Aiming marketing efforts directly at your target audience is your strongest bet—this can be supplemented with working with specific social media influencers. Social Media Influencers are people, and online personas, which are trusted sources with their pre-built fan base. They are trusted for their information and opinions, often in specific fields; it’s for this reason however a source in auto-mechanics may not carry much weight when talking about new cameras. Influencers have large audiences at their disposals, whether it’s through a various social media channel, blog, or even an email list, most importantly they have highly engaged audiences that share and react to their posts and articles. Getting your brand mentioned or even used and reviewed by an influencer can be much more influential than the vast majority of ad buys, or thousands of hours of social media pushes. This can be a massively powerful way to grow and enliven your social media follower ultimately reaching a wider audience.
Monitor social media:
To start you have to look for regular users who command attention using hashtags and keywords related to your sites and businesses. Hashtags are used most on forums such as Twitter and Instagram, they do have use on Facebook however they haven’t picked up as much steam. Perform regular searches for your brand name and see who’s likely to be associated to your brand and industry; make sure to look for those who are complimentary to your brand and image so as to keep your voice consistent and your reputation in tact
Reach out to bloggers:
Creating an outreach system for bloggers can appear overwhelming at first but it really comes down to finding the right bloggers to reach out to and begin connecting with them over email or their preferred social site. It’s important to take their preferences into consideration as this will go a long way into having them be more inclined to help you.
Now that you have an idea of what to do, what else should you know?
- Never be shy in asking for content shares; once you’ve found strong industry voices that are wanting to work with you make it worth their while and provide them with something they value. If you’re looking for more visibility chances are they’re looking for just the same. Offer to create a special article they can feature on their blog, or let them guest on yours.
- Let bloggers behind the curtain; allow them to be the first to review a product or a service before it’s readily available to the public. Exclusivity often drives relationships, bloggers are no different, and if you explain how it’s relevant to them they’re much more inclined to help you out. .
- Let them know how you can benefit them. You won’t purchase a service or good unless it’s going to do something for you, why should they? Of course this means that a lot of them will have some sort of fee, but the right voice, from the right blogger can be more valuable than tens of thousands in traditional media buys. This is why it’s gravely important to do your homework and research who the best targets are.
- Once you’ve done your research and found your new blogger don’t rain them in with your methods and voice. They’re popular and have developed their audience base their way; as such they can’t be told how to say something…you have to let them be.