What is a social media influencer and how them can help your brand

It’s only in recent years that being a social media influencer has become a lucrative, full-fledged career for some lucky individuals. Whether through good looks, quirky personalities, or even sharing memes, some people have been able to achieve the status of social media influencer.

Now, these influencers can help you in your journey toward growing your business and customer base through influencer marketing.

The power of social media influencers is one that shouldn’t be undermined and one which you can use quite effectively to help catapult your product and services into success.

What is a Social Media Influencer?

A social media influencer is a person that has a following on social media and is thought of as an expert in their respective fields.

There are influencers on a wide range of platforms, including:

• Youtube
• Instagram
• Twitch
• Snapchat
• TikTok
• Twitter

All of these influencers have one thing in common: loyal followers. The more followers a social media influencer has, the better the chances are of increasing your sales should an influencer mention your business on their platform.

This is why it’s so important to understand the benefits of social media influencers. Whether you have a business dedicated to true crime, writing, reading, fashion, food, or any other niche, chances are there’s an influencer that’s ready and willing to promote your brand to their audience.

Types of Social Media Influencers

There is a wide range of social media influencers, who can all help you grow your business and help you meet different business goals.

These influencers include:

A-list Celebrities

Celebrities are perhaps some of the best social media influencers to hire for your brand. Celebrities, by nature, have amassed millions of followers through their music, art, or acting careers.

Enlisting their help to promote your product is one of the easiest ways to reach a massive audience in little time. However, this is costly.

YouTubers

Youtubers are one of the fastest-growing types of influencers in recent years. They have the advantage of being able to put out full-length videos and blogs on their channels, as opposed to only snippets of short videos such as on Instagram.

YouTubers are so valuable and effective in digital marketing, that the top 10 brands on YouTube, including brands like Honey and Raycon, reached over 14.3 billion users in 2021 alone!

YouTubers are great at reaching out to a wide range of audiences, and they can provide valuable, in-depth reviews on your products or simply insert sponsors into their videos which already attract thousands, if not millions, of views.

Instagram Social Media Influencers

Instagram is particularly effective at reaching younger audiences. In fact, surveys show that Instagram is by far the most preferred social media platform for Gen Zers and Millennials, which make up approximately 70% of its 1.452 billion users as of 2022!

The great thing about Instagram is its ability to showcase your products beautifully through picturesque shout-outs by social media influencers.

Though many tech and gaming companies find that YouTube sponsors help spread the word about their products and services, the biggest spenders for social media influencers on Instagram seem to be fashion and beauty companies.

Macro Influencers

Whether on YouTube, Instagram, or another platform, macro-influencers are those that have over 100,000 followers but less than the followers of a celebrity (usually around one million).

Macro influencers are great for companies that want to spread the word quickly about their products but aren’t too worried about building a specific brand image or following.

Micro-Influencers

On the other hand, micro-influencers, those that have roughly between 1,000 and 100,000 followers, are considered essential for brands that want to build followings and attract niche audiences.

For instance, a micro-influencer that focuses on hunting and posts daily blogs for their followers is better equipped to sell hunting gear such as knives and bows and arrows, rather than a huge celebrity like Kylie Jenner, who boasts over 301 million followers on Instagram!

In addition, research shows that 82% of consumers who view a micro-influencer sponsoring a product are keener on purchasing it for themselves, showing just how effective these micro-influencers are at boosting your business’s sales.

Employees

Finally, employees that work for a company can also become social media influencers themselves, and highly trusted ones at that. This might be due to the fact that 53% of consumers stated that employees are the best and most reliable resources to learn about a company from the inside.

Employees can easily post on their social media accounts activities about their daily life working as an employee in your company, adding a human element and building trust in consumers. Best of all, it doesn’t matter what sized audience your employee has. So long as their commentary on your company is positive, it makes a difference.

How Social Media Influencers Can Help Your Business

There are various ways social media influencers can help your business, whether that’s growing customers and outreach or for your business itself. Below are some of the many advantages of influencers to promote your company.

