content?
- Does this influencer typically engage with and share content submitted by other companies?
- Does this influencer respond positively to @mentions?
Evaluate your answers to these questions to help narrow down your list of potential influencers, and begin your strategy with a select few.
Engage
When you are ready to reach out to your top influencers, carefully consider your communication strategy. Remember, these individuals and businesses are working hard to manage their own communities. If you want influencers to engage with and share your content, then your content should be tailored to the influencer’s audience. Craft your outreach authentically. If you can give your influencers helpful content and open language they can react to, you could be well on your way to a reply or share!
No Spamming
Throughout your influencer marketing campaign, try not to be too star-struck. Avoid flooding your influencers with your content, and try not to inundate your own audience with influencer content. Focus instead on creating a genuine connection with your influencers, and providing valuable, audience-aware content in all of your interactions.
Thanks as always for reading through. We hope you found this article helpful and if you want to give building your community a shot, swing by our site and we’ll help you get started!
