What is influencer marketing?

What is Influencer Marketing?

Influencer marketing has a different meaning than it did 20 even 10 years ago. You might be associating influencer marketing with brands partnering with celebrities to promote a product. While that concept is still true, influencer marketing has evolved and become more mainstream among common people on the internet.

So, let's define influencer marketing in 2021. Influencer marketing is a type of social media marketing used to promote a product through individuals who have a good presence on social media. This type of marketing puts a lot of trust in an influencer to portray a brand how they see fit for their profile. The main reason to work with influencers is brand recognition.

Influencer Marketing Over Time

The difference between a celebrity and an influencer is that influencers can be found anywhere. More than likely they are just a normal person who has a large following on a social media platform. They can have a range of followers, from millions to a couple thousand. They can be on Instagram, YouTube, Tik Tok, and other areas of social. Most of the time they focus on a "field", such as beauty, food, fashion, and much more. They are seen as "experts" in their chosen focus of field by their followers. They showcase a product, or service by taking pictures or videos of them using or talking about the brand.

How Do You Get Started?

Now you might be asking, how do I start utilizing this form of social media marketing. First, you need to find influencers. There are few ways you can find these influencers. One way you could get in touch with them is through a third-party platform. There are several to choose from. You can use this site to view the top influencer marketing platforms.

Making a Campaign

Once you chose the platform that fits your brand best. You can start a campaign discussing the requirements for your brand and what you would like to see. What platforms you would like to be seen on, such as Instagram, YouTube or Tik Tok. These requirements can include words you would like to hear or see written in a caption, picture specificity if you want a video or a story swipe up, and anything you want to require. From there, influencers can find you. Once the campaign is published, influencers can then apply to work on the campaign. Next, it is important to know what you are looking for in an influencer. Writing down a list of attributes that you would like would be the best way to tackle these applications.

Certain criteria you could want in an influencer could be, their follower count. Specifically on Instagram you have to have 10,000 followers to get a swipe-up link on your story. So, the follower count matters if that is one of your requirements. Engagement is also data that is good to look at. Seeing how many likes and comments each post gets in accordance with their followers. If there are little to no comments or likes but a high follower count that may not be the best person to use because their followers are not active with their account. You also want to look at what other brands the influencer has worked with. This way you can see the type of content they can produce and what they are capable of. Figuring out their "field" of focus is also important. For example, if you are a brand that has beauty products, you would want someone who posts makeup tutorials or skincare. You wouldn't want an influencer who focuses on cars to produce content for your beauty brand. The influencers' followers are interested in the influencer because they produce content that is relevant to their lives.

Keep In Mind

An important concept to keep in mind is giving an influencer a creative outlet. Giving clear instructions to an influencer as to what you, as a brand, are looking for in their content is important. However, giving too much direction could make a campaign not perform as well. The influencers know their followers and what gets their attention. Giving the influencer full reign on how their content is going to look is most ideal. Making sure you approve this content before it gets sent out, can help make sure your brand is being portrayed in a way you see fit. You would be surprised how well content produced by an influencer, with little guidance, does.

Staying on top of your influencer is crucial. Sometimes they don't see your messages, or they lose your message. Making sure you have a clear deadline for them to send you content for approval and a deadline for them to post. Getting their email or direct line, if they want to give you that information, would also help you keep everything in line and make sure deadlines are met. If you are a product company and you have to send them your product you want to account for, the ordering time and shipping time. Keeping up with communication about when your product arrives, questions they have, and getting approval back to them is also important to meet deadlines and making sure you are getting good content for your product.

When it comes to prices, that all depends on how you hired an influencer. Using a third-party system versus reaching out via direct message or email can vary. Using a third-party system, from the list mentioned earlier, will more than likely have prices listed by an influencer depending on which platform and what is required of them. A third-party system is great to use if you want to look for influencers based on price, or any other filter. Reaching out via direct message is risky because you don't know the influencer's going rates until they send you their portfolio or a price. Having a budget for your campaign is a great idea, you may in turn get to hire multiple influencers.

These are just a few basics to get started with your own influencer marketing campaigns. There is so much more based on the type of product you are promoting, your budget, and many other variants on how well an influencer campaign will perform for your brand. Luckily, Hyperchat Social offers Influencer Marketing management, we would love to help you market your product to influencers! Go to http://tryhyperchat.com/ to book an appointment!