What You Need To Know About Digital Influencer Marketing

Digital influencers are key leaders who have a major reach in the social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram etc. These people due to their knowledge and intelligence have gained the trust of a large number of followers on social media. These leaders are now being used by business houses to spread the word about products and services. Rather than marketing directly to a large group of target customers, it is a better idea to hire influencers to put the word out for business houses. This process is known as influencer marketing.

How Influencer Marketing Works

Usually digital marketing experts combine two other forms of marketing with influencer marketing – content marketing and social media marketing. In most of the influencer campaigns there is a touch of social media marketing because this is how the influencers also spread the word through their personal social media channels. A lot of influencer campaigns also have an element of content marketing where most digital marketing companies supply the content to the influencers.

Some people may consider influencer marketing to be a kind of word of mouth publicity. However, there is lot of differences between the two. Influencer marketing engages the key individuals or influencers as they are known to make use of their influence among friends and family, the real avenue by which the communication takes place is word of mouth marketing. Whereas influencer marketing includes word of mouth publicity, but is it not so the other way around. Word of mouth marketing may not use influencers who are respected and trusted by their followers.

Why Influencer Marketing Is Becoming Popular

According to studies made in 2018 only 4% people trust celebrities endorsing a brand of product or service but now the scenario has completed changed. People have started trusting superstars and celebrities to look for recommendation from people who are knowledgeable and credible. This is where the influencers come into the picture. These people through their earlier interaction with their followers already have their trust. All a company needs to do is cash in on that trust. When it is pertaining to any advice, most people would trust a peer more than any so called expert. The influencers are seen as peers by their followers and therefore their word is trusted.

How to Become an Influencer

Most people would want to become influencers, but for this you need to have done your homework. This is because influencers are the people who have a following of thousands of people on any social media platform. The influencers who have less than 100 thousand followers are called micro influencers and most companies prefer these people. You need to share valuable information with your followers. Due to these reasons influencer marketing is the in thing right now. The best part is that you will get paid to find your influence on your followers and then use the same to push the brands that collaborate with you. Sometimes, the influencers are expected to create their own content while other times the content is supplied by the digital marketing agency of the product or service you are promoting.

The first thing to do is choose your niche, and choose your target audience carefully. This way most influencers start out by promoting the niche that they are passionate about. Moreover, here you need to make sure that you stick to a particular industry and niche. It is also important to pick your social media platform carefully. Currently LinkedIn and Instagram are the most prominent social networking sites with many followers. However, there may be other platforms on which you could achieve the desired result. Hence conduct a proper research regarding the social media platform you prefer. It is also important to create a holistic persona of a target audience. This clearly means that you need to pick your followers carefully.

You need to also look out for other influencers who are bigger than you and if you reach out to them, some of them may open the doors for you and you can collaborate with them in the future. The content that you create is also popular and Facebook and LinkedIn allow the maximum flexibility among the social media channels when it comes to content creation. On the other hand Instagram and YouTube only focus on a specific kind of content. You should also not go overboard with the number of social media channels and it is advisable to stick to maximum 3 channels in order to achieve best results with lesser effort.

How Much You Can Earn As An Influencer

Most major brands are  allocating a large portion of their marketing budgets to influencers. According to experts fashion bloggers, gym instructors etc. are the future of digital marketing. Earlier influencers could only hope to earn some extra income on the side, but nowadays it has become a bona fide career path. In fact nowadays there are influencer marketing agencies that cater to many large and small brands. These agencies make big money and charge anything from $100 per post to even high amounts like $10,000 per post. This kind of high earning is possible when you have more than one million followers and a strong influencer marketing network.

What you earn as influencers depends on you and the number of followers that you have. A micro influencer is a person who has 10k to 50k followers and this type of influencer is much in demand. The income on YouTube is better if you are a gaming expert. People who are known as nano influencers can expect to earn $30,000 to $60,000 in a year. Micro influencers are a step ahead of nano-influencers and they have more followers compared to them. These micro influencers can earn $40,000 to $100,000. If you are a celebrity influencer then you can make much more than that.

Hence if you are thinking of becoming an influencer as a career choice then you are thinking in the right direction. As an influencer you can make much more money compared to a regular nine to five job. At the same time, you have your freedom and not bound to timings. However, you should bear in mind that becoming an influencer is hard work and keeping your status is also difficult.