How To Improve Your Content Strategy With Influencer Marketing

Content strategy is the process of creating, developing, and managing content. In the very competitive online marketing world of today, it is very important that you pass the right message to your target customers at the right time. To do this, you need a specific content strategy outfitted to your brand and company’s needs.

Content strategy is obviously an important part of marketing that produces great results but it is also important for many other reasons. Apart from the fact that your content attracts customers and builds their trust by engaging them on a personal basis, a good content strategy gives you online search visibility and reveals you as an authority in your niche. As such, a good content strategy directs a company’s marketing and sales team towards reaching and exceeding their goals probably because it attracts and keeps customer attention till they convert to sales.

Influencer marketing, on the other hand, is a recent and fast-growing marketing field that utilizes the “trusted figure” authority of an influencer with a loyal fan base to the advantage of brands in various niches. Influencer marketing statistics shows that 70% of millennial consumers’ purchase decisions are influenced by their peers and 30% of consumers are likely to make purchase decisions based on recommendations from non-celebrity bloggers. Many of the influencer marketing strategies which contribute to these statistics include:

• PRIZE and Giveaways with influencer support.
• BRAND mentions by influencers.
• BOOSTING company events publicity with influencer marketing.
• A social media takeover where companies agree to hand over their brand social media accounts to influencers.
• BRANDS guest posting on influencer sites to tap their network and build an authoritative image for themselves.
• BRAND partnerships with influencers can be very valuable. For example, Lady Gaga actively promoted Airbnb properties during the 2017 Super Bowl.

With influencer marketing, companies such as L’oreal are giving their brands an edge, engaging consumers, and attracting them. The success of L’oreal’s “Beauty Squad” made up of 5 popular bloggers/vloggers in UK is a typical example of the explosive result of mixing content strategy with influencer marketing.

BENEFITS of improving your content strategy with influencer marketing

1. IT helps you stand out:

Many B2B and B2C businesses are actively involved in content marketing to the extent that content marketing is now a standard marketing strategy. This is why you need something more to spice up your content strategy which will in turn, drive your brand awareness and yield more profit.

2. COMPANIES can build authority:

Many people can create a 30-second advertisement and paper print adverts, so why should target customers believe that your product is better than that of your competitors? A content strategy mixed with influencer marketing allows you to build trust when you’re seen engaging with experts in your niche. And it helps you to create an image where you have niche authority to answer questions related to your products and services. Let’s use an illustration of a toothpaste-producing company that publishes a blog post on a dental influencer’s blog, outlining different types of disease that could result from bad personal dental hygiene. The description of those diseases with symptoms and personal remedies, if professionally done, can drive people to your toothpaste company.

3. YOU can build trust for your brand:

When influencers who are experts in your niche use your products and give reviews about it to their audience along with videos or pictures, target audience will gain interest in your product and will likely be converted. This is because influencer-audience relationships are built on transparency and as such, friendly or subtle recommendations from influencers could yield more conversion.

For example, Sabrina, an influencer from “A Little Obsessed” was given a mini Cooper Clubman to drive before Christmas in 2016. Organized with a road trip, Sabrina was able to engage her audience with almost 500 likes and several comments. So, instead of creating a 30-second ad, a practical video demonstration can give your brand all the push it needs to be known all over the world.

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4. IT improves your search visibility:

Integrating influencer marketing with a good content strategy can allow you to acquire quality backlinks from an influencer which will improve your google search ranking. Also, if an influencer should guest post on your blog, some of their audience will move to your blog just to read the valuable content of your influencer.
Before you do that, you should probably check their domain authority. You can use Moz’s open site explorer to check the domain authority score of the influencer’s website. This is to let you know if linking to their site or getting a backlink from their site will help you positively.

5. ENHANCED connection:

“Actively engaging, connecting and speaking to social media influencers gives you access to their social media audience who can then engage you for your products or services. Influencers can also deliver your message to your niche audience in the best way”, says Melissa Jentry, the influencer marketing specialist at Pro Papers review and social media researcher at My-Assignment.Help, who knows very well the industry of the best paper writing services, UK and sometimes needs the help of essay writers online.

You can link to influencers in your niche just by mentioning them when talking about your products or services (especially on Twitter). People love to share content that features them and you can benefit from this. However, you should probably make sure that you mention them in a relevant way not just by-the-way to get them to read and share your post.

