Using an influencer is by far one of the most exciting, affordable and effective marketing methods.

There are many marketing tactics available at your disposal that it can be incredibly difficult to know where to begin. Especially, when it comes to deciding the best one for your business. However, at the core of marketing, you’ll always find social media. And it should be your first stop when you’re looking for ways to share your content with the world.

On the other side, creating shareable content is easier to say than do. But, one of the more up and coming ways to market on social media is by hiring and using an influencer on your profiles.

This has and is being proven time and time again to one of the most effective ways to market your business. It can amount to hundreds, if not thousands of social shares. Sounds like something your business wants or need? Allow me to explain.

What is an Influencer?

An influencer is somebody that has already built their way up in the upper atmosphere of social media credibility. Think Gordon Ramsey when it comes to cooking. Also, think Lonely Planet when it comes to travel. And any blogger, writer, photographer or media-based individual that has thousands of followers that they could introduce your brand to.

Statistically, influencers are a proven and successful marketing method. BuzzSumo conducted a survey of over 100 million articles and found and direct link between influencer-related content and the number of shares that that piece of content received.

Averagely, the figures show that an influencer post has a 31.8% higher chance to get shares that a regular post. Likewise, if three influencers shared a brand’s content, the shares doubled. Five influencers and posts were receiving a 400% increase in social shares. As you can see, it’s a marketing practice worth looking into.

However, many businesses can ask ‘how do you even get an influencer to market your brand, let alone five?’

Hold your horses; we’re getting there. To help you get started, here are three ways you can incorporate an influencer into your marketing strategy.

Building Up Your Online Presence

Using an influencer in marketing strategy can have dramatic effects on your SEO ranking. One of the most important aspects of SEO to consider is the links that you use on your website. This includes both your internal page links and your external backlinks.

One study that was carried out by search engine giant, Moz, discovered that the quality of these links is also essential when it comes to your ranking. This means you can’t simply fill up your pages with poor quality links or receive backlinks from low-quality spam websites. You need to find leading and authoritative websites to link to and to link back to you.

As you’d expect, getting backlinks on these high-authority websites is no easy feat. But, this is where influencers come in. Working with an influencer in this way has two main benefits.

Firstly, the chances are that the influencer you chose is already has a large following and could already be considered an authority site. This means when the influencer links to and from your website, your website is getting a boost in its SEO ranking.

Secondly, an influencer who shares your website means that you’ve increased your chances that other users and other high authority websites will share your content. In short, using an influencer can dramatically boost your quality backlink database.

Influencers Creating Content for You

As you already know, creating successful content is never an easy feat. It can take years to master the art of content creation and a tonne of finetuning to make sure that each piece is perfect. Hand in hand with the consideration above, Google will also examine your content to make sure that it provides real value to your readers, as well as the keywords used and the overall readability of the content.

So, in short, you need fantastic content that makes a real impact on your users. However, why not use an influencer to create this content for you? An influencer’s primary job is to create content that engages with users. They’ve obviously done a good job in the past because they wouldn’t have got to where they are now.

All you need to do is to get in contact with your influencer and chat through what sort of content they would be happy creating for you and their terms and conditions. This content is then hosted on your website with links to and from your influencers website, again boosting your SEO ranking and your levels of user engagement.

One company used influencers in their strategy which was then analyzed by TopRank Marketing. In just two weeks, the company boosted their website and page traffic by 609%, according to figure.

Mary Fowles, a content marketer for Big Assignments, states, “There are two ways you can approach an influencer for content. Firstly, you can work together to provide content and the sort of content that you want. You may want to create a template or a guideline for the influencer to work from.

However, the other way is by letting the influencer have full creative control over the content. Of course, as a partnership, you’ll be able to decide on a topic or subject. But when it comes to actually writing the piece, always let the influencer take control, it’s what they’re best at.”

Using Influencers to Share Your Content

As a marketer, one of the most overwhelming challenges you’ll face is getting your existing, and any future, content seen by your audience. After all, the lifespan of an Instagram post is only a few minutes before it’s lost forever in the ocean of uploaded content.

When it comes down to it, it’s all about engagement with your posts. The more engagement you get, the higher your traffic will be, and that’s where an influencer comes in. A joint survey discovered that internet users actually trust influencers online as much as they trust their friends which you need to use to your advantage.

Consider this. Influencers already have thousands, if not millions, of people that hang off every word that they say, type or share. If you can get an influencer to share your content, it will then be in front of all followers. And this will massively boost your online visibility.

This is a great tactic to use if you’re raising awareness about your business, product or a service. This entire method works based on the credibility of your influencer. People trust what the influencer says so them. Sharing your business means they trust you, and therefore their thousands of followers you should trust you as well.

Tips for Securing an Influencer

As you’d expect, an influencer isn’t going to put their credibility on the line for any business or organisation just like that. They’re going to want high-quality websites and businesses that have a purpose and run legitimately. This means your content needs to be perfect. Here are a few tips and tools to guarantee this quality.

Provide Valuable Content

As mentioned above, you need to provide content that’s informative and holds value. These pieces of content need to be professionally formatted and read well. You can use the writing guides at Via Writing, Ox Essays and State of Writing to get you started. You can also use online tools to create remarkable, high-quality content. But be sure to check it for errors and grammar mistakes.

When adding references and quotes to your content, which you should do when providing valuable information in your articles, add them professionally using free tools like Cite It In.

Consider the Length of Your Content

The length of your articles and content is vital to its success when providing valuable information and for your SEO ranking. To start with, you’re should aim for around 2,000 words as Google states this is the optimal length. You can easily track and monitor your word count using tools like Easy Word Count.

Guarantee Accuracy

If an influencer is considering working with your business, they’re going to read through your existing content first, obviously. If you have a poor-quality content full of mistakes and doesn’t grab their attention, they’re going to decline your offer.

This means proofreading all your content now and any future content you post, especially the piece you want them to share. Also, don’t forget about plagiarism. You can plagiarise content without noticing it. You can always enlist the help of plagiarism checkers such as Plagium and Academized if you’ve got a lot of content or want to ensure it is unique and you don’t steal someone else’s work.

Conclusion

These are the most notable ways you can use influencers in your content marketing campaign. As you can see, there are many benefits to using them for boosting your SEO ranking to getting hundreds of social shares on your content posts.

Using an influencer is by far one of the most exciting, affordable and effective marketing methods, so what are you waiting for?!

________

Article written by Brenda Berg