Influencer Marketing and the Tips to Consider

What: Influencer marketing plans engage the strong voices in one’s industry – i.e., people who listen your target audience – to help bring your content to them. Influencer involvement can be something very simple, like regularly re-tweeting and/or re-tweeting your message to their communities, or in further detail, co-producing message for joint communication. This idea can be leveraged on unpaid basis. If you are looking to enlist high-profile celebrities or influencers or want to build a consistent, long-term relationship, you will have to support your program with some moolah.

Why: Influencers have a pre-defined audience interested in their ideas and suggestions. They are well positioned to boost reach and awareness, which, helps your message get found and absorbed by the right audience. They will lend credibility to a particular piece of message as their commercial (endorsement) trades on the trust they have gained over time from their clients.

How: The various approaches to using the technique require some logistical footwork to get your influencer program to get momentum. Here’s how:

• Be familiar with the high-profile personalities in your industry and related social communities to identify influencers who are in advantageous position to speak on your message’s behalf.
• Consider likely partners to identify those who straighten your brand values, voice, and message value, and who offer the best likely help you promote your goals.
• Appoint best candidates and seek their participation.
• Negotiate terms, moneys, and deliverables for the commitment.
• Seed, track, and manage their attempts on an continuing basis.

Tips: If you are thinking of this form of content promotion, consider all the steps involved in leveraging influencers (both paid and unpaid) and get customizable templates to make the process more manageable. In the meantime, these quick tips will help you operate the process smoothly:

• Use search to discover possible contender: Try typing [your industry] + “blog” (or “site”) into a search field, use advanced search operators to broaden or narrow your results.
• Clearly define the terms of engagement: There are multiple ways to use influencers in your promotional efforts, with different levels of involvement from their side. Before you get them to participate, have a clear idea of what you need them to do, the goals you want to achieve, and what you they will get in return for their help.
• Spend wisely: Only because you don’t want to spend a lot, does not mean you can’t get big-name influencer talent. Negotiate terms, such as reducing the actions the influencer is expected to take during a given period, to make their partnership more economical. Alternately, you may acquire a notable influencer who already shares your product or services’ sentiments and might be ready to lower the usual rate to work with you.