Creating a Social Media Influencer Marketing Strategy

    In today's society, influencers play a major role in marketing. More and more businesses are partnering up with influencers to promote their brands. Influencers can reach certain target markets businesses are struggling to reach with their large followings. This past year with COVID-19, the uprising of influencer marketing took the world by storm. For a business to effectively use influencers for their marketing purposes, they need to come up with a social media influencer marketing strategy. There are seven steps involved in creating a social media influencer marketing strategy including establishing goals, determining a target market and social media channels, identifying and finding influencers, setting up monitoring and listening streams, discussing the partnership, incorporating influencer marketing into the social media strategy and measurement.

    The first step in most plans starts with establishing goals. These goals should revolve around the goals for the business and objectives in place for your social media marketing strategies. Some goals to think about can be increased post engagement, increased website traffic, brand awareness, increased sales and more. After establishing goals, it's time to determine the target market and social media channels you want to utilize. The type of target market you are trying to reach will vary depending on the platform you use. For example, Chapter 14 tells us "Instagram and YouTube are among the most popular channels for influencer marketing." Once you determine the right target market and platforms you want to use, next is identifying the influencers for the market. The influencer needs to be someone that the target market trusts and values. Not only does the influencer need to be someone for the target market, they also need to fit the business' budgets and goals. Things to also consider are influencer location, demographics and other personal values. After having an influencer picked out, it's important to set up monitoring and listening streams to track their actions before engaging with them. It's important for businesses to build a relationship with the influencers of their choosing. Once you have engaged with the potential influencer, it's time to discuss the possibility of working together. For influencers who want to partner, they want to know what they are getting out of the experience. This could include free products, a sponsorship, financial compensation and more. The next step after a deal has been made is to start incorporating influencer marketing into the social media strategy. Ways businesses can utilize their influencers are having the influencer share content from the company's social media platforms, promote the brand's content by posting on their own channels, inviting influencers to be guest bloggers and more. The last step in this process is to measure the performance of the influencer. To ensure success, it's important to ask both qualitative and quantitative questions. These can include was there an increase in website visits or how many influencers posted about the brand.

     With the new uprising of influencers, it's important for businesses to hop on the trend to stay relevant in new consumers' eyes. I think utilizing influencers is a great way to expand your brand. I know I follow a few influencers myself and have ended up buying products because they have them. The power influencers hold is crazy, use them!