But before we dive into that, you must have the right mindset and approach towards influencer marketing; and no, it’s not all about freebies.
You have to start thinking of yourself (and your brand) as an advertising agency.
Magazines, TV, and other traditional forms of advertising no longer control the cultural narrative — we do.
This is why brands are jumping onto this whole influencer marketing thing, because it’s more effective and cost efficient for them.
Thus, you must start thinking of yourself as a “publication.”
“Often a brand will categorize influencers as journalists, and we have to explain why that just doesn’t work. Journalists are paid by their publication, and publications earn revenue from advertisers. In the case of influencers, they are their own publication, so there has to be a budget allocated to them.” — Tara Rogers of Mojo PR
With that in mind, know your worth.
A typical magazine ad costs anywhere from $500 to $20,000, depending on whether the publication is local or national, the size of your ad, whether you use color, and if you’ve negotiated a multiple-ad rate.
Still, that’s a lot of money that you could be tapping into!
So let’s dive in!
(If you don’t have an audience yet — read How To Become An Instagram Influencer first.)
You control the narrative of your own brand and have an audience that follows you because of your unique style and voice.
Followers like you because of your brand — brands like you because of your audience.
So you must know your audience very well in order to know how to pitch yourself to brands.
That is why niche matters.
Because you have the specific audience a brand is looking to tap into.
- The Celebrity — built fame through traditional media and has jumped on the social media bandwagon as well
- The Personal Brand — built recognition and a loyal army from the ground up, usually self-taught
- The Thought Leader — built recognition from their thoughts in their field
- The Founder — built a company that is within a certain niche
- The Expert — built recognition through learning, research, continual self-development, and creates tutorials for others
- The Disruptor — the rebel that shakes things up and goes against the grain
- The Lifestylist — engages with brands and talks about products/services that fit in their lifestyle and that improve their life
- The Editor — access to lots of products to review
- Brand Awareness
- Education
- SEO Authority
- Social Following
- Damage Control
- User-Generated Content (UGC)
- Trust Development
- Sales Increase
- How relevant is their blog/social audience to the campaign subject matter?
- What is the size of the potential audience that is likely to see the story?
- How engaged is that audience with the blog/brand in general?
- How often does the blogger/influencer publish new posts?
You can be an influencer and not have a blog. However, I would highly recommend getting one if you didn’t already.
Having a blog quadruples your value.
- Identifying a relevant influencer was considered the biggest challenge by 75% of marketers.
- Notice what they said: a relevant influencer.
- Once again, that is why having a niche is so important.
- If your brand aligns perfectly with their brand, and you reach out, it’s literally a no brainer for them to work with you.
2. Getting the attention of influencers and then building interest with them is another major problem faced by 69% of marketers.
- See how it goes both ways?
- If a company that wasn’t in line with your brand and aesthetic reached out to you, you would probably ignore them or turn them down.
- Always put yourself in the brand’s perspective and try to look at your own brand through their eyes.
3. Inability to get an accurate ROI (return on investment) report of their campaign is another issue according to 53% of marketers.
- We will talk about this a little later and how you can create measuring metrics.
- They conduct google searches for “top instagram accounts for [niche]”.
- They use Iconosquare, which is an analytics tracker to see how relevant and engaged an influencer’s audience is.
- They search for relevant hashtags on Instagram to see what accounts pop up with the best engagement rate.
- This is the hardest platform to find influencers, because Facebook isn’t designed to elevate brands; it’s designed for friends, but brands look up groups with high engagement rates and contact the admin.
- They use the Advanced Search Tool
- They search for relevant posts, keywords, and locations
Now that you know where brands look, make sure you can be easily found!
- moz.com/followerwonk — see where you rank on twitter
- buzzsumo.com — see where your blog ranks
- keyhole.co — hashtag tracker for real-time most influential posts
- home.kred — evaluates mentions, replies, follows, and retweets on Twitter
- ninjaoutreach.com — finds the most influential bloggers
- socialmention.com — finds out what people are talking about online
- alexa.com — evaluates your traffic statistics
- moz.com/researchtools/ose — evaluates your site authority
- seoquake.com — evaluates your SEO
- valuedvoice.com — below is a look inside my account right now, this was for 4 blog posts.
- blogdash.com
- diamondlinks.net
- activate.bloglovin.com
- blogmeetsbrand.com
- thebrandconnection.com
- socialnative.com
- bloggymoms.com
- intellifluence.com
- tapinfluence.com
- realclever.com
- revfluence.com
- takumi.com
- upfluence.com
- mavrck.co
- lefty.io
- influencer.uk
- peg.co
- neoreach.com
- izea.com
- socialix.com
- octoly.com
- buzzoole.com
- influicity.com
- indahash.com
- advowire.com
- famebit.com
- webfluential.com
- adly.com
- findyourinfluence.com
- grapevinelogic.com
- ifluenz.com
- innetwork.net
- jamballa.com
- popularpays.com
- thecirqle.com
- In order to set yourself up for more work, you need to prove ROI.
- Now, you may have the ability to incite transactions, however your true value to a brand sticks around long after the sale.
- Set yourself up for long-term success with brands in order to get booked for more gigs!
- You’ve already done the hard work of getting in contact with them and getting your first shot at working with them, so do it right the first time around and secure your paycheck for years to come!
- Write blog posts on related topics
- Promote products through pictures and affiliate links
- Promote products on Instagram and Facebook stories
- Make videos with relevant content
- Write review and rate products/services
- Run a giveaway
- Send an email to your list
This is my most recent work with Beverly Hills fashion designer @mariamannabarska on my personal Instagram @elainerau.
- Brand Awareness
- If you asked your audience to perform a task, such as use a hashtag, you can calculate how many people followed through.
- If you posted a video, you can track the number of views.
- If you posted a story, you can track the number of actions taken.
- Education
- If you wrote a blog post, you can track how many comments were left on your blog or how many emails you received about your post from your followers afterwards.
- If you included links on your blog back to the brand’s website, clicks can be tracked with a customized bit.ly link.
- If people bought the brand’s products/services through your affiliate link, you can both track that.
- SEO Authority
- If the brand’s SEO ranking went up, they would be in charge of tracking that.
- Social Following
- If the brand’s followers increased due to partnering up with you, that’s super trackable.
- A good way to do this would be to host a giveaway, making one of the rules that you have to follow the brand in order to enter the giveaway.
- Make sure to take before-and-after photos to show as proof for your next potential clients.
- Damage Control
- If the chaos the brand was experiencing started settling after your post because you put the rumors to rest, that isn’t trackable per se, but they can feel it, and that is a result.
- User-Generated Content (UGC)
- If you use created images with your and the brand’s products and got high engagement scores on your pictures, the number of likes and comments are what you track.
- Sales Increase
- If you sold a lot through your affiliate link, their sales went up!
- Make sure to also track this with a bit.ly link for your own records.
And that’s it!
Pretty simple right?
As long as you’re providing value that the brand can track, and you have the audience they are looking for, more than likely the brand will be willing to collaborate with you!
Good luck!
If you have any questions about being an influencer, feel free to reach out to me at ladybossblogger@gmail.com, and I would be glad to answer any questions you may have!
If you loved this post, PIN the pic below!
Much Love,
❤ Elaine Rau
*Disclosure: There are some affiliate links in this post, but these are all products I highly recommend. I won’t put anything on this page that I haven’t verified and/or personally used.
