How to Leverage Influencer Work in Your PR Strategy

Gone are the days spent flipping through our favorite magazines, taking quizzes and picking out our next must-have items. Today, most of us will find ourselves scrolling through social media, whether it’s TikTok, Instagram, or Pinterest, looking for the latest news, products, style, and beauty recommendations. While this is great and means access to everything we need 24/7 as a consumer, this also means that communication professionals must shift their focus from traditional to “new” PR with an emphasis on influencer strategies.

By building a sense of community and trust, influencers can impact consumer behavior, which creates a huge opportunity for PR professionals. Here are some ways you can add influencer partnerships to your PR strategy to bring it to the next level:

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User-Generated Content

Through influencer partnerships, you gain great user-generated content (UGC) that can be repurposed on your brand’s social channels. While you work on the backend to help create guidelines and talking points for this, UGC comes across as more natural and genuine rather than a paid advertisement. Even though it is to be expected that most of this time this kind of work is paid, popular, trustworthy influencers are typically known for working with brands that they truly believe in and use themselves, which in turn helps create more of a positive feeling from consumers.

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Micro-Influencers

Many times, you’ll see clients look at the total number of followers before looking at anything else when it comes to deciding which influencer they’d like to work with. Still, if you have worked in social media before, you will see that’s not the only indicator for the best bang for your buck. While a higher follower count might look nice at first glance, micro-influencers with a smaller follower count are usually more beneficial because they yield higher and better engagement results. Micro-influencers can interact with their followers more easily, creating a stronger relationship and higher levels of trust.

Social Media Takeovers

A static post or reel on an influencer’s page is great for gaining brand awareness, but another great tool to implement is a social media takeover. This means working with an influencer who will take the reins of your social media account, usually Instagram, for a predetermined amount of time – this can be from a few hours to a 24-hour takeover. In this situation, influencers will tell their audience to follow your brand’s page, so they don’t miss the upcoming takeover, which helps increase your follower count and brand awareness. This gives a fun, behind-the-scenes look, and these followers will usually continue to follow your brand even after the takeover.

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Drill Down ?

Today, there are thousands, if not millions, of influencers for every category from fashion and beauty to food, travel and hospitality. With so many different influencers out there, consumers can pick and choose who they want to follow based on what their specific interests are. Keeping this in mind, influencer partnerships allow a brand to hone in on its target audience by choosing which influencer they want to work with to help reach their goal by getting in front of the right audience.

While PR has traditionally focused on earned media relations, it’s clear that leveraging social media and influencer partnerships is also necessary to build brand awareness. It may seem daunting, but adding this to your PR tool kit can help you achieve your goals and is a great asset to have on hand.

Want to learn more about how to reach your goals? Make sure to follow along or reach out to us HERE to schedule some time to talk!

?This post was authored by the team at Impact PR & Communications .

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