Working with influencers is a great marketing technique. Gone are the days when it was easy to put your brand on social media and expect results with good content and social media practices. Most marketers now agree that influencer marketing is not just an effective strategy but also an imperative measure. The challenges of promoting your business are ever more pressing.

Influencer outreach is a challenge even for seasoned influencer marketers. In fact, compensating them, as in giving them freebies or discounts, works. However, there has to be something more compelling than these extrinsic rewards. Otherwise, you may just lose them to other companies with better offers.

One of the steps in influencer marketing is collaboration. This happens after you’ve become friends with your influencers, by which time you will have gained their trust. Influencer marketing examples we had in the past say being able to market with influencers is a result of putting up compelling content and building a relationship with these key people in your niche.

Your work begins before you start influencer outreach!

Forget influencer targeting. If you’re in the nascence of your business, your goals should be product development, content generation, and social media management. Working on things you can capitalize in the near future so that you’ll have better chances at winning influencers.

SOCIAL MEDIA

Social media is basically the most convenient influencer marketing platform. It’s where we look for the right people. It’s where we work with them. Influencer collaboration usually happens on social channels like Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.

Influencers post shout outs every once in a while. When they do, people and pages they get to mention benefit from them. Influencers drive followers to entities they mention. This makes them social media drivers and movers. When an influencer mentions you, their followers come to your page. Effectively, you can watch your reach and engagement increase dramatically.

Social media mentions can be in any form of content — text posts, images, or videos. There are also different ways of mentioning you. An influencer can tag you directly or can mention a recent post of yours.

Start relationships

Getting popular people on social media give you a shout out is a natural outcome of a good influencer marketing strategy. It’s easier to get people mention you once you have established rapport with them. You have to make friends with your potential influencers and then earn their trust. Once you’re friends with an influencer, all you have to do is ask. It doesn’t get any simpler than that.

Offer good things in return

Making friends with people is sometimes a difficult task. Sometimes they are just too busy. Some social media celebrities are cynical about followers who suddenly message them and ask them favors.

If you can’t start friendships with them, offer something nice. What you can offer is up to you. It can be a product sample for a single mention. It can be a 6-month free service subscription for an ongoing social media collaboration.

BLOG FEATURE

Nothing is ever more flattering for brands than being featured by an authority in their niche. So you have this expert guy who has a hundred thousand followers on Facebook or Instagram. Thousands of people read his blog every day because it’s very informative and useful.

You want that guy to feature your product. Maybe he can do a demo using your product so that he can indirectly tell his audience to try your brand themselves. The logic of getting someone reviews your product or write a post about it isn’t so difficult to comprehend.

Companies have been paying bloggers to feature their brand for so long. Only now did we call it influencer marketing. Well, it’s basically a form of it.

Your business becomes the subject of a feature blog post or article. It most likely takes a form of a review or testimonial, which hopefully doesn’t sound too patronizing — otherwise, readers would be intrigued in a bad way.

Bloggers may review or feature a number of products at the same time. If that happens, you can ask them to include your brand. That’s one of the influencer marketing examples we know that aren’t too tacky.

Give a fitting offer

Influencers who maintain blogs are very busy. They’re not your regular social media celebrities who simply dazzle their followers with one-liners, memes, and selfies.

Bloggers are at any moment doing research, interviewing other people, working on a project, or writing their next post. They normally don’t check their email to find out if someone is asking for a blog post feature.

So if you want to get noticed, make an offer they can’t refuse. Again, this influencer marketing tactic works if you don’t sound like a creepy, hopeless guy.

Choosing the right influencer

You can’t ask just any blogger to review your brand. The wrong blogger won’t bring in revenue and will only be a waste of your resources. The right blogger is fit for your brand. Their content is relevant to your campaign. And their audience is likely your audience, too.

Bloggers may decline your offer if your brand isn’t relevant to their content. How can you expect a fashion blogger to talk about camera accessories?

Considerations

Make a compelling offer. Writing an article about your product isn’t easy. No one does it for free. Compensation is essentially an important aspect of influencer marketing.

Be reasonable and realistic with your expectations. It takes a while to write content. Don’t make unreasonable demands, like asking for a review on short notice.

Bloggers won’t write stuff outside their niche.

Make their job easier. Collaborate on a blog post, instead of giving the entire task to them. Provide images or videos if necessary. Remember, you’re not hiring a writer. You’re working with an influencer.

Now you know how to start your influencer marketing and how to collaborate with influencers. The next great step. Take Action!