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Wot Da Hell is a “Social Influencer”?
This is a question for many outside the Internet Marketing communities as it’s a relatively new concept. Only those who are in the marketing and social influencer hierarchy know what it means.
To cut a long story short, a Social Influencer has a large social media following and presence. They are so popular they can convince their large following to buy certain brands. That comes with a huge fee (depending on the number of followers).
How did this new marketing method develop?
The world is changing at a drastic level. Technology has crafted a brave new world of millennials that have been born into a digital world that previous generations had only dreamed about, or watched on Science Fiction movies.
The generation of today embraces this technology as second nature. Practically everyone is on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat and YouTube. From the ages of 10, kids are on at least one of these platforms and watching YouTube rather than TV.
It’s no wonder the brands are looking towards social media for getting their name or product to a huge audience. The time is now for this phenomenon and time for brands to grasp it now before it implodes.
As from 2018 adults spend over 11 hours a day interacting with online media which is a phenomenal amount of time spent online. This has made online media the most attractive medium for brands to reach out to potential customers.
Here are 5 reasons brands should pay attention to a social influencer.
1: Target Audience
Brands can approach a social influencer who has the same interest in what they sell. If a clothing or fashion brand wants to target potential customers either in a certain geographic or globally, then they can achieve this with a fashion influencer.
A car brand can partner with a page or influencer who posts about their choice of car brand and potentially reach thousands or millions of people through just one post.
This is a quick and effective way of marketing and works so well for brands who have a big marketing budget. Many companies and brands would rather use a smaller social influencer as they can also be very effective and usually have a loyal fan base.
There is a cool tool that most pages have access to on Instagram and Facebook. It’s called “Insights”
Facebook and Instagram allow you to see the insights of the page. The page owners can see what age the followers are, the ratio between male and female and the geographical information.
A brand may want to target a certain area of the world or country with its product promotion. Therefore, it’s important for the page owner to get the demographics of the audience.
2: Engagement
The most important element of a social influencer is audience engagement.
Why is this so important?
Engagement is when a follower posts a comment or likes a post. This shows that the post has had approval from the follower. If they engage through comments, then this is the most powerful element that the influencer has in their grasp.
It’s important to post engaging content as this will keep your audience interested and keep coming back. Comments are also good for your pages reach and if you are working with a brand, they can then see that the campaign is working.
A page owner can post a cool image or video of a product and entice their audience to comment. Facebook and Instagram have recently changed algorithms, and it’s a lot harder to ask for likes and comments.
The most effective way around this is to do it discretely so that the platform’s algorithms don’t pick up on it. Links posted in the post pane can also affect the reach of a post if using Facebook. The way around this is to feature a product in your pages shop and tag the product in the shop on your post.
You can also drop a link in the comments section of your post which can bypass the Facebook nasty algorithms (for now). Instagram doesn’t allow you to insert links into posts but you can add the link to your bio section of Instagram. When a page owner posts an image or video they can make a note that the link is in the bio so people know where to click.
If you have a Facebook page linked to Instagram, then you can tag the product in your Facebook shop to the image or video you have posted on Instagram. Because Instagram’s owned by Facebook, they allow this and it’s very effective.
3: Following
A large following on Instagram and Facebook is important for an influencer. The bigger the page the more chance you have of attracting brands. This was always the case a few years back but more recently smaller pages have also been in on the action.
Marketing departments have found that working with smaller influencers have also had a positive effect on brand promotions as the page’s followers are more susceptible. The micro-influencer is achieving positive results in marketing for companies because of their enthusiasm for using hashtags.
Many of the large pages on Instagram rarely use hashtags anymore. They don’t really need to because of the huge amount of followers that engage, anyway.
Micro-influencers know exactly what hashtags to use which helps brands target their market. Hashtags are like SEO (Search Engine Optimization) for social media and can really help find the ideal audience for the page owner and brand. It’s a win-win situation for both page and brand.
4: Stories
Both Instagram and Facebook have included Stories on their pages which allow the page owner to reach a larger audience. The reach seems to be higher for stories and you can add a hashtag, location, question tab, and poll. These tabs are great for engagement and recommended if you want to reach a bigger audience.
There are lots of other tools within stories like text, mention, product (you can tag a product), gif, music, time, and many more (including emojis).
You can add Instagram stories to a highlight so they stay on your page. If you don’t add them to a highlight, then they will delete after 24 hours.
5: Shout Outs
Influencers are also doing shout outs on their pages to promote other smaller pages for a fee. These shout outs can help smaller pages get quick followers over 24 hours but some larger pages can charge a fair bit for this.
Brands are also using pages and influencers to shout outs on posts and directing traffic to the link in their bio. Shout outs are another quick and effective way of marketing and quick and easy money for the influencer.
In a nutshell, the quick and easy money analogy isn’t as good as it sounds. Initially, influencers are spending hours, days, weeks, months and even years building up a social media presence. This takes plenty of hard work, effort and time so once you have built the following, it gets easier.
So where does YouTube come into all of this?
YouTube is one of the most popular streaming platforms. It’s also an amazing search engine because it’s owned by Google. YouTube is great for influencers to reach out to brands with video posts and the comments section makes it more engaging.
Brands can reach out to YouTubers who have a large following to promote products. The YouTuber can add links and a description to the panel below the video which encourages the subscriber to click on the links.
The Google Adsense program allows the YouTuber to earn revenue from ads inserted into videos. If it meets the requirements, then it places the ads on the video and the content creator can earn a substantial income from a viral video.
On most occasions, brands are more inclined to approach the YouTuber to arrange a deal themselves. This can be much more lucrative for both YouTuber and brand.
Conclusion
Now you know how powerful today’s social influencer is for the marketing and advertising world. Some say the influencing marketing trend bubble could pop soon. We think it will only get more popular and stronger because of billions of us spending most of our time online.
The old medium of TV and radio advertising still carries weight but this will only get less popular. The younger generation is not interested in TV or radio. The Millennial generation is interested in the top social media platforms and this age group is the preferred target for all the top brands.
If you would like to know more about the life of a social influencer, then you can check out “Influencer Films” by Binge Networks which is an informative documentary on the Influencer marketing explosion.
Click on the image below to watch the film.
