You probably know that word-of-mouth is one of the most valuable forms of marketing out there: It’s been shown to influence 20 to 50 percent of all purchasing decisions.
After all, potential customers are much more likely to be receptive to
recommendations from a person they respect and trust than to ads or
other corporate messaging.
In the new world of digital relationships, word of mouth extends well
beyond recommendations from friends and family into the realm of
influencer marketing.
In fact, research from Twitter
shows that 49 percent of consumers seek purchase guidance from social
media influencers, and 20 percent said that a Tweet from an influencer
inspired them to share their own product recommendation. Even more
important for marketers, nearly 40 percent of Twitter users said they
had made a purchase as a direct result of an influencer’s Tweet.
And on Instagram, the amount brands are spending with influencers is over $1 billion per year, according to a study from Mediakix.
In this post we’ll take you through everything you need to know about
influencer marketing—from strategy and tips, to tools you can use to
boost your campaign.
Bonus:Download a free guide to discover how to get more sales and conversions with social media monitoring on Hootsuite—no tricks or boring tips.
What is a social media influencer?
An influencer is quite simply someone who carries influence over others. A social media
influencer is someone who wields that influence through social media.
The form of influence can vary and no two influencers are the same.
Celebrity endorsements were the original form of influencer marketing,
but in the digital age of online connection, regular people have become
online “celebrities” with powerfully engaged social media followings,
especially in certain market segments.
In fact, a survey of U.S. teens conducted for Variety last year
found that YouTube creators took eight of the top 10 spots in a survey
of influencers, outranking traditional celebrities like musicians and
movie stars.
Perhaps no one embodies the concept of the social media influencer more than DJ Khaled, whom The Washington Post dubbed “The King of Snapchat.”
His 6 million Snapchat followers make him an obvious choice for brands
who may not (yet) have a strong Snapchat presence of their own.
When the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority debuted on the social network, they hired DJ Khaled for an account takeover that brought in more than 350,000 views in its first two days alone.
How to incorporate influencer marketing in your social media strategy
Think of influencer marketing as simply another arrow in your
marketing quiver. While it’s a different approach to brand messaging,
your influencer campaigns should still align with your larger content strategy and brand image so that they enhance your overall brand reputation.
Extend your reach (or laser-target your message) through influencer channels
In many cases, you will use influencer marketing to extend the reach
of your brand messaging by working with social media influencers to
create or support content they post on their own social media channels.
This allows you to piggyback on someone else’s follower base, either to
reach a broader audience or to segment your efforts in ways that would
never be possible through your own branded social media accounts.
For example, the National Pork Board has partnered with Latino social media influencers in its #sabrososmomentos
campaign to encourage Hispanic American families to serve more pork at
family get-togethers throughout the holiday season, targeting a specific
segment it would be challenging to reach through the board’s own
branded channels.
This video, posted by influencers Los Pichy Boys on October 18, already has more than 340,000 views.
Boost credibility with influencer messaging on your own channels
You can also recruit influencers to participate in content that you
share or cross-post on your own channels, as clothing company ThreadBeast did when it created a series of Facebook Ads with streetwear influencers like Nightwing2303 unboxing ThreadBeast packages.
Check out the views on that Facebook video: 3.4 million! Plus, it garnered another 200,000 views on Nightwing2303’s YouTube channel.
The campaign targeted 18- to 24-year-old men in the U.S. with an
interest in hip-hop or streetwear brands, and resulted in a 36 percent
increase in clickthrough rate.
ThreadBeast’s Facebook ads influencer campaign ended in July, but the
company is still working with influencers: Nightwing2303 posted a new unboxing video to YouTube earlier this month.
A social media takeover,
like the DJ Khaled example above, is another effective way to leverage
an influencer’s following and cross-promote your own channels to build
up your own follower base.
How to find the right social media influencer for your campaign
Before reaching out to a potential social media influencer, you’ll need to consider the Rs of influence:
Relevance: The influencer is
sharing content and developing a following relevant to your business and
the particular market segment you want to target.
Reach: The number of people you could potentially reach through the influencer’s follower base that would bring value to your business.
Resonance: The potential level of engagement the influencer can create with an audience that’s valuable and relevant to your brand.
When determining whether an influencer is a good match for your three
Rs, you’ll need to ask yourself a couple of important questions.
Who are you trying to influence?
