Should I Use Social Media Influencers To Grow My Business?

Your business is active on social media, and you’re seeing some great engagement and traffic to your site. But you may be wondering if you should jump on the social media influencer trend and approach a well-known name in your industry to do a little stumping for your brand.

But first, you have a couple of questions:

Just How Influential Are These People?

The short answer is that it depends on just how broad their reach is. Micro-influencers reach the fewest people (under 100,000) but they have, by far, the highest engagement levels at around 25%-50% engagement with every post. Mega-influencers, who may number in the millions, have only 2% to 5% engagement with each post.

And this differentiation may be irrelevant in your industry. There may be only so many people even involved in selling emulsion metalworking lubricants, for instance, so mega-influencers simply don’t exist in your niche.

Does It Really Make a Difference?

You bet. Peer reviews and word-of-mouth recommendations are far more powerful than other types of advertising. Forty-nine percent of consumers say they rely on influencers’ recommendations to make purchasing decisions.

Partnering with an influencer can also improve your credibility because your brand is being highlighted by someone your audience trusts. In addition, the influencer gets your brand seen by a broader audience than what you would reach with a typical post.

Now that you’re convinced that influencers have a valuable benefit to your brand, how should you go about utilizing one? There are a few ways to incorporate an influencer into your marketing:

• When you’re debuting a new product line, send them a sample and ask them to review it.
• Pay an influencer to write a guest blog or a series of guest blogs.
• You can ask an influencer to appear on your podcast or a live video with you.
• Ask an influencer to share one or two of your best pieces of content.

You may have a clear idea of which influencer aligns well with your brand, your target audience and your budget, but if not, there are some ways you can identify who the strong voices are in your industry. The best approach is simply to search on sites like Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram with key industry-related phrases to see which posts are trending. You’ll start to see which influencers have the most traction when they post.

Then you simply reach out to the influencer. It may seem a little awkward, but influencers often receive requests like this, and they likely have an existing policy for what they are willing to promote and whether they will charge to do it.

To learn more about the role of influencers in your marketing plan, contact us at DirectMail.io. We offer an all-in-one marketing platform that’s flexible, easy to use and brings powerful features to your marketing strategy.