With social media ever on the rise, there has been a surge of what the masses like to call Influencers or, more specifically Social Media Influencers. Far from a fad, this position of influencer will be around as long as there is social media – so how can you, as a company, use that to your advantage?
What is an Influencer?
At its most basic definition, a social media influencer is someone who leverages their social media presence to influence the purchase decisions of their target audience — whether that’s for their own products or other products as an affiliate or partner. Many people first assume Instagram as the platform when they hear the world “influencer,” but it really encompasses people who have significant audiences on any platform, if they use it to market products and influence purchase decisions.
Why is it important for companies to leverage Social Media?
In the grand scheme of things, social media is relatively new, and the idea of “influencers” even more so. Even though old marketing strategies and mediums are still viable and working, our world is changing rapidly and has been over the last 20 years. According to the HootSuite blog, there are many important benefits that social media marketing offer to companies:
- It’s an easy way to build brand awareness
Just by having these social media accounts (and making sure they are complete and active), you are creating more of an online presence for your brand. Plus, it puts your brand in front of your target audience frequently, since the majority of Americans visit their social media of choice at least once per day, if not more.
- It helps grow your audience
When you branch into any portion of marketing that your company left previously untouched, you gain a whole new slew of eyes on your content and products — the same is true of social media. By using social media marketing, or influencing, you are putting your company in front of a whole new demographic.
- It can help you increase sales relatively quickly and inexpensively
Marketing and influencing on social media can be done organically, without spending a single cent, but that does take some time and know-how to establish your presence and start making sales. Paid marketing, however, is relatively inexpensive and you can get a great ROI if they are well-optimized – check out our post on how to optimize your facebook ads for more info.
How do you become a Social Media Influencer?
So it is pretty clear that becoming a “social media influencer” is a smart marketing move — but the question remains: “How do you do that?”
Here is a small crash course on starting your journey towards becoming a social media influencer:
- Find out where your target audience is “hanging out.”
There are a lot of social media platforms out there, and new ones pop up every day. In market research, you’ll find that your particular audience, the ones that want to connect with you, will be active on a handful of platforms at most. Figure out which ones! If you need help with that, contact us!
- Do some research on what it takes to grow your presence on those particular platforms.
Each platform requires different things to be successful. Focus on one to start, and then move from there.
- Create and implement a plan.
How much money do you want to spend? How can you grow your brand? Make an actionable plan that will grow your platform so you can leverage those followers into sales.
We know that all of this is… a lot. For help from some experts, apply to be one of our clients so we can help you with the entire process.
