The reason it’s called social media influencer is because we want to turn you into someone who has influence. Someone other people look up to. It does not matter where you come from.
Old, young, rich, poor, male or female—it does not matter!
If you are an expert at anything on social media and have a following, you can make a living from it.
Whether you’re a newbie or an expert, the world of social media has become an exciting and dynamic place. With the right combination of effort and skill, it’s possible to build your own platform and turn your followers into loyal customers.
But what is it that makes some influencers stand out from the crowd? We’ve compiled a list of nine strategies that will help you do just that:
Know the Effective Strategies to Become a Top Social Media Influencer
Select Your Niche
To become a social media influencer, should you select your niche and speak only that?
Selecting your niche doesn’t mean you’re going to talk only that. Your social media accounts can talk about anything and everything you want.
But, your followers should know you for what you’re good at.
“Generalist is often forgotten, never a specialist.”
- What are you good at?
- Which topic are you comfortable with to talk or create content?
Ask yourself.
If you are more interested in skincare and makeup, then you’re a beauty influencer.
You have a good sense of fashion, fashion influencer. You travel often and have many stories to share, travel influencers.
Here’s an example of how to list your niche on the profile bio:
Source: Instagram
Narrow Down Your Comfortable Social Media Platform
Don’t come to the conclusion that being an influencer means you need to stay active and available on only one platform.
It’s not what I meant.
Here’s an example to understand better:
You get to post about your professional life, skills, or how-to-do’s on LinkedIn. You can also take an extra step in telling your followers about the struggles in your career path or what you learnt from your experiences.
But, posting your everyday life content or your political views on LinkedIn wouldn’t make sense.
Posting your everyday life content is mostly for Instagram, Snapchat, or Tiktok. And politics mostly suits twitter and even Instagram.
Here’s where selecting your niche helps. Your first step would help figure out which is your primary social media platform and the secondary’s are.
Set Target Audience
Before you can start to build your brand and influence, you need to know who your target audience is. So what is a target audience?
It’s everyone you want to reach with your content. You’ll want to define their problem that they are trying to solve and the solution you offer them.
You also need a value proposition for each of these segments (what is in it for them), as well as an unique selling proposition (USP) that makes you different from all other social media influencers out there.
Finally, think about what your overall brand promise will be so people can easily identify with what it stands for.
Create a Content Calendar
Consistency is extremely important when you aspire to be a social media influencer. When you start posting content on regular intervals, the social media algorithm will automatically push your accounts for others to see.
So, here comes a question, how to stay consistent? What are the effective ways to keep posting?
Preparing a content calendar is the right thing to do.
A content calendar is an essential tool for any social media influencer. It helps you plan and organize your posts and make sure that they’re timely, effective, and relevant to your audience.
The first step in creating a content calendar is to determine what the focus of your channel will be. What are the topics or themes that you want to cover?
Meaning, schedule how many static posts, or reels, or long content videos you can post every week. Planning this ahead will help you allocate time beforehand and post on the fixed day.
To prepare your content calendar you need to start brainstorming ideas. Research how fellow influencers are doing and what you want to do.
Don’t get intimidated by the term content calendar, as a fancy one to buy or difficult to prepare. It’s nothing but a calendar for the month and writing down the posts you’ve planned.
You can write it down in your notebook or create an excel sheet and prepare it.
The following is an example of a content calendar that you prepare in excel sheet:
Source: Webpik
There are a lot of templates online that you can download for free to prepare your content calendar.
Take Baby Steps Towards Generating Traffic
If you’re new to the game, it’s tempting to try and go for everything at once. But this is one of the most common mistakes people make when they first start their career as a social media influencer.
The truth is that unless you have millions of dollars behind you, there’s no point in trying to do everything at once.
Instead, focus on one platform at a time. Pick out your favorite channel and spend time building an audience there before moving on to another platform like Facebook or Twitter (if that’s even possible!).
If you feel overwhelmed by all of the followers who are watching your every move from across the interwebs, don’t worry! Your followers will come very slowly in the beginning (as they should), so if anything just remember this number: 5%.
That’s right—only 5% of your fans will ever see any content shared by any account on any platform because we’re talking about thousands upon thousands upon thousands of users!
So don’t sweat it if everyone doesn’t like what they see right away; just keep putting out great content consistently over time and eventually those numbers will rise exponentially!
Start Collaborating With Fellow Influencers
Here are a few effective steps to follow when:
- Collaborate with other influencers.
- Share each other’s content.
- Learn from each other.
- Make new friends! (Bonus points if they are fellow influencers.)
- Get more followers!
When said collaborate, let’s say a lifestyle brand is looking for influencers to do a marketing campaign.
You being a fashion influencer, you can sign up for the project when you get to work with a makeup influencer, photography influencer, and maybe someone who is into styling as well.
When such collaborations happen the exposure is immense. Let me tell you how your accounts are listed or tagged in fellow influencers accounts.
And if there are any fashion influencers on their followers list, your account might intrigue them and you get followed.
These types of collaborations help you learn and experience what the other influencer is doing and you can explore new ways to increase your organic growth.
Engage With Your Followers
Now that you are on the road to becoming a top influencer, there are a few things you need to keep in mind.
Respond to comments on your posts and direct messages. This is a must during any stage of your influencer journey. Your flowers are your primary audience. Taking effort to increase followers is fine but it’s vital not to lose the current ones.
Interact with other influencers through their posts, too. For example, if someone mentions you in their post or tags you in a picture, engage with them by commenting or liking their post (not an entire back and forth conversation).
This will show that they’re getting noticed by people who matter just as much as they do!
Make Your Contact Accessible For Brands
One of the biggest advantages of having a contact form on your website is that it will make it super easy for brands to get in touch with you and confirm their interest in working with you.
The chances of your being found on the social media channels by brands are high when you use the right keywords in your bio.
When you are a skincare influencer, add skincare enthusiasts or beauty influencer terms to your bio. This way when a user tries to find you using skincare or beauty influencer terms, you are likely to be found.
On the other hand if you are a food blogger and your collaborations take place only in the city you live in, mention that as well.
This helps local restaurants to reach out to you for brand collaborations.
The benefit of mentioning such terms on your bio is exposure. If you are not found, there are other multiple influencers who the brands can approach.
Source: Instagram
To be more visible, add the right keywords, and your contact details.
It’s also important that if any brands reach out directly via social media or email, that these messages are forwarded to your business email address so they don’t fall through the cracks.
Else, you can register yourself in an influencer marketing platform like Qoruz to get the exposure from brands that are looking forward to working with you.
Deliver What Promised
So, what to deliver here? When you start working with a brand, you both agree on a few deliverables for the campaigns.
You’ve been listening to the feedback and suggestions from the brand, but what about actually delivering?
Delivering on promises is critical. Not only does it show you are listening to their feedback, it also shows that you care about what they have to say. Your audience will appreciate this and be more likely to share their thoughts with you in the future.
If there are delays in delivering on your promise, keep in touch with your brand so they don’t think you have forgotten about them or about working together.
Communicate regularly with them so that they know what is going on and why there has been a delay (even if the reason isn’t totally under your control).
Insights
Being a social media influencer is all about making yourself visible to the world and establishing your presence on social media platforms. To do this, you need to be consistent with your content and make sure that what you’re posting is valuable for your followers.
Social media has created a whole new way for businesses to connect with their customers: which means we’re in an era where consumers want more than ever before! There’s never a bad time to get out there and see what the social media platforms has to offer.
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