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Best social media platforms for Influencer Marketing?

Best social media platforms for Influencer Marketing? 1200 675 admin

Social media platforms, in the dynamic landscape of the digital world, are gaining increasing power every day, thereby creating fresh opportunities for influencer marketing.

We say this as we see an increase in the number of social media users worldwide. Last year, new users with an average of 1.3 million joined social media, bringing the global user count to nearly 4.2 billion by the beginning of 2021.

Deciding which social media platform can be fruitful for your business or influencer marketing program can be a choosy task.

Mostly, two social media platforms are known best for influencer marketing. One is Instagram and the other one is TikTok. So let’s dig into the details of both platforms to find out which one is best for you.

Instagram

Launched in 2010, the platform offers a mobile-focused environment to interact with. Broadly, Instagram has been seen as the best platform for influencer marketing. The platform has an audience base of Millennials, Gen Z, and Gen X.

Features

Instagram offers a variety of features for an influencer to create content either in terms of a static or a video. These options are available for content shareable on the feed. Social media content creators share professionally shot images and videos on the feed and maintain their grid as per their niche.

Moreover, Instagram has a ‘story’ feature which makes the content available for 24 hours. There, you have multiple options to interact with the audience including polls, open questions, and quizzes. Instagram stories are used to share instant and raw content as the audiences like to see the behind-the-curtain version of yours.

The interactive nature of Instagram stories has increased the time spent on the app to more than 28 minutes.

Instagram has also launched ‘Reels’ on stories which allow users to create 15-second multi-clip videos with audiovisual effects, and other creative tools. However, this feature is unavailable in certain geographic locations.

Audience

If your target audience lies in an age group of 25 to 34 years, your influencer marketing program should definitely include Instagram as this age group is the most abundant one on Instagram.

They follow celebrities or social media influencers/content creators. Not only that, people on Instagram love to share user-generated content which includes their own images, and stories of their creations as well.

Not to forget the mentioning part of Instagram where people mention each other in different content.

Instagram is a place where you can find a healthy and impactful community. Influencers and content creators interact with their audience, discuss, guide, and recommend.

Tracking and measurement

Instagram offers analytical tools to track and measure the performance of individual posts. This helps in understanding how the content of an influencer is performing, what the audiences like and interact with.

When is the best time to interact with the audience and to what extent the influencer’s content reached and brought new followers?

TikTok

The application is known for shooting and sharing short, musical, and hilarious videos. The app which began as a platform to make lip-syncs and participate in dance trends has now become a full-time career of many social media content creators.

Features

TikTok has provided a great avenue for users to share user-generated content which includes everyday vibes, as well as tips and tricks, entertainment, and challenges.

In parallel, we have seen many influencers who became famous from the same platform for creatively converting the daily routine moments.

As the platform is video-based, it offers more features to shoot videos creatively thus enabling its users to make the most of their mobile phones.

TikTok favors original content and by following different best practices, your video can get a chance to appear on the ‘for you’ page of the app.

Audience

About 33 million users access the app to interact with the content. With the great potential the platform offers, many brands have accessed TikTok with influencers and have found great results. 

Regardless of the fact that TikTok is comparatively new in Pakistan, brands like Cadbury, Samsung, and Huawei have run their influencer marketing campaigns on TikTok.

Around 60% of TikTok users lie between the ages of 16 to 24, making it a primarily Gen Z platform. This gives the brands an opportunity to target their audience group which is kids or Gen Z. 

The platform is interactive in nature and requires its users to perform on camera while shooting a video. So if you are thinking to appear on TikTok, plan out some activity that entices the audience to participate.

Tracking and measurement

Like Instagram, TikTok also offers certain features to track and measure the performance of your content. The analytics are more or less similar to Instagram where one can find followers’ information as well as profile visits and video views.

TikTok or Instagram?

So having adequate knowledge of both the platforms, their audiences, and how they work, how should one decide which platform is best for their influencer marketing program?

The answer lies in the audience. Wherever your audience is active should be the targeted platform for influencer marketing campaigns.

Both platforms have their distinct genres. So the next big thing is which platform is aligned with your brand’s communication.

Sometimes, you may find that both platforms can work best for you as your target audience is available and active on both platforms.

On the contrary, there may occur some cases where both platforms might not work best for your business.

To find the best platform for your business and the top-performing influencers on those platforms, sign up on Walee and kick start your influencer marketing campaign. Moreover, you can create your online presence by creating your Walee shop.

To see how your campaigns and influencers are performing, Walee provides you a real-time dashboard that makes it easy for you to track, measure, and control your campaign along the way.

Interested in starting your first Influencer Marketing campaign? Contact us now!

