A trendy and effective way to garner brand awareness is through influencers, whether it’s a one-and-done deal or ongoing brand relationships.
Working with influencers, versus purchasing your own digital ad, has its benefits. Brands can gain third-party credibility. Influencers have built trust with their followers, so gaining support from an outside source can not only help increase brand awareness but brand authenticity, too. With influencers, you’re also able to effectively target an audience, or industry, you may have not interacted with before because you’re using the influencer’s network – not building your own from scratch. Mixing influencers and brands works, and according to the Content Marketing Institute, 69% of millennials purchase products that influencers recommend.
Influencers’ profiles don’t necessarily have hundreds of thousands of followers. Micro-influencers, profiles with smaller but highly-engaged followings, are extremely useful and can typically narrow in on a particular audience. In fact, influencers with large and small followings can contain your target audience, so it’s best to diversify your influencer mix with accounts of differing sizes. And, if you’re looking for a platform where visuals perform well – Instagram is the one to use.
Most Instagram influencers, large and small, use a business profile, meaning they have some extra tools than the typical personal profile. If you’re thinking about working with an Instagram influencer, there’s more than one way they can share your content. We’ve got two other opportunities you’ll want to remember for your next influencer strategy.
Leverage the link in their Instagram bio
Instagram business profiles allow a spot in the bio for an active link. Your influencer strategy should include creating a trackable link, to either your business’s website or a landing page, and requiring the influencer to put it in their profile for a specific amount of time. It’s a great way to get a backlink to your owned media.
Use their Instagram stories as another content outlet
Request the influencer to include relevant content in their Instagram story. On the photo or video, they can insert any relevant hashtags and tag your account, too. Bonus: if the profile has over 10k followers, they can add a swipe-up link in their story – another way to link to your owned media! See the screenshot below for an example.
Influencer marketing is here to stay and will become a crucial part of advertising budgets. I’m just scratching the surface about influencers in this #PRbrief, but our director of public relations rockstar, Tara, can give you the full lowdown in her Influencer Relations 101 blog post.
The Element team can help you run engaging, highly-targeted influencer campaigns that will resonate with your audience. Interested? Let us know!
Last but not least, each week the Element team has quick, needle-moving tips for you, so come back every Friday for your next #PRbrief!
