Firstly, influencer marketing is one of the most successful strategies to broaden your company’s reach, boost your industry’s legitimacy, and promote yourself as a thought leader in your sector.
Secondly, you’ll learn tactics for becoming an influencer in your profession, finding other influencers, and using your influencing talents to encourage people to pay attention to what you have to say in this article.
But before we get into it, let’s first define influencer marketing.
What Is Influencer Marketing and How Does It Work?
Influencer marketing is a strategy for leveraging an individual’s status within your company to raise the company’s overall profile and reputation. Moreover, many influencers use their power and influence to start their own enterprises or consultancies.
Many of the world’s most powerful influencers well known by their organisations’ names. Larry Kim, the company’s founder and Chief Technology Officer, is a thought leader in the sponsored search, content marketing, and social media arenas. Larry talks at conferences all over the world, and his considerable knowledge and thought leadership in the search industry has raised not only his own but also WordStream’s image.
Influencer marketing, on the other hand, isn’t just about using someone’s image to boost sales. Influencer marketing is more typically about establishing that person as a trusted authority in their field and defining the dialogues that revolve around that topic; in Larry’s case, sponsored search, content marketing, and social media.
So, what is influencer marketing if it uses a single person’s standing to influence others but isn’t primarily utilised to generate leads or raise sales? How do you go about becoming an influencer? And how can you design marketing campaigns that target industry influencers?
Here are eight influencer marketing methods that will boost your industry’s awareness and make people want to learn more about you.
1. Influencer Marketing Strategy: Identify Industry Influencers
You should identify – and follow – these significant people to see what they’re talking about, even if you already know who the movers and shakers are in your profession.
Where can you look for influencers?
The easiest approach to locate influencers is through social media. Besides, search by topic to find out who is participating in conversations and who is making their voice heard. Check out who influential individuals follow and who they follow. Participate in frequent industry-related talks (for example, the weekly #ppcchat Twitter chat).
You can sort the results by page and domain authority, followers, retweet ratio, and average retweets, among other factors.
Other methods for identifying influencers in your sector exist. Look for conferences that are relevant to your sector and look at the speaker lineup. Have you ever noticed how the same persons appear as columnists and guest posters in a range of business publications? These people are most likely influences. In your field, what names do you hear over and over again?
With just a little research, you can rapidly compile a list of influencers to follow and listen to.
2.Shape the Conversation is the second influencer marketing strategy.
It’s crucial to understand the difference between advocating for a cause or a topic area and being influential before you can become one. You can be the world’s biggest supporter of content marketing, but that doesn’t make you a content marketing influencer.
Furthermore, you must shape and define the topic, not just advocate for whatever is being discussed, to be seen as a legitimate influencer in a certain area. Are you posing questions that no one else has considered (or dared to pose), or are you simply rehashing what others have said? Is your perspective on a topic truly unique, or are you simply rehashing what everyone else has said? Do your thoughts and opinions on your industry challenge current conventions, or do they get lost in the shuffle?
You must define the discourse, not merely nod your head, if you want to become an influencer and reach those who are already considered significant in your area.
3. Own Your Niche is the third influencer marketing strategy.
You must own your area if you want to become an authority in your field. It’s not enough to know a lot about a few topics; you need to focus on one hyper-specific topic and make it your own.
Larry began describing the AdWords Quality Score algorithm a few years ago. Some scoff at Larry’s efforts on Quality Score, stating that it wasn’t essential enough to deserve the time and effort he was putting into it.
They were mistaken.
Larry’s look at Quality Score and what it implies for AdWords marketers is a great example of niching down. Rather of writing about paid search in general (and hosting webinars and speaking at conferences), Larry carved out his own niche by narrowing his focus to Quality Score. They regarded Larry now as one of the world’s foremost experts on paid search, but he started with an already specialised issue and went to work establishing himself as an authority in one of several niches – one that many others had disregarded or dismissed.