Your Brand’s Ultimate Guide To Social Influencers
Just how important is Selena Gomez to your marketing strategy? Depending on who you decide to target, she could be absolutely essential.
With 128.7m followers on Instagram, 53.5m on Twitter, 61m likes on Facebook, and 2.1 million subscribers on YouTube, Selena has a massive audience hanging on her every social media action.
This makes her, relevant, authoritative, significant, in short, she’s an influencer.
You might not know what a social influencer is, but people like Selena could be hugely important to both you and your audience. Here are 11 things that you and your brand should know about social influencers.
1. What Is A Social Influencer?
A social influencer is someone who is active on social media and will often have either a blog or vlog which they use to connect with their followers.
They’ll have a large following across their various social media outlets and blog, and hold a position of influence within the lives of their audience – to their audience, social influencers are: authoritative, reliable, trustworthy, and experts.
This means they have the power to make their audience follower their lead.
2. Who’s Doing It?
Social influencers come from variety of areas within society:
- They’re celebrities
- They’re enthusiasts
- They’re industry experts
- They’re activists
- They’re politicians
Some of the most well known and popular social influencers are:
CyreneQ
DanTDM / TheDiamondMinecart
Jake Paul
Smosh
Zoella
To cut a long story short, anyone with access to social media and a blog/vlog can be a social influencer.
3. Who’s Their Audience?
Social influencers have been considered the voice for Generation Y, AKA, Millennials. This is because of they work from a digital platform, making them easily digestible for those living in the ‘smart-phone-zone.’
But the audience of social influencers are not just the young and hip. Smartphones are now the preferred method for most of humanity to access the internet and 40% of the global population is now a social media user.
Who’s their audience? Everyone.
4. What Do They Want?
By the very nature of their name, social influencers want to influence people. They believe that the message they are sharing is important, relevant, and unique
They are projecting their voice because they saw an information gap – they wanted to hear what they have to say, no one else was saying it in the way they do, and so they assumed the mantle of public speaker themselves.
For this they want recognition of their unique insight.
5. What Recognition Are They Seeking?
Social influencers want adoration, a public following, but most importantly they also want to get paid.
While they have chosen their soapbox because it gives them a platform to talk about something they care about and which they have knowledge of, they don’t want to do this for nothing.
They may not be charging their viewers for their insight but they aren’t giving their services away for free.
What a social influencer wants is to monetise the sway they hold over their audience through corporate sponsorship, or making money from the number of views they received.
6. Why Should I Care?
That’s a good question. So here’s a good answer:
You should care because social influencers have a captive and engaged audience, and I’m afraid that however brilliant (very in your case) the relationship you have with your audience it’s nothing on a social influencer’s.
Why?
Because your brand is trying to sell your audience something – in fact you don’t have an audience, only customers and prospective customers – so they will always be suspicious of your intentions.
However, a social influencer is giving something to their audience and this means the people they engage with are trusting of their intentions.
You should care about this because by working and partnering with social influencers, you get the opportunity to sell your brand to a trusting audience.
It’s an audience which takes the advice of their speaker as something beneficial, making them potentially much more receptive to your product than ordinary customers.
7. Where Can I Find Them?
You’ll find them on the web: they’re on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google+, and on their blogs.
More importantly, though, you’ll find them listed on sites that exist to connect brands with social influencers.
There are plenty of these around on the tinterweb and these are some of the best:
Our personal favourite, though, is the brilliant FameBit.
Owned by Google (the parents of YouTube), this creates a seamless connection between you, your chosen social influencer, and the two biggest search engines on the planet. What greater opportunity could you want for your brand exposure?
So there you have it. You now know what a social influencer is, examples of them, who they speak to, why they speak to them, what they want out of it, why they’re important to you, and where you can find them.
So what are you waiting for? Get out there, find the right social influencer for you brand and give yourself the opportunity to market it to a truly receptive audience and gain some new customers.
Just remember, though, you’re probably not going to connect with Selena Gomez. I’m sure you’re as gutted as Selena isn’t – we feel your pain.