6. INFLUENCERS can make your brand offers and content much more authentic and relevant:

An influencer’s relationship and partnership with you can also make your products and services much more authentic (this is probably because most influencers will not partner with fake companies who offer ineffective products so they don’t sully their reputations and disappoint their fan base). This is the crux of influencer marketing.

You can work with influencers to give your giveaways more credibility. You can ask people interested in participating to follow you and the influencer, and tag someone with a comment on the influencer’s giveaway post like KeVita did.

Ways To Improve Your Content Strategy With Influencer Marketing

1. IDENTIFY and recruit top influencers in your niche

To improve your content strategy, you have to start by identifying the right influencers who maintain an audience with your target potential customers. The right influencers must share your brand’s values and passion. This is important because when an influencer shares product without being interested and passionate, their audience can see the lack of interest. This is why you have to build a mutually beneficial relationship or partnership with the influencers you choose.

You can find and identify influencers via influencer marketing platforms such as Upfluence, Popular Pays, NeoReach and Traackr. Influencer marketing platforms serve as software solutions that help you to manage and coordinate your influencer marketing campaigns and programs. If you’re able to find and choose the right influencer marketing platform, you should be able to:

• USE powerful algorithms to find influencers and analyze their influence, impact and social presence.
• MANAGE your relationship with influencers.
• MEASURE macro and micro-levels of your influencer marketing: This implies measuring the key performance indicators and metrics of your influencer marketing programs and campaigns from every individual influencer in your campaign to a complete overview of all your influencer marketing programs and campaigns.

Here are some things to consider when you’re trying to choose the perfect influencer marketing platform for your brand and company products and services:

• DOES the platform provide you with enough data to analyze and understand every influencer on their platform so you can make the right choice?
• DOES the platform cater for effective influencer relationship management?
• CAN they provide you with expertise training and knowledge for choosing and managing your influencer marketing programs and campaigns?
• DO they provide adequate tools for your influencer marketing?

Although, influencer marketing platforms can be very useful for finding and managing your influencer marketing campaigns, there are a few possible disadvantages to using them. Since most of them are like an online database, they are vulnerable to cyber-attacks and internet hacking. So, like it happened with Octoly, a French influencer marketing platform, your information can be leaked in a data breach. Using influencer marketing platforms also limits your influencer reach to only influencers on the platform, which is why you need to research what option benefits you most; identifying influencers via influencer marketing platforms or searching for influencers on social media.

You can use tools like Buzzsumo, Hypr, Influenster, etc. to find influencers with credibility in your niche as well.

2. CREATE long-term relationships and partnerships with your influencers

Once you’ve found the right influencers, it is time to build a relationship with them. It doesn’t have to be a paying relationship, it could be a mutually beneficial relationship. For example, a cosmetic brand company could find a Makeup vlogger micro-influencer and send free products to them to test out and review without having to pay. Not only would the influencer rate your products well if they liked it, they could also become one of your customers, actively using your make-up and sending customers to you at the small cost of some free cosmetics.

3. EMPLOY influencer marketing in your content creation and marketing

Some ideas of how you can employ influencer marketing in your content strategy are:

• During content creation, you can make use of quotes from influencers to emphasize values that your brand or company is trying to represent.
• You can create valuable content and guest post them on influencer’s website to introduce yourself as an expert to your target niche or industry.
• You can send your products for influencers and ask them to review your products, make recommendations or give positive endorsements on their social media networks or blogs.
• It is also possible to secure interviews with influencers for your website where you are able to ask them questions and get answers that are valuable to your audience.
• You can create a round-up blog post of influencers in your niche contributing advice on certain topics in your niche. This way, you provide value to your audience, get exposed to influencer audience, and influencers get more publicity and exposure as well.

4. ACTIVELY engage influencers on social media

As part of building relationships with influencers, you can engage them on social media. For example, follow an influencer in your niche or industry, comment on their blog posts and social media posts and converse with them privately and publicly. When influencer audience see you interacting with influencers, they could also decide to follow you and interact with you.

12 Reasons Why You Should Embrace Influencer Marketing

How did you feel?

Do you remember the day you started your own business? How did you feel? Of course, you felt as if you were walking on air. You worked so hard to stand up on your own two feet and become your own boss. You chose to work for yourself rather than being securely employed. And now you have your own brand which needs to be marketed using the most effective strategy for you to get more customers while saving money.

Which marketing strategy should you embrace? Should you go for influencer marketing while combining it with cheap writing services? This article will address this question.

