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Introduction to Influencer Marketing
Marketing, as well as technology, has evolved exponentially in recent years. Furthermore, these two have merged, giving rise to new strategies that help brands, companies, and organizations to achieve their objectives, which in most cases, consist of greater exposure, recognition and obviously, a higher number of sales.
Social networks are one of the products of this evolution. Their essential purpose is based on connection because they were initially intended for that purpose, to connect us with other people anywhere in the world. Faced with such a possibility, brands have entered this world by putting millions of goods and services within reach of the customer with just a click or a tap on the screen of your Smartphone.
This trend gave rise to competition, that is, since many brands or organizations joined the world of social media, then what would differentiate them? The answer is simple: the strategies they decided to apply to reach their customers.
Today the pace of life has changed compared to that of a decade ago. Today people move at a dizzying speed, so the use of traditional marketing became obsolete for many brands giving way to the purpose of digital marketing, which is nothing more than moving the strategies and adapting them to the digital plane.
We could mention many digital marketing strategies that have been the result of numerous studies in recent years and even say that there are as many ways to apply them as creativity allows. However, on this occasion, we will emphasize one of the most effective ways in this book, especially if it is a matter of increasing the exposure and scope of any product: influencer marketing.
What is influencer marketing?
Influencer marketing is a new digital marketing strategy that consists of achieving a series of collaborative links between brands and companies and those people with high visibility and prominence on the Internet, known as 'influencers.' But what are influencers?
Influencers are not superhumans or magic creatures that hold the secret of social networks in a magic book. They are simply characterized by having a lot of receptivity and charisma in the virtual world. Some of them, like YouTubers, for example, have channels with thousands (and in some cases even millions) of subscribers and followers.
Influencers play a role that is a product of technological evolution, which plays a critical role in today's life. Naturally, these social network kings are real diamonds in the rough for brands, companies, organizations and even entrepreneurs with emerging businesses.
Their critique of a specific product or their appearance using a brand of clothing, for instance, can considerably increase the widespread acceptance of a specific brand and, therefore, boost sales like foam.
For a company, applying this strategy can bring significant benefits. Some are as follows:
• You get to amplify the positive messages of the brand or company.
• You will generate a lot of conversation on the net about the products offered by the brand.
• It increases traffic to the website or social network profile of the brand that the Influencer is promoting.
• The brand gains a good reputation and high prestige.
• If designed well, a campaign with influencers does not have to be expensive and can yield a satisfactory and profitable return on investment (ROI).
Influencers are generally followed by a target audience characterized for being very consumerist and for having high purchase power: millennials. But, becoming an influencer or being considered an influencer is not only about having many followers.
It is about having your opinion followed and considered by a particular audience. And at the same time, this implies a lot of hard work that involves a lot of learning, perseverance, and dedication.
To be a successful influencer, you must not only know how to use the leading social networks, much less how to make beautiful publications. It is a role considered a profession and that you must take very seriously if you want to be considered by the biggest brands in the market. If you wish to be successful, we don't have a magic formula, but we have prepared this e-book with some secrets that will surely change your perspective and guide you in the process of becoming an influencer.
Choose Your Niche
There is no magic formula to become a recognized influencer. However, you will need the charm to please your followers and to be always at the forefront of trends because, in the digital world, the last thing you want is to lag.
But there are secrets you can start using to stand out: one of them is to target a specific niche. In other words, to stand out, you must find a target audience to address. And to do that, you must talk to them about a specific topic, something you stand out in in a unique way and in a way that makes you stand out from the rest.
It doesn't matter if you have 1,000 or 100,000 followers, what this ensures is that by speaking to a group from a specific niche on a particular topic, you will achieve an audience that is highly committed to your content. This commitment will ultimately translate not only into followers, but consumers of your content and an audience that is loyal to you and, of course, trusts your judgment.
Also, it will undoubtedly make brands want to approach you eager to reach an audience committed to your criteria. So how do you choose a niche?
The answer will depend on you and your skills because if you are strong in the kitchen, you cannot target an audience that loves fashion design or choose as a niche the manufacture of summer clothes. Does this mean that you should stick in only one thing? Not exactly, everything in its own time.
In social networks, there are millions of people who create a great deal of content and target different audiences; in other words, there is something for everyone. Choosing a niche is a task that requires time and planning, especially if you intend to stand out among so many people who may be doing the same as you.
How can you choose a niche and not die trying?
