If you are new to the marketing or social media scene all you know about influencers is that your spell check keeps trying to tell you that it is misspelled and doesn’t exist (don’t you hate that?) Quite on the contrary influencer marketing is the hottest trend in online marketing right now. It is literally everywhere.
And why is that? It’s all because influencer marketing has proven to be much more effective than old school advertising. Big brands are old news.
The most effective way to market your product, in 2017, is by reaching out to people with medium to large audiences on social media and have them natively storytell about your product.
And yet we find that a lot of marketers / business owners are a bit uneasy with contacting total strangers. So I wanted to break the ice a little bit and share with you some of the tips and tools that have helped us connect with influencers for our business.
Before we go on, here is an awesome article about how to find influencers if you are having trouble with that. Also, if you are thinking of becoming an influencer or wondering what the heck an influencer even is, read this captivating post about the recent influencer-themed #Qchat.
In this article I want to briefly go debunk the 5 myths of working with influencers, these tips will literally help you get connected to any person out there… in the world wide web. Let’s begin!
Myth #1 – Don’t Message the Influencer Too Much
Contrary to popular belief, influencers get so many messages that they assume that you’re going to message them a few times if you’re serious. It’s a rite of passage! If someone has 40,000 or 50,000 followers on Twitter then I’m sure they get hundreds of messages every day, so you just need to keep messaging them.
And they don’t take offense to that, it actually shows them your grit and determination to get connected. So don’t limit yourself, don’t reach out to that one person three times and think to yourself “oh well they must not like me…”. Reach out at least 20 to 30 times in the course of a few months and you will surely get a message back.
Whatever your competition is doing, you gotta do more.
In the middle of a keynote speech that Gary Vaynerchuk was giving in London, a loyal fan stood up and said that he reached out to Gary several times, and did turns out he only reached out to him 10 times so Gary laughed at that and said that “you got to do more”.
Myth #2 – Just Email The Influencer
Don’t get me wrong, email is still a potent tool to connect with people, but how often do you read an email from a person that you have never heard about? Maybe sometimes. And how often do you immediately try to find them on social media? Always.
When I find an influencer I want to connect with, I find all of the social media platforms that they are using. I go on their Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram. It’s super powerful for me to see the difference in how they use each platform and I can respond to them and engage with them differently on each one of those.
just like if you are running an ad and you need want to show it a few times to each person you targeting the same way it’s really good practice to message and influencer and several of or if not all of their platforms. It reminds them of your existence, allows them to engage with you with three different media and it builds your credibility. Because if the influencer sees that you know how to use all these platforms they see you your content and they see that your audience is engaged with you on those channels, they’re more likely to respond and work with you to promote your product.
LinkedIn has been particularly helpful for me to connect with influencers. If I find someone cool on instagram then I find them on LinkedIn and add them to my network. When I add that new person I always add a note telling them exactly why am adding them. If I want to engage about my product I write that in, if I want to get an interview with them or publish a guest post I write that in. Transparency is key. This way they are more likely to respond and a lot of them respond with the “the next steps” of how to to make that happen. So it’s really powerful to use all the platforms available to contact an influencer. Do it.
Myth #3 – popularity & reach = value
Sometimes you can find a person with millions of followers that had low engagement, so he may post a link to something but no one clicks on it. It’s way better to reach out to an influencer that has high engagement, regardless of size of audience, than a huge personality with no traffic.
If you look at Gary Vaynerchuk’s Twitter page you will see that he has both a huge following (1.48M) and tons of engagement (literally thousands of people engage with his posts every week). This is the kind of engagement that you should be looking for.
Myth #4 – Use Influencer Marketing to the Exclusion of All Else
Influencer marketing should become a component in your overall marketing strategy. You shouldn’t drop your Facebook and Twitter ads and all of your existing advertising out there in favor of the influencer strategy that you have developed. Everything works together.
When you throw your influencer strategy in the mix then your whole business gets a facelift, that’s how you should think about it.
Myth #5 – Get Everything Right
Finding influencers to market your business is just like sales – it’s a numbers game. That means you have to reach out to as many people as you can, and accept all the NO’s. The more people you reach out to the higher the chances that you will get someone interested and have someone to work with.
That does not mean that you should sacrifice the quality of what your pitch or your engagement, but quantity and hard work beats lazy talent any day.
To recap:
- Message each influencer alot, at least 20-30 times
- Connect with each influencer through all the social media channels that they are using
- Look for engagement more than size of audience
- Combine influencer marketing with everything else you got going on
- Message as many people as you can, it’s just a numbers game
Those are the 5 common myths of influencer marketing, I hope that you took something positive out of it and if you use even a few of the strategies outlined you will for sure see a huge spike in your marketing success.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are the mistakes in influencer marketing?
The mistakes in influencer marketing can include choosing the wrong influencers for the target audience, lack of authenticity or transparency in sponsored content, and failure to track and measure the campaign’s effectiveness.
Why is influencer marketing exploding?
Influencer marketing is exploding due to its ability to leverage the trust and credibility of influencers to reach highly engaged audiences, create authentic content, and drive brand awareness and sales.
What is the negative side of influencer marketing?
The negative side of influencer marketing can involve issues such as influencer fraud (fake followers or engagement), lack of control over content quality, potential brand misalignment, and the risk of backlash or controversy if an influencer’s behavior or actions are inconsistent with the brand’s values.