High Digital Marketing ROI

Digital marketing ROI is the measure of profit or loss obtained after you’ve launched a digital marketing campaign. Hiring influencers brings one of the best ROI’s in the advertising business, with companies earning up to $5.20 for every dollar spent on influencer marketing.

That’s quite a high ROI, and is one that shows how easy (and essential) it is to choose to spend on influencers instead of other advertising campaigns.

Easy Content Creation

Designing an ad isn’t an easy task. Advertisements, including digital advertisements online, take time to design, film, edit, and introduce to audiences. However, social media influencers are quite used to creating content on their own and understand which types of content do well for their specific audience.

As such, depending on a social media influencer for content creation and marketing takes the stress off your shoulders, saves your company time, and can help you spread the word to audiences despite not having a solid content creation background.

Your influencer will take care of all of these concerns, as many influencers work alone and know how to produce content efficiently to help their business (and yours) grow.

Be Viewed as Trustworthy

Using micro and macro-influencers is one of the best ways to improve the trustworthiness of your brand. Audiences like to follow advice from people that are just like them, have similar interests, and are considered experts in their field.

Perhaps that’s why Walmart was one of the top 10 companies that spent money on social influencers on Instagram, and for good reason. People are more likely to buy products deemed helpful by other people just like them, and that is within their price range.

However, celebrities can also hold power over customers. If someone wants to emulate a celebrity, they are more likely to purchase products that these celebrities use, such as Flat Tummy Tea used by influencers like Cardi B and Khloe Kardashian.

Easily Spread Through Different Platforms

Most influencers have a variety of platforms they promote on. For instance, the social media influencer and horror storyteller Mr. Ballen began his career (after leaving the Navy seals) by creating stories on TikTok.

He then moved to YouTube, where he has amassed over 16 million subscribers as of the writing of this article. Then he transferred over to Instagram, and Twitter, and now has a Spotify podcast for his strange, dark, and mysterious stories.

This is just one example of how an influencer can sponsor your product through a wide audience on various social media pages. This is important to attract a wider age range for your product. In addition, it’s much better to pay an influencer rather than for ad space for each separate social media platform.

Win-Win Relationships

Another benefit of using influencers is the creation of long-term, mutually beneficial partnerships. You can choose to pay an influencer based on affiliate marketing, meaning they get paid a portion of sales commissions.

This ensures your influencer is doing everything possible to spread the word about your product so they can get paid for sales, while you reap the benefits and pay for ad space that is truly working in your favor.

In addition, as your social media influencer grows in popularity, so too can your brand as you sponsor their content.

Cost to Hire Social Media Influencers

Hiring social media influencers to promote your product can cost anywhere between $100 for nano influencers, to around $5k to $10k for macro-influencers, to well over even $1 million for big-name celebrities such as Kim Kardashian.

It’s important to create a budget that accommodates future influencer marketing. In fact, 90% of businesses report they will increase their budget to hire influencers, as they are now seen as one of the most essential parts of digital marketing and digital transformation.

For more accurate costs, check the social media page of the influencer and send them a personal message, or reach out to their team for more accurate pricing.

5 Cases of Social Media Influencers

If you are still on the fence when it comes to working with a social media influencer, consider how the following companies are already putting this marketing strategy to good use and achieving success.

1. Maybelline Falsies Push Up Drama

Cosmetic and personal care company Maybelline went looking for a way to drive awareness and increase sales for their new product, Falsies Push Up Drama mascara.

Its solution was to work with Walmart for the product launch and to add a strategy for teaming up with various beauty influencers on social media. These influencers had already gained an impressive number of followers by sharing beauty tips and where to find the best beauty products.

For the launch and to help drive traffic to the stores, these beauty influencers promoted the product and the displays found at the various Walmart locations across the country. As a result, they gained over 70,000 views while also increasing Maybelline’s total media value in the process.

Example: https://www.instagram.com/p/86lHmTj3x8/

2. Nike Air Vapormax

As a leading manufacturer and supplier of sports equipment and athletic wear, Nike incorporates influencer marketing into its strategy seamlessly. The company works with both celebrities and other social media influencers on various campaigns to promote its products in different ways.

