Social media is home to the stars. And no, we’re not just talking about film stars or political leaders. We’re actually talking about people we encounter in our day-to-day life. People like you and me. Social media is home to seemingly normal people who’ve made it big and gotten famous by just using social media; creating a network of followers or loyal fans. These people are no ordinary folk. They’re social media influencers and trust me when I tell you, you want them playing on your team if you want your brand to get noticed.
If you’ve gotten the attention of a social media influencer, amassing a huge following will never a problem for your business. The process is simple, you build relationships with influencers who, in turn, help you build relationships with followers. Think about it like this: Influencers promote your content to their followers and by doing so, bring the attention of followers to what you’re trying to promote or sell.
Now to answer your question: how best can you get their attention? Should you target big or small social media influencers? Which one works best? Well, we’re going to answer all those questions for you in just a bit.
- Target your social media influencer
This is the first thing you need to consider. You need to figure out who will be your ideal social media influencer. Here’s a quick checklist to ensure you pick the right influencers:
- Check the relevance of the content they post
This is an important thing. You need to see if the influencer shares similar interests as yours. Check if you are in the same niche.
- Consider the reach of your target social media influencer
Evaluate to see if this social media influencer has a big or small online audience. Small media influencers can really do the job just as well as the famous ones, albeit with some time. The remedy is to reach out to not one small social media influencer, if possible reach out to at least three to five small influencers at a time to get noticed.
- Make a list of your chosen social media influencers
Write down all the social media influencers that have caught your attention. Write down as many as you want, then individually check their profiles, followers, content shared and reliability. After much observation, you should be able to condense the list down to your top 10-15 influencers you’d like to be associated with. Make a study of the kind of content they share on these platform and try to find a common thread that you can use as a conversation starter.
- Take action
This is where things start to get interesting because now’s the time you finally act on all the research you’ve been doing all along. Start by:
- Following the desired influencer.
- Share, retweet or quote their published content.
- Don’t forget to subscribe to their mailing list.
- Comment on their published content or blog posts. Make this a frequent occurrence.
- Quote their content in your own posts, while being sure to include your own point of view or your opinion to the subject matter being discussed. This is likely to get their attention and might even prompt them to write back to you, sparking a conversation or a discussion.
- Follow their followers. If they follow the influencer you’ve picked, they’re likely to be interested in the content you have to share as well.
- If you can sense you’ve become comfortable with each other, plan the perfect approach. Begin by sending them outreach emails to enquire about whether they’d be interested in sharing your content, while also making sure the content you share with them is interesting and well, worth sharing.
- Offer to guest post on their blog. Guest posting is effective in attracting new content readers and possible subscribers.
- Maintain a good relationship with your social media influencers
Now that you’ve established a connection with your influencers, you need to maintain the relationship you have with them. You still need to communicate with them and keep conversation lines open. Send out public acknowledgements, freebies, remember to congratulate them on their successes or wish them on important events such as birthdays, anniversaries etc. Engage and communicate with your influencers and never stop.
The trick is and always will be to strike up a conversation and keep it going. It’s time consuming, sure. And sometimes it’ll be harder to keep this up than expected. But trust me when I tell you, it’ll be well worth the wait!