As of 2017, 85% of companies were using influencer marketing, out of which 90% agreed that it’s the most effective form of marketing. This increase in the usage and popularity of influencer marketing has encouraged many people to become influencers. But to become an influencer brand demands a lot of time, effort, and energy. Generally, many of them don’t know where to start, what to do, or how to build their brand.
8 Ways to Build Your Influencer Brand
This post will give aspiring influencers some of the most effective ways to start building your influencer brand.
1. Build Your Foundation in the Right Places
As an aspiring influencer, you need to build a solid foundation. You must have a strong online presence so that people can easily find you.
When you’re thinking about social channels, be selective at first and choose one or two platforms where your target audience spends the most time. For example, if you write a parenting blog for moms in the midwest, maybe you realize the moms you want to reach don’t use Twitter. Don’t waste your time maintaining a social presence on a platform that won’t help you start conversations with the people you want to reach!
2. Aim for Specific and Small Goals
As you progress along your journey to becoming a successful influencer, set achievable goals for yourself.
Think outside the “followers box.” It’s easy to get caught up on increasing the number of followers you have, but other metrics are important to! Learn different ways to keep your followers engaged and active on your social profiles. The old saying, quality over quantity, holds true. Pay attention to engagement, like number of likes, comments and shares.
Evaluate your progress by asking questions you can measure the answers to. Does your content results in engagement from x% of your followers? Do you see a lift in new followers when you post specific types of photos?
3. Do Research on “What Works”
You must always work on creating quality content. Figure out what type of content is going viral on the internet, and understand the mechanism behind its success. If possible, work on reverse engineering that success.
For example, memes are currently very popular on social media so they could work to engage your audience, but make sure the humor is relatable and relevant to your niche.
If you come across content that is gaining huge popularity on social media, research its evolution. What was the idea behind the success of this content? Invest some time and research to get an idea of what is working successfully and what is not, and if the same approach could work for your own content.
4. Remember the Brand Reflects Who You Are
As an aspiring influencer, ensure that whatever you do, all your activities have a positive impact on your brand. Make it a point to define your brand as who you are and what you believe in. Similarly, you should also consider working only with brands that suit your personal brand.
If your value system is not aligned with a brand’s value system then it’s better not to collaborate with them. Otherwise, the partnership could have a negative impact on the brand as well as your image.
This begins with developing principles and personal philosophies that are sensitive, thoughtful, and understanding of the opinions of others. Whatever you say or do will have a direct impact on the brand.
For promoting their product, Koa Organic Beverages teamed up with fitness micro-influencers. The beverage is made up of organic fruits and is best for fitness enthusiasts. One of the fitness influencers was Andrea Taylor.
The campaign was successful, and the picture posted by Andrea received more than 800 likes. This is one of the best examples where the values of the brand and the influencer aligned, resulting in the success of the campaign. If you read the comments on the post, you will also see that the influencer’s audience received it well.
Image Source – Instagram
5. Mesmerize Your Audience
You need to make sure to leave a long-lasting impact on the minds of your followers. You can post high-quality content or pictures on your social media platforms. You also need to ensure that the content is engaging.
The goal of mesmerizing your followers is to increase your engagement rate, visibility, and your active follower count. You need to invest time, energy, and perhaps even money to implement a perfect visual strategy. This will also help you to increase the amount you can charge per post.
As your brand grows you may eventually be able to hire a team of experts to support your photography and editing efforts as many top influencers do. In the meantime, there are (thankfully!) affordable tools and services that can deliver helpful editing support no matter what stage you’re at.
Photo editing platforms like Mendr essentially act as a full editing team. Using this app, certified professionals do the high-quality editing for you. You can remove objects or people from the background of your photo, change colors, swap certain objects for something else, etc.
Many influencers use this tool as their secret weapon for increasing the visual appeal of their photos without needing to invest in tools or training for themselves
Source: Instagram
The Swedish watchmaker, Daniel Wellington collaborates with many influencers to promote their watch. They ask influencers to create beautiful and attractive pictures, which they then post on the brand’s Instagram page.
The image shown below is taken by Maria Philibert, who has more than 30K followers on her Instagram account. She has posted this beautiful picture of her wearing a Daniel Wellington watch. And within 24 hours, the image has gained more than 27K likes. This shows the results from her followers of a beautiful, high-quality image.
Image Source – Instagram
6. Always Use Your Authentic Voice
If you want to be a successful influencer, never fake your voice. You have to discover your own authentic voice. Brands prefer collaborating with an influencer who can generate high quality and authentic stories for their brand.
You must maintain the authenticity, honesty, and originality of your work throughout your professional life. This will help you increase your engagement rate, generate organic traffic to your website, and increase visibility. The authenticity and originality will also help you gain new followers.
The screenshot given below is taken from the tutorial video of Omar El-Takrori. He is a professional freelance photographer, with 8.8K subscribers on his YouTube channel. The tutorial video talks about the use of Adobe Lightroom.
Image Source – YouTube
Drawing from his own experience, he shared tips and tricks to use Adobe Lightroom. The video has gained more than 147K views and 2.4K likes. Because he is a professional photographer, the video reflects originality and authenticity.
7. Maintain Consistency in Producing Helpful and Strategic Content
It’s important for an influencer to keep creating content. Ensure that this content is useful, informative, engaging, and helpful to your followers. This will help you position yourself as an effective and successful influencer.
When you create a useful and engaging video, blog post, or image, then it will immediately grab the attention of your followers.You could even consult your followers and ask them about what tips or guides they would like to see next.
Samantha Jane is a beauty influencer with 58K subscribers to her YouTube channel. Her videos are about makeup tutorials, shopping hauls, reviewing new beauty products or giving beauty tips.
She is regularly posts videos, at least 2 videos in a week. And all her videos are of high-quality and are very informative, engaging, and useful to her followers. She’s a great example of an influencer who maintains consistency in developing and posting useful content for her subscribers.
Image Source – YouTube
8. Listen to Your Followers
As you test and learn, it’s so important to also listen to the feedback of your current followers. Their requests and insights can be a great source for new ideas and building relationships, which is a big step to build a winning strategy to become a successful influencer.
Whenever you are getting a positive feedback, immediately go ahead and thank your customer. But in case you are getting any negative feedback, acknowledge it and work towards reconciling the situation. This is a simple yet effective trick to strengthen the relationship with your current customers.
This will surely help you to become an effective and successful influencer, who can stand out from the crowd. Ensure to build a brand that’s unique and distinct compared to other influencers in your niche.
Final Thoughts
Building an influencer brand takes a lot of time, effort, and patience. When you start your journey, you should know that it’s not going to happen overnight.
Have other useful tips to share for an aspiring influencer? Comment below; we’d love to hear from you!
Photo via Shutterstock
Aira Bongco
It is about knowing what your brand stands for and then ensuring to do that. It is all about the customer.
That was so well articulated thank you so much for being as thorough as you were. Extremely informative.