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HOW TO FIND THE RIGHT INFLUENCER TO PROMOTE A BUSINESS

Facebook promotion

Did you know that almost 63% of business marketers today work with at least 5 or more influencers on all their campaigns? Why do you think companies are all embracing the idea of influencer marketing? The reason is simple, audiences trust influencers, and they find it relatively easy connecting with them. They have a way of reaching out to their audience, influencing their opinions, decisions, and converting them into loyal customers. Let’s take a look at Huda Kattan for instance, who is a very popular beauty influencer. When she recommends or mentions a beauty product, how many people do you think would want to buy such a product just because of her mention? Several thousand, if not millions! However, finding the right influencers for your business isn’t always an easy task, and sometimes, it can be a very daunting task. In this light, VRG Web Design created a strategy to help you find the right influencer to promote your business service.

Understanding your audiences

In order to find the perfect influencer to promote your business, you first need to understand your audiences. The reason is that your audience is one of the major cornerstones of any influencer marketing strategy. Failure to understand whether or not your target audiences are the ones following an influencer can mar your marketing strategy. For instance, let’s say you have a fashion brand that sells beauty products. And you decide to work with a fashion/beauty blogger so as to boost your brand recognition and sales. However, do you think you’ve made the right call by merely choosing any random blogger because he/she has a million followers? I don’t think so! You need to understand that not every fashion influencer has the same kind of target audience. While some may target women and children, others target only men and millennials as their audiences.  So, beyond the fame and the number of followers, what is it you need to look for? You have to ensure that your target audiences are in line with those of the influencer you are opting for.

Know your influencers

Now that we’ve established the significance of your audience let’s take a look at how you need to evaluate an influencer before you can conclude that he/she is right for your business.

Their reach

The reach of an influencer simply refers to the number of followers they have on their blog or social media pages and profiles

Their engagement

Beyond the reach of an influencer, it is important to check their engagement rates. A very high engagement rate shows that their audiences are truly interested in their content.

Authenticity and personality

An influencer’s authenticity is reflected in their followers’ trust. Hence you need to find influencers whose posts don’t look like something they are paid to do. Also important is their personality. You need to be sure you are choosing an influencer whose personality aligns with your brand’s standards and values.

Where can you find the right influencers?

Social Media

The easiest way to find the right influencers for your business is to look for them on social media.

Hashtags

Hashtags make content accessible and searchable on social platforms like Twitter, YouTube and Instagram. So in order to find influencers for your business, search for the right hashtags that may be relevant to your niche.

Google Alerts

Another way to find them is by setting alerts for keywords relevant to your business on search engines like Google. That way, you will find blogs, topics, and articles relating to your business or products.

Blogger outreach platforms

In order to find influencers, check out their blog domain authority and social media statistics to find the ones that tick your boxes.

HOW TO CONVINCE INFLUENCERS TO MENTION YOU IN THEIR POSTS

Finding the right influencer is just the beginning of the process; the real work comes in the form of convincing them. So, how can one convince an influencer to mention their brand in their videos or posts?

Paid marketing

This is, by far, the easiest way to go. Contact the influencers you’ve chosen and let them know about the proposed deal. If you are financially buoyant enough to afford them, this can be a very effective strategy. But you will need to approach them with warm introductions, compelling proposals, attractive deals, and follow them up.

However, if you don’t really have much to spend on influencer marketing, you can try the following tricks.

Offer free publicity

People are often motivated to share posts, mention names and brands that say good things about them or highlight their positive traits. Once you’ve identified the right influencer, you can start to write blogs, share stories, and publish news about your brand that stylishly informs the public about the influencer. Once you’ve created these contents, you can then tag the influencer on social media.

Frequent their sites

If the influencer has, say, a blog or website, you can start by sharing relevant industry news on the site, guest posting about new and relevant industry developments. This will, no doubt, captivate the influencer and invariably encourage him/her to tell his audience about the new industry developments, and hopefully reference your brand in the process.

Provide quality and ask for mentions

Asking an influencer for mentions wouldn’t bring the world crashing down, but you need to be sure that you are providing him/her with quality content – something they consider valuable and beneficial to their audiences. Influencers would be happy to inform their audiences about your business when they see the potential benefits therein.

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Facebook Reviews are the new backlinks

5 star online user reviews

Third party reviews are now being viewed by search engines such as Google and Bing as the most important feature to ranking and have taken over that top spot from back links. This makes online feedback and evaluations such as Facebook reviews  as critical to your local SEO strategy as getting other websites to link to you with great anchor text. More specifically, according to MOZ’s Local Search Ranking Factors Survey, online reviews are thought to make up 10% of how Google and other search engines decide to rank search results. Local business reviews are more important than ever.  93% of consumers read online reviews for local businesses in 2017, with 12% looking for a local business online every day according to brightlocal.com consumer review survey. Think about it, if you want to know where to go to eat for dinner in a new town, what would you do?  You would probably ask people on the street or friends who have been there what they like. Well, social media makes that even easier with third party validation. Which is why 85% of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations.

In the past, a link from a third-party site was considered a vote of importance and based on the anchor text, relevant for your site. However, with so much gamesmanship going on and the ability to buy your way into local directories, or even pay a website owner for a link on their resources page, search engines now look at inbound links as not as trustworthy as they once were. In fact, the trust factor for reviews on Google, Yelp and Facebook coming form consumers is the most important thing you can have, if you want to show up in the Google Local Pack (top 3 on the map).

When you search for a specific business on Google, there is now a box on the right side of the results page that gives you information about the company including pictures, times the business is open and most important, highlights of consumer reviews posted by verified customers, which shows you how many Facebook and google reviews have been posted.

So what is the takeaway from this blog post? Make sure that every time you perform a service or sell a product for someone, ask them to review your company on one of the big 3, Facebook, Google, and Yelp. A great way to do this, if you sell online is to even set up an email automation campaign upon completion of the sale to request that review.

If you need help with this or just want to get more information about how social media can impact your SEO efforts give us a call or shoot us an email today, or better yet, post your comment on the VRG Facebook page.