Most marketers have no trouble coming up with a high-level answer to
this question: you’re trying to influence your customers, prospects, and
the broader industry community. But your influencer campaign can’t be
all things to all people: as in all types of marketing strategy, a
meaningful answer requires greater focus and a clear understanding of
your goals and your audience.
Perhaps you’re trying to influence people who work in a specific job
function—social media professionals or community managers who tend to
spend significant amounts of time on social media every day, for
example. Or maybe your goal is to influence decision-makers in a
particular vertical—maybe government or finance leaders who tend to
place deep trust in recommendations from their peer network. Or, you
could be trying to target a specific consumer segment, like millennials
looking to buy their first home.
These are three very different groups, and an effective influencer
marketing strategy requires you to speak to the right people using the
right tools (and, in this case, the right influencers), just like you do
in all of your other marketing work.
Looking at a very specific marketing niche, for example, a recent survey
from public relations firm MWWPR found that influencer marketing is the
most effective way of marketing spirits to millennials, along with
earned media. According to the report, 54 percent of Millennials share
branded content from spirits companies when it is posted by a social
influencer, and 93 percent usually try a new liquor after someone
recommends it to them. For any liquor brand looking to expand into the
millennial market, those numbers should be hard to ignore.
Who do your customers, prospects, and community trust?
For marketers, the key requirement for true influence is trust. Your
audience must trust and respect the opinion of the influencers you
partner with. Without the trust component, any lift in results will be
superficial and you’ll struggle to see a tangible business impact from
your efforts.
Working from a clear idea of exactly who you’re trying to influence,
take the extra step to find key opinion and thought leaders whom your
audience already looks to as sources of meaningful information. These
people are already influencers—and partnerships with them can drive real
impact.
Keep in mind that your audience demographics play a major role in
determining which influencers will be the most trusted in your
marketplace. Data from Twitter
shows that people aged 45 and up view more traditional household name
celebrities as preferred influencers, while millennials prefer digital
content creators.
Targeting that millennial market, Contiki has been using influencer marketing for five years through its #RoadTrip
series, hosting groups of YouTube stars as they follow Contiki
itineraries around the world. Some videos, like the one below created by
influencers Jesse and Jeana (BFvsGF), racked up more than a million views (not to mention more than 125,000 likes).
Perhaps it’s no surprise, then, that after its 2015 RoadTrip to
Southeast Asia, Contiki saw a 175 percent increase in owned YouTube
audience and a 25 percent increase in traffic to its Asian trip packages
online. Anecdotally, when Contiki’s Canadian sales managers visited
various campuses across the country, they heard from at least one person
each day who mentioned they had first learned about the travel brand
through their favorite YouTuber. The campaign helped Contiki win the
Skifties award for Best Travel Brand on YouTube and the British Youth
Travel Award for Best Use of Social Media.
There are plenty of tools to help you identify people with large and engaged networks talking about topics that matter to your audience, including followerwonk, Traackr, Klout, and Hootsuite.
But remember that reach alone does not indicate a powerful
influencer—you also need the other two Rs: relevance and resonance.
Watch for engaged followers—that means plenty of views, likes, comments,
and shares, all from the precise follower segments you’re trying to
reach.
A huge follower count is meaningless without evidence that those
followers are paying attention, and a smaller follower count can be very
powerful if it’s a niche area and the potential influencer is a
recognized leader. Markerly, a network that connects brands with
influencers, recently found that partnering with “micro-influencers” can
provide much better ROI than trying to snag a big celebrity. Their analysis of 800,000 Instagram users found that the influencers with 10,000 to 100,000 followers offer the best combination of resonance and reach. Image via Markerly.
Influencer marketing best practices
Influencers are becoming increasingly important in the social media
world, and they expect to be recognized for the value they bring to your
brand. Here are some key ways to ensure you build influencer
relationships that are beneficial over the long term.
Reach out slowly
Once you identify a social media influencer you want to engage with,
start the connection process by reaching out through content they are
already sharing, and conversations they are already starting or leading.
Twitter chats
are a great way to do this. If you know your potential social media
influencer is hosting a Twitter chat, be sure to mark the date and
participate. If they have a blog, comment on their blog posts to show
that you are actually reading their content.
Once you’ve begun to build rapport, the relationship can bloom into a mutually beneficial one. On that note…
Create mutual value
As a marketer, you’re probably focused on the value that influencers
can provide to your brand, not the other way around. But to create a
meaningful and lasting relationship, influencers must also derive value
from partnering with your brand—and not just in the form of cold, hard
cash (although that always helps).
