Last Updated on October 2, 2024 by Goldstar
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You probably already heard about influencer marketing. But what is it? How do you become an Influencer?
What is influencer marketing
An Influencer is someone who uses their personal brand to market other companies and/or brands. This Influencer is usually someone with authority in a particular niche or industry. An Influencer can increase the exposure of a brand to his/her own audience, which will help increase sales or brand awareness.
The campaign or promotion that is done by the Influencer can be created by you, or uniquely by him. This highly depends on the Influencer that you decide to work with. The content that he will then share can have multiple forms. It can simply be a social media post, a testimonial, a case study, a video, or even a blog post.
One of the things that you need to retain in your mind about Influencer marketing is that this is one of the few strategies that can be successfully applied to any industry, to any niche. After all, your brand will be promoted by someone who is trusted and credible within your industry or niche.
One of the things that many people tend to forget is that Influencers don’t need to be celebrities. The truth is that anyone can be an Influencer. All you need is to have a lot of targeted followers on the Internet and on social media more specifically.
What are the benefits of influencer marketing
In case you’re considering to use the Influencer marketing strategy, you need to make sure that you have a good plan in place, you should be able to know exactly how much you can afford to spend, the duration of the campaign, the Influencers who you may contact. However, you also need to be patient about seeing the results coming. The truth is that Influencer marketing is a strategy that is based on people. And people need to have time to digest what they see or hear and then to act.
In order to make sure that you get as much success as you can with this Influencer marketing campaign, you should consider integrating it with other strategies at the same time. For example, you can send emails, establish a special product release date, do a PR, among others.
What of the many wrong ideas people have about the Influencers work is that you will pay them so that they can say good things about you or your product. However, this won’t happen unless the Influencer really likes your product. The truth is that they spend a lot of time nurturing these people who follow them around the web and they won’t simply risk their reputation by promoting a product they don’t like or on which they don’t believe.
But how do Influencers make money?
The truth is that an Influencer can have multiple streams of income.
#1: Brand Ambassadors:
This is one of the most known sources of income of Influencers. Being a brand ambassador usually implies to have a contract with the brand that can last for many weeks, months, or even years.
#2: Podcasting:
Podcasting as one great vehicle to distribute his content, for example. In case you don’t know, you may already pay a small fee for downloading and listening to a podcast.
#3: Webinars:
The idea is mainly the same of podcasting. Influencers can either do live or recorded webinars and they can also charge a fee for people to access their valuable information.
#4: Social Media Sponsored Posts:
This is also another common way for Influencers to make money, especially when they are just starting.
The brand “hires” the Influencer to use his social media accounts to promote their products, increase the brand exposure, among others. The Influencer can be asked to write only one post or several depending on what the brand has in mind.