How to kickstart your influencer marketing journey from scratch
Ravindra Lattoo
Dynamic Sales Leader: 12+ Years Sales Experience, 4+ Years in Team Leadership
Let's talk today about How to kickstart your influencer marketing journey from scratch?
A lot of influencers get burned out by the no. of platforms to keep up, the pressure to remain relevant in content & the constant run to chase creator metrics. So, a lot of influencers leave their content creation journey in the middle.
The purpose is not to compare your journey with other creators & influencers. In my case the purpose & first priority is to learn new skills, express my perspectives & remain authentic as a voice on LinkedIn. So deep dive within yourself, figure out your purpose to be on platform & your purpose + persona can vary from platform to platform & it's okay to do that, just ensure that you don't sound artificial in the process.
So, if you are overwhelmed by what content to post every time, decide on a few content pillars say for e.g., Personal branding. Now either you can club your or client experience on personal branding & write totally original articles published 1st time on internet or you can consume content on this pillar by searching the term "personal branding" in search bar or by?#personalbranding ?on major social media platforms.
And then you create a long form content be it a YouTube video/Blog/Newsletter on LinkedIn/Beehive and thereafter just chop the content in short form - Tweets/Reels/Insta stories/Snapchat stories/TikTok/YouTube shorts & you can even redirect that traffic to the source you want - Newsletter, YouTube channel etc. To summarize decide on your content pillar, create the raw content or consume the content to create the content & chop it further to SFV's.
As an influencer, treat yourself as a social media manager working for someone or consider yourself as a media company. There is an element of commitment to your content creation journey.
As an influencer, it's important to broadcast & market yourself without shame. There is no room for shyness, my friend. So, build up a client portfolio on paid or unpaid basis & earn the bragging rights here on social media. A lot of folks here would take a note of you on social media & connect you for collabs & deals.
A lot of influencers start their journey on passion or sheer creativity but going forward they need to understand the math & business of running influencer marketing campaigns.
Understand & relate with the brand, understand the campaign purpose, decode the campaign brief, understand the time & money estimated to produce content, understand the scope of work & contract legalities, understand what metrics is brand interested in, raising bills to clients post campaign, understanding credit period & payment terms - what % advance & what% after, understand the non - payment terms, developing insights from the campaign, collecting & presenting metrics from the campaign & sustain a professional relationship with agencies/brands/influencer marketing platforms for further business of brand deals & collabs.
Be authentic in your campaign delivery & measurements. Esp for videos, you need to have proper background either at your place or contextually relevant location, develop a story based on brand ask & be sincere in the journey of execution.
What happens when influencer rides on quick buck scheme without authenticity or you don't understand being yourself as a commercial brand deal media company? This results in publish of irrelevant content which is coming from an incomplete understanding of brand ask & irregular posting frequency leading to audience disconnect & confusion.
What's the best time to post across platforms? Most of the influencers get this question & that's valid to improve the metrics based on timing. As per one trusted source, the best time to post across platforms are Tuesday/Wednesday/ Thursday - 10 am. For Meta, it is Tuesday/Thursday - 8 to 12 pm. For Instagram, it is Wednesday - 11 am & Twitter it is Monday/Thursday - 8 am.
How to increase engagement as an influencer? Engagement is a critical part of being an influencer & they are judged & classified by metrics most of the times. To begin have 1-2 content pillars, start with 1-2 platforms & be consistent with that & gradually expand to other platforms. Just optimize & complete your social media profiles first. Compare personal & business profile benefits & switch to business profile if the benefits are more. Make content actionable with relevant call to actions & interact with audience that's known as earned engagement. Also, you can connect with likeminded influencers of the same industry & engage with each other. This way you expand your audience also. You can use pay to play communities if you have money to splurge & you can use engagement trails in telegram & discord channels.
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Few mandatory investments I suggest before becoming a full-time serious influencer - Buy an iPhone/dslr or any premium quality phone with great snap & video taking ability. Buy a ring light that illuminates & highlights you in the image/video, a Bluetooth camera remote for convenience & a third party social media software for batch content planning in content calendars, batch content upload before publish & get content pre - approved from brand/agency before publishing. This saves your time & makes you effective in your journey.
Beware a lot of brands use fraudulent follower count clause in influencer marketing contracts & this may turn out to non - payments if brands are able to find source of your engagement factory during or after the campaign.
If you don't understand anything in campaign, don't assume but ask brand or agency. Be clear on campaign deliverables, content concept for promotion, product or service benefits, caption guidelines, post guidelines & hashtag usages. Understand what the brand really expects from you & take the brand feedback pre & post campaign.
How to get the first paid campaign from brand? Few ways to approach a brand - brand’s website/brand’s email address/brand manager’s email address/ brand social media handles/influencer platforms/agencies/influencers associated with the brand.
Before reaching out to brand, you need to do some homework & then do email outreach. Understand brand target audience, Why you want to work with them, what are you loving about the brand, what you can offer them & bring evidence of engagement & experience of past campaigns - case studies, develop media kit of 1-3 pages maximum, your purpose of being an influencer, your detailed campaign metrics & be very professional in your communication.
So once brands consider you for the campaign, thereafter you should define how will you work commercially with brands - paid posts - single or multiple /product seeding/perishable content - Instagram/ Snapchat stories & just organic unpaid posts & stories.
Celebrity & Mega influencers charge brands on the basis of reach i.e., no. of followers. But mid-tier, nano & micro influencers cannot charge on followers. The good news is that not all brands partner with celeb & mega influencers, a lot of them partner with other category of influencers because they bring either earned genuine quality engagement because of stickiness with their followers. So as nano/micro/mid-tier influencers you can charge brands on engagement.
As small influencers how to do paid partnership with brands - Link in bio/Link in 1st comment/Link in caption/crafting a brand campaign with series of posts/social amplification & cross virality on other platforms/exclusivity/content usage rights are few paid ways to reach out to brands.
If you have any concerns & queries, happy to answer them. Get started!
#influencermarketing ?#influencer ?#influencermarketingagency ?#influencermarketingstrategy ?#contentcreators ?#creatoreconomy
Attorney At Law at CIVIL COURT CASES
1 年Very nice
Entrepreneur
1 年Hi, we know currently all the management done for influencer marketing campaigns is on sheets and it's not easy to manage and keep track of campaigns and influencers. We are going to launch a platform where agencies can easily manage their influencers and campaigns efficiently. To make it more useful to agencies, we would love to hear from you about the problems you face in managing campaigns and influencers through sheets. We will be selecting 10 agencies for the beta version who will get early access to all the features for free. If you are interested, write to us on [email protected]
Next Trend Realty LLC./wwwHar.com/Chester-Swanson/agent_cbswan
1 年Thanks for sharing.