What is Influencer Marketing? and How do you do it?
Influencer marketing is the art of reaching out to people within your industry or niche with a huge social media influence and getting them to share your content to their large, engaged audience. The point is that if an influencer shares your content, it's almost like a recommendation or a leg up. And to have someone so influential in your industry do this, could mean you get loads of exposure for your own products, services or content to exactly the right audience, recommended by someone who they really look up to.
There are several ways to go about influencer marketing, here are some ideas:
Ask for Retweets on twitter by reaching out directly and publicly, this isn't that much of a nuisance to them just make sure the content is relevant and of interest to your target influencer.
Write a blog post about your influencer or influencers, that is helpful for your reader yet includes a little ego stroking for your target influencer.
Write or vlog about a recent article your influencer has written and explain why their views are so important for your audience.
Meet your influencer in real life! - This may be a little harder but if you go to industry conferences you are likely to bump into that big publication or top journalist in your industry, talk to them, connect and share an image of you together on social media, this is a great way to connect offline and online and then make that social media connection (This happened to me! Deborah Meadon - Dragons Den - Has retweeted me! and said i'm so good at social media!) - This can give you and your business and credibility a huge boost.
Start small and work your way up. Start with your local news outlet or niche publications and when the time is right to reach out to the Richard Branson's, you'll know!
Be resilient, it can take time to get influencers to notice you. Keep posting great content, share your views with influencers and always thank them when they do share your content. Don't be too desperate or overly spammy! This is a one way ticket to getting yourself blocked or called a stalker.