Marketing changes fast — really fast. From the early days of print, radio, and television to digital marketing today, its evolution is undeniable. Today, social media is the brave new world of marketing, with social media influencers becoming the biggest movers and shakers when it comes to getting your brand out there.
Social influencers are just weird if you think about it. These aren’t marketers in and of themselves — they’re just people that are literally famous on the internet. But social influencers have incredible power, and that power is changing digital marketing.
What Do Social Influencers Do?
Social influencers pretty much do what it says on the tin: they have such a big follower count that they can influence thousands of people at a time with a single tweet or post. In the case of celebrities that have millions of online followers, a major social influencer can make or break a company by either coming out in favor of a product or service — or by saying something negative about it.
As a result, allying with a social influencer can be a major boon to any marketer. You can often “sponsor” up-and-coming influencers, often providing merchandise or services to them for little to no cost, in exchange for them to promote your brand. Even just supplying sample product to an influencer for them to review can help spread your brand message.
Why Influencer Marketing Works
Social media marketing, especially influencer marketing, works great as a platform. Yet there are some things that you need to keep in mind: influencer marketing only works if your influencer, and by extension, your brand, focus on honesty and transparency.
If you’re promoting your services in an effort to encourage others to buy blog content from you, for example, be up-front and honest about how difficult it is for non-writers to create content. Make sure you ally with an influencer that also stresses how important such a service is. Plagiarism is a major problem over the internet, and passing off original content as your own without acknowledging the role that content creators make can sink a social influencer’s status — and the status of any brand associated with them.
Social Influencers Are Your Friends
Digital marketing today is all about social media. Social influencers are integral to pushing your brand into the spotlight and keeping it there, but doing so takes a major effort to ensure the influencers you partner with are well-respected and that they have enough social reach for such a partnership to benefit you. If you’re marketing your web design services, for example, you’ll need to find an influencer that has a large following in that industry.
Additionally, with the premium that social media users place on honesty and transparency, it’s important that you keep your influencer relationships as straightforward as possible. Show influencers that your brand provides an important benefit or value while also being open about the things that matter to an influencer and their followers provides excellent opportunities that look and feel authentic. Doing so provides your brand legitimacy, and this creates even more marketing opportunities going forward.
Social influencers aren’t going to disappear overnight. In fact, the reach of influencer marketing is likely to extend even further as social media becomes even more prevalent in our society. Do your best to adapt to this digital marketing environment if you want your own marketing efforts to take off. If you can catch this tiger by the tail, you’ll have a much wider audience for any products or services you choose to market in the future.
