Influencer Marketing is Having a Moment – Here’s What You Need to Know

2017-08-31 08:00:00 | Khylie Gardner | small business marketing

If you’ve been anywhere near social media in 2017, you’ve probably noticed a cohort of social media stars promoting a wide variety of products to their millions of Instagram followers. There’s no doubt about it – influencer marketing (recruiting bloggers to help promote your product) is definitely on the up and up. In fact, in a recent survey, 84% of marketing and communications professionals reported that they planned to release an influencer campaign within the next twelve months.

Why is influencer marketing having such a moment? The truth is plain and simple: it works.

With the Kardashian/Jenner clan promoting hair vitamins and ex-Bachelorette contestants swearing by a new self-tanner every few weeks, your might have gotten the impression that influencer marketing wasn’t right for your business. You’d be wrong.

Although it’s unlikely that your business has the financial means to warrant a post from King Kylie herself, you can still use the influencer marketing trend to your benefit. Here’s how to do it.

How Influencer Marketing Can Work For Your Business

Identify your influencers

Michael Brito defines influencers as people in your business’s sphere who have significant social capital. They could be anyone: industry critics, people with popular Instagram accounts in your town – even your local Little League team could be influencers, really. Anyone who can help you reach your core demographic in a new way has the potential to be an effective influencer. And because you are awesome and your business is beloved by all, we already know that these folks already exist.

So how do you find them?

We recommend BuzzSumo, a tool that is leading the way in helping brands of all sizes to find their ideal audiences. BuzzSumo has an influencers feature that will help you find the top writers, bloggers, and publications in your field. Plus, this content marketing tool can help you track content trends and stay one step ahead of the game!

Decide How to Use Them

Once you know how to find your influencers, it’s time to create an influencer marketing campaign that revolves around them. Build your campaign with your brand’s end goals in mind. How can these people use their social capital to help you reach new audiences? Consider asking your influencers to:

Write a guest blog
Post sponsored content
Collaborate on an event or a new product
Review your product

Ready to crush the game but not sure what metrics you should be looking out for? Here are the Inbounding Marketing Metrics you should be watching.

Create Mutual Goals

It would be nice if your social media influencers would drop everything to help your brand succeed – but the truth is that they need to get something out of the arrangement, too. Creating goals for your campaign that are mutually beneficial will make influencers more likely to work with you.

You’re relying on your influencers to do their share of the work, but you have to keep up your end of the bargain, too. Support their content by letting your existing audience know how stoked you are to be working with them – namedrop your influencers and direct your audiences to follow them across social media. Not only will it make your bloggers happy, but your consumers are going to get an extra dose of your brand from a new source. Win-win.