There was a time when celebrities ruled the social media kingdom as the only influencers, encouraging their fans to try something new with a strategic product placement post. Actors were persuading their followers to try the new smoothie joint with just one photo of themselves happily sipping away at a concoction that was aptly named after them. And with one tweet, they had convinced their fans to follow their hairdresser best friend.
These days, social media influencers are no longer limited to celebrities. In this digital age, anyone can be a social media influencer as long as they have a strong following of people engaged in their lives. In fact, there are already influencers who have more followers than some celebrities.
Piggybacking on a celebrity’s follower base isn’t going to be easy. Consider their multiple gatekeepers who include a publicist who controls everything from who they are seen in public with to what brand of water they should be holding when the paparazzi take snaps of them. Social media influencers, on the other hand, are a lot more accessible and a whole lot more open to hearing your pitch. But before you go reaching out to just any influencer to participate in your social media marketing campaign, consider the following:
How many people could you potentially reach through the influencer’s follower base?
Would their audience’s attention be of value to your business?
How relevant is the influencer’s content to your industry?
Once you’ve determined if the influencer is the right match for your brand, here some tips to help build a relationship with the influencer who you hope to collaborate with:
How can I make a connection?
Some influencers have a social media channel of choice. One could have the strongest engagements via their blog because of their writing and quality content. Another could have the bigger fanbase thanks to their curated Instagram feeds. However, whether they are dominating via their blog, Facebook, or Instagram, it is likely it is all linked to their Twitter account.
Connect with the influencer by interacting through content they are sharing. Start a conversation. Retweet their tweets. Share their posts. Comment on their blogs. Prove that you are engaged in their social media accounts. Once you’ve built rapport, reach out.
How can you help each other?
Most influencers have played the game before and know that brand partnerships rarely mean there is an exchange of money. However, there are other ways for you, the brand, and influencer to benefit from each other. One is content swapping. Another is sending the influencer free samples of your product in exchange for blog reviews, vlogs, or posts. On the posting side, brands now have a powerful DM campaign platform in Fedica where they can send targeted messages to a segment of their followers based on a range of criteria such as location, profession, age and more. This increases the influencer’s engagement and results.
Will they help you track the results?
After collaborating with an influencer, you may notice an increase in your followers and post engagements. Determining success means being able to measure it with actual numbers and percentages and not just being satisfied with seeing an increase in followers. The numbers will help you determine which posts were most successful, reached more people, or encouraged the most engagement.
Unfortunately, influencers are quite busy building their own personal brands and may not have the time to dive into the analytics for you. However, nothing is stopping you from measuring if the influencer relationship proved to be of value or not. Fedica provides you with an accurate Twitter analysis and insight on the unique reach and total impressions of your campaigns. Their plans are fully customizable including comprehensive influencer analysis.
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