“Value” doesn’t only mean financial compensation; it simply means
that the perceived benefit of the partnership is equally important to
both you and the influencer. It could involve a content swap, an
introduction to a unique community, or some kind of swag or product
placement, but always keep in mind that mutual value will be the key
driver of long-term influencer relationships.
Go for a consistent look, feel, and tone
When choosing an influencer, in addition to finding a fit for your
niche market, you need to find someone who’s producing content with a
similar look and feel to your own, and whose tone is appropriate for the
way you want to present your brand to potential customers. This will
make it much easier for the brand and the influencer to share, swap, and
collaborate without creating a disjointed feel in either party’s social
media posts.
A social media influencer who has worked hard to build a following
will not accept a deal that makes their own personal brand seem
inconsistent. And allowing the influencer creative freedom is much
easier when you know that their content will gel with your own.
Combining your efforts creates the best results—data from Twitter
shows that exposure to a brand Tweet creates a 2.7 times lift in
purchase intent, but exposure to both a brand Tweet and an influencer
Tweet more than doubles that lift to 5.2 times.
Measure the results
Social media influencers should be able to provide analytics and
detailed reports on the reach of their posts, but remember that you’re
also looking to track engagement. This can be tricky, with 47 percent of respondents to a recent survey
saying that proving the value of their influencer marketing campaigns
is their biggest measurement challenge. Hootsuite allows you to measure
campaign success by tracking mentions of the brand or campaign hashtags
with social listening streams.
Remember that influencer marketing is one of the hottest online
marketing trends right now, but you still need to do your research,
ensure your efforts align with your overall marketing strategy, and test
and track your results to improve performance, just as you would with
any other marketing tool.
10 influencer marketing tools
A list of influencer marketing tools to help you find influential
people to partner with, and track the success of your campaigns.
Stop chasing online personalities that have little sway over your
target audience. This template will help you map out your influencer
marketing strategy and inform partner decisions.
This tool by Moz makes it easy to find relevant influencers on
Twitter by topic and location. Use it to build a list of potential
influencers to engage and partner with. Pro tip:create a Twitter list for these individuals for easy reference.
You can use Hootsuite search streams to discover social media influencers by monitoring conversations relevant to your industry.
Who is your target audience engaging with? Whose content are they
sharing? These people have clout that can help your brand expand it’s
reach.
Once you have a set of influencers to follow, you can add them to a
Twitter list and save it as a stream to easily track what they share and
who they engage with—learn from the best.
Use this tool to determine whether an influencer’s audience is right
for your brand. The app will give you relevant data on a user’s
following, including average age, income, location, likes, interests,
and profession.
Find the top trending photos, videos, and influencers for any tag or
topic with TrendSpottr for Instagram. The app also makes it easy to
engage with key influencers, view trending hashtags, select from a list
of popular tags, and easily share trending posts to your social
networks.
Find local Instagram influencers posting in your area (or an area you
choose to follow). You can monitor for locations and hashtags, or
combine search terms for advanced listening.
These short text codes can be added to a URL to track important data
about website visitors and traffic sources. Create them for your
influencers to use when they share content on social media so you can
track how much engagement the campaign is receiving.
Use the Hootsuite dashboard to create UTM parameters in a few simple
steps. Then you can share the links with your social media influencer or
easily add it to your posts.
Check out our guide, How to Use UTM Parameters to Track Social Media Success and learn more about this invaluable tool.
As we explain in our post, The Facebook Pixel: What It Is and How to Use It,
this tool makes it easy to track conversions from a Facebook ad,
optimize ads based on data collected, build targeted audiences for
future ads, and remarket to qualified leads (people who have already
taken some kind of action on your website).
If your influencer marketing strategy includes a Facebook ad
component, you can use a pixel’s remarketing capabilities to expand an
influencer’s reach and connect with a new and relevant audience. Check
out our step-by-step guide to learn how to put the tactic to work in your next campaign.
This app identifies and ranks industry influencers and uses their
inherent trust to discover content relevant to your audience. This makes
it easy for you to find and share content that will help expand your
businesses’ reach on social media.
Do your busy @mention streams make it more difficult to engage with
influencers? InsightPool’s single-click response interface makes it easy
to cut through the noise and connect with key individuals. Make your influencer marketing activities easier with
Hootsuite. Schedule posts, engage with influencers, and measure the
success of your efforts. Try it free today.
