Have you ever heard the word, “Influencer Marketing”?
If you’re a marketer, you must familiar with the concept of influencer marketing. As we’re at the end of 2016 and I think this was the year of Influencer marketing.
Influencer marketing interest increased more than 2X since Nov. 2015
At the end of 2015, Google’s Keyword Tool measured search for “influencer marketing” at approx 9900 average monthly searches. Now, influencer marketing is searched well over 18,100 times on average each month.
Are you still wondering? Why you should add Influencer marketing into your content marketing strategy.
Have a look at these stats because numbers don’t lie:
51 percent of marketers believe they get better customers from influencer marketing. That’s because the relationship began with trust in the influencer.
81 percent of marketers who have used influencer marketing judged it to be effective.
92% of consumers trust online word-of-mouth recommendations.
What is Influencer marketing, you ask?
According to Wikipedia, Influencer marketing is defined as:
“Influencer marketing is a form of marketing in which focus is placed on specific key individuals (or types of individual) rather than the target market as a whole. It identifies the individuals that have influence over potential buyers, and orients marketing activities around these influencers.”
No doubt, Influencer marketing has become one of the most powerful ways to reach customers.
Brands are collaborating with social media influencers to produce, distribute, and promote content.
Here’s a 5 step action plan framework for influencer marketing, take a look:
You must use the power of Influencer marketing to build your credibility in your industry.
Here are the 10 proven and amazing influencer marketing tips from the marketing experts. Enjoy!
Tip 1: Influencer Marketing concept is not new
“Minecraft has used YouTube influencers to help sell its game for years. Its annual conference is also about training passionate users to create content on YouTube. This has led to the rise of Minecraft influencers with tens of millions of YouTube views and subscribers.
So the concept is not new. It’s just the medium and the reasons for motivation has morphed.”
– Jeff Bullas, Content Marketing Influencer, Founder of Jeffbullas.com
Tip 2: Don’t confuse audience with influence
“Having a lot of Twitter followers doesn’t inherently make a person influential in any way. It gives them an audience. True influence drives action, not just awareness, and very few online demi-celebrities have enough juice to drive action in droves.”
– Jay Baer, New York Times bestseller author, Founder of Convince and Convert
Tip 3: Get Influencers to promote your content for free
“Instead of sharing your content on social media (and hoping an influencer notices it), you put your content directly in front of the movers and shakers in your niche.
If you’re a content marketer or blogger, you’ll get rewards like More mentions and inbound links from other blogs in your niche, more social shares of every piece of content you publish, more loyal fans and email subscribers, and more invites to interviews and roundup posts.”
– Brian Dean, Founder of Backlinko
Tip 4: Show off your awesome piece of content
Don’t be afraid of taking the first step and performing an outreach to show off your awesome piece of content. But, first, understand that influencers don’t have free time…so you need to give them exactly the type of content that helps their audience.
– Neil Patel, Co-founder of Crazy Egg and Hello Bar
Tip 5: Tell your story to an Influencer
“Want to create good relationships to increase your visibility and get more customers? Start with your story. Tell the influencer what kind of value you can bring to their audience.”
– Mike Stelzner, Founder, and CEO of Social Media Examiner
Tip 6: Create high-quality content
“It’s key to create very high-quality content on high-visibility channels. And the faster you’re able to do this, the faster you’ll gain credibility and influence.”
– Kevan Lee, Director of Marketing at Buffer
Tip 7: Getting the attention of Influencers
As influencers, these people are fairly important to any industry. They generally have “real” jobs, and are also extremely active on social networks, spending their time sharing content and blogging. Getting on their radar is not easy, so to get their attention, you need to give away “content gifts.”
– Joe Pulizzi, Author, and Founder of Content Marketing Institute
Tip 8: Measure Influencer content performance
“How good was the content from each influencer? Did they share the content with their networks? Did they engage further with it? What were the sources of your traffic?
Evaluate your own performance as well. Did you make it easy for busy influencers to engage with the content by providing pre-written social messages, links, embed codes and status updates?”
– Lee Odden, CEO of TopRank Marketing
Tip 9: INFLUENCERS DON’T WANT MARKETING GIMMICKS—THEY WANT AUTHENTICITY.
“Create that feeling of connection that people will enjoy and share with others by letting them see the human side of your business.”
– Vladimir Gendelman, Founder, and CEO of Company Folders
Tip 10: Evaluate who is the audience of the Influencer
“Evaluate very carefully at who is who is following the influencer in question. If you’re going after some 15 year old kid with a fanbase of screaming girls, but you sell pampers to middle aged moms, you’re going to miss the mark.
So you need to know who they’re reaching, and if it lines up with what they promise. Make sure you know they can deliver on the specific audience you are looking for.”
– Gary Vaynerchuck, serial entrepreneur, CEO, investor, author, public speaker
Tip 11: See the relationship between the Influencer and his/her followers
“Influence isn’t just having a lot of followers. It’s also driven by expertise and credibility on subject matter and the relationship between the influencer and his or her followers.
Instead of simply looking at followers, a better equation for brands to consider is the following:
Influence = Audience Reach (# of followers) x Brand Affinity (expertise and credibility) x Strength of Relationship with Follower”
– Kyle Wong, Co-founder, Pixlee
Do you want to add your favorite influencer marketing tip? I’d more than happy to hear from you. 🙂