5 Steps to Start Influencer Marketing
Steps to start Influencer Marketing

5 Steps to Start Influencer Marketing

So, recently I was asked to take up the initiative of leading the Event Management & Influencer Marketing Teams for my organization. I have been somewhat familiar with Event Management before, but Influencer Marketing was an entirely new concept for me.

In this article, I want to talk about the initial steps towards Influencer Marketing that I have explored. My community includes majorly Parents & Mothers. The first and foremost thing to do was to create my network of Influencers. The majority chunk of Mom Influencers I found were either Active on their Instagram handles, or else through their blogs. Since I am well versed with Instagram, that's what I started with, while continuing the existing Affiliate Network of the company.

Even though Influence Marketing is a booming field, with a huge number of Mom Influencers in active competition, what is surprising is how the widespread community can, at the same time, manage to run in compact compliance with their networks. Please know, here I refer to the established Mom Bloggers who have been at it for quite some time, and followers ranging above 17.something k. The young bloggers are still in the initial phase of building up to the community. However, even they become an important part of the community, since it is the existing community's support that nurtures their page.

For the established and developing Influencer accounts, it is simple. You reach out to one Mom Blogger (with a considerable business prospect), and within no time you're a part of the conversation of the community. Not in the community yet(mind you).

But I wished to do it my way. I wanted to dig deeper, and have a better understanding, not just of their business, but also of their views and opinions. In order for me to be able to create a movement one day, I feel I need to be a part of it, and understand it, before I can think for it.

I started with the Initial steps to Influencer Marketing:

  • Influencer Research: Based on their location, traffic, followers, and content category, do a thorough search of Influencers. It takes time for all of them to connect and reach back to you. Keep enough research at your hand, all segregated and categorized as per the criteria mentioned above. You can also start by first reading about this, there are many step by step to guides to influencer marketing, online.
  • Influencer Reach out: The reach out depended on the kind of platform. For Instagram, the two most common ways to reach out included connecting directly through DM, and through email listed under contact on their accounts.
  • Influencer Communities: As I mentioned in the beginning of the article, the influencers, while in a constant competition, function in accordance with their community. It is very easy to reach out to a particular group of influencers, given that you've been able to capture the hearts of the limited contacts you've had in the beginning.
  • Diversify: In the beginning I started out with the easiest platform i.e. Instagram. It is extremely friendly for the bloggers, followed by Facebook Groups and then WhatsApp communities. While it is easy and time saving to make connections on Instagram, it is very crucial to diversify the channel of influencers as well. Not all parents are fond of exploring new Social Media, some stick to Facebook, some to WhatsApp, and some like to traditionally read articles and blogs relating to their problem statement. Ensure you are connected everywhere, and never let a medium be your limit to providing solutions.
  • Be one of them (Networking): To ensure that I was in a continuous loop of what they were talking, what they were promoting and what they were feeling strongly about has been a challenge. I have taken it as a motive to eventually be able to not just know, but understand their struggles and efforts.
  • Working with the few Influencers with whom I've been able to build the connection has been a delight. Especially what it has provided me for my events. You see, for any event that we organize (now virtual), the first thing that comes to our mind for promotions is posting on Social Media. But is the organic way of promotion enough?
  • Naturally the question arises, what more can we do? How do we get the boost that it needs, and how do we ensure the right scale of boost at the right time in the most valuable way, is applied? Influencer Marketing solves these questions. For Event Marketing, an important aspect is to ensure that we're able to create enough movement, intensity of noise that the event requires.
With the right plan, right execution and a pinch of "something original", both the influence circle and the event plan can work in a beautiful equilibrium.

Indeed that will always be an Ideal situation that we wish must aspire to reach.

  • In my next article, I'll talk about steps to land the right content for Influencer Marketing, and how Influencer Marketing plays an important role in boosting events. Do let me know in the comments if this article was helpful? And if you wish for me to write on anything else.


Anuj Mehta

Diamond Professional

2y

Loved it. Waiting for the next one!

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