Social Media Influencers: 21st-century storytellers

It’s time to start investing in the social media storytellers of our time: influencers. Yes, self-published content and press releases still have their place, but it’s time to shake up your online strategy and hand the book over to a new network of marketers.

So, write your synopsis, establish your characters, and let your influencers tell the story – and here’s why:

1. Awareness

The first stop in marketing is making sure audiences are aware of your brand. What better way to do that than by having your very own network of influencers or brand advocates creating that awareness for you?

Establishing your network of influencers allows you to generate brand awareness on most – if not all – social platforms. This gives you the opportunity to increase brand awareness on all social fronts. What more could you want?

2. Trust

They’re called influencers because they have such a large, engaged online cohort that they actually do influence their following. Each influencer has a very loyal following, because users very much trust in the influencers they follow. As such, if an influencer believes in your brand, many of their online followers will start to do the same.

3. Audiences

It’s no surprise that influencer marketing expands your reach. Think about all of their followers and likes that will now become yours (providing you know what you’re doing) – yeah, we like the sound of that too!

You’ll be reaching a much more active online environment through your influencers. An influencer’s following is much more engaged, interactive, and willing to be involved in online two-way conversations. Using influencers will put your brand at the forefront of these conversations and will help you to develop your online story further. This will help to increase your brand authority with your target audiences.

4. Ad immunity

A report from PageFair highlighted a surge of ad blocker usage by 30% in 2016, and this is only expected to grow. There has been a major shift with online consumers as they have become more savvy in the know-how of brand advertorials. 2016 saw 615 million devices blocking ads worldwide – now that’s a lot of devices where your ads are going unnoticed. So, why are online consumers using ad blockers?

The second-largest reason for ad blocks is interruption. Consumers are not fond of brands using paid ads to disrupt their online experiences. How do we combat this? Influencers. Influencers are your new ads. They tell your brand story without interrupting your audiences – they interact with them instead.

5. All for one

Influencers can always be used to promote products and services in most sectors – even many of the drier categories. They can write your chapters no matter what the words, but it’s all about finding the right ones. It’s important that you choose your influencer based on their audience and whether they fit your brand’s target consumers. Don’t select your influencer based on their image and their amount of followers. It will be much more valuable to have an influencer with a lesser following but the right target audience than it would be to have an influencer with a large following and the complete wrong audience reach.

Whether you’re selling a destination, marketing property, or even trying to make your recipes the next viral #FoodPorn on the internet – influencers can help you get there.

Examples

Now you know why influencers are important, but have you seen them in action? Below are two of our favourite influencer-based strategies that conjured up examples of storytelling where consumers didn’t want to put the book down.

Nikon and the Warner Sound Festival

Having an influencer mention your brand on their social platforms is great exposure, but how about taking a page out of Nikon’s book? They turned their influencers into photographers by actually making them create content using their products.

At the 2013 Warner Sound Festival, Nikon asked attendees to document their time with a Nikon camera and share it on social. Along with generating hundreds of social mentions, Nikon also became the top trending topic on all THREE nights of the festival. That’s what we call influencer marketing done right!

Instagram: the platform for kings and queens of fashion to show off their styles. It can become quite saturated with the number of sponsored posts, which is why the ASOS Insiders influencer campaign was a stroke of genius.

Instead of using sponsored ad posts, ASOS decided to create sponsored accounts. Using individual influencers, they posted flawless images of them wearing clothing stocked by ASOS, with links and prompts for them to ‘buy the look’.

ASOS was able to expand its organic reach with consumer loyalty longevity, and without having to spend big money on advertising campaigns. And that’s a prime example of how influencer marketing can generate a big impact on a small budget.

The social media landscape has changed and it’s time to rewrite your online strategy. Learn the new words of digital marketing by downloading theEword’s content writing guide. If you’re still looking for the missing chapters to your online storytelling, find out how they can help get your pages filled up with the powerful words of influencers.