Sometimes having a social media presence isn’t enough to promote your product. It deserves better visibility online. To reach a broader audience, companies need to leverage off social media influencers.
Not only can these social media accounts boost sales, they can also improve a company’s reputation.
Marketing partnerships drive growth through the social reach of an influencer’s followers.
What Is a Social Media Influencer?
This type of marketing uses an influential personality on social media to promote a product or service. This social media account does not have to be a celebrity, but can be a popular niche blogger.
Such influencers have significantly larger followings than an average social media account. An influencer will likely have tens of thousands of followers or more.
Your company would pay this account to promote the product to a much broader audience. Promoted posts on Facebook or Twitter would have a target audience chosen. But, a promoted post through an influential account would reach beyond that target.
An influencer may promote your product or company on a specific social media channel. In the case of influential bloggers, it may just be a review written on their blog. The terms of posting will be set out once you come to an agreement.
In some cases, an influencer will promote a product or service in exchange for a sample. FCC and EU regulations require influencers to state whether they have a relationship with the company.
Audiences view influencers’ opinions as more reliable and honest. Therefore, audiences will believe the reviews. In this case, a social media influencer endorsement is more powerful than having a celebrity appear in an advertisement.
How to Find Social Media Influencers
First, you need to identify your target audience and prospective influencers on different social media platforms. These two things need to match. You wouldn’t want to choose a real estate influencer to market website services.
Think about people who would use your product or service and search for related social media profiles. The majority of those accounts’ followers should fit into your target audience.
Keep in mind that the larger the influencer’s following, the more expensive a partnership may be.
There are services online to check and monitor an influencer’s social media reach across various platforms, such as Klout. Some services can also identify the fake followers an account has on Twitter.
There are also influencer marketing platforms to help simplify the process.
Grow Your Business with Social Media
You don’t have to build a following with just your social media accounts. There’s no need to go it alone when you can recruit influencers to help build your market and grow your business.
More than 80% of marketers will use influencers to boost sales as well as their company’s reputation. And the majority believes that these marketing campaigns are effective.
When you’re ready to grow your business through social media, contact us for help building a better online reputation.