Many times when you mention influencer marketing the person listening will associate it with Instagram. Here you need to understand that of course, Instagram is the leading social media site that companies and businesses choose for influencer marketing. However, many marketers are overcoming this obsession with Instagram and opting for other social media platforms like YouTube, LinkedIn, Reddit, Getfluence.com, Medium, SteemitTumblr, Pintrest, etc. Each sector can benefit from different social media platforms and the marketing professionals are marking this opportunity.
To each sector its own network
This is the reason that the obsession with Instagram is waning and marketing professionals are looking at other social media platforms. For instance for YouTube is the most popular for video games, cryptocurrencies opt for influencer outreach on Reddit, and for B2B marketing, LinkedIn is the most preferred social media platform. Here we can see that Instagram is not always the obvious choice and marketers are looking for social media platforms that can optimize influencer marketing.
How to choose influencers
Here we also need to understand that many millennials are becoming wary of influencer marketing also. Many millennials say that they do not easily trust the words of an influencer. This is the reason that marketers have started looking for influencers who have a loyal audience who will trust their word.
This can happen only when the influencers provide content that is easy to believe. At the same time, the reach of the influencers is becoming less of a criterion concerning how to reach out to influencers. As you may already know, marketers are now turning towards micro-influencers who have a lesser reach, but their audience trusts them. Usually nowadays when marketers choose an influencer they check their engagement with their followers. If they find that the followers are responding in a positive manner to the posts and content of the influencer, only then do they opt for that particular influencer.
Test and operate on many channels
Some trial and error approach is required when it comes to influencer marketing at least in the beginning. A good strategy applies an agile approach in which they experiment with several campaigns and media and then compare the performances. The marketers are carrying out the following experiments:
· Forming a partnership on Instagram
· Purchasing Tweets from the influencers on Twitter for instance, on Quuupromote
· Publishing a sponsored article on platforms like Getfluence.com
· Running a campaign on LinkedIn and its editorial section LinkedIn Pulse
· Testing the waters on the lesser-known networks like Medium, Steemit, etc. mentioned above
Only experimenting will help you to formulate the proper influencer marketing strategy which will help you to design an influencer marketing campaign that gives you high ROI. You should aim at making the campaigns balanced by mobilizing different marketing channels and when it comes to influencer marketing then you should try several networks and media. Don’t forget to leverage the power of repurposed influencer-generated content. If you are running paid ads on social media, you probably heard about the term “ad fatigue”. However, not many brands have in-house resources to generate the amount of content to prevent ad fatigue. So use the content created by influencers for your paid ads. It will help you increase ad conversions by staying relevant to your audiences and will act as social proof. Here you need to understand that the user will conduct their own research and consult different sources before they move on to make a purchase. It is advisable to be present at each user action to be able to maximize the chances of converting a follower of an influencer into a customer.
Quality of content is more important than follower count
This fact has been mentioned above and we should now look into this phenomenon in depth. Nowadays according to studies more and more marketers are paying attention to the quality of the content that the influencer is publishing and most marketers are saying that the content takes precedence over relevance, engagement, and reach. Here you need to notice that the reach comes last and is not being given the kind of importance that it was given earlier.
This is the reason that micro-influencers who publish quality content appreciated by their followers are becoming the target influencers for most of the brands. Of course, even micro-influencers need to have a following of at least 1000 because followers less than this will simply not be effective in marketing the product.
How the transformation has happened
For a long time, the marketers chose to spend their influencers’ marketing money on influencers who had large followings of 5k and above on mainly Instagram. We have already discussed the move away from Instagram earlier and why this happened. Just like everything else marketers learned their lesson from experience. Over a period of time, they realized that the approach that they were taking was not correct. They stopped chasing influencers with large follower groups and instead started looking for influencers who may have a smaller following but had a higher level of engagement with their followers. Then again it also mattered that the quality of the content that they posted was good so that they could convince the followers regarding what they were saying.
Marketers are still learning how to best use influencer marketing because the industry is still in a growing phase. The followers are saying that they would not take even the influencer’s word just like that. Instead as mentioned above they will make their own inquiries and research before making a purchase. Of course, this may not happen if the influencers have a close connection with their followers and there is a high level of trust between them. In this case, the followers and even millennials will take the word of the popular social media influencers for what they are saying and make a purchase based completely on their words.
Here you need to understand that there are many tools available online which will help you find influencers who are well suited for you. In spite of this, you will have to make your own research further and look for influencers, who as mentioned above have a strong level of trust with their followers. If you do this then you will also have to indulge in some trial and error because it is not easy to understand these nuances about an influencer and their followers. Hence if you want to generate the right ROI from your influencer marketing campaign then it is a wise idea to give up the obsession with Instagram and look for other media platforms as mentioned above and make sure that you team up with the right influencers.
