This post was most recently updated on July 8th, 2017
Using Influencer Marketing To Grow Your Blog requires building workable strategies.
There are several mistakes I’ve seen bloggers make in the burst of interest surrounding influencer marketing.
Bloggers are apt to overly quantify, randomly apply and trivialize their influencer marketing strategies.
To understand thèse missteps, let’s start with a definition of influencer marketing that we can work with.
Special: Set Up Your New Blog Today… 3 Easy Steps
Influencer Marketing Defined
As the name suggests, influencer marketing is a strategy of increasing your blog and brand following by tapping into the resources of influencers.
An influencer is someone who has these characteristics…
- sizable reach,
- recurring audience,
- ability to create awareness, and
- ability to move people to take action.
Here’s how to use influencer marketing to grow your blog.
- identify influencers in your niche,
- give them something they value,
- develop a reciprocal relationship.
Identify Influencers In Your Niche
Make it your business to learn who the influencers in your niche are.
You can find them
- dominating social media channels,
- writing top blogs and
- creating popular products and services that your prospects consume.
Special: Set Up Your New Blog Today… 3 Easy Steps
Get Their Attention
Here’s how to get their attention.
Hint:
Give Them Something They Value
Reach out to your target influencers with value.
Share their blog posts on social media sites, and participate in
- their comment streams,
- product launches,
- contests, and
- other things they value.
Find what’s important to an influencer, and make it important to you.
Amplify and publicize it in any way you can, and preferably, in ways that are unique to you.
Develop A Reciprocal Relationship
When your target influencers take notice of the value you have given them, they will want to reciprocate in some way.
It’s not so much that they are appreciative and thankful (though they may be)… as it that they want to continue and foster the relationship that you initiated, and that they have now come to value.
Special: Set Up Your New Blog Today… 3 Easy Steps
Common Mistakes That Bloggers Make
In your enthusiasm to use influencer marketing to grow your blog, avoid making mistakes that could ultimately frustrate you and undermine your strategy.
Don’t Overly Quantify
Don’t obsess on metrics and statistics.
As influencer marketing increases in popularity and buzz, you will see more and more emphasis on quantifying the influence levels of influencers.
- how many followers do they have?
- what is the conversion rate of their blog post offers?
- what is their social reach?
- and so forth and so on.
Resist the temptation to follow just “big” influencers, though.
Sure, they may have the numbers to chase, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they are a perfect blend for your niche and for your specific audience and readership.
You might strike a much more mutually beneficial relationship with a “mid-level” or even “mini” influencer who makes more sense for your blog, and may offer you more joint venture and cross promotional opportunities.
And don’t forget, as everyone and his brother flocks to the “big” influencers in your niche, it will be increasingly difficult for you to get into their sights, let alone their good graces.
Don’t Randomly Apply
Don’t try to create a random influencer campaign.
In other words, don’t just start reaching out to people who look like influencers every time you visit a blog or social page.
Do this with a clear strategy and within sensible limits.
Trying to build a meaningful and reciprocal relationship with influencers requires a lot of effort and dedication.
Develop a strategy to build a relationship with a manageable number of influencers.
What number is “manageable?”
It depends on how much time you will devote to this strategy, and how deeply you intend to develop the relationships.
I recommend that you pick a small number of influencers to market yourself to, and let it increase slowly as you get the hang of it.
I started with the number “10” in mind, but I didn’t actually reach that number for several months into my campaign.
The main point is to focus narrowly on your target influencer list, just like you laser target your blog audience, and buyer/client prospects.
Don’t just try to get everyone to notice you because it will dilute your efforts and make your campaigns weak.
Special: Set Up Your New Blog Today… 3 Easy Steps
Don’t Trivialize
Finally, don’t trivialize the relationships you build with influencers.
Don’t take them for granted.
Don’t work to get someone to help you promote your new product or service, then disappear from their blogs and social media feeds after you achieved some fleeting success, or after you failed to gain any immediate traction.
Influencer marketing is for long term.
Continue to build the relationship as an ongoing part of your blogging business, not just some quick hit and miss marketing scheme to tap into only when you have a special launch or project.
