Influencers are the new celebrity endorsements. By leveraging key leaders in your industry, who have their own, engaged audience, you can strategically get your brand in front of new eyeballs – and fast. These consumers will also be more receptive to your content because of the trust already established with the influencer.

When done correctly, these collaborations can yield incredible returns for businesses who implement them.

Influencer marketing can energize and improve your social media marketing efforts to connect with today’s consumers. Incorporating such tactics now can cement your company’s growth for long-term success.

Here are 3 steps on how to begin including influencer marketing in your social media strategy.

#1 Be Clear on Your Intentions

Before embarking on your influencer campaign, it’s important to know exactly what you want to achieve, so your efforts are centered on fulfilling this goal.

Are you looking to increase brand awareness? Grow your leads? Generate sales?

Whatever the objective, knowing your intentions upfront will give you clarity in your content strategy, and how you subsequently communicate with your influencer.

#2 Choose the Right Influencer

Despite its apparent advantages, influencer marketing is a wasted investment if you’re not working with the right ones.

Simply basing your choice from their Facebook following or Instagram count is not enough – you have to dig deeper to ensure the influencer is the best fit for your brand and goals.

Here are five quick questions to ask yourself for choosing the right influencer:

• Relevance – Does their social media content align with your messaging? Read through their content to get a sense for what kind of influencer they are
• Engagement – How involved are followers with their content? Do people comment, like and share their content? The levels of engagement will be a determining factor if their followers will be responsive to your content
• Reach – Although you don’t want to make this the final deciding factor, reach is certainly a valid metric to consider
• Frequency – How often do they post on their page? Followers are more likely to return and engage when there’s fresh content being served daily
• Authenticity – How authentic is their content? Personal stories and experiences that include genuine use, or mention of a product or service, are more trusted than straight product reviews. They’re highly engaging for followers and are apt to take the recommendation from the influencer

#3 Share Remarkable Content

With your selected influencer, it’s time to give them some remarkable content they can share with their audience.

The good news is, this is what they already excel at. Therefore – depending on your objective – you can give them your products (or have them experience your service) and allow the influencer the flexibility to highlight your brand on social media and their blog in their own way.

Additionally, you can provide specific blog post or website links (i.e. landing pages) you want your influencer to share in their social content to drive traffic to your sites.

Conclusion

An endorsement from a powerful social media influencer can add incredible value to your brand and social presence. An effective influencer campaign can help you grow your social following, increase brand awareness, and generate leads and sales.

Article Written by Katrina Padron of Social Media Today