As a refresher, I recently wrote a blog post called 5 Tips to Help You Get Better Results with Influencer Marketing, which summaries pretty well how to get the results you want. You can read it here if you haven’t seen it yet. We recently explored tip #1 here, and tip #2 here.
This week we’re taking a deeper dive look at tip #3:
Start with One Platform
It’s easy to get overwhelmed by all the different options for collaborating with influencers, so start with one platform. Facebook is a popular choice; so is Instagram. The first question to ask yourself is where does your market hang out, and second, what do you really love to do? It’s like a vin diagram. Where those two overlap is a rich starting point for you.
There are also tons of bloggers out there that can have a big impact on your influencer marketing efforts…From mommy bloggers, to health and fitness Instagram influencers, there’s an endless world of bloggers and social media influencers that you can collaborate with to promote your book. Remember, an influencer is an individual who has the power to affect purchase decisions of others because of his or her authority, knowledge, position or relationship with his or her audience. In influencer marketing, your efforts are on influential people, not on your market as a whole.
This means you research and find the influencers that would be the best fit to reach your target audience. How do you do that? One way is to look at your niche mates (other competitors) and see where they are appearing. Then see if you can do the same. Another is to research who else is solving the problem that you solve. Where are they appearing? (If you’re a fiction author, this tip is if you have a strong nonfiction angle.)
One note: In my experience, bloggers simply don’t have the sense of urgency that earned media does. When you have a book launch, for example, ideally you want to have interested media outlets do something with you and your book around the launch date. However, as I said, some of who we used to call “new media” simply don’t respond to your deadlines. They may be interested in covering you, but it will be on their timeline. I’ve had bloggers get back to me as much as a year later, interested in what I had a year before. This can also be an argument for starting any campaign really early.
Everyone loves a gift, so send influencers an email and ask if they would be interested in receiving a complimentary review copy of your book. Remember, they get inundated with requests, so they might say, “No, thank you.” In which case, you need to figure out the next step to building that relationship.
If they say yes, mail it that day. Be sure to follow up and ask if they be interested in posting about it on their social networking platforms. If it’s a blogger, you could offer to provide a guest blog post.
The point is, with influencer marketing you’re focusing on the influencer and gaining entree into their networks. You want to build out your strategy for outreach and then hone it as you get feedback on your efforts. It all starts with picking a particular platform and starting there. You can branch out to others as you are ready. This will keep the overwhelm at bay, and will help you to build confidence as you continue to reach out to others.
To your success!
Joanne
P.S. I had an interesting question regarding finding your market this week from a fiction writer. With fiction, unless there’s a strong nonfiction angle, reviews are your best bet. Get reviews wherever you can. The other strategic tip I have for you is to research other successful authors within your genre and see where they are getting exposure, and which influencers are writing about them. That will give you an indication of who your influencers are too. Good luck!
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