7 reasons why your business could benefit from social influencers

Social Influencers have taken over the media, but what is a Social Influencer? A social influencer is someone who has built a large audience on social platforms such as Instagram, YouTube, TikTok and on occasion, Facebook. An Influencer’s core role is to work with brands to deliver content to reach the end goal of generating more sales and raising brand awareness. Previously, an Influencer was a celebrity or a famous figure splashed all over the tabloids or in magazines, however, now it can be anyone who creates engaging social content that attracts a large following. 

So, how can influencers benefit you and your brand?

Well, 93% of marketers have used influencers,so you certainly don’t want to get left behind. But firstly, there are a few considerations before you contemplate using a Social Influencer as part of your marketing strategy, such as the type of influencer that would be most suitable for your brand. This is important as most influencers have their own niche, so you wouldn’t want to select someone who doesn’t advertise your brand in the most beneficial and authentic way. Another consideration is the social platform. Depending on the demographic, brand and content, the platform may vary. The demographic of daily active users on Facebook goes up to 65+ years whereas TikTok, Instagram and YouTube have a younger audience ranging from 14-45 years of age when it comes to daily active users. It’s important to identify who your audience is so you know which platforms will be best suited. 

Remember, it’s still important to have a presence across multiple social platforms, and just the one that works best for reaching your audience and personas.

Another key consideration before you start reaching out to influencers is research . It is vital to do your research on potential influencers to represent your brand as they could just be an overnight sensation. An overnight sensation in influencer terms is when someone posts a piece of content that gets a lot of attraction and increases their following massively. The reason to have Social Influencers incorporated into your brand strategy is to promote your brand through someone who is seen as trustworthy by their followers, and who influences their followers to buy the products or services they are promoting. A Social Influencer who has 30k followers but has an influence over what people purchase and a good relationship with their followers would be more beneficial than someone who has 100K or over followers (known as a Macro Influencer) who may post funny videos that have the purpose of entertaining people, but not the purpose of influencing people to buy certain things. Micro-Influencers are expected to play a bigger role in the future due to their audiences being more engaging and therefore more likely to take action.

Now, onto the 7 ways in which your business could benefit from Social Influencers.

1. Brand awareness

Social Influencers are a valuable asset when it comes to raising brand awareness. In other words, they can help get your brand out there by posting content showing your latest product or service you are offering. When an Influencer has a large and engaged following, what they post will reach a large amount of people which will result in their audience becoming familiar with the brands that they are using consistently and start to recognise them. But don’t forget the Micro-Influencers. They can often be a better fit for your brand if you are wanting people to interact with the content that you are posting via the Influencer. Micro-Influencers tend to experience more interaction with the followers (including back and forth conversations) as their audience know they are more likely to receive a response compared to Macro-Influencers.

2. Credibility and trust

Social Influencers are trustworthy in the eyes of their followers. If it’s good enough for an influencer, then it’s good enough for them is often the motto they go by. If an influencer seems to be enjoying the product/service they are promoting, it leaves a subconscious thought in their audience’s minds. When it comes to a comparison of two different brands that someone may be choosing, if they have seen one of their favourite influencers using a certain brand, their opinion will be biassed towards that one. 

The power of reviews. As many of you will most likely look at reviews before purchasing a product, or at least acknowledge how important reviews can be to potential consumers, a Social Influencer fits under the same category. Your chosen Influencer would be reviewing the product and telling people what they like best about it, which saves people time looking through lots of reviews. 

3. Cost-effective 

Rather than paying for multiple ads to go live on each different platform, you can pay for an influencer to create the content, and then post it on all their social platforms for one price. It can often work out as a cheaper way of marketing your latest products and services, and is a quicker process and route to getting your message out there.

4. Boost engagement 

A common aim for many brands (especially ones that sell products) is for people to be asking questions. Also, the more engagement a post promoted by an influencer gets, the more likely it is going to come up on many people’s explore pages due to the algorithms. An example of this is on Instagram. If someone that you follow is engaging in a post by an influencer, it is likely that the algorithm will think you are both interested in the same thing and show it on your page. If someone just scrolls past an ad without any engagement, then it is not as likely to end up on a user’s page.

5. Reaches target audience

In accordance with reason 4, the algorithm enables you to reach your target audience. Even people that don’t necessarily follow an influencer, the post will be shared around and will end up on explore pages (pages that are shown to you based on what you interact with) of people that would be interested and are likely to purchase your product. After completing your research in who will be the best Social Influencer or Influencers to represent your brand, the majority of their followers will be your target audience, it’s a simple and effective way to reach your target market.

6. Generates leads 

Once you have reached your target audience, you will have reached more potential leads which then increases the chance of conversion. As mentioned earlier, when you have selected the influencer with the niche that best suits your brand, who have followers who will like similar things, they are more likely to be the ones to interact more, make purchases and click on links to indicate they are thinking of purchasing the products. You can keep track of who is showing more interest by the comments on your chosen influencers post and you can retarget them or see if there is a pattern in the users that are interested.  

7. Improves content strategy 

A successful content strategy should include a variety of things to optimise in the most effective way. As time goes on, we have more and more social channels available to us, so let’s utilise them. Of course, you don’t want to rely solely on influencers to improve your content strategy, however, they are a great addition to improve your results for the future. The Social Influencer Marketing industry is predicted to reach a worth of £13.4 billion in 2022, and this is because it has benefited hundreds and thousands of brands that have incorporated Social Influencers into their content strategy. Full time jobs have now been created to just find influencers due to the return on investment, so it’s definitely worth giving a try.

In summary, using Social Influencers as part of your marketing strategy can be a really effective and impactful way of reaching and engaging with your target audience. It’s important to get the right alignment between your brand, and the Social Influencer’s, as collaboration between brands and Social Influencers that don’t appear to be authentic and look as though the Influencer is just taking cash from any old brand, will be picked up on by the audience and won’t deliver the results you’re expecting. Think of Social Influencers as an extension to your media plan, consider them as much as you would the placement of a full page press ad. 

If you’re interested in using Social Influencers to meet some of your KPIs, the Next Chapter team can assist and support in creating and delivering a Social Influencer strategy. Get in touch via the websiteor give us a quick call on 01423 313 134.