This article is for people who endeavor to be successful social media influencers.

For our clients, particularly the ones in the retail industry (Business-to-Consumer or B2C), we often consider working with influencers as part of a targeted advertising strategy or overall marketing strategy.  The benefit for our clients is reaching the influencer’s audience with a positive message about our client’s business in exchange for a fee charged by the influencer.

While many consumers understandably find this practice questionable, the unsavouriness is primarily due to an increasing lack of trust in influencers.  This trend is being driven by the increasingly higher quantity and lower quality of people who consider themselves influencers.

Which brings us to the question:  How can you be a successful, professional, influencer in the ocean wannabes?

Misconceptions

Three misconceptions that need to be cleared up straight away:

1. Likes and comments that consist of a smiley face or heart emoji don’t count as engagements.
2. Don’t bother estimating your Return-on-Investment (ROI) per click–it’s going to be different for every client.  Over the last few years, there’s been a push to calculate ROI as part of an influencer’s Key Performance Indicator (KPI) one-sheet, to the point that even major advertising organizations have “standardized” on US$1.00 per click.  The genesis of this so-called standard is that it’s the default setting for many ROI calculators.  In other words, it’s meaningless.
3. If the majority of your posts are advertisements or you post about a variety of subjects without a cohesive theme then you’re not an influencer.  An influencer has an audience (followers) based on one specific niche.
   • Examples  |  Food.  Gardening.  Pets.

6 Steps to Success

1. Theme
   • What is the theme of your social media account?  The more focused, the better.
     • Example  |  If you love food, then the majority of your posts should be food-related.  Cooking, restaurants, travel to areas known for a particular cuisine.
2.  Followers
   • Once you have over 5,000 followers (the current definition of a Micro-Influencer) on a social media platform, you have a large enough following to be of interest to potential advertisers if the majority of your followers are real people and they represent a valuable niche.
   • It’s simple to determine if the majority of your followers are real by using one of the many websites and apps available.
     • Examples  |  Analisa,  HypeAuditor, trendHERO  (Note:  We’re not affiliated with any of these businesses).tok
3. Engagements
   • There are 3 types of engagements that are valuable to advertisers:
     • A real comment by a real person.  These types of comments are easy to determine because they consist of at least one full sentence.
     • Sharing a post.
     • YouTube subscription.  This metric only counts for YouTube, because it takes time and effort to subscribe to a YouTube account.
   • Example KPI  |  If you have 5,000 followers and a recent post garners 30 to 5 real comments (e.g. full sentences), you have a good level of engagements.
4. Niche  |  Demographics and Interests of your followers
   • Gender
   • Age
   • Location
   • Their top 3 interests
     • Examples  |  Mom, motorcycle racing, pet owner
5. Return on Investment (ROI)
   • Instead of calculating the value of a click, simply list how many clicks your average post receives (e.g. from your post to your advertiser’s website).
   • To really stand out from the crowd, confirm with 3 to 5 advertising clients, how much revenue the clicks from your post have generated.  Then state it as a Conversion Ratio.
     • Example  |  Average revenue generated per click for advertising customer XYZ:  $25.
6. One Sheet
   • Put the preceding 5 items into a single document with a brief biography about yourself, the link to your social media account, and your contact information.
   • Please don’t add multiple pages of information and graphics.   If a person is interested in hiring you and they need more information, they’ll ask for it.

 

Bottom Line

Just like a person sending out their resume to a company, your potential advertising customer is reviewing hundreds of influencers per day.  Your goal is to make it easy for them to hire you by having a short, simple-to-understand document (One Page) readily available for them to review.

Photography by Visual Hunt