Influencer Marketing Strategy & Seamless Execution

Influencer Marketing Strategy & Seamless Execution 1024 682 admin

There was a time when Influencer Marketing was limited to celebrities and dedicated bloggers only. But now, since the rise of influencer marketing, it has opened new doors for businesses and brands to connect with their potential consumers and audiences.

A decade ago, direct selling and testimonials used to be seen as the only way of influencer marketing, with known and famous faces. Thus, making it an expensive mode of promoting a business.

However, in today’s millennial era, there’s been seen a shift in perception of people from celebrities with a massive following to bloggers and micro-bloggers producing unique, genuine, user-generated content.

Today, we can see different people in different categories creating good content and maintaining a healthy community. So if you want to know whether influencer marketing can help your business in exploring new possibilities, keep reading on.

1. Make your objectives clear

Before jumping into the horizon of influencer marketing, take out some time beforehand and make things clear regarding what actually are you trying to get out of influencer marketing.

Does your brand really need an influencer marketing program? If so, how you can capitalize from this corner of marketing? Having clear objectives will provide you with concrete ground to build your influencer marketing strategy on.

Most businesses prefer influencer marketing either to create awareness about their business or generate sales. Having these broad objectives, it is important to further refine the objectives which align with your brand needs.

Maybe you want to expand your customer base in a different demographic. Or you may want to introduce a new product to your existing customer base. Or you might want to increase social mentions of your brand by igniting word-of-mouth activities.

Most influencers have a specific following and they can make your message reach a specific audience group. So with your broader goals, keep a note about how you will be converting your broader goals into small, specific, and effective actions.

2. Finding influencers

Once you have a clear understanding of what you want to take out from influencer marketing in terms of your objectives, it is time to look for those which can convey your message in the most relevant manner.

Just like other strategies, research is the first step. Start with one platform first then expand to other ones. Your brand should also have a presence on that platform.

If you are not sure which platform is best for you, use different social listening tools which can help you identify your potential platforms and the influential voices. Also, check out our detailed guide on finding the right influencer for a campaign.

While you research, keep the below things in mind:

  • The influencer should be relevant to your business or creating content that is relevant to your audience
  • The social media content creator has a good engagement rate with a significant number of followers
  • Some influencers are in the growing phases of their social career but have a good engagement rate. So, if you can compromise on the follower count, you can get an effective engagement rate with a very specific audience
  • The person should be authentic as well as their followers. Beware of fraudulent activities. Do check the comments and whether are they maintaining conversations with their followers.
  • Look for branded content they have shared. You will get an idea of what they are capable of and how you want them to work with you

To help you avoid all this hassle, you can simply register on Walee and connect with a community of influencers.

3. Budgeting and management of the campaign

While you search for the platforms and influencers, choose the type of influencers with which are you interested to work? Would you like social media celebrities with huge follower numbers? Or are you comfortable with micro-influencers having less than 2000 followers? You might like to work with someone having between 5K to 10K followers. Your selection of social media content creators will directly affect your budgets.

Once you lock the type of influencers you will be working with, start creating your budget. Also include the time for planning, developing, executing, and reviewing the entire plan.

Unlike an automated campaign, influencers are human and most of them don’t like to be controlled. They are creative people and constantly manage multiple partnerships too.

Some of them might miss your deadline to post at a specific time or alter the requested call to action in their communication. For that, you will need to invest your time in maintaining a fruitful relationship with them. Then you will be able to bring out their natural talent in the best interest of your brand.

4. Track and control your campaign

As you launch your influencer marketing strategy, keep it on track and making necessary changes is equally important. There are different ways to track your campaign such as speaking with influencers regularly or checking their profiles where they have posted about your business.

If you have run a sale-focused campaign, then you can track and monitor in real-time through Walee dashboard. It makes it easy for you to track every influencer working for you and how they are performing in terms of bringing sales for your business.

Final Word

An influencer can stay but the industry of influencer marketing and its operating procedures have changed completely in a short period, and this same industry may become entirely different from today. However, this article will help you to start drawing your campaigns on the canvas of influencer marketing. But like other marketing areas, influencer marketing is constantly evolving so be ready for change.

So after knowing the value of this industry, let us guide you about how can you create an influencer marketing strategy.

Return on Influencer Marketing: Measure What Matters

Return on Influencer Marketing: Measure What Matters 1280 720 admin

I just made a new purchase – a wooden table. After setting it up, out of habit, I took a picture and posted it on my Instagram with the caption, ‘unboxed and assembled’. Not so surprisingly, quite a few people ended up asking me where I purchased it from. Am I an ‘influencer’? Nah. Did I have the power to influence the people around me? Oh yeah!

Influencer marketing isn’t new

Word of mouth has now become e-WOM (electronic word of mouth), but has been around for a long time. People have always influenced each other when it comes to buying decisions.

The underlying concept of influencer marketing, depending on someone’s credibility, remains the same. What actually changed is the medium or channel.

