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How Do You Develop an Influencer Strategy?
Influencer Marketing
More and more companies are interested in getting into the world of social media influencer marketing, but many don’t know where to start.
Step one in pursuing influencer marketing to promote your brand is developing a solid influencer strategy. Your strategy lays the groundwork for your entire campaign and can either set you up for success or disappointment. So how do you develop a social media influencer strategy that works?
In this blog, we’ll explain what you need to know about various types of social media influencer marketing and how you can implement them at your company.
What Is Social Media Influencer Marketing?
Social media influencer marketing is one form of social media marketing. It involves a relationship between brands and influencers. Brands partner with influencers in their industries or niches, and those influencers promote the brand’s products or services through their social media content.
At its core, social media influencer marketing is all about tapping into ready-made audiences through representatives (the influencers) who have built up trust with those audience members. More traditional marketing methods like television or radio advertisements lack the trust and authority that influencers provide.
One of the advantages of social media influencer marketing is that it’s highly versatile. You can run influencer marketing campaigns with micro influencers or mega influencers. Your campaign can utilize giveaways or product placement. You can choose one popular social media platform or multiple. The options are almost endless.
What Are the Different Types of Influencer Marketing?
Influencer marketing comes in many different forms. It’s not as simple as just connecting with influencers and getting them to agree to participate — you need to decide which types of influencer marketing campaigns you want to pursue.
Some of the different types of influencer marketing campaigns include:
- Contests and Giveaways: Who doesn’t love free stuff? Brands can partner with influencers to run contests and giveaways that generate interest in the brands. The influencers promote the contests/giveaways on their pages, and their followers have the chance to win free products or services.
- Affiliate Marketing: In affiliate marketing campaigns, influencers agree to promote your brand’s products or services through a unique link you provide them. When their followers click that link and complete purchases, the influencer — your affiliate partner — receives a commission on those sales.
- Sponsored Posts: With sponsored posts, the influencers generally create content focusing on a brand’s products or services and post it to their social media profiles. Instagram influencer marketing is predominantly sponsored posts marked with “#ad.”
Other forms of influencer marketing strategies include product placement, video reviews, and brand ambassadorships. You may be wondering “What is the first step in creating a social media influencer marketing strategy?” One of the first steps to take is deciding what type of campaign to run.
What Are Some Steps to Implement Influencer Marketing?
With all these different options, it can be difficult to implement influencer marketing in your company. You might ask yourself — How do I develop an influencer strategy? Or, what is a good influencer strategy? Try these steps and strategies to begin implementing influencer marketing at your company:
- Set your goals and budget for the campaign.
Before you do anything else, it’s important to spend some time thinking about your goals for the campaign. Do you want to grow brand awareness? Boost sales? Raise your brand’s social media following? There’s no wrong answer, but your goals will inform the rest of your influencer strategy. Don’t forget to set an approximate budget early on, too.
- Decide what type of campaign to run.
Once you have your goals, you can choose what kind of campaign to run from the list above. Don’t limit yourself to just one, either. Brands can run multiple different types of influencer campaigns with great success.
- Select your influencers.
Arguably the most important part of developing an influencer strategy is choosing the best influencers for your brand. Consider factors like follower count, engagement rate, and type of content to select influencers that will work well in your campaign.
- Grant creative control to your influencers.
Part of the answer to how to improve influencer marketing effectiveness is to trust your influencers. They know what kind of content their audiences prefer better than you do, so (when possible) grant them creative control over the sponsored content they post. You may be surprised by what they come up with.
These are just the basics of how to run an influencer marketing campaign, but they’ll set you up for success.
How Lionize Can Help You With Your Influencer Marketing Strategy
You don’t have to develop your brand’s influencer marketing strategy alone — Lionize can help.
As an innovative influencer marketing platform, Lionize uses artificial intelligence and automation to simplify influencer marketing. All you need to do is define your campaign goals to Lionize and select from a curated list of influencers. The platform will do the rest, from onboarding through execution.
Book a Discovery Call today to see the difference Lionize can make.
For Brands
We’ll help you find the perfect partners for your brand. Let our network of limitless Influencers build brand awareness and drive your digital traffic goals.
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For Agencies
Finally, a platform that removes the heavy lifting of Influencer campaign management. Free your time to focus on your client’s creative strategy.
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