Marketing your content on your own is perfectly fine, but you can give your brand a boost by asking an influencer to help. Influencers are people who have a considerable following online. They have built up a strong connection with their audience, and are seen as a trusted authority. Their followers will eagerly check out any venue, product or service that the influencer recommends.
Say, for instance, an influencer dines at a small, recently-opened restaurant and loves the food and service. He raves about it on social media, posts fabulous photos of the food, and the next day, his followers flock to the restaurant to check it out. The restaurant is more than pleased with the increase in bookings and patronage, and will be grateful to the influencer for helping them get the word out about their great food. Best of all, this publicity cost them nothing!
Can you see your brand benefitting from the clout and audience reach of an influencer?
Think about how powerful influencer marketing is: if you work with a lot of influencers, your network could potentially grow exponentially. You don’t need to rely on your own audience to help you get the word out. Instead, you’ll be leveraging the reach of the influencers to get to their followers.
But how do you get influencers to help you out?
For starters, you can go on social media and look for people in your industry with sizeable followers. You don’t want just anyone to promote your business; you have to look for influencers who work in the same industry as you.
For instance, if you’re a hip hop dance instructor, you wouldn’t want influencers who promote interior decorating. Your audience demographics are different. You would look for influencers connected to modern dance, sports, gymnastics, yoga or personal training. Their audiences are more likely to click through to your content.
Once you’ve identified your influencers, it’s time to approach them. You can be bold and straightaway ask them to help you promote your content in exchange for something. But bear in mind that unless what you have in exchange is of value to them, you’re not likely to get a response. They probably get dozens of requests a day so you would be in competition with those others.
A better way would be to build a relationship with them; try to get on their radars by regularly commenting or providing good feedback on their content. This will take time, but it will build up trust, and when you’ve gained their trust, they’ll be happy to put in a good word for you with their followers.
