There is no such thing as a good influence. Because to influence a person is to give him /her one’s own soul. He does not think his natural thoughts, or burn with his natural passions.
Unless you provide valuable content that your readers wants, you won’t have readers. People don’t stick around when they’re hungry and you’re not feeding them. They’ll move on to the person who fills them up with whatever they need.
One of the best ways to influence people is to make them feel important. Most people enjoy those rare moments when others make them feel important. It is one of the deepest human desires.
When you create content, the value can be found in the format that best suits them. So make sure you spread the format across several mediums. Make that content relevant and make it pop.
You can’t make mediocre content and expect to become an influencer.
Your content should sound like you.
That means what you bring to the table should be made up of your life experiences, your setbacks, and your triumphs. It doesn’t matter if your content is written or spoken; it needs to flow from you and through you.
Stay on topic when you’re posting to social media. Few things are more annoying than someone who rambles on and on, saying a lot but never really imparting any takeaways.
You need to provide value to your followers if you hope to become an influencer. Sometimes, that value will depend on your niche.
For example, if you’re in the beauty niche then providing a detailed tutorial on how to use eyeshadow will be valuable in the eyes of your community.
However, if your niche is golfing, then that eyeshadow tutorial is more than just annoying. It’s useless and likely to anger your followers. They wanted golf tips and advice and you didn’t give them that.
Keep in mind that no matter what your topic, you want to make it fun and enjoyable for your followers. So focus on telling stories. Use examples in your content that depict human interest.
Emotion is universal and when you tap into that, you connect with your audience and give them content they’ll remember.
For some topics, it might be helpful to bring facts or studies to your content. Doing this boosts your brand and makes you look trustworthy.
Don’t forget that it’s not just your followers watching you. As you grow your platform, brands, and companies within your niche may begin to pay attention to your profile.
That means you always want to have your information updated and your best content on display. If your content is lackluster and there’s no easy way to contact you, a busy brand manager will look elsewhere for his company’s next influencer.
Your influencer goals will be to drive traffic, boost sales, build awareness for other brands, and continue to establish yourself as a leader in your niche. It’s not difficult to do these things while still building a loyal following. However, you must always be careful to be transparent.
There are dozens of influencers across social media platforms that are not transparent. Their methods, in some cases, border on fraudulent. They don’t follow the rules of their social media network of choice and they promote any company that’s willing to hire them.
You want to build your following using methods that are authentic. This means that if you work jointly with a brand or you’re promoting someone, you need to be upfront about the collaboration, sponsoring, or selling.
Disclaimer: The information on this POST is not intended or implied to be a substitute for professional advice. The opinions expressed within this article are the personal opinions of the author. All content, including text, graphics, images and information, contained on or available through this article is for general information purposes / educational purposes only, and to ensure discussion or debate.
Thank you …. Influencer marketing is a good thing but it has a seedy underside where people use or are tempted to use strategies that violate legal guidelines and cross ethical boundaries.
As an influencer who’s transparent, the information you’re giving your audience should never be deceptive. Don’t hide your collaboration with a brand or other influencer. By acting like you just happened to find this great service or product, you give the reader the impression that you don’t benefit in any way from mentioning or sharing the info.
Instead, be honest with your followers about how you “found” something, why you trust the person or product, and how you benefit from the business relationship that you have with the brand behind the promotion. This can be as simple as using #sponsored at the end of your post.
If you don’t clearly call an advertisement an ad, then you risk getting into trouble with the social media network. Worse than that, you risk permanently losing the trust of your audience. Once you’ve lost that trust, it can be difficult to rebuild it.
There might be situations where only some of the content you’re talking about is promoted. For example, maybe you’re doing a tutorial on how to bake gluten-free cookies.
Most of the recipe uses common household ingredients. However, you’re getting an incentive from the company that makes the almond flour. Even when you only recommend or promote one item, you still need to tell your audience that the company gave you a free bag to try, in exchange for your honest opinion.
It’s important that you’re transparent as an influencer because what you say can affect the buying decisions of your followers. What some influencers and marketers have found effective is to promise to be ethical. For example, you might say, “I’ll never promote a beauty product to you that I wouldn’t recommend to my sister. I promise to only share products that I believe in 100%.”
Do you want to add a word or two?
If you don’t disclose an association with a brand or company, your followers may feel your recommendations were slanted. They may even think that your opinions were “bought” and can’t be trusted in the future.
The most important part about being transparent is showing that you care about your readers. They don’t mind if you bring a product to their attention.
What they mind is if it’s not relevant, and you wouldn’t use it frequently yourself based with your experience. Readers love what’s honest and what’s real. When you practice that, your outreach can’t help but grow.
Engagement Builds Influence
If you’re new to influencer marketing, you’ll start out with no audience, or a very tiny one. However, it won’t stay that way if you engage on your platform. The more you invest in your community, the faster your audience will grow.
Your value doesn’t matter when you want to become an influencer. What matters is how you value others. That’s the creation of a relationship.
When people reach out to you by leaving a comment, you should always answer the comment. This kind of consistent engagement shows your audience that what they have to say mattered and that you’re acknowledging them.
People will follow you or like a post. When that happens, return the action.
Your comments….
You must show the audience that you understand and empathize with them. Then you need to come up with a way to help your audience get what they want.
For example, if you’re in the body positivity niche, you might want to post daily affirmations that your users can repeat when they start thinking negative thoughts about how they look.
When you have a high engagement rate among your followers, it means your message is being well received. It also means that your influence is going to grow because of the quality of your message. The more your influence grows, the higher your popularity will go.
Remember that most social media networks are using algorithms to determine which content gets the best spot in your home feed. The more engagement your content gets, the more likely it is that the social network will place it high in the feed.
Collaboration is Key
Don’t hold back thinking you need ten thousand followers before you can reach out. Collaboration does offer a lot of benefits to you but it also has perks for the other influencer that you’re partnering with, too.
Don’t let your collaboration become a one-way street.
When you connect with an established influencer, they’re most likely going to have a bigger following.
If you want them to agree to a collaboration opportunity, then you need to know how they’ll profit from this partnership
Have a plan in place ahead of time, before you approach the influencer.
One small influencer approached a bigger influencer who was busy. He offered to give this reader a free guide his approach to pain therapy.
The influencer loved the special perk because she needed content for a few days.
You might be tempted to think that the best way to collaborate is by finding the influencers with the biggest audiences. You may also believe that the influencers with the smaller followings won’t be worth your time. However, that’s not always true.
Influencers with only a few thousand followers are known as micro-influencers and these influencers build a high level of trust among their followers. They come across as ordinary people who are talking about products that they use themselves.
They regularly interact with their followers to the point that their audience not only trusts them but feels as if they know them. A micro-influencer may have a higher engagement percentage than an influencer with 100,000 followers. This could mean higher conversion rates
When you do seek to collaborate with someone else, you want to be sure that you check out the other influencer. You want someone who’s authentic and won’t bring harm to your brand.
The key to successful leadership is influence, not authority.
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