One example of this is in the promotion of its Nike Air Vapormax series. Nike teamed up with a popular channel on YouTube called “What’s Inside?” which creates and shares videos around cutting into everyday objects. The goal is to show the audience what they can find in the interior of the product.

These influencers, a father and son, have over seven million subscribers and garnished over three million views for the Nike Air Vapormax cut-up.

3. Casper

Finding new ways to build brand awareness and promote certain types of products becomes more challenging every day. A prime example of this is mattresses and other bedding products.

Yet, the innovative company Casper became the first of its type to offer more than in-store options, opening up e-commerce and mailing mattresses and other products directly to consumers’ front doors.

To get the word out and reach a broader audience, Casper began looking for social media influencers with large followings and a hipper vibe on YouTube and Instagram to promote their products. The focus was on finding influencers that projected authenticity and could really relate to what they offer and who the brand is trying to reach.

Casper didn’t stop there, however. They took it another step further by providing the influencers with customized coupons, which led to building a relationship and boosting loyalty.

Thanks to its creative influencer marketing, Casper was able to compete with competitors on a higher level and build awareness of the brand with audiences it may not have been able to reach on its own with traditional advertising.

4. FIJI Water

Social Media Influencer Danielle Bernstein, while promoting her own brand’s Bodyworewhat, included bottles of FIJI water in her workout photos and videos for followers. She further promoted the water brand to her audience by creating posts reminding them of the importance of always staying hydrated during and after workouts and providing a discount code they could use for home delivery.

Since this macro-influencer was naturally promoting her own product, the inclusion and mention of FIJI water comes across naturally and is not just a product placement for money. This smooth integration is one of the best influencer cases in marketing today.

A key takeaway here is that various macro-influencers use their social media popularity to make a living, and this includes continually finding ways to monetize their channels, accounts, and audience followings. Understanding this allows you to seek out those looking for a relationship with a brand, such as is the case with Bernstein and FIJI water.

5. Audible

Consumers are increasingly jumping on the bandwagon to listen to books and podcasts as they commute, walk, workout, or conduct some other activity. Much of this is due to the efforts of Audible, a company owned by Amazon that offers monthly memberships.

A big part of Audible’s efforts is to team up with various social media influencers, both at the Micro and Macro level, as well as with celebrities. In other words, Audible’s marketing team allocates a good part of its budget and strategy to how influencer marketing can work best for them.

Taking clues from Audible’s marketing playbook, a good strategy for working with micro-influencers starts with finding ones that have a loyal following and high audience engagement. The influencer can mention your brand, product, or service in an authentic, genuine way, making it seem like a personal recommendation. Consumers today rely more and more on personal recommendations, so this is a win for all.

An example of such marketing is when one influencer created a post mentioning how he educates himself by listening to books and podcasts on various topics, such as business management, as he travels from one location or job to the next. It is a natural, genuine post that just happens to mention the brand.

These five cases of influencers are only a small representation of how this strategy is making a difference today. Creativity and relationship-building are at the core of its success, and it is available for anyone who will take the time to find the right influencer or influencers, and cultivate a strategy that works.

Boost Your Influencer Marketing Efforts with the Help of WriterAccess

Influencer cases in social media are numerous today and continue to rise. Now is the time to find out how you, too, can benefit.

Once you know the social media influencers your brand wants to work with, the next essential step is to create valuable content to share with their followers.

Collaborating with the influencer is one way to accomplish this goal. Another way is to work with creative freelance writers to develop content for the influencer to share on social media, blogs, and websites.

The writers at WritersAccess can help with this! Sign up today for our 2-week trial to get started.

Wrap Up

Social media influencers are much more than models or funny personalities online. They are now a cornerstone of marketing, and anyone from macro-influencers to micro-influencers can influence customer decisions and improve your sales!

Consider their power next time you’re thinking of ways to improve your outreach and strengthen your business.