The Impact of Social Media Influencers on Content Marketing Strategies

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Social media has had a huge impact on marketing, and businesses’ ability to find and collaborate with the right influencers has become as important as using ads. The impact of social media is especially strong in the content marketing world because people consume a lot of content through social media, and they trust influencers. When a friend introduces you to someone, you’re more likely to be open to a conversation than when approached by a random stranger, and this is the reason why influencer marketing is so effective.

Besides, some traditional approaches become less reliable. Paid advertising becomes more expensive, while its effectiveness decreases. Therefore, there’s no surprise that businesses try to increase their reach and conversions by using influencer marketing. According to research, influencer marketing has an 11 times higher ROI, and 40% of social media users say that they’ve purchased products online based on their favorite influencers’ recommendations.

Who Social Media Influencers Are

All social media influencers have a specific audience and niche. Some of them are celebrities with millions of active followers, and such influencers can help brands immediately reach a huge audience, but collaborating with such influencers can also be very expensive. There are also micro and nano-influencers, who can help brands that are looking for precise targeting. Generally, there are three major categories of influencers.

Macro-influencers

Many social media influencers have become internet celebrities. Influencers with 500,000 to millions of followers are called macro-influencers. They are extremely popular creators in their specific fields, although their audience may not always be highly engaged. Many macro-influencers are vloggers, podcasters, bloggers, and sports or show business celebrities.

Micro-influencers

Micro-influencers have a more narrow niche, with 20,000 to 400,000 followers. Their followers are always highly engaged, and collaborating with such influencers can help you deliver a perfectly targeted message. If you want your content to reach people who are actually interested in your type of product, collaborating with micro-influencers can be a great solution for your content distribution strategy.

Nano-influencers

Nano-influencers have fewer than 20,000 followers, but their audiences are always highly engaged, and they can effectively promote your products. Nano-influencers enable emerging brands to increase their ROI and conversions without investing a lot of money in marketing. Nano-influencers can create product reviews and other types of user-generated content. They can also share discounts and coupons.

How Influencer Marketing Works

Influencer marketing is a type of content marketing that implies collaboration between an influencer and a B2C or B2B business. Quite often, such collaboration involves co-creation of the content, which is a very effective solution because influencers can tailor your content to the preferences of their audience. However, influencers can also share your content as it is, or you can delegate the whole content creation process to an influencer.

If you want to create content yourself, you should perfectly understand the audience you’re dealing with, being able to communicate your message in the right way. Given that content creation involves a lot of writing, you may want to delegate this work to experienced freelance writers. For instance, you can find writers familiar with your industry on custom writing review websites like Writing Judge. 

Generally, it makes sense to create content yourself if you’re going to deliver a message about your brand values and mission. Quite often, the best solution is to delegate content creation to the chosen influencer and act as a supervisor rather than a co-creator. For example, influencers can create tutorial videos and product reviews. These types of content can be very effective, enabling your target audience to quickly evaluate the benefits of your product or service.

Of course, choosing the right influencers, measuring your ROI, tracking, and managing your collaborations can be very difficult and time-consuming. Fortunately, there are many useful tools that might help you. Here are some of the best tools for influencer marketing:

• AspireIQ
  This tool will help you search for the right influencers using a huge database of contacts. It also enables you to manage your relationships with influencers and monitor the performance of your campaigns and provides reports.

• BuzzSumo
  This is a content-focused tool. It enables you to enter keywords and search for relevant influencers. Besides, BuzzSumo includes metrics and reporting features. You can also use an open API to connect this tool to other web apps.

• Klear
  This is an all-in-one solution that enables you to search for influencers, manage your relationships with them, and measure the results of your campaigns. Thanks to the Klear Influencer Score, you can evaluate which of your potential partners are actually the most influential.

• HYPR
  This is another influencer marketing platform where you can choose from among more than 12 million influencers from different niches. You can check detailed statistics on influencers and measure different KPIs of your campaigns. This tool will also provide you with lots of demographics data.

• FamePick
  This is a live database of creators and influencers. All creators have their profiles that enable you to quickly figure out whether or not you should choose them for collaboration. FamePick also features an AI-driven matchmaking tool.

Influencers Are Shifting Their Focus, Brands Benefit

According to statistics, businesses gain up to $18 of earned media value for every dollar invested in influencers, with an average ROI of $5.20. Influencers now dominate the world of inbound marketing, and they realize their impact. Influencers have strong relationships with their followers, and their content is all about engaging with followers in a personal and authentic way. Therefore, there’s no surprise that many influencers decide to use their platform to not only make money but also make a positive impact in a more general context.

For example, the COVID-19 pandemic made influencers from different niches unite their efforts to grow awareness and to educate their followers about the issue. Many influencers started to talk about the importance of using masks and hand sanitizers. Authenticity and trust have always been the basis of influencer marketing, but the coronavirus pandemic made these factors even more important. Today, if a brand takes any authentic action, it can make a huge impact on the brand’s reputation in the long-term.

Brands like Dettol and Lifebuoy have launched multiple influencer campaigns since the beginning of the pandemic. Each campaign focused not on just promoting products but on teaching the audience hygiene and educating them about the disease, as well. Amazon also launched its Amazon Donate campaign and collaborated with dozens of influencers who published their videos on how to donate with Amazon. Of course, such a campaign promoted the brand, but its main focus was education. Educational content adds value, and its value grows even more what this content helps people make a difference.

The focus of influencer marketing shifts towards sharing content that goes beyond promoting products or services. It’s all about sharing ideas, building a dialogue, helping the community, and simply providing information that is actually useful. This trend can be very beneficial for brands because they can no longer be faceless companies. Influencer marketing gives you an opportunity to get closer to your potential customers and to build strong relationships with them.

Final Thoughts

The effectiveness of influencer marketing is unquestionable, but it might force many brands to reconsider their content marketing strategies. Influencer marketing is all about authenticity and engagement so you must make sure that your content will organically resonate with the audience. No matter whether you want to create content yourself, delegate this job to freelancers from custom writing review sites like Best Writers Online, or rely on influencers solely, you should know your audience and approach it in the most organic way possible.

Social media users trust influencers, and you can always find an influencer whose audience is likely interested in your products or services. Big companies may collaborate with macro-influencers, while small startups with limited budgets can still benefit from collaborating with nano-influencers. Influencer marketing offers great targeting opportunities, and it can boost your conversions when done right. If you want to improve your strategy or learn more about social media marketing, in general, here are some great sources that might help you.

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About the Author

Frank Hamilton has been working as an editor at essay review service Online Writers Rating. He is a professional writing expert in such topics as blogging, digital marketing and self-education. He also loves traveling and speaks Spanish, French, German and English.