What are influencers and how can influencer marketing be used?
Intro
We live in an era where the majority of citizens (even within third world countries) have smartphones…. and with smartphones comes applications… more specifically, social media applications. It is no doubt that social media has taken a hold of the majority of consumer attention, more people are staring at their phones in a day than they are a Television screen or a newspaper.
What does this mean for businesses?
It means that you need to get IN FRONT of your target customers face…. ON THEIR DEVICE…
There multiple ways to do this, but right now, one of the most efficient ways to get in front of the customer is through their feed.
Social Feed
A customer’s social feed consists of a collection of posts by:
- People
- Businesses
- Sponsored Ads
- Media/content Pages
Now as a business, you can post all you want on your business page, but if your target audience isn’t following you, they won’t see your content. it doesn’t matter how good your hashtag research is, you will not reach NEW potential customers, and you will not experience any real growth this way.
So as a business, you need to take advantage of the customer’s social feed in more ways than one. Of course, posting content on your own page is crucial for brand identity and converting current followers, however, you should want to be consistently be adding NEW followers to your business page, and not at a slow rate!
So how can we get our content to convert followers that have no idea who we are yet?
The answer is Influencer Marketing.
Influencer Marketing is broken down
Influencer Marketing uses the customer’s social feed against them in a way, so that the people and pages that they trust and know as “real people” or “media pages” and not as business’s, persuade or influence them to follow or check out your brand/business.
Influencers can be categorized into 2 subcategories, that is;
Influencers – People
Examples: Kylie Jenner, Lebron James, Jake Paul
Influencers (or Memefluencers) – Media/Content Pages
Examples: Daquan, Funny Hood Vids, Dunk, Lad Bible, Business Mindset
Note*: For the purpose of this article:
A Micro Influencer has less than 100 K followers.
- Only work with these influencers if your Instagram page has less than 50 K followers
- If your Instagram page has more than 50 K Followers you can/should still work with these Influencers, however, choose the ones with the highest engagement
A Macro Influencer has more than 100 K followers
- Work with these influencers once your Instagram page has more than 50 K followers
Something to keep in mind!
It’s very important, that as a business, you analyze and study the engagement of the Instagram influencers that you may potentially work with. In this day of age, every one including their mom’s cousins roommate claims to be an ‘influencer”, meaning people may do unethical things to appear as one, such as gather or obtain fake/inactive followers with the hopes that they can get free stuff from businesses like yours!
As a rule of thumb, if an Instagram Influencer has real/active followers, they should have at least 10% views to followers on their content. Meaning if they have 100,000 followers, they get minimum 10,000 views on a video, (the more the better obviously). Of those views, they should get 25% likes minimum. Meaning if they have 100,000 followers, and get 10,000 views, they should get 2500 likes. These are the bare minimum requirements, and any page/person with less than these metrics should not be working with your company!
What to post
Once you generate a list of the Micro and Macro, Influencer, and Memefluencers that you wish to work with, it’s time to prepare/curate the content most appropriate for their pages. You want the content to have as much Viral Potential as possible. (note*: content that incites Anger in the viewer has been shown to have the most Virality).
For example, if you arrange a post on Business Mindset, you’re going to want to study the page, and see which posts currently do well there. Meaning, which posts have the highest views/likes in comparison with the rest of the content on that page. If you see that posts with subtitles do really well, you may want to think about adding subtitles, if you see that posts which talk about money, or entrepreneurship do really well, you may want to incorporate these elements into your content. Don’t forget that you will also need to strategically sell your business’s page, product, or website, and you only have 1 minute (Instagram post) to say it all!
Types of Posts
Because we have the option of working with an Influencer (person), or a Memefluencer (media page), we also have to decide whether the content will be made by the Person, Media page or ourselves.
Generally, when working with an Influencer (person), it is part of the deal to have the film and create a piece of content where they vouch for your product and post it on their page as a normal post. This content can also be used on your page to fortify your brand by having a Popular Influencer as a spokesperson/representative. It is highly suggested that you take the time necessary to clearly outline and communicate your requirements with the Influencer before they make the content as they will have to re-film or re-post the content if it’s not up to your standards the first time around.
When working with a Memefluencer, it is more common to have your content filmed and edited by your own team, and then have that posted on the media page with the hopes of attracting that pages followers to your business.
MemEfluencer, or Influencer?
So what’s the main difference between a media page (Memefluencer) and a person (Influencer)posting your content?
The price and the amount of time that the post is up!
People influencers will generally charge a much higher rate for a post, shoutout, or promo video (a video that they film with themselves in it, promoting your product or business), but the post will typically be permanent on their page (it will always be up there). Whereas Memefluencers will have lower rates, and will generally only post the content for an agreed upon time (example: 12 hours, or 24 hours).
Most engagement happens during the first 24 hours of a post anyways so having a permanent post may not be worth it if your business’s ad spends budget is low.
Conclusion
Influencers/Memefluencers are probably the most cost efficient way of getting your content, and business out to many people at once. However, it’s important that you assess the engagement and legitimacy of the people you work with. It’s also important that you research and study each Influencers current content, and attempt to recreate a piece that will blow up on their page.
If you like what you read and want the top of the line Influencer marketing for your business, send us an email at [email protected] or fill out our contact form Here.