No social media marketing strategy is complete these days without influencers. With their band of loyal followers, these real-world creatives have the ability to connect with customers in an honest, authentic way that traditional marketing strategies often don’t.
Whether influencers have been a part of your brand’s plans for a while, or if you’re looking to add them into your mix for the first time, these current trends of working with influencers will help to serve as a guide as you move forward.
1. Influencing Across Multiple Platforms
Influencers, or content creators, as they are often known, typically have a preferred social medium. Whether it’s a gorgeously curated Instagram, attention-grabbing TikToks or longer-form YouTube videos, these creatives have traditionally focused on building their following according to their strengths.
But now more than ever, a cross-posting trend has emerged. Influencers are utilizing multiple platforms to promote their work, like an Instagram story showcasing their latest YouTube content, or a TikTok video that doubles as a reel. Because of this, there is ample opportunity for their audience to see a partnership or promotion multiple times.
2. Videos
If we’ve said it once this year, we’ve said it about a thousand times: Your. Social. Media. Strategy. Must. Include. Videos. Luckily, any influencer worth your time will likely be very well-versed in creating attention-grabbing video content for their social platforms. While utilizing videos in your company’s regular social media marketing strategy is so important, videos created by influencers who love your brand brings a level of conversational authenticity that is certain to draw in customers.
They’ve worked hard to build relationships with their audience, and because of this, their approach often comes off as that of a close friend chatting with you over coffee. So, if they say, “Hey, I found this really cool product that I think you’ll just love,” their audience is apt to listen.
3. Micro-Influencers
Quantity…or quality? These days, all trends point to the latter, even in the influencer sphere. For quite some time, celebrity endorsements on social media have seemed like a holy grail of sorts—after all, who wouldn’t want someone like Taylor Swift, who has over 200 million Instagram followers, showcasing their brand? But consumers are becoming disillusioned with celebrities touting products and are connecting more with content creators who have much smaller followings (think 25,000 or less).
It makes a lot of sense. Micro influencers are much more relatable than celebrities, and thus more trustworthy when it comes to recommending products. They often operate in niches that allow brands to find a much better fit for a partnership. They’re good for marketing budgets, too, as brands can often afford to work with a few micro-influencers at a time instead of one big-named celebrity influencer. As you look for a micro-influencer that fits your brand, take note of their curated content, their audience makeup and who else they may have partnered with in the past.
PRO TIP: Make sure the influencer you are looking to work with resonates with your brand AND has your ideal target audience. Stay away from picking an influencer just because of their following, you want to make the most out of the partnership!
4. Building Long-Term Relationships
Gone are the days when companies and influencers operated with single-post agreements. Now, building long-term relationships with these creators is key—and it benefits everyone involved. Instead of taking a once-and-done approach, try making a package agreement with your influencers that covers a certain amount of posts over a period of time.
5. Influencer-to-Influencer Collaborations
Another great thing about influencers is that they have built a pretty strong collaborative community among themselves, which lends itself to some pretty cool partnership options. It’s like this: You find an influencer you want to work with, and you see that they have a good working relationship with another content creator. Together, they have collaborated on projects which they have shared with both of their respective groups of followers, which means that each has essentially doubled their reach. So why not partner with both together? They’ll have the opportunity to create more collaborations and your brand will benefit from reaching twice as many people. Just be sure that both creators are a good fit for your products.
Influenced
Among all of these emerging influencer marketing trends, one common element that your brand should keep in mind is authenticity. Now more than ever, audiences are expecting real, honest marketing, especially from influencers. So, above all, make sure that you partner with a content creator who is truly a good fit for your brand, and you’ll be sure to build a relationship that’ll make waves!
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