What gets measured gets managed

A study from Mediakix shows that nearly 90% of all marketers find ROI from influencer marketing comparable to or better than other marketing channels!

Measuring the Return on Investment for Influencer Marketing is a challenge, but it is not impossible. Unlike other types of marketing efforts, this is not just money in, money out.

A few important things to remember before diving into influencer marketing’s ROI:

The results don’t end, even when the campaign has

Organic SEO and sites like Pinterest get businesses additional impressions, even after their influencer marketing efforts have ended.

The content can be reused

The content created by the influencers can be used and reused by the businesses, on their own social media channels.

Lower costs compared to traditional marketing

Generally, the costs associated with traditional marketing techniques are much higher than the costs associated with influencer marketing. The influencers take the responsibility of any creative costs, leading to lower overall cost, and a greater return.

A Closer Look at the Return on Influencer Marketing (ROI)

Simply put, return on investment, ROI, is the amount of the income that has been generated from the spending that has been done. It helps you determine whether the effort you’re putting in, the investment you’re making, is actually worth it or not.

This sounds easy to calculate but unfortunately gets a little more complicated when it comes to influencer marketing efforts. There’s no outright fixed cost, and neither is there an absolute value of the benefit (like sales made) that you have, on top of it, the customer journey visibility is hard to track. However, once you’re clear about your campaign goal, you can track specific KPIs that help in calculating the ROI.

1. For Audience Building, track the subscriber or follower count

Every brand wants their presence to be seen by the maximum audience possible. It is recommended to track your subscriber count by covering how many email subscribers you have or even through simpler means like tracking your Instagram followers.

2. For Brand Awareness, track page views, impressions, and mentions

A little similar to audience building, to make people more aware of your business, you need to have a greater presence around. Track page views, impressions, and mentions. Using Google Analytics, you can see from where the traffic has been directed, and whether is it from your specific influencer or not. A very simple way to track your mentions, and the engagement that your brand is getting is through social listening tools.

3. For Lead Generation, track the sign-ups or email subscriptions

Of course, all businesses are looking for leads, to eventually be converted to sales. This can simply be done either through utilizing CRM systems for tracking which lead landed on your website from where or making use of email marketing software.

4. For Engagement, track the engagement rate

Another great yet super simple metric to track is the engagement rate. All you need to do is keep a check on the likes, comments and shares you’re getting on your marketing efforts.  This is easy to track because of the built in analytics dashboard provided by all social media channels. When an influencer is posting about you though, the stats won’t be directly visible to you. Make sure that every time you have an agreement with them, they’re clear about sharing a detailed performance report with you.

5. For Sales, track the conversion rate, or the sales made

Ultimately, all businesses wants their leads to be converted to sales. All our marketing efforts should directly or indirectly contribute to greater sales. Sales can be tracked in Google Analytics if you’ve set up ecommerce tracking.

In short, if you’re looking for a good return on your influencer marketing efforts, you need to Track things that actually contribute to the sale, not only the final sales figures.

How can Walee help your brand

Now we’ve established that influencer marketing is a great marketing strategy, and measuring its return is actually possible, how can you gain access to all these influencers?

Walee has done all the heavy lifting for you, and has over 80,000 influencers on board! To help businesses track their efforts, Walee generates a unique custom tracking link for each influencer when they work on a campaign. This makes tracking influencer marketing efforts super easy, giving businesses the exact number of sales they’ve generated. In fact, the payments made to the influencers are through the same platform, making it easy to do a cost-benefit analysis, using cost per click (CPC) and eventually calculate the ROI.

Pretty simple right? Send us a message on our social media channels or email us at support@walee.pk  to see how we can help you get the maximum benefit out of your influencer marketing efforts.

Share your thoughts in the comments below!

How to find right Influencers for your Business

How to find right Influencers for your Business 1024 682 admin

When it comes to connecting with the audience in a meaningful and more personal way and identifying their behavior patterns about certain brands, the right influencers or social media content creators are the obvious options to make this happen.

Onboarding and working with the right influencers can help you connect with your target audience, drive traffic to your website, lead to sales, and achieve other objectives of the brand. Around 63% of marketers work with influencers on every campaign.

The importance of influencers in a marketing strategy is consistently increasing and the reason for their exponential growth is their connection with the audience. They connect, create, share, listen, and discuss with their community. In return, they have become trusted peers for their audience.

Now that you know how important the role of an influencer is, let’s dig in further to explore how you can find the right influencers for your business.

Why do you need to promote your brand with influencers?

Before you start looking for influencers, first make the objective of onboarding an influencer crystal clear. Ask yourself what is the primary purpose of incorporating the social media content creator(s).

Are you looking to create brand awareness other than through paid advertising tools?

Is it a positive perception you want to create around your brand?

Or do you want people to buy your brand on the recommendations of influencers?

