How to Build Strong Social Relationships With Influencer Marketing (Infographic)

How to Build Strong Social Relationships With Influencer Marketing (Infographic)

Influencer marketing should be part of every brand’s marketing strategy, yet far from the majority of brands are implementing into their strategies even though influencer marketing has shown time and time over that it dominates the marketing game with tremendous marketing results.

In this article, we’ll be discussing how you can build social relationships with influencers, and go more into detail of how and why you should use influencer marketing. Last but not least, we’ll teach you how to approach an influencer to build long-lasting relationships, and to finish it off, we’ll take a look at the infographic below.

How to Build Strong Social Relationships With Influencer Marketing (Infographic)

First of all, what is influencer marketing?

SproutSocial describes influencer marketing in the following way:

“An influencer is someone who has an active following and can move their followers to take action”

And that is exactly what you as a brand can take advantage of. By working with influencers who can move their followers to take action, you can present your products in a genuine and natural way by trusted individuals and therefore make a much bigger impact with your ad, compared to regular display ads which no one seems to trust anymore.

There are different types of influencers:

1. Popular Youtubers

These are individuals who share videos on YouTube on a regular basis and make themselves the stars of the show. By presenting themselves as someone who is trusted and has authority in their niche, the YouTube influencer slowly starts to build up credibility and trust in their niche, leading to them becoming a go-to source and thought leader.

When this happens, people start to look up to them, wanting to become like the influencer. This makes it super easy for YouTube influencers to market a product as a lot of people will want to buy it when the recommendation comes from the influencer they look up to.

2. Social Media Experts

Social Media experts are just what it sounds like, experts on social media who knows how to leverage social media to their advantage in order to grow, build influence and trust.

3. Bloggers

Bloggers are influencers who have an own website where they write about things in their niche. Common subjects for influencers are fashion, travel, lifestyle, and beauty.

Bloggers usually don’t only have a blog and are often active on other social media platforms as well. It is common that blogging influencers have first built their influence and trust with social media platforms and then started their blog once they started to get some traction.

4. Famous people

It is very debatable if famous people should be classified as influencers but as they influence people, they are influencers in one way. Celebrities are often extremely expensive for brands to work with, and in addition, their followers are normally not very targeted. Not long ago, Kylie Jenner did an ad for Pureleef facial cleaner. Undoubtedly, the brand had to pay a lot for the endorsement, however many people have complained that celebrities endorsements feels so fake and are so easy to look right through.

In addition, the product which Kylie Jenner endorsed is dedicated for women, yet more than half of her followings are men who will never buy the product. This means that the cost per actual follower who is the target audience of the brand is very high.

Compared to influencers and micro-influencers where most of their followers are laser-targeted, celebrity influencers are not very cost-effective for brands.

What about the benefits of influencer marketing?

The benefits of influencer marketing are plenty.

First of all, influencers help you gain more credibility.

Because the influencers have built their trust over a long period of time by having constant dialogues with their audience and becoming the go-to source for people in their niche, influencers have a lot of credibility when promoting a brand. When they recommend a brand, the brand will get instant credibility because they’re recommended by a trusted source.

Influencers also let you gain access to larger audiences.

Because influencers have actively built their audience and followers base, they often have a lot of them. AND, very targeted such.

Brands could spend money on inefficient marketing ways such as TV ads and Newspaper ads but nothing is more powerful than getting a word of recommendation from an influencer, and get exposure in front of all their followers.

Influencers also give you user-generated content.

When you partner up with influencers, they are often the ones creating the content. This means that you get access to fresh new content that you can use, and content that a lot of people will recognize because it is created by a famous influencer.

With influencers, you also get more social influence, new leads, and customers.

As we discussed earlier, by getting a recommendation from someone who is trusted, that trust will be carried over to you as well. This will of course also lead to more new leads and ultimately customers thanks to the recommendation of the influencer.

Well, the statistics speak quite clearly.

For every 1 dollar invested in influencer marketing, brands see a $6.50 return. Not bad!

Influencer marketing is also the fastest growing method of acquiring new customers. And, it is the most cost-effective customer acquisition method.

This is what marketers say:

• 51% of marketers believe that they acquire better customers through influencer marketing.
• 50% of marketers us influencer marketing to generate leads and sales.
• Blogging is the top platform for influencer marketing.
• 59% of marketers plan to increase their influencer marketing budgets.

The last statistic speaks very clear that the majority of marketers who are using influencer marketing finds it effective.

What are the traits of a good influencer?

When choosing influencer, there are some things you have to take into consideration, so you get the best results possible.

Here are the top traits of a good influencer that you should look for when choosing them:

1. Authentic. 

Influencers need to be authentic because if they’re not, they’ll lose their trust quite quickly. This means that influencers shouldn’t work with every single brand who approaches them. Instead, make sure that the brands who are approaching them aligns with their core values because the followers of the influencer will be able to tell quite quickly when the ad campaign isn’t genuine. For example, a beauty influencer who all of a sudden start promoting skate boards.

2. Active

Influencers need to share content regularly to keep their followers updated.

3. Engaging

If an influencer doesn’t engage with their audience, they will have a hard time building genuine trust. Check so that the influencer has conversations with their audience and responds to all their questions.

4. Expertise

The influencer should be a thought leader in its industry and be an authority figure.

5. Leadership

Because influencers are industry leaders, they should be able to get topics trending instead of following others.

How to approach influencers

When approaching influencers, it’s important that you do it the right way.

There are two ways to approach influencers.

Firstly, there is the direct approach, and secondly, we have the slow and steady approach.

The direct approach includes approaching an influencer directly asking for a partnership.

The slow and steady approach means first developing a relationship with the influencer and then progress into working with each other.

More on these approaching ways in the end of this infographic.

Image courtesy: SproutSocial