Best Ways to Approach Social Media Influencers
Written by Athina Crilley
The increase in the use of social media rapidly has given rise to a new wave of digital celebrities known as ‘influencers’.
Influencer marketing is a fairly new concept, but the use of content creators to increase brand awareness and promote your business appears to be a very effective strategy. Content creators, including bloggers or social media users can collaborate with businesses to promote their products and drive sales in return for free products, one off payments, or long-term sponsored partnerships.
This form of marketing is highly successful because influencers often have highly engaged audiences who trust their opinion. These content creators are able to produce creative original content about your products or services to post to their followers or subscribers. And when you choose the right influencer, whose followers are in your target audience, they are likely to be very interested in what you have to offer.
This all sounds great, but how do you go about contacting influencers and getting them onboard with your brand? What are the best ways to approach social media influencers for your own business or your client’s business? Here are some of the top, most effective ways you can do this.
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Do Your Research
Research is a key to success in any branch of marketing. It’s always the first step.
Before reaching out to any influencers, you first need to do research around figuring out who your target audience is. This will affect who you reach out to collaborate with.
The platforms you want to use to market your brand will change the type of influencers you choose, so it’s important that you think about which platforms you want to use as part of your social media strategy. Do you want curate a beautiful feed on Instagram? Are your target audience going to consume long form videos like those on YouTube? Do you think they will love to watch 30 seconds clips on TikTok?
Once you’ve established the above, the next step is to find the specific influencers that you think fit well into your business and your brand’s values. Larger companies usually have a whole team dedicated to the role of finding future influencers to collaborate with, because it is a huge, time-consuming task. However, it is a task worth spending the time on getting right!
The first thing to establish is the type of influencers you’re interested in, and the size of their following. Depending on their audience, going from the largest to the smaller, influencers are split into macro, micro, and nano influencer. Which type you choose to work with will depend on your budget mainly, as larger influencers often require more compensation for their work.
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Create Your Pitch
Now you know which influencers you want to reach out to, it’s time to create a pitch. Your pitch is what the influencer reads before they decide whether or not to accept your offer, so make it good!
Your pitch shouldn’t be too salesy. It should instead inform the influencer of who you are, what you stand for, and details of the campaign or project you want to be a part of.
For micro-influencers, you can usually reach out through direct messages on social media platforms. Larger influencers might request you to contact them through email only, or through a link in their bio. With macro-influencers, it often takes a few extra steps to contact them as they may have a manager or assistant that deals with any enquiries.
A great thing to do when approaching social media influencers is to offer them a favor. Instead of asking them for a favour, consider offering them a discount code to share with their followers, or offer them some free items in return for a post if you have minimal budget to spend. Make sure that you are doing something for them, so they are more likely to do something for you in return. It’s about winning their trust, and opening up the conversation in a friendly, approachable tone.
It’s good practice to make every pitch personal. You can do this by using their name at the top of the message or in the subject line of the email. Add a personal note showing that you have genuinely seen their posts and know what they stand for. This could be mentioning their recent blog post or commenting on their recent YouTube videos.
Keep your pitch fairly simple and short. Make sure that you add in all the necessary details about your brand and what you are looking for in the collaboration. Remember to emphasize what the influencer can get out of the campaign beyond just the payment.
It’s not always easy approaching social media influencers, especially if you are a fairly new business with a smaller team and low budget to spend on digital marketing. However, it is definitely worth using social media influencers to increase brand awareness, make more sales, and grow your business. Influencer marketing is here to stay, so get on board as soon as you can!
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If you’re struggling to know where to start when it comes to researching your clients, Impact Enterprises does in depth market research and lead generation for all clients to scale their businesses and maximise sales. Their data specialists are skilled in social media curation and trend spotting, including influencer identification and email sourcing.