Start Your First (or next) Influencer Marketing Campaign
If you want to get off on the right foot, I highly recommend that you use a spreadsheet to map out your exact influencer marketing strategy.
Pick a number of influencers to target in your campaign.
Let’s go with the number “10” since that is what I used for my first influencer marketing campaign.
At the top of your spreadsheet, list the 10 bloggers you will target.
Your vertical list should comprise the activities that will comprise your influencer marketing campaign.
These should include things like…
- Visit their blog, daily
- Tweet each blog post
- Facebook share
- Google+ share
- LinkedIn share
- Write a blog post featuring your target influencer
This is just a rudimentary list.
Think of all the things that might work for you… all the things that will tap into your special skills and knowledge.
Perform each activity every day.
As you do, your target influencers will start to notice the consistent, steadily dripped value you are offering them.
If they don’t take the initiative to reciprocate in some manner, then you take the lead and ask them to.
Suggest to them that you write a guest post on their blog, for instance, or ask them to share a blog post you wrote that mentions them in some way.
Special: Set Up Your New Blog Today… 3 Easy Steps
My Secret Weapon
I actually stumbled upon a special technique that has worked wonderfully for me, and I invite you to hack it.
First, click the video below for my short interview with Rebekah Radice in which we talk specifically about this strategy.
I chose Twitter to hyper-market to top influencers because it’s such a fluid, constant, ongoing sharing platform.
That gives me the opportunity to do a lot of sharing with a lot of people, very frequently.
Also, Twitter is easy.
Just a few characters and you’ve got a tweet.
Because it’s such a fluid platform, the influencers I target get to see a lot of activity from my sharing, on an ongoing basis.
My “Secret Weapon” is Post Planner.
My favorite features of Post Planner are:
Easy Content Posting:
Posting content lies right within the Post Planner dashboard, so you can always give your followers a good mix of proven content.
With Post Planner you can FIND all the content you need IN ONE PLACE.
Just add your favorite accounts from Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, and your favorite hashtags, keywords and blogs. Then cherry pick the best content to BLOW UP your engagement!
You can choose
- Photos to connect,
- Articles to share value, and
- Statuses to start conversations.
The content is always at your fingertips — with star ratings to help you choose.
Build Engagement:
Post Planner’s star ratings make it easier by helping you choose the most engaging content available — so you don’t have to hesitate or second-guess.
And engagement, after all, is the essence of influencer marketing.
The app shows you top performing content for any social account, hashtag or topic — all ranked by virality, so you can confidently predict engagement.
It actually helps you FIND scientifically proven content that skyrockets engagement, boosts reach, and drives more traffic to your website from Facebook, Twitter & Pinterest.
Recycle Your Tweets:
And here’s my favorite feature that has made my influencer marketing campaigns go absolutely crazy.
With Post Planner, you can actually “recycle” your tweets.
Click the text above to read the details about recycling your tweets
True enough.
You can create, curate, craft and cadoozle (for the sake of alliteration) all your tweets in Post Planner.
Then tweet them out.
Sweet.
Then, after all that, simply hit a little toggle button thingy that puts your favorite tweets (or all of them) into “recycle” rotation.
That means, once you’ve sent out a tweet that tells the world about an influencer’s cool blog post, it won’t die in the tweet-trash bin.
It will get recycled for as long and as often as you like.
So your target influencer will keep seeing that you’ve tweeted about his/her post repeatedly.
And it’s all automated so it can be happening while you bathe (everybody says “while you sleep”… sounds so cliche).
So, learn more about it, and sign up right now.
Get your first (or next) influencer marketing campaign started in minutes.
Start Here: Post Planner
This is my affiliate link.
If you enroll with it, just let me know and I’ll personally help you build your first (or next) influencer marketing campaign.
Influencer Marketing To Grow Your Blog + My Secret Weapon
Now you know…
My Secret Weapon
Now you know…
How to start, operate, perpetuate, simmer and stir influencer marketing to grow your blog.
Are you ready?
I’d love to hear your comments below about how you could employ influencer marketing to grow your blog.
After you drop a comment, you could even share this to your social sites 🙂
Thanks… you’re the best!
-Donna
Comments are closed.