What is social media influence? Broadly speaking, influence is the ability to inspire others to take action or to change their way of thinking.
What Is Social Media Influence?
According to a survey by Influence Central, 86% of women shoppers use social media content as a chief source of online research when thinking about making a purchase. A study by Nielsen Catalina Solutions and TapInfluence reveals that influencer marketing generates 11X more ROI than traditional marketing.
Here are some tips for brands that wish to increase their social media influence:
1. Ask Questions
Instagram Stories is an ideal medium for this but Facebook also lends itself well to asking questions. Find out more about them and they’ll be more interested in what you have to offer.
2. Create a Dialogue with your Followers
For example, get them to caption a photo and tell them that you will repost the best ones on one of your social media channels. Announce news and events on your social channels to create a sense of anticipation and to keep people tuning in.
3. Focus on Video
Whether live or recorded, video is consistently among the best performing digital marketing strategies. 90% of viewers say that product videos are helpful in the purchasing decision process, and viewers retain 95% of a message in video marketing compared to 10% in text.
4. Link to your Social Networks
Make sure to include links on the homepage of your website. You could also include links in your email signature. Cross-promote your various social channels across your social networks.
5. Make Viral Content
Create a post that either entertains, informs or is something that your followers will want to share.
6. Run a Contest
This can be an effective way of increasing brand awareness and growing your followers. Consider asking people to search for an answer on your website, to encourage them to find out more about your brand.
7. Use Hashtags
Although they don’t work as well as they used to on Instagram, it is still worth taking the time to research the best hashtags for your brand. If you’re a new company, avoid using the largest hashtags such as #luxury or #travel and pick ones that have less than 500,000 uses.
8. Include Keywords for Ranking
Certain social media platforms such as Pinterest and YouTube regularly appear at the top of Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). Sprinkle keywords that relate to your business into your headlines on these platforms. You could even use a relevant keyword for your social media channel names.
Of course, working with social media influencers who have already built up an engaged following is another great option. However, it seems that everyone is referring to themselves as an influencer these days, making it hard to know which ones to choose.
Pick the Best Influencer for Your Brand
A recent study by Tomoson found that influencer marketing is the fastest-growing online customer-acquisition channel, ahead of organic search, paid search and email marketing. Here are some tips for how to choose the best influencer for your brand.
The best social media influencers create a dialogue with their followers that may inspire them to find out more about your brand and ultimately to purchase your products.
1. Reach
A good spread of followers on a variety of platforms is desirable, rather than influencers only present on one social media platform, with no website. This will ensure greater visibility and longer lasting impact in terms of Search Engine Optimization.
Moreover, in the Tomoson study, marketers ranked the following social media platforms by order of effectiveness:
1) Blogs
2) Facebook
3) Instagram and YouTube
You may find this surprising given the current focus on Instagram. However, ask yourself which of these platforms function as search engines.
That is the case for YouTube and Pinterest, together with blogs. Using best SEO practice and targeted keywords will ensure long term traffic.
Do an experiment for your own brand, creating an article that is optimized for search engines. Then promote this article across all your social media channels so that you can check which is the most effective.
For Instagram, that could include a link to the article in your brand bio and a swipe up link in Stories. For Twitter, you can use a link shortener for the website article, to help track where your traffic is coming from.
Then go to Google Analytics, look at that specific article and check where your traffic is coming from. For example, one of our top performing posts receives traffic from Google, Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, TripAdvisor, YouTube and Instagram.
Also, don’t assume that blogs are small hobby sites. If you analyze the traffic of some of the top blogs in the world, it is higher than 99% of other websites.
If you only focus on traditional media, bear in mind that some of these media outlets use a paywall for their online coverage and only subscribers will be able to read these features. What’s more, the articles will not shareable, significantly limiting their long-term reach. They may also only be available online for a specific duration of time.
2. Engagement
A large number of followers doesn’t mean much without a correspondingly high level of engagement – e.g. comments on an Instagram post or retweets on Twitter. It’s important that your chosen influencer takes the time to respond to some of the comments.
You need influencers who enjoy communicating with others, as social media is a two-way exchange.
3. Relevance
According to a recent study by ZINE, only 11% of brands ask content creators to provide their analytics. You can definitely request these before you make a campaign selection.
For example, ask for their Google Analytics monthly uniques screenshot or Instagram demographics. Choose an influencer with a reader/follower profile that matches your brand.
If you’re a luxury travel brand, choose a travel blog on the Mediavine ad network. They only allow websites producing high quality original content with a minimum of 25K monthly uniques into their network. You can tell whether a travel blog is a Mediavine member by looking at their adverts which have the word Mediavine displayed in the bottom left hand corner.
Fashion influencers with a predominantly teenage audience may be less suited to a high end brand than luxury blogs with readers/followers mainly aged over 25 and in the A & B income groups.
If you’re a luxury swimwear designer looking to work with an Instagram influencer, ask them to send you a screenshot of their Insights analytics, specifically the gender of their followers. Someone who has a 95% male following is unlikely to get your swimsuits seen by many potential female buyers. Consider picking a luxury influencer with a good proportion of female followers.
4. Trust
To what extent is your chosen brand influencer considered an expert in their chosen field? How well does their audience trust them?
This can be hard to evaluate, but influencers who are authors or keynote speakers in their subject are good options. Check out their LinkedIn profile to evaluate the extent of their professional connections.
5. Quality
The best influencers create their own content, rather than regurgitating press releases. Not only can using duplicate content have severe consequences for your brand, but readers will be turned off by the lack of personal opinion.
Choose content creators who are skilled in photography or videography to highlight your brand in the best possible light. The influencer’s written and spoken English should also be perfect, with no grammatical or spelling mistakes that could reflect badly on your brand.
6. Authority
Authority can be measured in a number of ways. Domain authority, for example, affects how the content on sites is ranked by search engines. You can check a site’s domain authority at Moz Link Explorer.
A domain authority over 30 is considered desirable by some brands. Try to choose a social media influencer who is considered an expert in their field and well known within the blogging community.
7. Return on Investment
In order to measure influencer ROI, you can also request analytics after the campaign has finished. Ask your brand influencers to provide a summary of how the content they have created for you has performed. We provide a full campaign report with stats for each social media channel and website features.
8. Rapport
Once you have identified the best influencers, it is important to build up a good working relationship between your community manager and these influencers. Mutual trust gives the best results for the influencer and the brand.
Final Thoughts on Social Media Influence
In summary, social media influencers are a powerful tool to help promote your brand. When it comes to finding the best fit for your brand, consider their reach, audience demographics, content quality and consistency.
With careful vetting and strategic outreach, you can find an influencer who will support and elevate your message with passion and authenticity. We hope that this definition of social media influence and tips on how to pick the right influencer for you is helpful.
If you’re keen to delve further into how social influence can benefit your business, then check out our other articles for exciting tips and tricks about digital marketing and social media trends. We also assist brands in identifying key influencers for their projects and we also do keynote speaking on influencer marketing so do get in touch if you’d like to find out more:
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