To do this, you must start by writing down a straightforward list with all the things that interest you. Put special emphasis into those topics of your interest, the best that suit you or those that you want to display in your social networks; Probably, you will find that your range on tastes is enormous. Do not worry so much about it. We will narrow down the options you have thought of, later, this works. Now, pay attention to the following explanation. Focus on a niche.
By now, you should have written down all your interests and skills. These can be turned into niches.
Some niches are trendy in social networks within which they stand out:
• Fashion
• Art
• Travel
• Food
• Geek
• Couples
• Leisure
• Babies
• Gamers
• Makeup
• Comedy
• Photography
• Fitness
For example, let us say you like the "Fashion" niche very much. However, this niche is extensive by itself. Therefore, whatever content you post in your social network of choice might not be specific and lack the impact that you want because it would be too general and diffuse to stand out. As general as fashion is, you can select something even narrower. Options are endless if we get ourselves used to think outside the box. Following the example with the Fashion niche, we can find various topics, such as garment making, fashion blogging, fashion design, fashion trends, etc. You can also narrow your niche even more, for example, if you are a fashion designer, just being one and talk about it won't suffice; you can be even more specific by talking about making swimwear. Following this idea, you can talk about making swimwear only for ladies or only for men. So, if you feel you have chosen a broad niche, you can go even deeper and adopt a smaller one.
As you will see, making a thorough lookup of want to give to your followers or subscribers is worth it, since they love to know that they will find specific and unique content in your site. Therefore, it is up to you to be as specific as possible.
Aim for an audience
Another essential step to success on social networks is knowing who you want to target. For this task, you can look for inspiration in other accounts targeting the same niche as you. It is completely valid if you choose to aim for a similar style of the accounts you looked up for inspiration. It's not about copying them, but about being inspired by them. This inspired aesthetic will help you identify yourself to an audience like theirs and, in turn, help you find a similar follower base.
Study your inspirational accounts carefully. Find their most successful posts and try to break them down into their core elements. This analysis will help you generate a similar post. Everything works if it's with your personal touch and from your originality.
Evaluate according to your content, what would be your ideal audience? That is, if what you like to do is show your creative process as a fashion designer, you cannot aim at a gamer audience.
Choose a leading social network
The last, but at the same time, the most crucial step, choose a network on which you want to establish yourself.
This does not mean that you must open an account in only one network and only dedicate yourself to it. No! But you should start in one initially, at least while you consolidate your content and build up a community.
There are many networks where you can create content. For example, Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter are the most popular. However, YouTube can grant you quick fame if you use it correctly, and Tiktok, in the last year, became the most downloaded social network in both PlayStore and iStore.
To choose a social network to work on, you first need to know it, know how it works and why not, its secrets. This knowledge will also help you find a network that identifies with you, for example, it's not the same to upload images to Instagram accompanied by a caption that makes you fall in love and seduce the customer. It is not the same as making a video for YouTube that engages the subscriber enough to see the whole thing.
The best resource to exploit your full potential is to understand which social network you want to be on and make the most of it.
Currently, the most used networks, in trend and growth, are Instagram, YouTube and Tiktok. However, this does not imply that other social networks are losing relevance. Still, it would be very advisable to focus on the place where there is a higher number of people; therefore, these three networks are the perfect target to become an influencer and be the target of the most recognized brands.
Instagram: What it is and how it works
Instagram is a social platform based on a mobile app. It allows its userbase the upload of images and videos with multiple effects, such as stickers, pre-set filters, frames, etc. and then post them as content in the platform or share them across a wide array of social media.
Initially, it was intended as a photography network since it was one of the first social networks that had unique filters for photos. This allowed the user to create a well-edited image and give it a professional look without much effort; anyone could edit without using resources like Photoshop.
Instagram is currently one of the leading social media platforms for both consumers and brands because it harbours more than 20 million influencers, which work for the people as entertainers and opinion leaders, and for a brand as promoters to generate more sales.
To become an Influencer within this robust social network, in which there are more than 1,000 million users a month, you must be very charming to please your followers and always be at the forefront of trends. In the digital world, what you want, the least is to be left behind.
Most social networks nowadays work with an algorithm. The purpose of it is to humanize social networks more and more since, according to experts, in the last few years, social networks were becoming generators of social alienation. In the face of such concern, most social networks stuck to an algorithm that consists of showing you what you like, taking you to those things with which you identify yourself and with which you interact the most.