Once your goals are clear enough, you can direct your efforts to find the person who can help you meet your objectives.

How to look for Influencers

There are certain ways you can work to find your best match of influencers. Below are they described:

1. Get to know your audience

In influencer marketing, audiences are the third pillar alongside influencers and the brand. Many brands here make mistakes. They see the number of followers but not the type of followers. You must ensure that the audience following a specific influencer is the one you are looking for.

For instance, you work for a food brand and want to generate trails of a new variant. In order to do that, you choose to work with a food blogger. According to you, will this be the right decision?

Well, broadly you took the right step. But specifically, you need to see which food blogger will work best for you as the right influencer. The one with pretty aesthetics of some lavish restaurant food or one who specializes in home-made food as well as covers the ingredients of the same.

An influencer with an audience similar to your target audience and content which fits your brand will be a perfect pick. Because s/he will feature your brand in front of people who can eventually be interested in your brand.

2. Get to know your influencers

After getting a complete hand on the knowledge of your audience, it’s time to identify the potential influencers who can meaningfully represent your brand. For selecting influencers, below are the criteria you must see for what a good influencer should have.

Influencer Reach

Reach is the number of followers an influencer has on their social media. It is important that the person you select for outreach has a good relevant audience.

Engagement

This metric is more important than reach. The engagement rate shows how much followers actually engage and interact with the influencer’s content. A good engagement rate is a sign that an influencer can affect the purchase behaviors of their audience. A recent study showed that Instagram influencers who have 5k to 10k followers have a better engagement rate than the big ones.

Authenticity

Authenticity is the single most important metric which makes one an influencer. People will most likely follow the person whom they feel authentic. Therefore, when searching for influencers, take a look at their content and see how authentic their content and thoughts are. How much their audience believes and follows their opinions.

An influencer with authentic content can bring positive perceptions to your brand.

Personality & Niche

A good influencer marketing campaign is actually successful when the influencers promote the brand which technically fits their personality, niche, content, and industry.

3. Where to find the relevant influencers

Influencer marketing is all about genuine people advocating your brand. It is not restricted to big celebrities. So, how do we find those genuine people? Here’s the answer:

Hashtags

With hashtags, it is easy to find content on social media. You can search for hashtags that are relevant to your brand and similarly the people using those hashtags. Here’s how:

  1. Search for #sponsored #ad #influencer #blogger and #[Yourbrandcategory], and see what content appears
  2. Let’s say you find a pleasing picture, then see the creator’s profile
  3. If there is similar content that you liked earlier, see whether they are from the same niche your brand belongs to
  4. If they have a good number of followers, calculate their engagement rate using different tools. That way, you will get a rough idea of the worth of that content creator
  5. If they seem to satisfy all the conditions, mark them on your list of right influencers for your business.

Social Media

You can find right influencers for your business on social media by searching for those who are already talking about your business or alike. Different blogs and social media mentions will help you find such people.

Here, social media listening tools will make it easier for you to find the content people have created about you. For example, if someone has created their content on bicycles, and you deal with the same, you definitely would want to engage them.

Google Alerts

Google Alerts can be a good source of information when searching for content related to your business. Just create alerts of your relevant keywords and you will start receiving alerts whenever someone writes about related topics.

Let’s say you want to promote your business on the web but don’t know the leading or relevant websites, Google alerts will help you in finding them.

Influencer Marketing Platforms

These platforms can help you easily find influencers from different niches. You can access their database and filter your search as per category, social media platforms, engagement, followers, and more.

To help you look for your best match of influencers, Walee is there! We are Pakistan’s largest and growing influencer network with more than 80,000 influencers onboard.

You can register on Walee as a business, run campaigns, and track performance; all in real-time.

How to approach the influencers?

Once you list down all the right influencers for your business, it’s time to approach them. Below are some ways you can use for outreach:

1. Introduce yourself meaningfully

When you find the right people for your campaign, then first be a follower of them. Engage and share their content, comment on their posts, showing appreciation for their work.

As you appreciate them, you can introduce yourself in a direct message with a reference leading to the content you liked and shared.

2. Share your proposal

After you place yourself in the eyes of influencers, send them a proposal that wins their hearts. Below can be the details you may include:

  1. You and your business’s details
  2. How you came to know about them
  3. What are the specifications of the campaign
  4. What they will get in return (monitory or else)

Try to keep every detail transparent and discuss it with the influencers after you send them the proposal. Take them on a call or meet them and cater to their concerns. Similarly, try to build a friendly or casual relationship with them so that they can stay longer with you.

Lastly, follow up with them after a few days.

This is how you can find the influencers for your outreach campaigns, create a healthy relationship with them, and make them your brand’s advocates.

Want to kick-start your next influencer marketing campaign? Sign up on Walee today or connect with us for more details.

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