Pick A Platform for Becoming a Social Media Influencer
If you try to become an influencer across multiple platforms all at the same time, it’ll slow your growth. It’s hard to become an expert when you’re busy trying to be popular on every social media site.
Instead of splitting your time, concentrate on one social network in particular and build that one up to where you have thousands of followers. You need to be focused on growing your audience in one central place.
Look at which social networks are most popular in your niche. Instagram is a great network for beauty bloggers, fashion icons, and fitness brands. However, if your niche is business and technology, you’ll have more luck on LinkedIn or Facebook.
This doesn’t mean you can’t be on other platforms. It’s smart to go ahead and claim your username on other social networks. However, you need to develop your main platform first before you move on to expanding to other ones.
Think about your ideal audience when trying to choose your platform. If you want to reach an older demographic, then Twitter isn’t the best place to try to build your influence. Instead, look to Facebook or LinkedIn. Younger audiences like teenagers favor Snapchat and Instagram over Facebook.
Picking just one platform to begin your influencer journey is wise because you’re not going to have the time to do several well. Instead, you’ll end up doing a mediocre job across all of them.
Have an Influencer Road Map
You can’t get where you’re going, if you don’t know how to get there. To become an influencer, you need to create a plan to get from point A to B. You’ll need to build a following and consider how you’ll use that following to grow your business.
You must know what needs to take priority. This is one of the main steps in any influencer plan because it involves knowing where to build your audience and how to gain their participation.
When you have a plan, you can grow your reputation and optimize the interactions that you’re having with other users. This allows you to be able to adapt products or collaborations and engage with followers effortlessly.
It’s not only about what you share; but when you share it. You need to do research to see when is the most popular time to post on your chose social media network. These hours are usually the peak hours when you’ll get the most traffic.
Keep in mind that other influencers are posting about the “optimum” time, too. This means there’s a lot of noise for your followers to sift through. Even worse, some social media posts only have a shelf life of sixty seconds before they’re buried in the home feed.
That’s why you want to focus on experimenting with your times and tracking your results. The ideal time to post on your network might be listed as 6am on Monday. However, your own tests might show that you get the most engagement at ten in the morning.
Your influencer plan should also include hashtags you’ll be targeting. You can look up the most successful influencers and the brands in your niche to get some hashtag ideas.
Don’t stop there. You’ll also want to use a tool to help you find social media hashtags that you may have overlooked. One of the best tools for this is the Influencer Marketing Hub’s Hashtag Generator Tool. To use this site, upload the image you plan to post and the software will suggest hashtags that might be a good fit.
You can also try All Hashtag Generator. When you enter your keyword, this website will display several lists of hashtags including the top 30 hashtags for your niche, similar hashtags that you’ll want to use, and other keyword phrases that might be a good match.
Keep in mind that every network is different when it comes to hashtags. You can include as many hashtags as you want on a network like Twitter. However, Instagram encourages their users to limit their hashtags to around twenty per post.
An important precursor of becoming a successful influencer is knowing ahead of time what content you’ll be posting. You can’t simply throw something out there and expect great results. Sure, you might hit on something every now and then that resonates with your audience, but it won’t be consistent.
Try to create an editorial calendar for your content. Ideally, you want to be thinking 4-8 weeks in advance. That means you don’t scramble for content at the last minute, desperately searching for something to post.
To make sure your feed is always filled with fresh content, try using a social media scheduler. You can use a tool like HootSuite or Buffer to prepare your updates in advance then select your daily post schedule.
After you schedule your posts, you only need to check in on your social media profile a few times a day. Spend these moments answering comments and engaging with your community.
Bring Value to the Table
Unless you provide valuable content that your audience wants, you won’t have an audience. People don’t stick around when they’re hungry and you’re not feeding them. They’ll move on to the person who fills them up with whatever they need.
When you create content, the value can be found in the format that best suits the audience. So make sure you spread the format across several mediums. Make that content relevant and make it pop.
You can’t make mediocre content and expect to become an influencer. Your content should sound like you. That means what you bring to the table should be made up of your life experiences, your setbacks, and your triumphs. It doesn’t matter if your content is written or spoken; it needs to flow from you and through you.
Stay on topic when you’re posting to social media. Few things are more annoying than someone who rambles on and on, saying a lot but never really imparting any takeaways.
You need to provide value to your followers if you hope to become an influencer. Sometimes, that value will depend on your niche. For example, if you’re in the beauty niche then providing a detailed tutorial on how to use eyeshadow will be valuable in the eyes of your community.
However, if your niche is golfing, then that eyeshadow tutorial is more than just annoying. It’s useless and likely to anger your followers. They wanted golf tips and advice and you didn’t give them that.
Keep in mind that no matter what your topic, you want to make it fun and enjoyable for your followers. So focus on telling stories. Use examples in your content that depict human interest. Emotion is universal and when you tap into that, you connect with your audience and give them content they’ll remember.
For some topics, it might be helpful to bring facts or studies to your content. Give your audience evidence or research backing up your message. Doing this boosts your brand and makes you look trust-worthy.
Don’t forget that it’s not just your followers watching you. As you grow your platform, brands and companies within your niche may begin to pay attention to your profile. That means you always want to have your information updated and your best content on display. If your content is lackluster and there’s no easy way to contact you, a busy brand manager will look elsewhere for his company’s next influencer.
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