A hardworking parent runs a small floral store. A social influencer wants flowers delivered for her friend’s engagement party. She orders the flowers and is given great service as always. As she wishes her friend on Facebook and Twitter, she gives a grateful shout out to the florist, thanking her for the excellent work.
In a matter of hours, the florist is flooded with new business. What clinched the new requests pouring in? That one tweet, that one post. Social influencers have an audience that listens to and reads whatever they say. And they trust the judgment of the social influencer.
In fact, social influencer marketing is the most powerful way to garner customers online. Such is the power of the social influencer that entrepreneurs are learning how to harness this awesome, seemingly endless power source. Here’s how and why they do it.
Creating authenticity
Marketers can try all they want but authenticity is not always possible to achieve just by a campaign. Efforts gain validation when they are connected to someone who has built trust. That is the social influencer. With one word, the influencer creates huge presence for the company or the brand. Marketers realise this and go out of their way to woo influencers hoping to use their scope of power.
Using the most powerful advertising tool
Recent surveys seem to indicate that less than 4% of youngsters consider regular media as a source for their purchase decisions. So where do they get their information from? Online reviews, social media and blogs. This tool is wielded with great power and dexterity by the social media influencer. Yet another way by which entrepreneurs use this influence.
Most effective
An entrepreneur has a few other ways by which he or she can reach an audience. There’s email, SEO, affiliate marketing, and straightforward advertising. All of them come with their own nuisance value. Social influencers have something the others don’t – a willing audience. When there is receptiveness on the other side, it becomes easier for marketing to work. This kind of marketing is more effective because it’s welcome.
Creates need
Imagine if you have an audience waiting for a product or service you haven’t yet launched? That’s the power of the social influencer. They try the product, sometimes in its test phase, and then tell followers about it. Followers then wait to try it out themselves. Just think what you can achieve with this power. You can have your product or service reviewed, you can iron out the flaws if found the influencer and come out with a product or service that would be attractive to your audience. Thus, revenue generation also becomes relatively simpler.
No ad blocker
So many of us have turned off ads in our devices. Then how does an entrepreneur get across to us? With a person, not an ad. A person we trust. A social influencer. An influencer can circumvent any ad blocker! We are naturally wired to not even view ads when we are looking at a website. On a sub-conscious level most of us have tuned it out. But when a social influencer tells us something we go for it because it is not an ad but a suggestion or advice. However, the same should not be overdone by the influencer, else the results might not be the same.
Using ordinary people
Social influencers are not celebrities. They are important in their sphere of influence. Even a college student or a die-hard ice cream fanatic can be an influencer. Thus, entrepreneurs don’t spend huge amounts to sell college supplies or the new ice cream flavour. They use these people and their reach to pull in customers.
As an entrepreneur what you need to do is to use social media influencers along with the traditional forms of marketing to get the maximum benefit. Do not just use social media influencing as your marketing strategy, involve all the other methods like flyers, ads, etc. An important point that an entrepreneur should note is that they should do their research thoroughly. When the entrepreneur knows his target demographic then the person can find a social media influencer who has a presence among those in that demographic. For example: a social media influencer who has a presence in the internet marketing niche will not be able to put across your idea well to his audience if your brand is a beauty product. But if you find an influencer in the beauty niche and when that person puts out a tweet or posts a blog or reviews your beauty product, you would have hit pay dirt as the people following them will surely buy your product.
Regardless of where you’re selling your product – local or international, online or offline, every entrepreneur can benefit from the power of the social influencer. The social influencer need not be a celebrity, anybody with a few thousand trusted followers is an influencer, though having more followers’ means you are a better influencer as you can influence a lot of people with just one blog or tweet. The most trusted platform for social media influencing according to studies is the good old blog. Bloggers have built an audience over time and this audience is waiting for the blogger to post something. Such audiences should be your target. The next trusted platform is Facebook with its many groups, followed by Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram and the others.