Social media influencers are becoming increasingly powerful in the world of social media, offering hitherto unthinkable ways to promote your brand in an authentic and credible way.
As the online population becomes more skeptical of traditional advertising, influencers tap into a new way of promoting brands.
From creating great content and starting sprawling conversations to bypassing ad-block technology there is a wealth of good reasons to be working with social media influencers.
1. Content Creation
Social media influencers excel at content creation, which is something that many small businesses struggle with.
Many small and medium-sized businesses are focused on bringing a unique, specialized, and highly valuable product to market – and that is exactly what they should be doing.
However, this narrow focus means that they often fail to understand the spectrum of content that their audience might be interested in, casting too small a net that misses out on a valuable audience.
Social media influencers are in the prime place to create the perfect, wide-reaching content for the audience for your product. They know what is going to grab the attention of this audience because they’ve been one of them!
Influencers can also share a wide range of media from videos to podcasts, ensuring you get the best reach for your content.
Just make sure that any content your influencers are creating will work across all digital platforms. Some influencers won’t allow you to share their work as they want to keep it unique to their own platforms. Negotiate this first to ensure you are happy with the outcome.
2. Growing Followers
Social media influencers are influencers precisely because they have a wide following and one of the main reasons to use them is because you can grab a share in that following by working with them.
Naturally, celebrity influencers have the biggest following but that means that there is rarely a specific niche.
Kylie Jenner’s 188 million followers on Instagram, for example, come from all over the world and fit multiple demographics.
Micro-influencers – on Instagram that is generally anyone with something between 1,000 and 100,000 followers – are in the feed of a much more niche demographic.
The benefit of that is that it actually allows highly targeted advertising and more often than not you’ll find that because these followers have a shared interest in your brand you are going to pick up some followers through your influencer and grow your brand.
Whether it is beauty, fashion, travel, or tech an influencer will give visibility to your brand in a wider way than you can achieve on your own social media. Building your following this way allows you to reach more people, faster.
3. Improve SEO
So great content and more followers – no surprises there. These two things are, after all, the beating heart of social media. A less obvious upshot of using influencers to market your brand is that it can improve your SEO.
How? Because online influencers who are active on social media will generate a huge amount of referral links and traffic to your website.
If your influencers use a variety of digital platforms – YouTube is especially valuable here because it is owned by Google – this diverse selection of referrals will boost your rankings.
What is more, the reach that social media influencers have often extended beyond their followers and into the mainstream media?
If a campaign that you’ve created with an influencer finds its way into mainstream media, these links back to your website can have a huge impact on your SEO, and ultimately your sales!
4. The Trust Factor: Increased Credibility For Your Brand
For the average viewer, social media influencers offer a glimpse into a coveted lifestyle and these influencers have built a huge amount of trust with their followers by posting authentic and valuable content.
In the cynical world of online advertising, trust is a rare commodity: only a third of consumers report trusting traditional ads that brands promote themselves.
Social media influencers bring trust back into the equation, and when they promote your brand it offers credibility and assurance to your customers that you are the real deal.
The reason that influencers have such powerful credibility is that they are real people. To their wide audience, they are ‘one of them’ – just an elevated body whose tastes and likes people take a genuine interest in.
A good social media influencer will have cultivated a serious vibe of authenticity amongst their followers and most will only work with brands that they are genuinely interested in.
By piggybacking on this authenticity you can bring your brand into the minds of thousands of people who wouldn’t have given a second glance to your own advertising or social media.
5. Bypass The Ad Block
Ad Blocking is pervasive across the internet. It is ubiquitous on desktops and increasingly present on mobile devices too. This means that a lot of the advertising budget is going to waste, spent on adverts that are never seen.
Using online influencers neatly bypasses this problem because suddenly your advert becomes identical with the social content that your customers are scrolling through.
It is not just authenticity and credibility that your brand attains by placing itself in the influencer’s feed. It is also visibility, because now instead of being wiped out by ad blocking tools your content is taking pride of place in the news feed.
6. Social Media Influencers Are Cost-Effective
With traditional advertising, a lot of expensive research needs to go into understanding exactly the reach and engagement you are likely to receive.
With influencers it is readily apparent as you have a wealth of information from historical posts, so you’ll know to a high degree of accuracy what the reach of a certain post will be.
Influencers have high-value relationships with their followers in a way that traditional advertising can’t compete with.
This means that ROI is far more straightforward to calculate and most likely significantly higher than with traditional means.
7. Social Media Influencers Start Conversations
If you want people to start talking about your brand, then influencers are the way to go.
Not only do influencers offer instant authentic exposure, but they also initiate conversations that move into the comments section and begin to spread organically through the feeds of their followers. This follow-on effect can give your brand great visibility and further engagement.
Because followers trust an influencer, they are much more likely to share content across their feed. In this way, influencers initiate a dynamic and evolving conversation that features your brand at its center.
This conversation can include questions about your product, valuable customer feedback, and even free testimonials that you can use on your website.
8. Connection Building and Cross-Influencing
For new businesses a campaign featuring influencers can be a valuable way of getting your brand out there.
As well as finding influencers who are dominant in your field, also explore cross-influencing with similar brands or businesses who are already established. You can tap into their audience by running joint giveaways that build awareness of your brand through their followers.
Cross-influencing can be a great option when you’re starting out before you’ve built up a big following.
The credibility and authenticity offered by social media influencers is an antidote to a critical online landscape.
Take advantage of their trusting audience, build powerful and engaging content, and grow your brand by working with social media influencers.
Tia Tilson is a freelance writer at Dissertation writing services and Assignment help. She is passionate about the linguistic aspects of advertising discourse and fascinated by the changing landscape of online marketing. She also works with the PhD Kingdom and other brands to deliver their messages in creative and unique ways.
