Wind up your work, pack your bags, go traveling, and earn doing what you love! Too good to be true, isn’t it?
Influencer marketing is a rapidly expanding industry that has grown to $21.1 billion from $16.4 billion in only three years. Before you knock your own sock off, you do not fall too far behind if you don’t know how to become a social media influencer!
Apparently, it’s now easier than ever to build a following than it has ever been. With a glimpse of talent and a ton of hard work, anyone can make an active earning from their hobbies.
Now, as easy as it may sound, it’s not a pie that you can have a go at just like that. But before you uncover what it takes to play alongside the big sharks in the pool, let’s see what a social media influencer is in the first place!
What is a Social Media Influencer?
In the simplest terms, a social media influencer is someone who influences an online community. Whether through Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or YouTube, if you can make an audience, you wield the title of a social media influencer!
However, the social media influencers we so commonly address are micro-influencers. The influencer marketing industry is divided into three main categories. There are celebrities (over a million followers), macro-influencers (up to a million followers), and micro-influencers (up to 100K followers).
Let’s turn it over to how you can become a social media influencer in your industry!
Benefits of Becoming an Influencer?
If you expect to become a paid influencer right off the bat, you’re in for a surprise!
Seeing that only the top 1% of the influencers get paid enough to make a living may shatter your hopes. But there surely is more to it than meets the eye.
A majority of micro-influencers enjoy various incentives. Invitations to foodie openings, paid trips, free products, and more contacts in the industry are a few to name.
Evidently, to become a social influencer, you must know your industry and be thorough. More on it later in the article. But to summarize, you must have something unique to offer the crowd. Whether it is a skill, product, or insight, it needs to be something people look for.
How to Become Social Media Influencer in Your Industry?
I’ve detailed the process of becoming a social media influencer in the following text. So, let’s find out how to become a social media influencer in a beginner-friendly guide without further ado!
1. Find an Audience!
Before getting into the ballpark of social media influencing, you need to look down a platform. Because that’s where your audience comes from.
For example, if leaving spicy reviews for cafes and restaurants is your thing, Instagram influencing is your option. Find the perfect angle for a flavorful photo for your Instagram and pen down how the meal excites your tastebuds.
Similarly, product reviews, DIY hacks, and sharing information are more suited for YouTube. People want extensive research spoon-fed to them, and no platform does it better than YouTube.
Now that you can find out where your target audience lies let’s find you a niche!
2. How to Find a Niche?
Whether you want your influencing career to be a child’s play depends on your chosen niche. You don’t want to leave your comfort zone for something that doesn’t naturally attract you. Because isn’t that why you want to quit your current job and start influencing?
The niche you choose should be something you’re an expert in. It can be anything from pet toys and litter boxes to history lessons and travel blogs.
3. What Channels You’ll Be Using?
Going back to Step 1, the channel you use becomes your source of income. You may see it as getting ahead of yourself, but isn’t that an inevitable goal? To introduce luxury into your life off of social media influencing and kiss goodbye to the 9-5?
Some social media platforms require you to set up business accounts if you intend to influence them. For example, a Facebook business page and an Instagram business account, to name a couple.
Not to forget to evaluate the potential of your earnings from a channel once you start gathering mass!
4. Create Valuable Free Content to Prove Worth
Becoming a lifestyle blogger or an influencer in social media takes time to generate income. Fortunately, you can utilize the initial stages of your social media influence to prove your worth to the audience.
And nobody loves anything more than quality and free content!
Before introducing your products, seeking collaborations, or monetizing your channel, you must let your audience know why you’re worth their time and money.
5. Show Your Uniqueness and Give a Strong Impression
The content you share on a social platform needs to be tailored to your target audience and niche. But it must also have your own unique touch to it. You can do so by sharing your life experiences, learnings, and situations.
If you had chosen your niche accurately, this should come naturally to you. Also, if you’re an expert in your field, you’ll have a ton of hacks and tips to share with your audience. This is how you display your expertise and get your viewers to convert!
6. Create a Content Strategy
If you’re easily carried away by questions like how to get internet famous fast? Or how to get Instagram sponsors? Then a good content strategy is what you’ll need the most.
Sharing authentic and valuable information is one side of the coin. The other is getting it to the right crowd. There are a plethora of social media management tools you can use to help you out. Or, you can hire an SEO service to help you out from time to time.
7. Tracking Progress
One of the best advantages of using social media platforms to become an influencer is how you can track your progress. Unlike traditional media streams, you can view the success of each post.
It helps you focus your funding on the areas that are paying off the most. Tools like google analytics and built-in social media trackers allow you to see views, clicks, likes, shares, and subscribers. You can use these analytics to reach out to your audience for a more personalized advertisement.
8. Interact with Your Audience
Viewers and subscribers love nothing more than an interactive influencer. This gives your viewers a sense of belonging and what will bring them back to your page once you share a new post.
Replying to comments, liking reviews, and responding to a few messages a day should bring you into the good books of the audience. Most influencers in social media rely on this method to attract collaborations and monetization offers.
9. Say Yes to Collaboration
Collaborations are the main source of monetization for micro-influencers, so use them wisely. Once your social account winds up its sails, you can leave your contact in your bio and invite collaborations in your area.
This makes you visible to investors in your fellow industries and will earn you your first gig. However, it is also important not to sell yourself short. After all, you’re putting in quite an effort into running the blog and taking your time out to review and advertise the products.
10. Create an Internet Presence
An influencer blog or an account on another social media platform will help you drive traffic to your main accounts. Once you develop trust with your audience, you can expand your income stream by making your own brand or selling directly from a web presence.
Also, having a blog or website gives you more authenticity and room to play around with the audience. And, of course, the essence is to maintain the same level of trust and authenticity across all the platforms.
Ending Thoughts
Becoming a paid influencer is not that easy due to the overwhelming competition in the market. Which is also one of the negative effects of social media.
However, if you’re focused enough to develop an internet presence first and gain the trust of your audience, as described above, you might be the one to have an edge in the competition.
I hope the above piece of information was useful and wish you the best of luck in your influencing career. Now that you know how to become a social media influencer, feel free to drop us a comment below on how it turned out for you!
