- [Instructor] Influencer and influencer marketing
are terms that you can see in here
all over the online world.
Everyone is looking to create influence for themselves
and their brand online.
But what exactly is an influencer?
Influence is defined as a power affecting a person,
thing, or course of events, especially one that operates
without any direct or apparent effort.
But when we talk about influence in social marketing,
this quote sums it up.
True influence drives action, not just awareness.
And as marketers, actions are the goal.
These are things like conversions, say, products bought
or customers who visited a specific landing page
on your website.
Influencers are people who are active
on social media and blogs and they have the potential
of exposing your brand to their followers.
And if their network is a great fit,
they have the potential of driving thousands,
if not tens of thousands, of their followers to your brand.
And this all is usually with a blog post,
Instagram post, or even a tweet.
And that's why influencer marketing is so effective.
We as consumers have a tendency to be cynical about
brands promoting themselves.
But when a person we follow on Instagram
or a friend vouches for a brand on their behalf,
we're much more likely to trust that recommendation.
And this friend is what an influencer is to a brand.
Using social media influencers in your marketing
is the practice of building relationships with the people
who can build relationships for you.
An influencer has the ability to reach your customers,
be it on the blog, social account, or somewhere else online,
in a more profound way.
Here's how you can identify influencers.
First, look at your audience and advocacy.
True influence really requires those two things.
Advocacy is driven by the depth of conviction
that the influencer has.
So when identifying influencers,
you want to blend their advocacy and influence.
You'll also want to take a look at their relevance.
How relevant is their content and network
to your brand and message?
Now, for reach.
This simply doesn't mean how big or small their network is,
but it means how many people you could potentially reach
through their following that would bring value
to your brand.
And engagement.
How engaging are they with their audience?
And how much is their audience engaged with them?
If they're creating calls to action in their content,
is their audience actually taking action?
Here's how to find influencers for your brand.
The easiest way to find them is to monitor social media.
These guys will be the loudest brand fans your brand has
and will have an audience that aligns with
your brand's messaging.
Most large CRM tools have social listening capabilities.
But if you don't use one at this time,
simply tuning in to your social media mentions
and blog posts about your brand, you will see influencers
and advocates that you probably didn't realize that you had.
Social media monitoring allows you to find those influencers
who advocate for your brand and niches within.
These are also tools like Hootsuite or Klout.com.
So if you don't have a larger CRM,
you can use these free services to find those influencers.
Next is hashtags.
Identify the hashtags that your target influencers are using
and track them in a social listening tool like Hootsuite.
Once you start finding influencers that seem like
a good fit for your brand, make sure that
you're tracking them somewhere.
And this is where your social CRM tool
will be really helpful.
I also highly recommend using Google Alerts.
Every brand should at least have their business name
set as an alert.
You can set one for a keyword about your brand
and this'll help you identify people who write about topics
in your niche, and even people who may be writing about
your brand itself.
And don't forget about blogger outreach.
Bloggers are the most powerful influencers online.
When locating influential bloggers for your brand,
start by searching for blogs in your niche and follow them.
Don't forget to also read their content
and that'll help you get a good feel for their style
to see if they're a good fit for you.
The more influential bloggers looking for brand partnerships
will list statistics that vouch for their SEO
on their website.
So this'll include things like
their number of email subscribers,
their social following, website ranking,
and number of visitors to their blog per month.
Working with your influencers,
you're going to keep collaboration and partnership
at the forefront of this relationship.
Do everything that you can to help them help you.
One of the ways of doing that is going to be
encouraging content creation.
Most likely, your influencers are content creation machines.
So your goal is to be encouraging them to create
some authentic and consumer-generating content.
Figure out how you can make it really easy for them
to create this unique content, how you can make your brand
accessible for them to write about, and how you might
be able to incentivize this content creation process.
One of the ways you can do this is by encouraging
the posting of photos and videos of them
using your products.
A great example of this strategy is the brand ModCloth.
Their ambassadors are people that their audience looks up to
so when they see their ambassadors posting
their latest apparel or latest outfit from ModCloth,
then they really drive engagement
and really get the audience excited
about this upcoming apparel piece.
Product giveaways or service discounts are another great way
to work with your influencers.
Make sure they always have the latest product,
article of clothing, or version of software.
Don't skimp out on providing them with all the tools
they need to tout your brand.
A great example is GoPro.
They are brilliant at this.
This is a brand that is so generous in providing
GoPro equipment and goodies to their brand advocates.
Work alongside your influencers
and form an authentic relationship.
In the early stages of creating an influencer program,
your first brand advocates will be pivotal in uncovering
how you can better work with them
and incentivize their participation
and thus future influencer participation.
Build a strategy and then give them the tools
to build their own network to nurture and grow.
Your key takeaway is embrace your assets
and those are your customers and your brand advocates.
Work with the customers who love you and your brand
and give them a voice by treating them like superstars.