• Influencer Marketing, Marketing, Social Media Marketing
• 15 July 2017

Like it or not, influencers are a major part of marketing campaigns today.

Their followers look to them for guidance. This means that having them on your side is crucial.

While influencers are a boon to you, using them still comes with all of the usual challenges of marketing your brand to audiences. From headlines to poignant narratives, fine-tuning your influencer strategy is far from stress-free.

So what are some great ways to go viral using influencer strategy? We’ve got five tips that’ll put you on the right track.

1. Come Up With Compelling Headlines

Whether you’re dealing with influencers or not, a compelling headline is a must.

You could have the greatest content to share with customers, but if you don’t understand how to write a great headline, your content likely won’t go viral.

This might sound a bit unfair to those of you who put your heart and soul into your content. It does, though, make sense if you think about it. Time is precious, and if people read a headline which seems boring, they’re not going to waste their time.

What, then, are some ways to make your headlines really stand out?

Well, for one, they should have important keywords in them. These are the keywords that interest your consumers. If they feel that the content is relevant to them, they’re much more likely to give it a chance.

You can also give numbered headlines a try. Take the title of this article, for example. We promised you 5 ways to make your influencer strategy go viral, This likely communicated the idea that this piece would be easy to navigate and digest.

2. Include Visual Elements

As you’ve probably heard, making visual content a part of your marketing strategy is a must in today’s world.

So, you need to include visual elements in your influencer strategy. Remember that linking up with your influencers is useless if they’re not visible.

You have several options when it comes to choosing visual elements.

You can go with video content, which works nicely when you collaborate with influencers who have prominent YouTube presences.

You could instead try relying more on pictures. Some influencers, for instance, have large Instagram followings. Their followers love viewing their content, which consists primarily of selfies and short smartphone videos.

These visual elements can be standalone projects with short blurbs. Or, you can also drop them right into the middle of your copy.

This will delight readers who aren’t looking to do too much reading while engaging with your brand.

3. Understand Your Audience

Understanding your audience is always important, even in the absence of influencers.

You must know, however, that dealing with influencers means that there is now a completely different element to understanding your audience.

First and foremost, you need to trust that your audience actually trust your influencer. Before you pick an influencer, ask yourself some important questions.

Is your influencer falling out of favor with his or her followers? Do your influencer’s ideals actually line up with your company’s?

Further still, you also need to understand that your influencer’s followers are loyal to him or her. They will likely value the opinion o the influencer over anyone else’s — including your own.

Whether or not it’s actually true, your target market sees the influencer’s opinion as objective and un-biased.

Simply put, there is no way that what they have to say won’t impact your business dealings.

Let’s, for example, you decide that you’re going to take your company in a new direction. If the influencer doesn’t like it, he or she may decide not to work with you anymore. The problem here is that the influencer’s followers may exit the deal as well.

4. Tug On Some Heartstrings

We’ve known for quite some time that emotions crush logic in the world of marketing.

If you can make people feel something, you’re much more likely to be able to convince them to purchase your products or services.

An effective influencer strategy will take advantage of this fact, since it’s arguably easy to do this when working with influencers.

Influencers are people first, brand ambassadors second.

They likely attracted their followers by presenting themselves as genuine. They are famous for connecting with their followers on a deeper, more authentic level. Consequently, their followers trust them and likely have some sentimental attachment to them.

In other words, you don’t necessarily have to strategize much here. By virtue of working with your influencers, you’ll be able to make that emotional appeal to audiences.

5. Keep It Simple

Before you joined forces with your influencer, he or she kept things simple. Videos were posted to YouTube. Facebook posts are made.

This simplicity is arguably what attracts an influencer’s followers. They like that the content is so simple and not so obviously bogged down by marketing strategies. In other words, influencers are an asset to you because people just love their authenticity.

That said, there is no reason to deviate from this formula when you ally yourself with an influencer. The simple yet effective social media marketing strategy which worked before can work now.

Don’t start producing a ton of gimmicky content with your influencer. This is bound to be a huge turnoff for some of the influencer’s followers.

Just focus on finding ways to seamlessly integrate your marketing strategies into your influencer’s strategy. Take the influencer’s authenticity and use it to improve your brand’s reputation.

Ace Your Influencer Strategy

Putting together a decent influencer strategy can throw newbies for a loop. Once they get into the swing of things, though, they undoubtedly find that you don’t have to try too hard to make influencers appealing.

Their appeal is already, after all, the fact that they’re so well-loved by their followers.

After you’ve finally perfected your influencer strategy, it never hurts to tighten up your marketing strategy in general. Having said this, why not look into getting a digital marketing analysis done? It should help you identify any weak points in your marketing campaign.

And before you leave, make sure you share your thoughts and ideas about influencer marketing. Your success stories and advice are definitely welcome here.