9 Steps To Becoming A Brand Influencer
- Anu
- September 10, 2020
- Career, Money
- brand influencer, how to become a brand influencer in nigeria, How To Become A Social Media Influencer In Nigeria
- 0 Comments
The word ‘Influencer’ has been used more often than not in recent years and is fast becoming a marketing phenomenon.
A brand influencer can be defined as an individual who has the power to affect the purchase decisions of others because of his/her authority, knowledge, position, or relationship with his/her audience.
An influencer has access to a large audience and can persuade others by virtue of their authenticity and reach.
Almost every major industry has seen a rise in influencers and brands are leveraging them now more than ever.
Being an influencer has become so lucrative that it’s no wonder that everyone wants to be one in their respective domains.
The types of influencers include Celebrity influencers, Blogger influencers, Micro-influencers, Macro influencers, and Nano influencers.
If you are one of those who desire to become one, check out the tips below
1. Choose a niche you are passionate about
Before you start on your path to becoming an influencer, you need to first select your niche. You need to choose a niche that you are interested in and can consistently create content about. You should also have some level of expertise in the field to be able to establish yourself as an influencer.
Make sure you choose a niche that is in line with what your passion and not just because everyone is doing it.
2. Optimise Your Preferred Social Media Platforms
Once you have chosen your niche, the next step is to select your preferred social media platforms and create/optimize your profiles. Most influencers are popular on only one or two social media platforms. So, it is best to focus your efforts on only 1-2 channels.
You also need to switch to a business account especially for platforms like Facebook and Instagram as that opens up a lot more options.
3. Create a Noteworthy Bio
Once you have decided on your niche, you need to start fine-tuning your Instagram account. The very first thing that you need to focus on is creating a bio that immediately catches people’s attention. It should talk about your story in a way that engages people.
Remember, it’s one of the first things that a brand or potential followers see on your account. So if you want to become an Instagram influencer, make it noteworthy.
4.Understand Your Audience
Before you start creating content and posting on social media, you need to understand your target audience. Influencers have sway over their audiences and strong connections with them. That’s due to the fact that they don’t cater to everyone, but only those with similar interests in the same niche.
To become an influencer, it is important that you know who you’re targeting and then do it well to build a loyal follower base. To understand your audience, you can first start by analysing your current follower base to get insights into their demographics and interests.
5. Create Relevant and Useful Content
The next step in becoming an influencer is to post useful and relevant content for your followers. The more you are able to engage with your audience, the more people will be influenced by your opinions and recommendations.
That’s the most important requirement for being an influencer, the fact that your followers actually listen to you.
You need to formulate a content strategy and use a mix of content types, preferably the ones that your audience will mostly like.
No matter what content strategy you choose, make sure that you make it broad enough to accommodate future brand collaborations.
Overall, keep your content strategy focused on your niche, but not too narrow. Think from a long-term perspective and start preparing to be an influencer right from the start.
6. Be Consistent
Posting content consistently is another crucial prerequisite to become an Instagram influencer.
You can choose to post daily, weekly, or at any frequency that you’re comfortable with. You should also consider the platform before deciding on that. Some platforms, like Twitter, are more dynamic in nature and require a higher posting frequency if you want to become an influencer on that platform.
On other social media platforms like Instagram, YouTube, and Facebook, you can get away with posting once or twice a week. However, select the days and times that you will post and be consistent.
In order to attain a certain frequency for your posts, you may need to get tools with which you could schedule your posts. Examples of these tools are Hootsuite, Tweet Teck for Twitter, CoSchedule to mention a few.
The good thing about these tools is that they come in handy when you may not be able to post at a particular time or when you have other equally important business to attend to.
Check out this article on the best times to post.
You don’t want to lose your followers by posting inconsistently or intermittently.
7. Engage With Your Audience
Once you start posting content on social media, you will often get likes and comments on your posts. For an influencer, it is important to connect with their followers, therefore, you cannot ignore these comments.
It is a good practice to reply to comments and answer any questions that your followers ask you. You can also just “like” their comments to show your appreciation.
Another way to engage with your audience is to ask them a question and start a conversation about a topic of mutual interest. Interactions like these help build personal connections with your audience and solidify your position as an influencer.
8. Use the right hashtags
Hashtags are important because they enable your content to be found by other Instagram users. Instagram allows you to use a maximum of 30 hashtags on a photo, and it is recommended to use all.
You should also create your own personalized or customized hashtag that your tribe will identify you with. If your hashtag resonates with people, it may even grow bigger than your account into something that millions of people want to use.
9. Collaborate with other influencers and brands
While your primary focus, in the beginning, should be to create and release great content, you will eventually want to look into collaborating with others. Whether it’s another influencer in the same (or different) industry, or a business looking to tackle your target audience’s demographics, partnering up can be a fun and mutually beneficial endeavor.
If you already have an idea of who you’d like to collaborate with, be sure that they align with your values and have a similar following (you want to appeal to their audience and vice versa).
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