Whether you are a small brand or an ‘influencer wanna be’, I will share the main ingredients for the secret recipe of becoming an influencer, a term that has gained throughout the steady growth over the past 5-10 years, positive and negative conotations.
Influencer Marketing Hub defined an influencer as someone who has:
- the power to affect the purchasing decisions of others because of his or her authority, knowledge, position, or relationship with his or her audience.
- a following in a distinct niche, with whom he or she actively engages. The size of the following depends on the size of his/her topic of the niche.
There are 6 different types of influencers- Mega, Macro, Micro, Advocates, Referrers, and Loyalists, which will be discussed in detail in the next post.
To break this down, firstly ask yourself: Why do I want to be an influencer? Am I hungry for money? Am I creative and able to differentiate myself on the market? Can my knowledge feed others and further have a small contribution in the world? Answering to these questions, will help you understand how much time and effort is needed to become an influencer because in the end everyone can be one. What I mean is that you don’t have to be a celebrity, because it is enough to be a customer or partner.
Maybe you are none of these and you just want to keep a diary, so that you can recall all memorable events in your life or get to know yourself and your passions, but if you want to do it well, then what you need is:
- VEGETABLES: choose the vegetables you know how to cook and you enjoy the most, which in other words means finding your niche stick to it as long as your stomach (brain and heart) is digesting it. Health and fitness, Beauty, Travel, Business, Fashion, Lifestyle, Animals, Relationships, Psychology, Interior Design are the most trendy niches.
- PAN: platform. Here you have 6 options: the well-known Instagram, Youtube, Tik Tok, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. You can obviously be on all of these platforms, but you will mostly spend your energy on the one generating more traffic.
While Instagram is the most effective social media platform for businesses and life changing tool for individuals due to the ease of usage, diversity, market penetration, but as well market penetration, Youtube attracts highly skilled experts willing to run introductory, maintenance, hashtag, contest or branding campaigns.
Besides, Tik Tok is the platform with the fastest user growth -500 million and it might just be one of the most sophisticated artificial intelligence endeavours in the world. According to Oberlo, Tik Tok’s mission is to capture and present the world’s creativity, knowledge, and precious life moments, directly from the mobile phone.
If you want to position yourself as a business-oriented influencer, then LinkedIn may well be the best choice for you. At the moment, Linkedin has over 50 million users and they aim for 3 billion users in the future, so the potential of the platform is still unexploited. Acting as a key opinion leader in your niche, it will give you the authority to analyze and promote clients on LinkedIn through influencer posts.
3. QUALITY or AUTHENTICITY call it how you want. No one wants to be you Photographers, creative directors, writers or videographers are focused on creating high quality content, rather than influencing and are often called ‘content creators‘. Choose wisely the brands you want to work with, as your audience might feel when you are promoting a product mismatching your values and beliefs and the same applies to brands looking to gain online presence through influencers. Don’t use bots or other shady methods such as buying followers, because the growth you achive is not authentic and moreover, nowadays there are tools (check this one ) to track down thesse people.
4. SPICES the hashtag game is still strong. For instance, a post with at least one Instagram hashtag averages 12.6% more engagement than posts without a hashtag, therefore prepare a strategy for that.
5. CONSISTENCY. Scheduling the content is both benefic for you and your audience as you gain trust for brands and their audience alike, which will maximise the potential of your influencer marketing.
6. KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE/ EATERS. There are many tools, which enable you to ask questions, create opinion polls, and answer users’ comments in order to strengthen the bond with your audience.
7. ENGAGEMENT -see if your food aka content is boiling. If it’s not, then be open to rethink your recipe and take into consideration a constructive feedback. A tasty recipe requires to build a community around the message and high conversion rates, which involve the percent of people who visit your site, follow you, make a purchase or filling out a lead generation form. Also, once your food is being served or better said your post is published have straightaway that 1 hour golden rule of replying to comments, because a new content has potential to reach new people.In some cases, 30% represents the content creation and 70% is how you promote it, therefore making use of the other platforms and network will widden your audience.
8. EXPAND YOUR NETWORK & KNOWLEDGE Go to events, read blogs, e-Books, listen to Youtube videos and engage with likeminded people.
To finish your recipe, sprinkle with some editing and visuals as first impression does matter, but don’t over do it unless you are a very talented Photoshopper.
Is there a particular topic do you want me to dig into? Let me know below about what you are curious of and feel free to share your knowledge about this stubject.