Influencer marketing defined

Influencer marketing is the best marketing tool for your brand. But what exactly is it? Influencer marketing is a form of marketing that aims at using key leaders or influencers to send your brand’s message to the larger section of the market. Instead of marketing your brand directly to consumers, you partner with influencers to get the word out. Here are 12 reasons why you should embrace influencer marketing.

Your competitors know the secret

Why should you embrace influencer marketing? Because it works like magic. Your competitors are probably using this tool to stay ahead of the game. Do not be left behind! Do not use traditional methods to market your products. And do not try to reinvent the wheel. Here’re tools your competitors might already use to keep in secret their successful content strategy – the creation of unique high-quality content with lower prices, like: Brill Assignment, AssignmentGeek, Myassignmentwriting or even Essay Writer Service. Sometimes you really need to try more products to find your one, the most productive and effective for your content strategy.

Increasing number of consumers

Today, the world has shifted to social media with consumers looking at fellow consumers to help them with their purchasing decisions. With technology advancing rapidly on a daily basis, you can expect to have more consumers online waiting to buy from you. And they can only buy from you if they are convinced by a person they trust and look up to. Influencers are the key to increase the number of consumers for your business.

Influencers affect your consumers

According to a research conducted by Nielson, 84% of consumers acted on recommendations from the people they knew and trusted rather than strangers. If they happen to know you, they will gladly share or retweet what you say.

You’ll understand your market

You need to discover who the top influencers for your audience are. For example, if your target market is aged between 16 to 25, you should look for the best influencer on a platform like snapchat. If your target market is aged above 55 years, you should find the best influencers on twitter. In short, know your target market and ideal consumers inside out.

Understanding your niche audience

Many businesses understand their target market in general but do not know how to effectively identify their niche audience or market. Influencers have the ability to attract your niche audiences like a magnet which in turn will boost your brand.

Improving your ranking on Google

Partnering with an influencer and requesting him to mention your brand on his or her blog not only generates leads, but also generates quality backlinks to your site which ultimately improves your ranking on Google search.

Enhancing creativity

You are probably thinking of how to make the next campaign different and memorable to your audience. How will you do it? Influencers have the ability to identify current trends in the market. Owing to this fact, they can create a different type of energy for your brand.

Increased engagement

An influencer will assist you in increasing your brand’s engagement thus increasing the number of people using your brand

Personalized content for your audience

Who on earth wants to read sponsored posts that appear too salesy and pushy? No one! They are just frustrating and mind numbing. All of us want to read and write posts or listen to stories which we feel we are personally connected to. And that’s why influencer marketing always wins. Influencers contents are highly tailored. An influencer knows that it is his/her duty to be true to your values and promote what you honestly believe in. The most popular influencers understand this rule of thumb.

Generation of leads

Since influencers work with tailored content, they will eventually grab your audiences’ attention. Once attention is grabbed, why won’t your message be the talk of the day? According to a research conducted by TapInfluence, 50% of marketers reported to attract quality leads due to influencer marketing. That’s great for you and your business. Right?

Influencers boost your returns

How do influencers boost your returns? According to Brian, a very successful salesman, an organization which encourages its sales team to go out and increase the time spent talking with customers (conversations) just can’t help being successful. Your influencers will generate more leads, who will lead to an increase conversations and ultimately in revenues. Nielsen reports that influencer marketing boosts revenue by an average of eleven times. Why shouldn’t you embrace influencer marketing?

Influencers know it all

Influencers are influential people because they know their target audience inside out. They know what works and what does not. If you are an expert at something, say motoring, you will definitely know within a few minutes of driving whether a car does well or not.

And finally…

If you want reach your customers easily and understand who they are, start looking at the people who influence and grab their attention. And when you get that person, you won’t just help increasing your sales and growing your business rapidly. You will sleep soundly at night and still be richer than your neighbors.

In  conclusion

Although, using influencer marketing to enhance your content strategy is a great idea, you have to be careful to choose the right influencers because if an influencer does something wrong, his/her actions could reflect negatively on your brand. This is why you should take time identifying the right influencers for enhancing your content strategy.

The question now is; Does the benefit of influencers on your products and services far outweigh the possible detriment of their wrong actions or vice versa? Let’s know your take on this matter through your comment.

Tiffany Harper contributed to this article.

Tiffany is a talented writer from New York, an extremely active woman, and a real leader. She began her career as a journalist and later proceeded it as an educational writer and editor. Now she works as an expert writer mostly in the digital marketing area. Please do not hesitate to contact her on Twitter.