As a small fish in a vast sea of websites, sometimes it’s difficult for a voice to be heard. It can get frustrating putting in a lot of effort and not having it make an impact. Many online website owners search for ways to get their website and content noticed. Increasing website exposure gets challenging, but the good news is that influencers can help. In addition to using influencers to persuade an audience, learning and applying additional skills will lead to a more profitable website. We will cover how to improve your online presence so your voice can be heard in our upcoming webinar. For now, below are some tips on how to reach out to influencers who can help grow your brand.
If you want to hear from influencers Pro Blogger offers some great advice. They recommend becoming someone worth knowing. Whether you have a strong social following online or not, there are ways to impress influencers and get your website noticed by more people as a result.
When you reach out to someone, chances are they’ll dig into who you are before they respond. They might check out your blog, or glance at your social media accounts.
You want your online presence to show you’re genuine and credible. Showcase your expertise if possible. But even if you don’t have any expertise or many followers or readers yet, there’s still a lot you can do.
For instance, do you complain all the time on Twitter? Or do you talk about topics that influencers in your niche will be interested in? Even if you don’t have many followers yet, tweet as if you do. The same goes for your blog or website. Make sure it looks reasonably professional and complete.
However, before even reaching out to an influencer it’s vital you know what type of influencer can help grow your brand. Neil Patel urges business owners to give an influencer an image and keep that in mind as you begin pursuing influencers on the web.
Personality type: Decide if you need an activist, an informer, an authority, etc. to best promote your campaign or product.
Genre: Pick one or two. Examples include technology, fashion, travel, marketing, etc.
Niche: This can be two or three. In order to promote my own product, I usually target marketing and PR influencers, as my genre and my niches are firms writing about blogger outreach and influencer targeting.
Topics: Pick a topic that your ideal influencer sometimes talks about on social media or their blog. You will be referencing this topic when you reach out and explain why the two of you are such a good fit.
Type of reach: Is it site traffic you are after or social media followers? Is the influencer an active blogger? Do you have a visually driven campaign and need your influencer to be on Pinterest and Instagram? Is it tweets you are after? Whatever reach you think is best for your brand, narrow down the channels and the number of followers on those channels.
To find influencers that align with your website’s niche use social media. Medium explains in further detail what this entails:
The easiest way of finding the right influencers for your brand is to look for the ones who are already talking about you. Blog posts or social media mentions about your brand will help you find influencers in your network. So, look out for those.
Social media monitoring or listening tools can help you find influencers who are talking about you or your industry. For instance, someone may have posted about yoga accessories. If you deal with such products or something similar, you definitely should engage with them.
Social monitoring and listening tools like Hootsuite, Mention, or Simply Measured can help you track your brand mentions on social media. You can use them to respond to your customer comments or even find relevant influencers talking about you.
You can also find influencers by following specific hashtags on Instagram, for example. These hashtags can lead you to their profile. While checking out their social media site, see how many followers they have and if they are a good fit for your business. Medium discusses this more in depth below:
Hashtags make content searchable and accessible on social platforms. So search for hashtags that may be relevant to your brand. This can help you find influencers who are right for your business.
You can follow these steps to find relevant influencers on Instagram:
Search for #sponsored, #ad, #blogger, or #influencer on Instagram and check out the results.
Image via Instagram
If you happen to come across a post that you like, check out the creator’s profile.
After you’ve found an influencer you would like to connect with, it’s time to apply various techniques to try to get them interested in you and your website. Mention says doing your research is important, as is honestly communicating with them.
If you’ve managed to set your sights on that special influencer someone, then you’re now getting to the trickier part of the equation: once you find the one, how do you get them to work with you?
Influencers can be notoriously selective about their affiliations, choosing to partner with brands that reflect their unique personal brands and are careful about not alienating their followers.
Honest communication
Apart from the fact that influencers can often be picky, they are also just human beings and consumers. That means they’ll probably respond the best to honest, direct communication, especially if you are offering them something of value.
Do your research first
You may think that this is common sense, but a surprisingly large number of businesses focus on doing massive outreach without sparing the time to take on a more personalized approach. You should be doing exactly the opposite – emphasize quality over quantity.
Research your influencer by following them on social media and engaging with their content (if they have content endorsing your product, share it!)Research their content history and see whether they’ve endorsed your products or similar products in your niche. This is also a good precaution: you don’t generally want to pitch an influencer that has criticized your product in the past.
Pro Blogger also recommends connecting with an influencer’s audience by commenting on their posts and engaging with their community. However, keep in mind that engaging with people in their community is important, but just don’t take it too far.
As well as leaving comments for to the blogger, reply to other people’s comments. This applies not only to their blog, but also to the social networks they use.
For instance, in a Facebook group you might welcome new members who’ve posted for the first time to introduce themselves. If it’s a Twitter chat, you might make an effort to ask questions and respond to other people who are chatting. (The people you connect with through comments may also become friends or helpful contacts for you.)
But be careful you don’t go too far. You don’t want people thinking you’re trying to take over the community. If you have the time and inclination to help out a lot, contact the influencer and ask if you can help them as a volunteer. You could offer to welcome new members of a Facebook group, or help prepare questions for a Twitter chat.
There are organic ways to get influencers to notice you. Get them to pay attention to your brand by creating a killer project. Consider either asking for their input or better yet, make the project so incredible that they’ll want to get to know you and learn more about your business. Crazy Egg offers more tips on how to engage and get noticed by influencers:
There’s an overabundance of data that’s going to be competing with your content, which means you need to make sure yours stands out. After all, you won’t get engagement from many influencers if your project is just so-so.
How do you create a great project then?
Start with a dynamite idea, great planning, and make sure your project is moving in the right direction from the beginning. In other words, get creative with your projects.
Start by brainstorming as many “good’ ideas as possible.
Leave nothing off the list, as this is simply the early stages of your planning.
If you’re struggling to find good ideas, it’s okay to go online to find motivation from other brands. There are thousands of online lists of marketing ideas.
Browse as many as you need to and write down the ones that stand out as the best.
Then, when you’ve compiled a list, see if there’s a clear winner, or try to find unique hybrid ideas that can leverage influencer input.
Remember in your planning that using influencers in unique ways always stands out, like in 2014 when Hubspot asked influencers to lend advice about influencer marketing for an infographic. Here’s a snapshot:Much like our finished influencer project, they took advice from top-level experts and created a visually pleasing infographic. It helped them stand out from the vast amounts of content that were being created and shared alongside this project.
We hope these tips on how to get the attention and approach influencers to help grow your brand. We cover more tips on how to make money online during our free webinar training. Join us and learn the online skills you need to make an impact and as a result, improve your earning potential!
Sources: Pro Blogger, Crazy Egg, Neil Patel, Medium, Mention
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